Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Sleep deprivation and buying a marijuana grow facility. - Acquisitions Anonymous 191

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Michael Girdley (@girdley) and Bill D’Alessandro (@BillDA) review a marijuana grow facility.Check it out: https://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/medical-marijuana-grow-facility-absentee-passive-ownership/2079732/?d=L2J1c2luZXNzZXMtZm9yLXNhbGUvP3E9WW1aelgzTnZjblE5TkRBNk1qQXNNek13T2pJd0xETTBNRG95TUNaalptWnliMjA5TnpVd01EQXdKbXhqUFVwcll6bE5ha0Z0VVhveFZsVjVXbFJRVlRsTVVIbGFTRkJVU1hkS2EwMDVWbFpOYlZWNk1WVlhSRGh0VW5vd2VVMURXa1JRVmxaVVNteE5PVkZXU1QwbWJIUTlNekFzTkRBc09EQW1jSFJ2UFRNd01EQXdNREElM0Q=-----Thanks to our sponsor!Acquira - your acquisition in a box service. Acquira offers training to help you find, evaluate, and close on a small business. All in under a year.    Their team has bought over 30 businesses across  3 different portfolios. Whether you’re just beginning your business search, actively pursuing a specific deal, or looking to grow your existing company, Acquira’s training and team of experts can help. Their M&A advisors provide individualized support through the entire process. They will provide guidance toward your offer structure, drafting your LOI, in-depth due diligence, and securing funding for your deal.  They will even fly out to the business with you.  Once you acquire a business, they can help you grow it too.Acquira’s ACE Framework will help you transition that business from owner-operated to management-led, increasing profits and allowing you to step away from the daily operations and enjoy doing more of what you love.  And if “more of what you love” is buying and growing more businesses, they can help you build a portfolio of businesses, and eventually get liquidity from that portfolio by selling it to a financial buyer, or selling it to its employees.Space is limited each month, so if you’re looking to acquire a cash-flowing business this year, sign up now at acquira.com/pod-landerDo 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.Subscribe 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]

Hey, everyone. This is Bill D'Alessandro, and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. I don't know what day you are listening to this one, but we recorded it on a Friday. So Michael and I had some fun. We review a medical marijuana grow facility in the great state of Oklahoma. This episode, while the deal was good, it prompted a bunch of really fun stories, especially from Michael, about the marijuana industry, about the farming industry, discussion of, you know, is this a farm or is this more like an alcohol distillery? So this was a really cool episode. We had a lot of fun recording it. I hope you have a lot of fun listening to it.

Today's sponsor is Acquira, your acquisition and a box service. Acquire exists to help you find, evaluate, and close on a small business, all in under a year. Their team has bought and operated over 30 businesses across three different portfolios, so they practice what they preach. With Acreira, you can choose to go through their accelerator, set up your investment thesis, and finance creative business by yourself, or Acquira can do it for you. Their search team scours the continental U.S. for a business matching your thesis and gets it under LOI. Their unique business model combines an accelerator and an investment fund.

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Acquire's ACE framework will help you transition that. business from owner operated to management led, increasing profits, and allowing you to step away from the daily operations and enjoy doing more of what you love. And if more of what you love is buying and growing more businesses, they can help you build a portfolio businesses and eventually get liquidity from that portfolio by selling it to a financial buyer or selling it to its employees. Space is limited each month. So if you're looking to acquire cash flowing business this year, sign up now at Acquira.com slash pod hyphen lander. And again, that's Acquira.com slash pod hyphen lander.

Bill, I have some good news. I'm less punch drunk than yesterday. A little bit. You got some sleep? Less sleep deprived. So maybe this episode will only be like 40% shaggy dog stories about what happened with my family and the country clubs and stuff. Man shakes fist that sky complaining about golf.

All right. So since it's Friday, I thought we would do something fun. more fun than usual. And it is a medical marijuana business for sale. Let's do it. And when you think about medical marijuana, which state comes to mind? Which one do you think about first? I was in Colorado when they legalized medical marijuana, which is a whole separate story.

