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Amy Walker's Exit School: Making Million-Dollar Business Ownership Accessible to All · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Codispodi and
0:17
today's guest is Amy Walker, the CEO and founder of The Exit
0:22
School. Her organization helps
0:24
entrepreneurs, small business owners, and six figure employees
0:28
successfully buy and sell small businesses.
0:32
They believe business ownership should be accessible to all and
0:35
their mission is to ensure no business ever has to shut its
0:39
doors when retirement approaches.
0:42
Since founding the Exit School in 2023, she has helped
0:46
countless clients plan for sustainable growth and a
0:49
fulfilling retirement. Amy is a highly sought after
0:52
speaker, executive coach and author known for her energetic
0:57
presentations. She has transformed many sales
1:00
and marketing strategies for different companies and her
1:03
accomplishments include being recognized as a Certified Body
1:07
Language Expert and having her work featured in Fast Company,
1:12
U.S. news and World Report, and American Express.
1:15
Her background also includes hosting a popular radio show and
1:20
coaching teams to achieve significant growth.
1:23
She brings years of experience in motivating owners to overcome
1:27
challenges and thrive in competitive markets.
1:30
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
2:14
today, CEO and Founder of The Exit School, Amy Walker.
2:18
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:21
I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you for inviting me and
2:23
giving me a a platform. All right, let's jump right in.
2:28
So before we get into the exit school, which is where we're
2:30
going to spend most of our time, I'd like to set the stage for
2:34
kind of what qualifies you to be in a a position of advising
2:38
people on buying or selling a business?
2:41
Can you kind of give us a little bit of your past track record so
2:45
people can understand that? Absolutely.
2:48
I have been in the business value growth space for about 12
2:53
years and that's where, you know, we're looking at how do we
2:58
make the company worth more in the future than it's worth
3:00
today. So that involves things like
3:02
driving your top line revenue, but also increasing your
3:05
profits, better operations, better leadership team, just
3:10
really developing a a better company so that it's not so
3:13
owner dependent. And I've been in that space for
3:16
a long time. But I'm going to be honest with
3:18
you, Anthony, I think people assume you need to be more
3:21
qualified than you are to buy businesses.
3:24
I've helped people buy businesses where they've they've
3:26
been a stay at home mom raising six kids and now owning a multi
3:31
$1,000,000 company. I've helped people transition
3:34
from being software helpers to buying the software company.
3:40
There's, there's a lot of opportunities out there.
3:43
And one of the things that we joke about with our clients
3:45
often is that far stupider people that you own businesses
3:48
today. So it's not, you know, it's
3:51
really not rocket science. I think it's a lot more
3:54
accessible than most people assume it is.
3:57
And The funny thing is when my business partner reached out to
4:01
me and asked if I wanted to, you know, start acquiring businesses
4:04
with him, at first I said no because I didn't see how my
4:08
experience was going to translate into this new space of
4:11
buying businesses. And I think we just need to give
4:13
ourselves a little bit more credit and open up that as a
4:16
possibility because it's not as hard as we think it will be
4:20
before we get into it. I'd like to hear you say a
4:23
little bit more about that because you know, whether you're
4:28
a software engineer that's worked for a company and now
4:31
you're stepping into a very different role of being an owner
4:34
or a stay at home mom that is now, you know, running, owning a
4:39
multi $1,000,000 company. Both of those sound like they're
4:41
pretty big leaps. Tell me why I'm wrong.
4:46
Well, when you think about running a small business and you
4:49
run a small business, most of it you learned through the doing of
4:54
the business, right? Like you, you kind of grew into
4:56
it. And when we buy businesses, we
4:59
don't buy solopreneur businesses where it's one person who does
5:03
everything and knows everything. We're trying to find a business
5:06
that has a team in place and they have operations in place
5:10
and now the owner sits in a seat on the bus usually like they
5:14
have a job, they have a role that they do and they're going
5:18
to train you on how to do their job.
5:20
But what we try to do is help people figure out what their
5:23
earned secret is. So for example, I'll give you
5:26
Marie stay at home mom, who she, when you look at her, her
5:31
experience and what she was really good at, she was good at
5:33
two things. She's really good at managing
5:36
teenagers and she was really good at shopping and managing
5:40
costs because she's been running a family of 6 on a budget.
5:43
So her business that she bought was for Crumble Cookie.
5:47
Locations that were already existing, already had cash flow.
5:50
Who works for them? A whole lot of teenagers.
5:53
What is the number one thing that she needed to do to make
5:56
the businesses more profitable? She needed to save them on their
5:59
food costs and on their labor costs, and she took that
6:03
business over and she increased them from a 10% profit margin up
6:07
to a 30% profit margin. So huge.
6:11
Yeah, huge. And this was mostly or
6:14
completely focusing on food costs.
6:17
Food costs and labor costs, those were the two things.
6:20
So they had a lot of teenagers just hanging around talking with
6:23
their friends when they weren't busy.
6:24
And it was like, OK, if we're not busy, people get cut, they
6:26
go home. And that's not abnormal for jobs
6:29
like that. My 20 year old son, well, sorry,
6:31
my 18 year old son is working for a restaurant right now and
6:36
he'll come home early. He's like, yeah, I got cut.
6:38
We were slow normal in that, in that type of an industry.
