Monday, February 21, 2022
It doesn’t get any better than this. Dan digs into financial expansion, wealth, access to capital, leverage, selling your company, exit strategies, and all things money.
In this first of a two part episode, Dan reveals how to:
If you want to grow and scale and have longevity, Money, Money, Money is tailored made for you.
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Russell Brunson: Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. Today's episode, we are going back to 2012, where Dan gave a presentation at the Info-Summit called Money, Money, Money. And in this presentation, he talked about expansion, wealth, access to capital, leverage, selling your company, exit strategies, and a whole bunch more. And I think this is a presentation you are going to love. So we actually broke up this presentation into two different episodes. You get part one today and the next week you'll get part two of the Money, Money, Money podcast episode.
Dan Kennedy: Nice of you to stay. So you have in the room with you for the rest of the day experts who are... How many pairs of glasses do you need, woman? Oh, God. It's like shoes.
We were having a discussion before the meeting, by the way, a handful of us, about who is here with the smallest and least luggage and who is probably here with the most luggage. So my theory is it's probably Dwight Woods with the lease luggage, because I've seen him in the same clothes all four days. So my assumption is he's like zero, that would be my guess. Maybe a couple pair of underwear in his pocket and on the plane. And my wager about who brought the most would be Allie Brown, even though she didn't stay overnight. That would be my wager.
So you have experts in the room who definitely have far more experience in deal making, value building and deal making, than I do. And I don't want to tread much on their territory. Conversely, probably of anybody in the room, I have the most experience in the info marketing industry. So I thought what I would do is two things really; I would tell you some things about equity versus income in info marketing businesses. And I would tell you a few things about the deals I've been involved in over the 40 years I've been in this industry. And some lessons learned. And I think a few things that they may not tell you. In fact, a few things probably that they might not want you to know.
So the three things we'll start with very quickly are these, first of all, the whole idea of income versus equity. So first of all, most info-marketers, but really most business owners in general, they really don't even start thinking about equity. If they ever think about it, they think about it very late in their game. Like when they start to think about, "I might like to get out of here. How can I get out?" That's about the time they start thinking about it. So most people get up every morning thinking only about what I call present bank.
So if you talk to an info marketer, for example, who just had a conference and you ask most of them, "How'd you do?" They're going to give you income answers, right? "Our registration revenue was X and it was up Y percentage over the previous year. We sold X amount of coaching programs. We sold X amount of stuff. We did X amount of dollars per head." Those are the answers you're going to get. And they're the same answers you would get from a restaurant owner on Monday about his weekend. "How'd you do?" And in their tribal language, if you know tribal language, the answer they're going to give you is about how many tables they turned on Saturday night. Or if you don't know tribal language, they're going to give you income numbers. "Well, we did X amount of sales." Or, "We did X amount of dollars per head," if they're a little more sophisticated they might actually be monitoring that. But these are all income numbers.
Nobody on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis really thinks about equity, future bank, as well as present bank. And I was trying to get people to do two things. First of all, to start thinking about both of them every single day. And secondly, to create mechanisms in their business that make simultaneous deposits to present bank and future bank. So the restaurant example is the easiest, because if they collect name, address, email address, and birth date of every customer in the place, every new customer that night, they put money in the present bank and they put money in the future bank, because if they know the person's birthdate, they have a 90% chance of getting them in the restaurant to spend money the week of their birthday. The direct mail that does that often pulls 70% and 80% response. So they've now put money in the future bank at the same time they put money in the present bank, and they've created future equity. So they've made simultaneous deposits.
If you speak and sell stuff from this stage, a whole lot of speakers only went, sold stuff, made money, went home. I was more about the customer than I was the present dollar.
To have the present dollar, but more interested in the future bank deposit, which colors, who you go speak in front of. Not just anybody who'll give you a check.
So income versus equity really is a thing that ought to be dealt with on a current basis. And most people deal with it only on a late in the game basis.