So that is a state I think of. Oh, this is probably the second state that comes to mind. Oklahoma. Oklahoma. They have not legalized anything in Texas. It is pathetic. Which is weird because Texas is usually like no rules, let's go. That's what you think.

That's the brand. It turns out the rules are just very selective. So we have no rules except a few that really matter. There's a few things we really care about, a few categories of things. Yeah, what happens in bathrooms, how people dress. But like we have no casino gambling here. Like, it's just so lame. Yeah, that was one of the weirdest things about Texas when I learned.

You said that they care so much about how people dress. When I learned that you were required to wear a hat and boots whenever you cross the state line, that really blew my mind about Texas. Actually, a lot of my friends are freaking out because there's this, the bill right now, there's a bill in the legislature that prohibits, basically it prohibits men from dressing as women in public. And then the way it's set up And what they've started to do is instead of the government

enforcing anything, they make it so they legalize the ability for one person to sue somebody else. For the way they dress. For, yeah. So, but it's not. This won't go bad at all. It's, it's really bad. Like, so for example, like, the way it's written is really broad.

It applies to, like, theaters. So, like, if a publicly funded theater has a man dressed as a woman and children are allowed in the vicinity, it's a problem. And that's the other thing. Like kids can't, it's for kids.

It's considered indecent for a man to wear women's clothes. This is just very fraught. This is very, yeah. How do you legislate this? So you can't have like a prince impersonator anymore because the shirts versus the blouses, you know?

Well, you know, a lot of cowboy outfits are kind of fringy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so anyway, we definitely just got canceled by one half of the U.S. population. I am not certain which half we got canceled. That's my favorite way is just to piss everybody off. That's how I like to be.

I like to be like so in the middle that both people hate you. Look, I mean, the Texas legislature, I know you're worried about what happens with how people are addressing. Can we have a casino while you're working on it? Just open up a casino in each city in Texas and let's call it a day so I could go play play blackjack every once in a while because I feel like it. Anyway. All right. Medical marijuana in Oklahoma.

Yeah. You want to read this one or do it? I can read it. So this is a medical marijuana grow facility. Absentee slash passive ownership in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They want $3 million for this business. And it has $1.6 million of cash flow. So they want less than 2x cash flow for this.

This is another business, second episode in a row. we've recorded where the cash flow is higher than the EBITDA, which is interesting, implies negative cap X or something. So EBITDA is 1.45 and cash flow is 1.58. So we'll use the cash flow number. So like 1.6, they want $3 million for it is 2x. They say they got a million bucks of FF&E, furniture fixtures and equipment, and about half a million bucks of real estate, which is not included in the asking price.

And then here's the thing that really surprised me, established in 2021. So as we record this as 2020, like how many cycles of marijuana growing can you actually have done in like a couple years? Like this is very early. So this is a great opportunity for an investor that wants to be an absentee owner or at least have the option of working on the business

rather than being stuck working in the business. Oh man, we're starting right out with the cliches. Let's go. This is a 9,900 square foot medical marijuana grow operation located in Oklahoma, City. This business has multiple owners, but the main operational owner is willing to stay on with the business long term for the new owner, if they wish, so the new owner could be almost 100% passive. This facility was built out in 2021 and planted their first crop in mid-February 2022.

So as of right now, they have been growing things for 18 months. For the first 12 months, the revenue is $1.4 million with a net profit of $950,000. The numbers above in the listing are what the owner projects, of course, for 2023. So we're selling marijuana grow houses based on four EBITDA now. All right. During the first 12 months, they were mainly focused on getting everything dialed in, and they were only able to do three harvests in 12 months. Going forward, they would be able to do four harvests, so once a quarter, which will allow them to produce between 1,800 and 2,000 pounds of cannabis per year. Currently, they are able to sell a product for $1,200 a pound on average. however, they mostly sell through brokers, so I would assume take a cut.