6:41
So she really got them to like utilize their labor costs
6:44
better. And then the way they had run it
6:47
before is each of the managers of the stores had a credit card
6:50
and the owners told them buy whatever you need.
6:52
She was like, give me back those credit cards, Tell me what you
6:55
need. And so she did all of the
6:58
ordering herself. She shopped for better discounts
7:01
for where they could buy things. She ordered in bulk.
7:04
She got them sent to her house. She distributed them to the
7:07
stores. So she was able to increase the
7:09
profit margin by, you know, 20%, which is huge.
7:13
Yeah. Yeah.
7:15
I love that because sometimes like, the best fixes are the
7:18
simplest ones. Yeah, absolutely.
7:20
You don't have to be overly complicated.
7:22
And you know, I was telling you about our our software engineer
7:26
right now who's getting ready to buy this company.
7:28
He is, he knows this industry so well.
7:31
He's been working in it for 29 years and he's been in so many
7:35
different aspects of the industry and different roles.
7:38
And so when we got on a call with the business owner, you
7:43
could tell that his broker and me were just sitting there like
7:47
we understand very little of what you guys are talking about,
7:50
but we can tell that you both really understand what you all
7:53
are talking about. And they really hit it off.
7:56
And I was just this morning, because he's actually under
7:58
contract, I was going over his business plan with him that he's
8:02
going to submit to the SBA and he knows, he knows all the
8:06
levers of what it's going to take to make this business
8:08
successful. He's got a ton of contacts in
8:12
the industry as well from different companies that he's
8:14
worked with over the years where he can reach out to them and see
8:18
if he can get contracts with bigger organizations.
8:21
He's so well primed to be able to run this business.
8:23
Now. Does he have stuff to learn?
8:26
Yes, he absolutely does have stuff to learn.
8:28
But he's smart, he's capable. He's learned new things before
8:32
in his life. This is just the next set of new
8:34
skills that he needs to learn. Is your company set up to help
8:40
steer him in the right direction to, I don't know, find mentors
8:45
or courses or things that can help him develop those skills
8:48
that he still needs? Oh yeah, for sure.
8:52
Nobody, nobody buys a business in our program without having a
8:55
really solid business plan and being aware of what what we call
8:59
their leadership gap. And everybody has a leadership
9:02
gap. I have one, you have one
9:03
wherever we're going next. We've never been there before.
9:07
So we don't have to know it all. We just have to know what we
9:10
don't know and have a plan for how we're going to manage that
9:13
leadership gap. So that's an important part of
9:16
the process is you got to have a game plan for how to run the
9:18
business once you take it over. And then we also stick with our
9:21
clients for the 1st 90 days after transition as well.
9:24
Make sure that things are going well, that they've been
9:27
thoroughly trained by the exiting owner, that they feel
9:29
really confident. And if they, you know, if they
9:33
have areas that need improvement, we also identify
9:37
that before we buy. And we set aside budget for
9:40
that. So that once they walk in, if
9:41
it's like, all right, you're going to need some operations
9:44
help or you're going to need some marketing help, or you're
9:46
going to need to hire an executive leadership coach to
9:49
teach you, you know, how to be ACEO.
9:52
You set aside those funds and you make sure that the business
9:54
has the cash flow to support it. Because the worst thing is
9:57
buying the wrong business or buying a business where you have
10:00
all these for how to grow it, but you have no cash to grow it.
10:03
So you need to make sure that the numbers all line up and
10:06
there's budget for it. So I want to dive more into
10:11
your, I'm going to call it unique business model because
10:14
you're not traditional business brokers.
10:16
But before that, I want to hear about how the company came to be
10:20
because I think there's an interesting story there.
10:22
That is kind of a fun story. So I have a business partner,
10:27
and we've been friends and colleagues for 12 years.
10:32
You know, we'd pass clients back and forth.
10:35
Just whenever one of us had a big idea, we'd brainstorm with
10:39
the other person. And so we'd just been supporting
10:41
each other for the last 12 years.
10:44
And he reached out to me and we, he said, I, I'm getting ready to
10:48
sell out my shares in my marketing agency and I want to
10:51
brainstorm an idea with you. And so we get on the phone and
10:55
he's talking to me about this idea of raising a fund,
10:58
purchasing $100 million worth of companies.
11:01
And he's asking me to poke holes in the idea.
11:03
We're talking it through. And then he said, well, what do
11:06
you think? I said, I think it's really
11:08
exciting. I am happy for you.
11:10
This sounds like a great plan. And he said, what would it take
11:13
for you to do it with me? And I initially said, no.
11:15
I was like, no, thank you. I'm I'm not interested.
11:19
And I want, I got out of my car. We were talking while I was
11:22
driving and I was walking into a meeting.
11:24
And this meeting was fascinating because it was community leaders
11:28
who were coming together to talk about a problem.
11:32
I live in a really rural community.
11:34
And for the first time ever, we had school buses that were
11:37
picking up children at tent cities and in the national parks
11:40
because we have this new problem of homelessness that we've never
11:44
had before. We don't have shelters.
11:46
There's just really not a lot of resources.
11:49
And so all of these community leaders were coming together to
11:52
talk about how do we solve this problem?
11:54
And while I was in that meeting, I just got this huge
11:57
overwhelming sense of like, OK, you, you got to do this.
12:02
Because the problem in that meeting was not lack of the
12:06
right ideas. I think we had great ideas.