Secondly, a lot of people don't even have businesses, and they think they have businesses. They really have episodic income events. And if and when you actually go to sell a thing that is just a series of episodic income events, you will find you have trouble. So in a not too distant past, if you went and looked at the MGM Studio sale in the entertainment industry, you will find they didn't do very well. If Disney sold today, Disney would do very well. MGM totally, "What's our next hit?" Disney, franchise properties and licensing and multiple income streams and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So big difference, even though they're both in the entertainment industry, and they both make movies.
Client of mine, not who started in info marketing incidentally, Guthy-Renker, because we began with infomercials for Think and Grow Rich and Personal Power. The first Think and Grow Rich show was 1980 or '81 I think. And I worked on the first show. Bill very quickly correctly identified, "Uh-oh, we're in the next hit business. We're in the episodic income event business, and we want to be in the reoccurring income business." And consequently in 1982 I think, there were 50 different infomercial, that they considered themselves infomercial companies, at least tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, they are all gone. None of them exist except for Guthy-Renker, because they figured out, "We can't be an infomercial company."
And so, in our world, there's an awful lot of people who don't build what's called a franchise. So James Bond is a franchise. Batman is a franchise property. They can keep dusting Batman off. I'm sure Adam told you, he just signed a really nice big seven figure deal with Warner Brothers and DC because they want to dust off all the old Batman TV stuff, because boomers and seniors want the old stuff, not the new stuff for themselves and for their grandkids. And so, think of how old that version of that property is and yet how valuable the franchise must be for them to hand him seven figures. So a lot of people don't build franchise properties within their businesses and they don't build evergreen assets.
So yes, you can do a launch campaign that brings in a million dollars, but it's done. And if your business is too much one and dones and not enough of these evergreen assets and franchises, you really don't have a business. You actually have a job. You're coming in and creating the next hit. And the danger in the next hit business is, I always say Disney can afford John Carter from Mars. When a John Carter from Mars happens, they can just shrug their shoulders, "It's only $100 million. It isn't probably even going to be a blip in our quarterly report. Off we go." Most of us cannot afford a John Carter from Mars. One of them could kill most of the people who are doing these episodic income events. And they are like cocaine. They're very addictive. So beware of your addictions to things that are short-term good, long-term hazardous.
Last, the confusion of an activity or a media with a business. So we use shorthand all the time incorrectly. So for a long time, people thought, for example, in my world, that they were in the infomercial business. There is no such thing. And a bunch of them found out painfully, there is no infomercial business. Infomercials are a media. They're just a means of selling stuff. They're no different than the Yellow Pages. Nobody has ever walked around, regardless of what kind of business they owned, and said, "I'm in the Yellow Pages business." The only people in the Yellow Pages business are the people that print the Yellow Pages. So arguably, the only people who are in the internet marketing business are the media companies selling you media, like Google landlords. You're not in the internet marketing business. That's not a business, it's a media.
This seminar, that's not a business. That's an activity. So it's important to really get a grip on what is an actual business. And we're going to talk about that. So specifically, we're going to talk about where can equity be created or found in an info marketing business. And as a preface, I want to say a couple of things. One is that everything you're going hear about today that has to do with the creation of value or equity, the development, the sustaining, the improvement, you should know to be entirely fair, that it is not a zero sum game. There is trade off.
As you decide strategically that you want to build brand equity, that you want to build intellectual property equity, that you want to build equity of any kind, you will be making decisions in many cases that forego some short term or easy income. That if you strategically make the decision, you are going to be in an income only business, which many info-marketers make that decision. You obviously think you don't want that pathway, or you probably wouldn't be in the room here today, but many info-marketers make that decision. And for many info-marketers, it's fine. It's the right decision, to have an income only play. But the minute you decide you're going to build equity, there's some income now that you are going to reduce, suppress, choose not to take because there's all sorts of short-term money grabs that can be had as long as you don't really care about equity.