If a new owner was to hire a salesman and sell direct to the dispensaries, they could get closer to $1,800 a pound, which would increase the gross revenue to $3.2 to $3.6 million per year. This is a great business in a very recession-proof industry. I'll give you that, I guess. It's a vice business. Call Mitch at here's his number. Mitchell Yinger. I got six employees.

The real estate is leased. Okay, so this is interesting. Normally when they go, oh, real estate, you know, could be included but not part of the deal. It's because a seller owns a real estate. In this case, the real estate is leased, but apparently the landlord would be open to selling. Their competition, there's plenty of other grow operations, but most cannot produce the same quality of product. The two easiest ways to expand would be add on the existing building and allow for more room to grow and hire a salesman to sell direct dispensaries, which would take your per pound price from 1,800 to 1,800. It also says seller is open to financing 25 to 50% of the sale price.

Interesting. One owner is wanting to stay on long term. The other owner will stay for 30 to 90 days. So, Michael, what do you think? Man, I should be selling pot. No, but seriously, do we know what the rules are in Oklahoma? I have no idea. Because that's the other thing that's interesting about marijuana is

the rules are like the liquor laws. They differ based on state. So like here in Texas, like liquor, for example, has what's called a three-tier system. Have we ever talked about this? Yep. Yeah, we have three-tier in North Carolina, too. Yeah, so for those of you don't know,

here's how three-tier system works. Three-tier system for liquor distributorship basically means there's producers who, like, brew beer or brew liquor or whatever. So like, let's say you're Jack Daniels or AB and Bev or whatever, right? And so that's the producer. Then there is the middlemen who are distributors. And then there are retailers and end-user customers.

And the way the three-tier system works is the producers have to go through distributors. And distributors then are the ones that put the product out into the market. And at least here in Texas, there is a reason why the liquor distributors, their kids went to Harvard and they fly around in private jets and the people who own the end user, the third tier, who own liquor stores or who own restaurants, their kids hopefully go to state college. It's because there's a limitation of supply of these distributors to where there's a handful of license and they've been grandfathered in forever. They're monopolies.

They're licensed monopolies. If you want Budweiser, you go through this one distributor and they get to charge whatever they want and their only price competition is what Coors or some other product is selling for. And then, I mean, I think most of us who follow the way consumer products work is there has been massive consolidation on the producer side. So like typically what happens is you have a brand

that's ABN Bev and they own 500 different brands and they work with one distributor who then has a ton of pricing power and is the three-tier system. So that I bring that out. And did I explain that okay, Bill? Yeah, well, the key is that three-tier system and never the three-shall mix, right? It is illegal for brands to do their own distribution.

It is illegal for retailers to manufacture. So in states with three-tier system, like in liquor, like we have here in North Carolina, it's very hard for like same entities to do retail and also to make their own alcohol. Yeah. And vice versa. like the manufacturers are not legally allowed to disintermediate the distributor. So it's all locked in.

It reminds me of the, I don't know if you saw this story, but it reminds you the original marijuana legalization bill that happened in Ohio. Did you ever hear this story? No, not in Ohio. So there were these guys who basically spent a bunch of money

to try to leave, legalize recreational marijuana. And the bill almost passed. Like it was super close. And I think it was in Ohio. It might be one of the other states, but this happened like five or six years ago. And basically when people,

they paid a bunch for lobbyists, they went to go try to get marijuana legalized in their state. And basically when they wrote up the bill, they basically created it such that the only place in the state that could produce marijuana and grow it legally

was a farm that they controlled. It was the coolest hustle I've ever seen in my whole life. It was as good as what the military industrial complex, like the military contractors do to make sure that the money keeps flowing to Boeing and all these different folks, right? Like it was that times 10. It was just like the best grift of regulatory capture I've ever seen in my whole life.