12:10
We had the right resources at our disposal.
12:12
We didn't have money to fund it, so we had the people who had the
12:16
right ideas that could do the right things to solve the
12:18
problem of homelessness. Nobody had the funding to get it
12:21
up and started. And I thought, you know what?
12:23
I've just been given an opportunity, like literally
12:26
handed in my lap to go out there and build massive amounts of
12:30
wealth. And along the way of me buying
12:32
$100 million worth of businesses, I'm going to be
12:35
partnering with people who wouldn't otherwise have access
12:39
to business ownership. And we're going to be building
12:41
millionaires who then can go and build in their for local
12:45
communities. And so I texted him under the
12:47
table. I was like, just kidding, I'm
12:48
in. I have no idea what it looks
12:50
like. And.
12:52
That was a quick turn around. Yeah, I was like, I'm in.
12:55
I don't, I don't know what we're doing.
12:56
I don't know. And I remember the interesting
12:59
thing was I just qualified myself because I didn't know if
13:04
I would be good at it. I, I just really quickly was
13:07
like, I don't have $100 million to start this fund.
13:11
I, I don't know what buying a business entails.
13:14
I'm not sure if I would be good at it.
13:16
And I just disqualified myself from it.
13:18
And, you know, I look at it now and I think I just lacked so
13:22
much information. But I think anytime somebody has
13:26
the confidence in you to open a door for you, you should walk
13:29
through. You might fail, but you also
13:32
might be great at it and you really don't know.
13:35
OK. So we we've touched on a little
13:37
bit, but explain more about this unique approach that you guys
13:42
take to business ownership. Yeah, So we don't like startups
13:46
anymore. It's kind of a dirty word for
13:48
us, which is funny because I worked with startups for years
13:50
and years, and it's so hard, such a grind.
13:54
It's such a hustle, and you're constantly fighting against time
13:57
and money. It's like, well, if I had more
13:59
time, I could do that. If I had more money, I could
14:02
hire somebody to do that, you know, So it's this constant
14:05
battle. So our approach is we find
14:08
really great businesses. They've got good cash flow,
14:12
they've got teams, they've got some systems in place, they've
14:16
got contracts, they've got clients and they're too small to
14:21
appeal to private equity. So these businesses are usually
14:24
between 1 and 10 million is their enterprise value, which
14:29
private equity. When they go out and they raise
14:31
a fund, they will raise $200,000 or sorry, $200 million and need
14:37
to deploy it in a short period of time.
14:40
So they're not looking for real small businesses that are going
14:42
to take a a good amount of work. They're looking for bigger
14:45
businesses that are going to take a little bit of work.
14:48
So that's what we focus on is those businesses that they're
14:51
big enough that they really should transfer, but they're
14:55
just small enough that there's not a lot of competition in
14:58
there. We find a lot of off market
15:00
deals. We find that's where we get
15:02
actually the best deals is before they're actually listed
15:04
with a broker. And then we help find operators
15:08
who have always wanted to run their own business, but they
15:11
just can't quite unshackle themselves from the golden
15:15
handcuffs of their paycheck. They don't want to take the
15:18
risk. They don't want to step into
15:22
insecurity. We also work with a lot of
15:25
existing business owners who are trying to grow their business,
15:29
but they just don't have the time and they need a big
15:31
infusion of cash to grow. It's almost always less
15:35
expensive to buy another business because you use the
15:38
cash flow of that business to pay for the acquisition.
15:42
So their own business doesn't have to shell out big amounts of
15:45
cash. The business they're buying that
15:47
cash flow pays the debt service and they can immediately, you
15:51
know, double or or higher their enterprise value because they're
15:56
worth more together than they're worth alone.
15:58
So that's the game that we are playing everyday, all day.
16:02
Like I'm I'm constantly looking for businesses, constantly
16:06
talking to people that might want to sell, constantly talking
16:10
to people who've wanted to be a business owner for a long time,
16:13
but they just couldn't quite stomach the risk of startup,
16:16
which I get and trying to find that that match, that beautiful
16:20
match between the two. OK.
16:23
So some follow up questions for you because there's a few things
16:28
that you need, right? You want to find the deal, you
16:30
want to find the business owner and then somebody somewhere
16:35
needs to find funding to make this happen.
16:37
So let's go with the first. How do you go about finding
16:40
these deals? You say a lot of them that you
16:42
find are off market deals so they haven't been listed with a
16:45
broker yet. Yeah.
16:47
So we have to go back one step before that, which is you need
16:51
to figure out what your buy box is and your buy box is the
16:55
there's some things that don't move in your buy box, like how
16:58
much money you need to make, where you're looking to buy a
17:01
business. If you're looking to buy a
17:03
business, where you are working in person versus remotely, those
17:07
are some of the factors that you'll figure out like what do I
17:10
really want? What would it take for this to
17:11
work for me? Then industries shift a lot.
17:16
There's, you know, when someone comes in, they'll, they tend to
17:19
start off by looking at everything.
17:21
It's a little bit of shiny object syndrome.
17:22
Anything where the numbers look good.
17:24
They're like, I'm interested in this, I'm interested in this.