So there are, for example, speakers, and I'm going to choose not to name them. But several years ago, if you've been around long enough, we had one on the program, to my objections, that in part resulted in me spending 45 minutes in a room with a crying woman, calming her down. Which on the list of top 10 things that I find appealing or that I'm particularly good at, it's not on the list.
So for example, just to give you a micro example, there are speakers who can sell from the platform like nobody can sell from the platform. But in doing so, because of the way they sell, because of what they sell, because of what they do with the customer after they now have them, they do enormous long-term damage. So they might, in their piece of real estate at a seminar, make the host a half a million dollars, when the next best person to be put in that same space will only make the host $200,000.
And you sit there in the room at the table and you know it. So, "Gee, do we want to make $300,000 less this week?" "Maybe, it depends on how concerned we are with the equity question." So the kind of who you get in bed with issue changes dramatically depending on how you weight your concerns, income, equity, short-term, long-term. The who you get in bed with question becomes more problematic. The what you sell question becomes more problematic. So it's not a zero sum game. And you need to understand that as you consider which way you're going to go, how fast you're going to move, everything you may or may not want to do about equity.
Now, let's talk about where it can be found. First of all, for the most part, you aren't going to find it where many other businesses often have it. So often, for example, location doesn't matter to us. Now, that's a piece of good news, in the sense that this is a business you can do with your laptop, with an antenna on a boat, out in the middle of the desert, you can be in Alaska if you want to. God knows you can even be in the wilds of Australia and New Zealand, which I keep telling these guys, "If they would only push that place closer to civilization, we would all be happier." But one of the virtues of this thing is it's virtually a portable business. But the drawback is there's no way to create location advantage.
Now, there are exceptions. The next time you're at EPCOT and you guys know, you should all go to Disney World at least twice a year with no kids, because they're a distraction to being... Well, they are, to being there as a student, and you should be there as a student. So how many people have not been in the past 12 months to Orlando, to Disney World? Look, most of you ain't getting any younger. I mean, so some of you should be eating dessert first. I mean, you really don't want to keel over with a brussel sprout in your mouth, do you? But you got to go at least twice a year and you got to go as a student, because nobody knows more about taking maximum money from people and having them be happy about it than Disney. That's their business. Three years ago, they passed Vegas in dollars per head per day. They take more money per head per day than Vegas. Vegas has unlimited booze, legalized theft, gambling, and hookers. Disney has a mouse, but they're better at monetization and making people happy. So you just have got to go.
So there's an intellectual property, the next business, the next time you go, really an info marketing business, that location does matter. But they're rare, but I'll give it to you so you can see it. The next time you go, you go to EPCOT, you go to the World Showcase in the back of EPCOT and go to England. Which by the way, their England is a lot closer than the real England. It has real British people in it. They import them. No, they do, every worker in every country in the World Showcase is totally staffed with people from that country and all the merchandises from that country. So really, I mean, there's no reason to schlep all the way over there. So I've done it.
So the first time, we're all over in London for Chris Cardell, of course everybody's got to go to Harrods. So we go to Harrods. Carla is loading up on souvenir merchandise, that we are going to have to schlep through customs. I'm going, "We're going to be in Orlando next month. We can just go over to England in Orlando, get this same crap, and they'll ship it for us." "Oh, no, no. Bring it home from..." That single thing did she buy, that the next time I pointed out to her was, which is really not a constructive exercise, but was right there.
But anyway, so if you go to England in EPCOT, which you won't see this in the real England, but if you go to England at EPCOT, you will find what used to be the [Gary Halbert 00:20:00] business. And so, there's an entire counter in one of the gift shops, pretty good size space, where they do the instant genealogy report and family crest. So you get the Kennedy family crest or the Donatelli family crest, which really isn't your family crest. It's a Donatelli family crest. And you get the little research report about the Donatellis were mobsters in the 1800s in Italy and all that. And then of course, the upsells are anything you could put that family crest on; shields, shirts, caps, beer mugs, whatever.