And I think eventually people caught onto it and like it got killed. but it was so close. These guys didn't basically pass the bill that was just like a blank checkbook for themselves. So anyway, that just reminds me. They almost passed a bill. It almost passed. It got really close. But like they were artificially creating

a monopoly for themselves as the only place to can bank marijuana in an entire state. It was just like, oh, you guys were so good. I love it. I love it. So anyway, the point being like just like every state is different. By the way, I also have a hilarious

Portland story about every state being different that I could share. But I'm trying to- Well, Portland is very different. I won't disagree. Well, the funny thing, I don't know if you know about this is Portland, but there is a state ruling that happened in there in the Oregon, in the Oregon Supreme Court about free speech. Are you familiar with this?

Have you heard of this? No. Okay. So if you go to Portland, they have had a- state Supreme Court ruling from like 30 years ago. And the Supreme Court there basically ruled that nudity is protected under the First Amendment. As speech. As free speech.

So you go in, you go into these places and like if you're naked, that's free speech. But it applies to like the gentleman's establishments where people are walking around, women are walking around naked are like. Speaking, right? Everywhere. Like just it. Yeah, it's, that's free speech. Like, oh, would you like a show?

shot a tequila from a naked waitress. Like, that's the whole thing. And you go to these places and it's not like, well, at least here in Texas, like in San Antonio, you have to wear pasties and all this kind of stuff. Like in Portland, they're just like yolo. And it's called from this one Supreme Court like ruling. Anyway, it's just crazy. That's still true today in Portland.

You could just walk down the street naked and not be arrested for indecent exposure. Bill, I read about this on, you know, I read about this in The Economist. You know, I don't know for certain. So I haven't experienced it. This is not something you do on the regular. Other people do this. But no. Also, like, the appeal, I don't know.

It's just like what? There's no upside to this. There's a bunch of Portland body hair jokes also that I'm not going to make. Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah, we get there. So anyway, different states with marijuana have different rules. And one of my buddies actually bought a grow operation in New Mexico. and the rules there were very interesting

where you had to have a grow operation and that enabled you to have one retail location and they were like tied together. So basically what they had done, which was pretty cool, was fix the number of outlets and then fix the number of growers. So you were ensured that there was a limitation of supply,

which is something like you want as a retailer. That's something you want. Not something you want as a consumer. It was definitely a whatever the opposite of consumer surplus is. It's a negative. Supplier surplus. Supplier surplus. So that would be the first thing I want to dig into on this Oklahoma thing is like,

what is the regulatory environment we're working in? The way they hint about it is it's a very open market free for all, which I think is something going to think that they can sell straight to the retail outlets. And they don't, I notice they call it a broker who they're currently going through. not a distributor, which to me a difference would be like a broker arranges a deal and you still ship it.

Like a distributor would take possession of your inventory. They're referring to it as a broker. So if they're using precise language, I would think a broker is basically like an outsourced salesperson that is visiting all the dispensaries, all the retailers and arranging the orders and noticing they're out of stock and all that stuff. 100%.

So that smells to me. That's like something I'd want to put a pin in. Like understand, okay, first of all, if I'm going to get into this, what is the regulatory environment? And like, am I getting set up something akin to, like, the Ohio situation I talked about where, like, I own the only farm in Oklahoma? By the way, if this was the only marijuana grow operation in Oklahoma, like, let's sell

everything and run over there. It would not be priced at two times cash flow, if it were. The thing that's interesting to me about how this is priced is, so it's priced at two times cash flow, which I could see that in a vice industry like this one, right, with perhaps a relatively unstable regulatory environment, you know, not to say that there's a bill right now in Oklahoma State House about how to regulate marijuana, but there could be tomorrow. Like this is an inherently unstable regulatory niche. So I could see a discount there. I could see kind of the sin discount on this business. But the thing that's weird to me is they want two X EBITDA and

I happen to know from my time in Colorado and having some commercial real estate buddies that the build out on these grow houses is not cheap. Yeah. Because they need a ton of power. So I had a friend who was a commercial real estate broker, you know, dime a dozen commercial real estate broker in Colorado right around the time medical marijuana was legalized, or recreational marijuana was legalized, rather. And so the grow operations just exploded. And he quickly figured out, he went from dime a dozen commercial real estate broker and then immediately hung a shingle as the grow house guy. Like if you wanted to build a grow house, he would not only help you find the real estate.