17:27
And then it narrows down when you start to match that with
17:30
what your earned secret is. So we want to know what you're
17:33
actually good at, what's your skill set, what's your
17:35
background, what are industries that you would be a good a good
17:39
candidate to buy with. Because once we skip ahead to
17:42
the financing part, your banks and your investors are going to
17:47
want to know that you're the right person to run this
17:49
business and so. You start with who the buyer is
17:53
and then look for something to fit them.
17:55
OK, OK, so then let's start there.
17:58
How are you identifying potential buyers or how are they
18:03
finding you? Potential buyers usually find us
18:07
through ads or workshops or classes that we're teaching.
18:10
That's usually where we find potential buyers or
18:13
recommendations like referrals from friends that are already
18:16
working with us. So that's the first thing we
18:19
have to figure out what's the right type of business they
18:21
should be looking for. And then we start, once we've
18:24
identified, you know, the industries that they want to
18:27
search in, then we are definitely looking at the public
18:30
listing sites. I don't want to make it sound
18:32
like we don't. We look at biz buy sell, we look
18:34
at SMB market, we look at Loopnet and I mean, there's so
18:39
many different places. We build relationships with
18:42
brokers, we build relationships with M and A firms.
18:46
I love M and A firms because the deals that we want are what they
18:50
don't want. So someone comes in that's sub
18:53
10 million and they're like, it's not worth it for us.
18:57
We're not going to make enough money for the, the, you know,
18:59
for the cost structure to make sense.
19:01
So I'm like, great, send all of them to me.
19:03
I've got a pool of hungry buyers.
19:05
Send me all of those deals. So we do a lot of networking.
19:09
We also do a lot of industry specific networking.
19:13
So joining the associations, joining the local Chamber of
19:16
Commerce, going to the annual conferences, you need to build
19:20
relationships inside of that network because like, let's say,
19:24
for example, that you wanted to buy AI.
19:27
Don't know, Anthony, if you were going to buy a business,
19:29
anything strike your fancy. Oh boy.
19:33
I think I'm super unqualified for so many things, but that's
19:37
something that you would help talk me through for sure and
19:39
help me identify what my strengths are.
19:43
I like, I like unsexy businesses that have longevity.
19:48
So I'm thinking like home services maybe?
19:51
OK, great. So let's do like, let's say I, I
19:55
don't like HVAC right now because it's the multiples are
19:59
crazy. They're going for like 5 to 8X
20:01
multiples and they're getting even the small ones are getting
20:05
nabbed up by private equity right now.
20:07
But let's say that we're going to go with someone something
20:10
like a doors and windows installation company.
20:13
OK, So what you're going to do then is you're going to join
20:18
where are those? You're going to say, where are
20:19
those people at? Well, a lot of them are
20:22
networking with construction because they want to meet the
20:25
builders who are going to be installing doors and windows.
20:28
They're. Also going to be trying to
20:29
create relationships with Realtors because when they sell
20:33
an old home that needs new doors and windows, they want that
20:36
recommendation. So we look at where they are and
20:39
then we go and start attending those events and networking with
20:41
them. And then we also start looking
20:44
and fortunately with AI, it's really easy to pull up a list of
20:49
all the doors and windows companies within your geographic
20:51
region. And then we reach out and we ask
20:54
him if we can take him out to lunch and interview them
20:56
because, you know, we're, we're looking to get into their
20:58
industry and would love to learn from their experience.
21:01
And it helps if they're a little bit older because then they're,
21:06
they're more open to starting to think about retirement and they
21:09
also feel a little bit more secure.
21:11
The funny thing is though, everybody thinks that it's going
21:15
to be the easiest thing will be to buy from these like near
21:19
retirement age guys. I can't tell you how many guys I
21:22
meet that are in their 70s and 80s and they're like, I still
21:24
got another 10 years in me. Whereas you find somebody in
21:27
their 40s and tell them you want to buy their business.
21:30
They're like, sure, let's talk. If the price is right, I'm good
21:32
to go. So, but that's, that's really
21:35
how we how we meet them. And then it's a lot of
21:38
networking. It's a lot of relationship
21:40
building and just letting people know, you know, if you're not
21:44
ready now, that's great. But keep me in mind when you are
21:46
I'd love, I'd love to get first look.
21:48
And those relationships do circle back around.
21:52
OK. So help me understand sort of
21:55
the business model side of it for the exit school, because in
22:00
my experience, it's traditionally there's a fee that
22:04
goes to the seller's broker, right?
22:07
And I don't have as much experience with buyers having
22:12
their own broker kind of like in a home real estate deal.
22:15
But you guys are putting in a tremendous amount of time, yeah,
22:18
to, to sort of be that matchmaker and do this
22:21
networking and find a good fit for them.
22:24
So how do you guys benefit from this?
22:28
We Co-op services and I'll be honest with you, the number one
22:32
benefit that we have is we get to see a lot of deals and decide
22:36
which ones we want to invest in and be a part of because we've
22:39
been a part of the finding, We've been a part of the due
22:41
diligence. We've seen the quality of
22:43
earnings report. And so we are when they get to
22:47
that point of funding and finding investors, we get to
22:50
participate in some of these deals.
22:52
We don't participate in all of them, but that's our primary win
22:56
is we're building our portfolios through partnering on deals, but
23:00
we Co-op services and I the, the way that I like to describe this
23:05
is that we're the transaction team.
23:07
So when you're doing an acquisition, you really should
23:11
be paying an attorney, you really should be paying an
23:14
accountant, you really should be paying a business analyst.