Now Halbert used to do that by direct mail. They now have a location, and that's a very good location. That business is also in kiosks, little carts in shopping malls all across the country. So that is an info marketing business that has a location issue to it. And in fact, the Disney location is of course a very, very valuable location that in and of itself, if they have a long-term lease for that location with Disney, that's equity, because that ain't easy to get. But most info marketing businesses do not have that.
Distribution, well, some. Most info-marketers aren't very good at it. I've been good at it my entire life. Only in the past six or seven years, have I not had some of my products in other people's catalogs. I've been good at that my entire life. So I've had product in Day Timers catalog, Covey catalog, SkyMall catalogs on the airplane, less about the money than about the acquisition of a customer, but that's distribution. But for the most part, our affiliate marketing is in a sense distribution, but it's not like a long-term deal to have your product on the shelf in every Bed Bath & Beyond store across America. So distribution is not that big of a deal to most info marketing businesses.
Market share, some businesses, yes. This business, really not. Most of the markets are fungible by the way. It's very hard to retain market share anyway, especially now that there's such a low barrier to entry to get in.
Physical assets, that's the least thing. We rarely in our business are going to have a building full of equipment and furniture and fixtures that we are going to turn around and put into the sale price. And pretty much if you do, you've done something wrong. So where most businesses have a lot of their equity, we don't.
There's also info-marketers erroneously think that a lot of the equity is in their content intellectual property, what they have authored and created, their books, their courses, their seminars, their material. And I would like to disabuse you of that idea, both from a practical operating standpoint, while you have your business, and when you go to sell it. The person who is the creator has ideas, can put together a course. That's the easiest part of this to replicate.
First of all, almost everything is derivative. So nobody's really done anything new since Moses came down from the Mount. So if I want a course on staff, how to maximize revenue for dental hygienists, all I really need to have a really good course is I need to go get 20 books and 20 courses that are already out there. I need to give them to somebody I got off Glance, who lives in a cave in Bulgaria. I need to have them turn it into one course. I need to tweak it enough I don't get sued. And if I really want to be cool, I go rent myself a highly effective dental hygienist to put on it as an author. And I maybe have spent five grand. So the content intellectual property is really not where the equity in our businesses is, but a lot of people think it is.
The evidence that it is not is what happens every time a really well known, famous, and successful author dies. If they haven't already done everything that's going to be discussed here today, pretty much their intellectual property is dead within six months. They're barely closing the lid on the human coffin when the lid on the intellectual property coffin has begun to be lowered.
Psycho-Cybernetics, the only self-help book anybody knows that's sold 30 million copies. I bought all the rights to all the Maxwell Maltz materials for $50,000. And I was generous in that. I was kind. Had I been a hard negotiator, I could have got them down. And they are not alone. So it's not there. It's really not in brand value for the most part for the same principle reason, is because in most info marketing businesses, the brands are tied to people. It's the best way to build the business. It's arguably the worst business to build, but it's the best way to build the business. And so, most of the brand identity is tied to people.
So here's where the three major equities are. One, lists. Ideally, lists with which there is significant goodwill and a pattern of responsiveness. Trained customers are better than untrained customers. As you think about acquisition rather than sale, which is one of the three things you should think about while you're in this room today, not just, "How do I sell my business? But maybe, is there a business I should buy, and cobble together with mine that makes it more valuable?" One of the best lists ever, here's a little inside secret, it's also to renting lists. So it's a marketing secret as well. The best list on the planet is a list of highly responsive buyers to mediocre or poor marketing. That's a great list for us, wonderful list for us.
So not to be cruel, but Nightingale-Conant, once the leader in this industry and still a leader in this industry, for at least a decade, pumps out pretty mediocre marketing, maybe two decades, pretty mediocre marketing. They don't pay copywriters very well. A lot of it's derivative, pretty much by category. If you take personal development program A and you look at the sales letter and you now see personal development program B, the sales letter's almost identical. They've basically just changed the names in the letter. They're not very good.