He knew how to get in contact with the local energy utility, negotiate the contract because they got to come in and like pull additional power to these places for all the lights and the climate control and everything. So you need a ton of power in these grow houses. So he would help you negotiate with utility, get special rates. There's a ton of capax usually. There's actually a fair bit of buildout. So you end up with, at this point, like they say they got a million bucks of FF and E. I would think like that's probably their capitalized buildout if I had to guess all the lights and all that stuff. And it's also interesting, too, that the real estate is leased, but the owner would be willing to sell.

So that also makes me wonder how customized to this property if the owner maybe just wants to let it go. Maybe it makes more sense to own the real estate. But at the same time, then you can't really, how valuable is the real estate if the business is not in it. So is the real estate a great investment? I'm not sure. But either way, they're, they probably put a million bucks at least into this thing. And they're selling for two times cash flow. Like, this just seems absurdly, like, are they just trying to get their CAPEX back? Like, why is it priced this way? Why go through all this pain in the ass to stand the thing up, to do all the CAPX, to do all the CAPX, to build it to get the permits to like do all all this shit that you got to do to start any startup

business let alone like a high capx regulatory one and then 18 months in you sell it for two times cash flow why like what is going i don't know what's going on uh because it's a farm it's a it's a it's a you know at least when you own a farm like let's say you own some land in Iowa or Nebraska, and my buddy owns some, which is really interesting. You at least are, you have some sort of cornered resource, right, which is what I like about him owning this land that he inherited, right? And so he's a gentleman farmer and his neighbors run the crops on it, and he just does strategy for this land he owns. But at least there, there's a cornered resource, There's only so much hyper-arable farmland, and at least you own that 500 acres,

and you're going to be running your corn or soy or whatever you're going to put on it. This is kind of the worst of both worlds, right, which is you just built a grow house. And in this case, I looked it up. They're in Oklahoma County, which is Oklahoma City proper. So at least you're in a city, so that's nice. But like, if you go do what you're talking about, Bill, and drive outside of the airport of Denver, it's like, grow house, grow house, grow house, grow house, warehouse, warehouse, grow house, warehouse, grow house.

There is no limitation on supply of people who can come in and try to undercut you on price. And you have all of the vagaries and downside of being a farmer. And to me, none of the even protective stuff, right? Like, you don't have, you know, a limitation of supply. Like, you don't have a bunch of corn subsidies? Yeah, yeah, exactly that. Let's not forget sugar subsidies, corn subsidies, like ethanol subsidies,

like those are all things that go straight from the consumer to the farmers, which is potentially why America continues to export. Did you know that America exports like triple the amount of food of number two country? I did know that. A wise man sent me a draft of a Twitter thread. Oh, yeah. I need to run that. By the way, so I wrote that thread last week and I've been sitting on it because I want

to send it on Saturday because it's a good stuff. Saturday thread. By the way, the thesis of the thread is, here is why America is overpowered and from a video, to use a video game phrase, and like you would be stupid to try to live in any other country. It's a great thesis, by the way. We'll get people super bad on Twitter. We'll get really pumped. But it all comes down to geography. Like America has, like, if this was a game of civilization and you started in North America, specifically owning the United States, like, it would be impossible to lose a game of civilization building cities here. And, you know, so like because of what we have in terms of that geography creating market advantage, like,

we're like triple what Germany produces. And Germany is the number two exporter of food. I didn't know that either. Like, I didn't, I didn't know Germany was number two, but we're like, we blow everybody else away. But some of it is because we subsidize it. Anyway, where did I, where did I take us there? So, so anyway, back to this. But not a good one is what you're going Back to this deal. It's like a shitty farm. Like, this is what you're buying here. With high capax, like, and no subsidies.