23:19
And we have that team. And so everybody is sharing the
23:23
expense of it. We save more money than we cost,
23:28
which we love, but there's definitely a fee that people pay
23:31
to have us be their transaction team is.
23:34
It a fixed fee, is it a percentage of the deal?
23:36
It's a fixed fee. And the thing that I love too is
23:39
I've talked to people who are like, I already spent 80K on
23:42
deals that haven't actually gone through.
23:45
We couldn't push to the finish line and we will for one fee.
23:48
We will work with you until you get to the finish line, until
23:51
you close. So if that takes 3 rounds of due
23:54
diligence with three different businesses, then that's what it
23:57
takes to get it done. But we've hired the best of the
24:00
best and put them on salary. So instead of you paying their
24:04
hourly rates, we're paying their salary and you have access to
24:09
them. And so let's say you meet a
24:13
prospective customer. Let's see that, that you, you
24:15
meet me and I'm looking at getting into home services
24:20
company. Are you putting me through some
24:22
kind of an interview process? It's like, Anthony, do you have
24:25
any experience in home services? It's like, Nope, I I can't even
24:28
swing a hammer myself. OK, maybe you're not a good
24:31
client for us. Like is there a filter process
24:33
there? There's definitely a filter
24:35
process, but the interesting thing, here's the interesting
24:38
thing, to actually run a home service business, you don't have
24:42
to know how to swing a hammer. You have to know how to manage
24:46
subcontractor teams and because the vast majority of these
24:50
businesses run off of subcontractors.
24:53
And So what you do need to know how to do is how to market, how
24:56
to sell, how to manage teams and how to coordinate projects.
25:00
So that's where our experience of working in a lot of different
25:06
types of industries makes us really good advisors because
25:09
there are times when I'll tell people this is a good business.
25:13
I don't understand why you're looking at it.
25:15
It doesn't fit with your, it's not in your wheelhouse.
25:19
And what will happen is if you continue to pursue that
25:22
business, at some point the SBA or the investors are going to
25:26
tell you that you can't buy that on your own.
25:29
And they'll tell you specifically that you need to
25:31
bring in other people to get the deal done, in which case you're
25:35
going to lose some of the equity.
25:36
And it, that might still be the best option, right?
25:39
Like it might still be the best option for you to go forward,
25:42
but now you only own 30% of the company instead of, you know,
25:47
80% of the company that those types of things do happen.
25:51
But if you'll take the advice early on, you don't get yourself
25:55
in quite as many of those scenarios.
25:59
OK. And then let's say that, OK,
26:02
we're getting close. We found a deal that seems good
26:05
to me. How is the funding side of this
26:08
equation working? Is, is that kind of on me and my
26:11
banking relationships or is it something that you guys can help
26:14
out with? It's definitely something we
26:15
help out with, but it also depends on you.
26:18
So for example, not everyone's a good candidate for the SBA,
26:21
right? They want you to have a 700
26:24
credit score higher. You have to be for at least six
26:28
months a legal resident or citizen of the US.
26:32
You have to have 10% down payment plus two months of
26:36
operating cash in your bank when you apply.
26:40
So it it is a fit for some people, it's not a fit for
26:43
everyone. So we do have relationships with
26:46
a lot of bankers and this is one of my secrets.
26:49
We apply for 10 different banks every time we're trying to get
26:53
one. The reason why is out of that
26:55
10, the SP is so fascinating because it is, you know, it is
27:00
this like nationally run program, but every bank sets
27:05
their own parameters over the top of it.
27:08
So you could find a deal that one business would be excited to
27:11
do and another one would have 0 interest in.
27:14
So if we, you know, apply for 10, what will happen is we'll
27:17
probably get term sheets for like 4 and then we look at the
27:21
term sheets that are the best and then we, we move forward
27:24
with the ones that are the best and they're not the same.
27:27
It's not like when you apply for a mortgage with a house where
27:31
you know, your offers going to come back really, really similar
27:34
no matter who you're doing your mortgage with.
27:36
They're, they're pretty different.
27:38
The terms and what they'll ask for a pretty different.
27:41
And so we're, we're going to apply for a lot and that's where
27:45
our banking relationships are very helpful.
27:47
And also knowing how to go through the process and
27:50
submitting a really good application, you have to look
27:54
like you're the right person to run that business for the SBA to
27:57
approve you. If you if they look at it and
27:59
they say, we think the deal is good, we think the numbers are
28:03
good, We think you're not qualified to run that business,
28:05
they will not approve it because that's a risk.
28:08
So learning how to make yourself look qualified.
28:11
And often times it's, it's not even because you're not
28:16
qualified, it's because you didn't make it look like you
28:19
were your, your resume, so to speak, was not good.
28:22
And so you're not getting the callbacks.
28:24
So you have to actually present yourself as a qualified buyer.
28:29
I would say our favorite way is seller financing, but you're not
28:35
going to get 100% seller financing.
28:37
That would be ridiculous for someone to say, here's my, you
28:41
know, multi $1,000,000 company. I'm turning over the keys, pay
28:44
me later. That's not going to happen.
28:46
But we are very successful at negotiating a good bit of seller
28:50
financing on the vast majority of our deals.
28:53
So we always try to see if we can do that.
28:55
And there are benefits to the seller as well.
28:57
It allows them to mitigate some of their tax risk so they can
29:02
spread that out over a couple of years versus all of it at once.