Consequently, when we've sold Magnetic Marketing through Nightingale-Conant, with the marketing material I didn't let them write, but I wrote when we did New Psycho-Cybernetics at Nightingale-Conant. New Psycho-Cybernetics, which you can still buy from Nightingale-Conant, they still sell it. That's been some time, you just had me sign one, didn't you?
Somebody had me sign one here, and you just bought one. You had me sign it. So for three years in a row, New Psycho-Cybernetics was their number one selling personal development product, not because of the product. First of all, nobody knows whether the product's any good or not till they get it. That's the nature of our beast. No, because I didn't let them write the sales letter. We wrote the sales material. So we went into a list that's highly responsive to mediocre marketing and delivered great marketing. That list is worth more to me than it is to them, because I would apply great marketing to it.
So one place we store equity in our business is in our lists, preferably lists with which we have goodwill, but that's a big piece of equity. I would never buy without this piece of equity there and I would overpay based on all the normal formulas for valuing a company, about which you will hear much. I might overpay based upon the list and what could be done with the list in smarter hands. So lists are a place where we store equity, reoccurring or renewable income. As with all businesses, they tend to be a lot more valuable if they have reoccurring or renewable income. It's why we love continuity. It's why we teach people in regular businesses, how to do continuity; restaurants, clothing stores, barber shops. It's why we believe in the membership concept, forced continuity, continuity.
But at least if not reoccurring, renewable. So if you take GKIC for example... So as you know, because you're here, we have institutionalized events, two of them; super conference and summit. They occur every year. By and large, the revenue's pretty predictable. It's literally a renewable revenue piece of this business. It's not like at random, every once in a while, we're making up a seminar. So that's a renewable income item.
Third, the intellectual property that really has the value, that has the equity is the marketing stuff. It's the evergreen or near evergreen ads, sales letters, all of the things that drive revenue for products, events, coaching, whatever. A lot of people don't understand that. It's another argument against one and done versus things that can be used again and again and again for a long period of time.
So if you think about the flagship product, the Magnetic Marketing system, really where's the equity? The equity is in the sales letters that sell it. And the equity is in the demonstration pieces that sell it, because a lot of it was sold this way. So you've all seen them. I won't bore you with them, but the confidential letter to the husband of the house from Jojo, the romance director of Jojo's Italian Grotto, which is not a real example, it's a fictional example. I made it up. That has sold $20 million worth of Magnetic Marketing. So where's the equity, in the product or in this? The equity's in this. And by the way, another reason the equity's in this is because you could jack it up and shove a different product under it, and you could use this to sell the other product.
So the equity in our businesses is very much about our marketing intellectual property and our processes. And so, under marketing IP, not only is there stuff, great ad, great sales letter. So as a freelance copywriter, I actually, in a sense, get equity in what I write, because I get a royalty. We're going to talk about the fact that there's lots of ways to get paid. So in reality, when I write copy for somebody, I get a fee, so I'm paid for my labor. And I get a royalty, which really means I own a piece of all the revenue that is going to be generated with that piece of copy, in perpetuity, for as long as the client uses it, in whole or part. I'm now quoting my contract.
And for example, I have a client in this industry, Craig Proctor. Some of you would know Craig, from whom I get a royalty check every month for a sales letter I wrote nine and a half years ago. That means he bought a piece of very valuable equity, because he's been able to use it day in, day out for nine and a half years to make money. The product that it sells would be worthless without the sales piece that drives the revenue. So where's the real equity? It's in the sales piece. And he owns 97% of that piece of equity. And I own 3% of that equity. So your marketing IP is extremely important.
Then, the other kind of marketing IP is really process. The processes we have in place that actually make the money. So I teach all the time, this will not be new, that wealth, power, and security, and independence are created through systems, not labor. So really, where's the real equity in McDonald's? Well, they have real estate equity. They have location equity. However, their best equity is process.