Is it, though? Because what makes a lot of farms shitty is the fact that they grow food and the margins on food are terrible. Right. They're so bad, in fact, that they need subsidies to stay in business. I would think, like, I don't know what corn goes for a pound, but it ain't $1,800, okay? A pound. I mean, corn is probably like.

for like a dollar a pound at wholesale. Like your farmer is selling his corn for like a couple bucks a pound max, right? This farmer, quote unquote, is selling his quote unquote corn for $1,800 a pound. So it may be shitty in some ways, but it ain't bad in some other ways. I just looked it up. The price of corn in 2023 is 54 cents a pound. There you go. Okay.

How do people make money running a farm? You don't. It has to be subsidized. You can't. Right? Yeah. So I think that's a question. Where do you think this market's going? Like, is that what these guys see? Like, is that where they're going to end up? Like, this is going from 1,800 to 2,000 pounds? I mean, if that's happening to this industry, the whole, like, everybody should be running. All capital should be out of this industry as quick as it can possibly run. Right. That will decimate the entire value chain. But I don't think that's going to have. happen. Here's why. Absently small portion of the population, you need to eat corn three times a day. You don't need to consume this product three times a day necessarily. Right. So like this is,

and also like corn is like food is just a bad business in so many ways. Right. Drugs and alcohol are great, legal drugs and alcohol are a great business, right, in a lot of ways. Yeah. Have you, Have you read about the butterfly effect of like, this is fascinating to me. So like there's a butterfly effect where like the United States has been doing a war on drugs, right, since the 70s. And a part of that was criminalizing marijuana, right? And then so that has caused all the cartels and everybody to like go underground and do only cash-based like transactions.

It's all cash for illegal drugs, right? Yep. And so the cartel, therefore, has all these problems of how do we get money into the... Cash logistics problems. Yeah, how do we get money into the, like, how do we launder it, how do we make it all legal, all that kind of stuff? So then because of that, and because we have this stupid war on drugs and we go too far against marijuana, which, you know, arguably is we're headed the right direction in terms

of liberalizing it, but still there's this overarching war on drugs. so they can't actually like take credit cards and that sort of thing at these at these dispensaries. It's okay and really expected that folks are going to be taking cash right at all these dispensaries, right? So you have this like this butterfly effect that gets there. But then it all circles back, which is there are estimates that and I saw it was like 30 to 50% of the cash that is coming into these dispensaries is just straight up laundered money. Like basically the cartels have figured out like, oh, Like, there is a semi-legal business where the government is actually okay with us taking in a lot of tax money via cash.

And so they just walk over and say, yes, I'd like five pounds of cannabis, please. Here's $3 million and, like, funneling it through all these things. And then the last I saw is because the cash has gotten so out of hand in all of these dispensaries and there's no banks will take it, right? Because we have a war on drugs. They have a situation where, like, the Fed has started to help them deal with the volume of cash they have because they have hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. So it's created this whole like a cycle that comes back on itself because of all these

individual decisions that are made to where like lots of the money coming through the dispensaries, it's totally just like it's now taxed, but it's just drug money. It's just for different drugs. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, it's cocaine money that now looks like marijuana money. Yeah. Well, and that's one of the things.

So I think you probably know this, but I don't know if our listeners do. the IRS does not care how you make your money. They just care that you pay taxes on it. Yeah, that's the Al Capone thing, right? The Al Capone thing, yeah. So, like, you know, like people, like you want to, you can get in more trouble selling drugs and not reporting the taxes than you can, like,

and not paying tax on it, then you can, you know, basically like selling drugs in many. Well, it's a separate crime. It's a separate crime. So, like, that's how they nailed Al Capone for tax evasion. right because he was making all this money and not reporting into the IRS every year and they couldn't actually get him on the drug charges like they could never nail him on that yeah but they sure as hell could prove he made a ton of money from somewhere and didn't pay tax on it and they put him away for

years for tax evasion right so anyway like if you put if you like what you're saying like you fill out your tax form and you're like I made this money from selling drugs like I sold weapons to the Russians like you say that on your tax return, like nothing will happen to you. That's not guarantee that nothing will happen to you. Well, I mean, from a tax, the IRS will not look at it. I mean, the IRS will take your money. There's no guarantee they don't refer you to the FBI. Yeah.