29:08
We also work with a lot of private investors as well.
29:12
So one of the things that we've done quite often is worked with
29:16
private investors to help raise the 10% for the SBA.
29:21
So that's something that we've done a good bit, but it it's
29:25
usually not just one of those three.
29:28
It's usually a combination of those 3.
29:30
Like, you know, if you're doing some seller financing in some
29:33
investor dollars or you're, you know, finding investors and
29:38
you're using the SBA, but there's usually a combination of
29:41
a couple. I mean, what do you look for in
29:45
the deals that you guys actually want to participate in?
29:49
Oh, that's a great question. We like to buy at a 3X multiple
29:53
which is aggressive. You know, most of the businesses
29:57
that you find that are listed are going in the in the size
30:00
range, you know one to 10 million, most of them are going
30:02
to be listed between 4:00 and 5:00 X multiple.
30:06
The problem is most of them don't have the cash flow to
30:09
actually support those debt service payments.
30:10
So we like to buy at a 3X multiple or lower.
30:15
We also the operator is a huge part of who we say yes to and
30:20
who we say no to. So when we look at business
30:22
partners, we look at communication.
30:26
Do we communicate really well and can we communicate about
30:29
hard things because sometimes business is hard?
30:32
We also look at trust. Do we trust this person that
30:36
when we pass the ball to them, they will take that ball, they
30:38
will run with it, they will pass it back and communicate when it
30:42
needs to get passed back. We also look at trajectory,
30:46
which is, you know, for us, are we going the same place at the
30:49
same speed? Because if we're not going the
30:51
same place, we're going to end up with a lot of conflict.
30:54
And if we're not going at the same speed, then one of us is
30:58
going to feel like they're getting dragged behind a moving
31:01
train. And that's not pleasant.
31:04
And then we also look at values like do we share the same core
31:09
values and do we want the same things the same?
31:12
Are we trying to create the same experience?
31:14
So the operator itself is a huge thing for us if and and the
31:19
great thing about how we work at the exit schools, we already
31:21
know these clients very well. We've been working with them
31:24
through the whole process. And so we've seen how they show
31:26
up when they get disappointed. We've seen how they show up when
31:30
they get busy. We've seen how they show up when
31:32
they get sick. And you're allowed to be busy,
31:35
you're allowed to be sick, you're allowed to be
31:36
disappointed. But when you own a business, you
31:41
still show up for that business even when you're all of those
31:44
things. You know, you might show up
31:45
differently. But do you communicate that
31:48
like, hey, guys, I'm sick this week.
31:50
Here's what you can expect from me.
31:52
Here's what I'm here's my plan for how the rest of it's going
31:54
to get managed versus just not showing up And then after the
31:58
fact saying, yeah, I was sick, sorry.
32:00
So we're, we're just looking at all of those things and making
32:03
sure that, and I would say the last part is, are we actually
32:08
the right people to partner on it?
32:09
So if we are not a good fit for that business or that industry,
32:14
then we'll be like, hey, honestly, I wouldn't include us
32:17
in this deal. I would look for somebody like
32:19
this and then we'll facilitate introductions for somebody who
32:22
would be a better partner. I just had a client bring me a
32:25
business and as soon as she showed it to me, I was like, oh,
32:27
I know who you should be reaching out to.
32:30
Let me introduce you because. They're an expert in that
32:32
industry or what? Expert in that industry, what
32:35
the growth levers are for that business is exactly what they
32:38
specialize in. And it just makes more sense
32:42
than it would for us to do it. And I think it, it takes a a
32:46
fair amount of humility because when we first got started, we
32:49
just had this like, yeah, we could figure that out, We could
32:52
figure that out. And now it's like we shouldn't
32:54
figure that out. We don't know enough in that
32:58
industry to actually be an asset on their board of advisors.
33:01
And if we don't, then why would we put our money into something
33:06
that we're not actually feeling confident that we know what
33:09
needs to happen with that business.
33:11
So it's all about getting the right people on your team to
33:15
successfully run it. So what are the right industries
33:19
for you for the exit school? We really love business service
33:23
companies. So anything that's B to B that
33:26
helps business owners run a more profitable successful business.
33:30
So like we own an operate an fractional operations company,
33:34
we own a marketing agency, we do, we own a business growth
33:39
valuation agency. We also really like discretional
33:44
medical. We've both consulted with a lot
33:47
of discretional medical companies and we also love
33:52
service based businesses. We've done not, I mean not
33:56
owning them, but we've done a lot of consulting with service
33:59
based businesses. So when there's a model that
34:02
fits into one of those, you can show me the business and I can
34:06
tell you what's going to work with sales, what's going to work
34:08
with marketing, because I've I've done it a lot on the
34:11
consulting side. And so those are kind of mine
34:14
that I'm most interested in what I'm not interested in right now.
34:18
I'll tell you that I'm not interested in laundromats.
34:22
They're so overpriced right now because they're trendy.
34:25
Yeah, they're, you'll see these laundromats and they're asking
34:28
for like 6X multiples and the cash flow will not support that.
34:32
So I'm not interested in those at all.
34:35
I'm not currently interested in HVAC companies because most of
34:39
these HVAC companies, you have to have a license and the owner
34:43
is the one who holds the license, not the employees.
34:45
There's nobody on the team that holds the license.