So Burger King, how many of you think Burger King has a better burger than McDonald's? All right, you learn more looking around. How many of you think Wendy's has a better burger than McDonald's? How many of you in your town can find some place to go get an infinitely better burger than McDonald's? Generally speaking, every fast food chain we might name has a better burger than McDonald's, and nobody ever beats them. How come? Because if you go in any of those other places, their process sucks. There's chaos at rush hour. They've never fixed it.
Burger King's been through every advertising agency on the planet, at least four times. They keep trying to fix their problem with advertising. They have a process problem. Nobody can get the food out fast enough and put the money in the register fast enough at rush hour. They're running into each other. The guy getting a milkshake is trampling over the guy over here. McDonald's, boom, in, out. And consistent all across the country. Great process.
Henry Ford, two processes, not one. He figured out how to make cars with an assembling line. However, that really wouldn't have had a lot of value if he hadn't figured out the franchise dealership network process, whereby dealers pay for cars before they're sold. Thereby, Henry don't need capital, and he created distribution, and he created exclusivity. So process is really important.
So one of my favorite examples is a company called Tupperware. So Tupperware, most people think of Tupperware in connection to its product. If you've not been to a Tupperware party, your mom has been to a Tupperware party. Everybody goes to a Tupperware party. Everybody goes with the intent of buying something, just like people who tune in to QVC, tune in with the intent of buying something. It's a great advantage to start with when you are selling by the way. It's why they don't need great salespeople at Tupperware, because everybody goes to the Tupperware party pre-determined that they're going to buy something.
Now, most people think about Tupperware in context of the product itself. If you don't know it, your mama knows Tupperware is the plastic stuff with the lid that pops and seals, and you turn it upside down. And they've innovated a lot in product. But Tupperware is really a process company. They're really not a product company. And they're really about eight major processes. So one is product innovation and manufacturing. And that's the only process that has anything to do with product. The other seven have to do with other very important things. They have a terrific process, maybe the best in the industry for recruiting part-time agents. They have a really good process for training part-time agents. They have a really good process for making those agents productive. They have a really good process for booking in-home parties. They have a really good process for presenting a party that sells a lot of stuff. They have a really good process to make sure every party begets another party, so that there is an endless chain of parties. So that to be successful, an agent only really needs to have one friend.
By the way, this is infinitely better. See, the network marketing industry hasn't figured this out. The insurance industry hasn't figured this out. The insurance industry is quite the opposite. The life insurance industry is about get an agent, he makes sales to the eight family members and friends he's got, and then he's dead, and you get another one. That's their business.
Tupperware's business, totally different. They can make a successful agent if all they have is one friend, because they create an endless chain of parties. And last, they have a great system for follow up on new buyers, so that they buy more, regardless of whether or not the agent in the field is any good. So they are a process company, to such an extent that if you study them, Tupperware brands, Tupperware is only one of 11 companies that Tupperware owns. They're all direct sales companies. Five of them don't even have a presence in the United States. They're all in South America and in Asia. Most of them are skincare and cosmetic companies, not plastic pot companies. However, the same processes are laid over every single one of those companies perfectly. So they are about processes and systems. Now, they've got God knows how many patents for God knows how many plastic pots.
When I visited the last time for several hours with their CEO, who I know, of all the questions I ask him, I did not ask him how many patents he's got. And of all the pieces of information he shared with me, he didn't brag about the number of patents he's got, because we both know it's bullshit. We both know it doesn't matter without this. So all my curiosity was about, and all his sharing and bragging was about the statistics and the facts and the inner workings in the seven processes in which really all the equity exists. Kids get it. The Lego blocks have to fit together. Separate, they're just trash.