Well, there's no guarantee they actually ever look at your tax return. Also that. Also that the IRS is running. So anyway, so I think there's one more point I want to make about this. And my buddy, who I talked about, bought a, you know, a combo dispensary and all this kind of stuff in New Mexico, and I have talked with him about the experience of going through it. This industry has attracted a bunch of people who are just dirtbag criminals. And when you ask yourself, like, well, why would that be?

Why would a bunch of dirtbag criminals go to a new legalized thing? And the reason is it because it's all the people who are like breaking the law, selling pot before. They've already got the infrastructure, right? Yeah, they're the ones that know how to do this. So that's not to say everybody in this industry is a dirtbag, just to be clear, but there are a lot of dirt bags. It's a much higher percentage than say, you know, other stuff. So he had, my buddy had gone through just like different partners, different grow guys.

And it is just like a nightmare. Like he would be like, yeah, I got a new set of like business partners on this. And I hired a new guy to run my thing. And then nine months later, he's like, yeah, that guy was ripping me off. Like every single water movement happened over and over again. They were lying to me. They were scumbags. So, yeah, that's the other thing.

You, you know, I guess it's maybe it's your phrase. Like you play around with hogs. You're going to bathe and shit. Yeah, like, I mean, here's the thing. Like, I am pretty confident none of my competitors who are going to break my kneecaps if I out compete them, right? You cannot be totally confident in this industry that if you have a lot of success, somebody are going to come break your kneecaps or demand protection money or whatever.

Some guy from XYZ cartel is going to show up and be like, you know what we think you need to do? You're going to be like, whatever you tell me? Well, you know what's funny too? I have a friend that I went to high school with who then became a Navy SEAL, a high-level Navy SEAL, absolute badass, did that for like five or eight years. And he left and now he runs a cannabis company in California. So, like, if I'm not worried for him. Like, when they come to break his kneecaps, he's going to break their kneecaps. I'm not worried for him, but I am not a badass like that.

So I would be terrified, you know, owning a business like this. And the more successful you get, the more terrified you should be. Yeah. I once did a real estate deal in like 15 years ago. And we got into a dispute with the other guys. And then later on, I hear that the other guys are of ill repute and maybe be connected to that kind of willing to do whatever type groups. And I was up late at night, scared about it.

And I was like, oh, this isn't worth it. Like, I'm not getting involved with these guys. Rolled over and just went back to normal life. It's just much more fun. Yeah. That's right. But like, I think this business is making $1.5 million a year, supposedly. It's for sale for 2X.

If you can go direct, and I should also say, I have known a ton of people who have made, oodles of money in this industry, in the grow house industry, just oodles of money. And in the medical marijuana and recreational marijuana retail business as well, a lot of money has been made in this industry. And a lot of people will keep making money in this industry. I just don't know if I got the stomach for it. I don't either.

It's just easier ways to make money. That's my new phrase, my new catchphrase, as I'm coming on 50-year-old girdly, people just tell me stuff. I'm like, I don't know. Man, that just looks really hard. There's lots of ideas out there. Why don't you just pursue something easier? Yep.

And 100%. All right. Anything more about this one? Otherwise, like, look, I think there's, yeah, I agree with you. 100%. There's something here. Like, you just got to go understand it. The good news is I think it's really pretty easy to understand this market.

Like there's lots of people who love talking about the cannabis business. These are the type of people who nerd out about getting high and nerd out about marijuana. And like, you go spend some time there. You talk to the seller. I bet you'd learn a million things about how this all works pretty quickly. And there's worst places to go in April, you know, to 20, 23 and then Oklahoma. It's pretty nice there, actually. Have you been to Oklahoma?

I have not. I heard, I heard Tulsa is, like, freaking awesome. Yeah. There's, I mean, there's, it's got a lot going on for it. And there's actually a really good book about how, how Oklahoma tied together. I would highly recommend it. And it's basically this guy takes the, and I'll go through my Amazon here to find it.