34:47
So you'd have to go spend 2 years getting licensed.
34:52
And also they do have really high multiples so I'm not super
34:55
interested in those. I am also currently very wary of
35:00
any e-commerce businesses that have been shipping their goods
35:04
outside of the USI think just with the current tariff
35:07
situation and I who knows where it's all going to land, but I
35:10
wouldn't be looking at those right now.
35:12
I might in the future, but right now that's a no go for me as
35:15
well. You know, we mentioned in the
35:19
intro about how important it is to you that businesses not have
35:23
to close their doors because of retirement.
35:26
Yeah. Say more about that.
35:28
Is that something that happens quite frequently?
35:31
Yes, actually, of all the businesses that get listed for
35:35
sale each year, only 20% of them find a buyer.
35:40
So you have a lot of businesses that just close their doors.
35:44
And even when you look at family businesses, the amount that
35:47
transitioned successfully from first generation to 2nd is
35:50
pretty small. There's a lot of businesses
35:52
where it like their kids don't want it.
35:55
And when you look at the 2nd to 3rd generation, it's a fraction
35:58
of those businesses. It's like in the teens that
36:01
actually transition from 2nd to 3rd.
36:03
So there's a lot of people who just closed their doors.
36:06
Now, I will say this, I think that number, the number one
36:10
thing we could do to change that isn't actually inspiring more
36:13
people to buy, although that is needed.
36:15
I think the number one thing would be helping business
36:18
owners, existing owners know what it takes for a business to
36:22
be sellable. Because a lot of people that I
36:25
talked to, they're like, yeah, I want to retire.
36:28
Cool. When do you want to retire?
36:29
Like, I don't know, six months. OK, tell me about your business.
36:33
They're like, well, I've been kind of slowing down over the
36:35
last few years and I'm like, oh, that slow down is going to cost
36:39
you so much money. Or they've been, you know, like
36:44
cutting down the team and cutting down the workload.
36:47
So now they're back to having this really owner dependent
36:50
business that they just have to run.
36:52
Those types of businesses are not very sellable.
36:54
And so I think people need to understand that they, the time
36:59
to sell is actually like 3 years before they want to retire
37:03
because that's when they're still pushing and their
37:05
business, their foot still on the, on the gas and they're
37:09
still going. That's when you need to sell to
37:11
get the most out of it. And you can find ways to sell
37:15
where you don't have to fully retire yet.
37:17
You can still stay on in some capacity and let that be your
37:20
slow down is now you're more of an advisor or now you're just
37:24
fulfilling a certain role within the company.
37:27
But you really should sell earlier.
37:29
And you also should start planning for the sale three to
37:32
five years before you want to sell.
37:35
So it's not a short game. It's not something that you get
37:38
to the end and you're like, OK, cool, I went out, let's sell.
37:41
It takes time to sell. It takes time to transition.
37:44
It takes time to make sure your business is ready.
37:47
And you want to know what those red flags are earlier so you can
37:49
start getting rid of them, 'cause whenever someone tells me
37:53
they want to sell, they want to retire in six months, I'm like,
37:56
oh, I have a feeling the story's going to get worse.
37:58
They start telling me more. I'm like, yeah, it's definitely
38:00
getting worse. Amy, let's shift gears a little
38:05
bit and I'd love to hear about a serious challenge that you've
38:10
overcome, whether it's personal or professional.
38:13
What did you learn? How did you get through it?
38:16
I would say the first, the first few transactions we did were
38:22
really hard. Number one reason we did them
38:26
all really close together. So we did three, we bought 3
38:30
businesses when it within about 3 months of each other.
38:34
The second thing was this was, you know this was early days and
38:37
we didn't know then what we know now.
38:39
We bought too small. So we were really focused on
38:43
businesses that we could buy without having to put in any
38:46
cash. And as a result, we bought the
38:50
first two especially were very small and they required a ton of
38:53
work. And so there was a point about
38:56
six months in where we were looking at it going, I don't
38:59
know if all of these are going to fail.
39:02
If they could, they could all fail.
39:04
There was problems in every single one.
39:06
And I remember talking to my husband one night and just being
39:09
like, hey, I just need to know like, would will you be OK if
39:16
all of this falls apart and I have to start over from scratch?
39:19
And he is such a wonderful, wonderful husband.
39:23
He was like, I'm 100% OK with that because I know you, I've
39:27
seen you pick yourself up time and time again and you'll figure
39:30
it out. Like, if this isn't it, you'll
39:32
figure it out. And that permission to fail
39:35
really was like huge weight off of my shoulders.
39:39
And then we were, from that point, it was like, OK, failure
39:43
is an option. It's on the table.
39:46
And we started really making the right changes because we had
39:49
been, you know, when they talk about you're playing not to lose
39:53
versus playing to win, we have been playing not to lose instead
39:57
of playing to win. And we had to make some pretty
39:59
significant changes in each one of the businesses.
40:03
We had to fire people. We had to hire new people.
40:06
We had to change the way that we were positioning ourselves as
40:10
companies. We had to change our operations
40:12
like we, we really bought too small and they were not strong
40:16
cash flowing businesses. So you were you were always like
40:19
an inch away from running out of cash and it was so stressful.
40:24
We made it through. Fortunately, all of those
40:26
companies are now doing really well.