So the systematization of a business, the sins of doom, most info-marketers is disjointed parts and random acts. That's really what they're engaged in. Infusionsoft helps, it plugs a lot of holes, imposes discipline. That's good, but it alone is not the cure for cancer. It's just a helpful tool. Then frankly, most of the info-marketers who have it, don't use it to its fullest extent. But regardless, if you look at most info-marketers' businesses, there's not clean, "This leads to this, Leads to this. If they say yes, this happens. If they say no, this happens. It happens every single time on the seventh day after this happens. It happens regardless of whether Betty's off for the week or she's here for the week. It happens no matter what." very few businesses.
Now, the most successful of my clients aren't this. The most successful of my clients are systemized to the nth degree. And so, really, there are three reasons to be in the room today. And three things to be thinking about as you spend the rest of the day. Then we're going to shift gears and we're talk about my journey and deals a little bit. But I do want you to think about three things.
So there's the thing that you came in for, which many of you raised your hands, "Gee, I'm thinking about tomorrow, next month, next year, five years from now, 10 years from now. I'm thinking about how I can sell my business." By the way, for any of you who are niche marketers who sell to business owners, or any of you who are opportunity, marketers who sell opportunities to people, you should know that the number one reason people get into business, the number one reason people buy a business, the number one reason people start a business is to sell it. That's what's in their head from the very beginning.
When we did the Be Your Own Boss infomercial for Entrepreneur Magazine at Guthy-Renker, we focus grouped over 1,000 people, who were buying entrepreneurs manuals about how to start a muffler shop, how to start a muffin store, et cetera, et cetera. And over 400 of the 500, either number one or number two reason for them buying the manual was to figure out how to start a business so they could sell the business. So really, what every business owner has in his head is the boat, the golf course, the island, the whatever. That's really what he's doing. And so, it's important to understand that about others. It's important to understand that about yourself. So there's one reason to be here, and to think about, and to gather information about, and that is, "Can I sell it? If I do, how much can I get for it? How can I make it more valuable so I can sell it for more? When can I sell it?" Most importantly, by the way, "Who can I sell it to?" That's a very important thing to be thinking about. So that's one category of three reasons to be here today.
Second thing, which may or may not have occurred to you coming in the door, I know anecdotally it occurred to some, but I suggest it should occur to all, is, "Should I go buy something? And if I go buy something, how do I buy it? How do I value it?" The reverse just of the other. Buying is just a reverse of selling, but almost every entrepreneur and almost every info entrepreneur thinks only in terms of building, because that's how we all start. Many of us start bootstrapping, 12 cents, turn it into 24 cents. Figure out how to turn 24 cents into a dollar. Start with one customer.
My newsletter business started with four subscribers, very painful by the way, writing a newsletter every month for four subscribers. I mean, I used to joke, why don't I just call them all? But you got to start somewhere.
However, if that becomes ingrained behavior and it puts you in a box, and as you have money, as you have resources, as you have the ability to get money, if you're still only in that box and you're not thinking about an acquisition strategy, that's limiting. And it maybe is not healthy, because there's lots of stuff you can buy that has more value to you after you buy it than it has to the person who currently has it. And there's synergy between companies in the same industry. And so, there's ways to grow by acquisition. So that's the second thing you should be thinking about.
The third thing you should be thinking about is the benefits you get from understanding value and equity, and to whatever extent you ultimately chose to do it, building your business in that direction, because it gives you a better business, even if you decide to keep it. So I've had clients over the years who have set in motion the, "I want to sell, three years from now, four years from now, five years from now. Let's talk about where we are. Let's talk about where we need to be. Let's talk about who I got to go find to help me, what pieces do I have to put together." And when they hit their magic place and they hit their magic number, they decide not to sell, because they made the damn thing so good that the stuff they didn't like about it, that was making them think about selling, now was fixed and it was better to keep it than sell it.
That's the third reason to be in the room, is even if you never sell it or you change your mind about selling it, if you built it to sell, you have a better, stronger, safer business.
Russell Brunson: Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing me on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow. And the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you.
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