But he basically takes the saga of the kind of the last great year that the Oklahoma City Thunder, the basketball team had, and ties that into the original founding of the state of Oklahoma and therefore Oklahoma City and like how it all comes together and how you can see how Oklahoma, the state, like how it all came together. the early racism, all that kind of stuff, how that all ties back into and reverberates in what's going on today in Oklahoma in that basketball season, which is really fascinating.

Wow, cool. The last thing I'll say about people in the marijuana industry, I just find hilarious, is there are so many people in the marijuana industry that you meet them and you're like, this guy does not have two brain cells to write together, right? Either they've all been killed by the marijuana or he never did in the first place. And then you ask him a question about marijuana. And he's like, well, the endocannabinoid receptors in your brain, blah, blah, blah. And he's like knows everything.

Every detail, it's like a freaking Ph.D. And it's like, oh, this really tells me a lot about, you know, like motivation and passion and, you know, all this stuff. Like, there are people that are so freaking deep on marijuana, but like can't read practically. It is unbelievable. It's pretty great. It's pretty great. I found the book. It's called Boomtown.

It's by a guy named Sam Anderson. And I forgot, there's also a big part of it where he goes and spends like gonzo journalism with Wayne and a blanket on his last name, but the guy from the Flaming Lips. Are you familiar with Flaming Lips? Are you fan of that band? I'm familiar, but I definitely don't know the guy's name.

So that dude, that dude is from Oklahoma City and he still lives there. And like he and his wife were like, like the preeminent kind of artistic culture, leaders of like this underground inside of okayc like just totally and they they've got like this whole like complex of like warehouses and stuff and this gang of like creators and they would go do like crazy stuff like totally sober like go out in the middle of night in Oklahoma City and like redo all the street signs to the city they wanted to have it be and like paint paint on the ground like

different stuff like it was just like this is the coolest like coolest stuff but he's um he's part of the book, too. They talk about how all that kind of ties together into the fascinating culture of this little town or this minor city in Oklahoma. And, you know, it's one of the great things about America. So highly recommend it. Yeah, Boomtown by Sam, Sam Anderson. Super good book. Cool. Love it. Cool, man. All right. Well, we'll catch everybody next time. Do we have an ass this time, Bill? No ask. I don't know. Follow us on Twitter. You probably hear us talk about this plenty. Follow us on Twitter. It's where all, you know, we do all the bullshitting day to day. And also, if you know somebody that would like to sponsor our podcast, if you know a professional who sells

to the deal industry, so be it a lawyer, an accountant, an intermediary, you know, anything like that, we would love to talk to potential sponsors. So come sponsor. We reach 10s, nearly hundreds of thousands of listeners every month. And they're all, they all care about doing acquisitions and doing deals. Yeah, we have sponsors. Yeah, we have business buyers. So people are looking to buy stuff. So service providers, we've had folks like that sponsor, which would be good. I, We have actually business sellers. Like that was one of the things that really surprises me is people listen to this podcast

because they want to nerd out how to think about their business. So if you want to sell something of business sellers, you know, cloud bookkeeping has been with us forever and is one of our greatest sponsors. So like, but they sell mostly to sellers, right? And people have owned businesses. So that's part of the audience as well. And they've had a lot of success.

You know, another sponsor of ours that is absolutely freaking tunded it is Trout CPA. Yeah. They have, I don't know if they still sponsor us, but they did for a while. and they did ERTC for me and Mills very successfully, very highly ethically. And I know Mills and I have referred them to tons of people. And in talking with Dan over there, he says it's just constant from the podcast.

I think they've gotten very high return on sponsor. And they sponsored like three episodes, which is that it? They didn't even charge him for that plug either. Which is why like you and I were DMing and you're like, okay, how much for one episode? I'm like, we're not doing that. Like sign up for 10. Because we're going to provide a lot of value, not a little value. So that's what we want to do.

Yep, that's right. Super cool. All right. Well, yeah, reach out to us. We'll take your money. I mean, we'll work with you. Catch you later. See ya.