40:30
It's so fun to each. I used to dread our monthly
40:33
finance meetings where it was like we were in the red this
40:37
month and you know, this isn't going well.
40:39
And now we look at it and I'm like, I love those meetings
40:42
because it's just so fun to see how far we've come.
40:45
But it was, it was touch and go there for a minute.
40:48
I I really wasn't sure if we were going to make it or not.
40:53
You mentioned having to let some people go and hire new people.
40:57
Were there other levers that you pulled to help really turn
41:01
things around? Mm hmm.
41:06
Both my partner and I had to get back in operator seats.
41:10
So we had to actually work in the businesses very hands on,
41:14
spend a lot of our time. We had to figure out and each of
41:19
the companies was different, but we had to figure out what the
41:22
levers were that we needed to hit.
41:24
And so every business we, we really kind of put on like EOS
41:28
type systems where we created KPIs that we knew like for, and
41:34
I'll take my operations company as an example.
41:36
So one of our KPIs that we watch is how many, like our client
41:40
retention is 1. So we watch client retention,
41:43
how many months are they engaging with us?
41:47
Another one that we look at is our profitability.
41:51
Another one that we look at is our our sales.
41:55
So those are our three KPI's that we look at.
41:57
And I had to actually get involved and do all the sales
42:01
for that company. I was like, OK, I'm driving
42:03
sales. And so you know, for a year I
42:08
was the only one that was driving sales and then I had to
42:12
train the next person. And I'm still, I'm still
42:15
involved in sales in that company.
42:17
So what we learned from it was you need to buy bigger and you
42:24
need to really understand what the business will require of you
42:27
before you jump in. And smaller is not easier.
42:30
Like we just really went into it and this is what a lot of people
42:33
do on their first ones. They think, yeah, buy smaller,
42:35
it'll be easier, be easier to get the money.
42:38
It's actually not. It's everything about it is
42:40
harder. It's harder to run it, It's
42:41
harder to fund it, it's harder to do.
42:45
There's less margin for error is what I'm hearing you say.
42:47
Oh yeah, yeah, like 1 bad month and all of a sudden you're like,
42:50
are we going to make payroll versus a company that's bigger,
42:54
you have more of a buffer and you can you can ride the waves a
42:57
little bit better. So you were too small before I
43:01
heard. I heard you say that now you
43:04
look at deals that are 1,000,000 to 2 or 10 million in size and
43:09
is that annual sales? Is that EBITDA?
43:11
What? What does that number represent?
43:13
That's enterprise value. So EBITDA would be less than
43:17
that. So like for example, a $10
43:20
million enterprise value would probably have like 3 million in
43:26
EBITDA. A $1 million enterprise value
43:30
would probably have 350,000 in EBITDA.
43:34
So how small were you going before?
43:36
You do you even really want to know?
43:38
We bought one that actually the first two that we bought both
43:41
had 250,000 in annual sales. OK, these were.
43:47
Really small, tiny. And we, we were like, OK, we're
43:51
going to buy them and then we believe in the potential and
43:54
we're going to grow them to, you know, $3,000,000 enterprise
43:57
value and then combine the whole portfolio to a $10 million
44:01
enterprise value. And they were just, they were
44:04
just so small. And they're great companies.
44:06
They're great at their service, they're growing, they're doing
44:10
well. They're just small and it's a
44:14
much heavier lift if you buy too little.
44:18
And so is your goal still to kind of get multiple companies
44:22
in sort of the same sector, roll them up and then position that
44:26
for a secondary sale? So the interesting thing about
44:30
our business services portfolio is the reason we bought these
44:33
first was that we wanted to be able to do acquisitions at a
44:37
rapid rate and know that we had built the marketing.
44:40
We had the marketing agency we trusted to run the marketing.
44:43
We had the operations company to come in and do to do the
44:46
integration after purchase and to get all of the SO PS written
44:50
before the exiting owner leaves. We wanted to have the CFO, the
44:56
fractional CFO that we could come in and that they would
44:58
understand like we didn't have to retrain or on the process,
45:02
like we understood their process, they understood what we
45:04
needed. And so the business services is,
45:07
is not so much a buy and sell as it is a buy and support.
45:12
But other ones that we're working on are absolutely like
45:14
right now we're under contract for an aggregate trucking
45:17
company and that one, the goal is to buy other trucking
45:21
companies to roll them up and then to resell and exit.
45:25
But we'll be using the business services in the process.
45:29
What's your superpower, Amy? You know, what's funny is I've
45:34
never questioned my superpower so much as I have in the last
45:37
two years of doing acquisitions. Sometimes I'm like, I know my
45:41
superpower and other times I'm like, I don't know, because I'm,
45:45
I'm constantly living in my growth zone where I'm I'm
45:48
constantly doing things that are new and they're a stretch.
45:51
And I would say, though, I think that as of today, this could
45:57
change in two months, But as of today, I feel like my superpower
46:01
is actually aligning people to the strategy and getting people
46:06
in the right seats, doing the right things with the right
46:10
level of accountability. I think it's implementing the
46:14
plan. And I want to give a little bit
46:16
more attention to the first part of your answer there where
46:19
you're sort of like, I don't know, man.
46:21
I'm still pretty uncomfortable. I'm still growing because this
46:25
isn't the kind of thing that you were doing before.
46:28
And the exit school is still relatively new.
46:32
And so every day you're showing up, I mean, I, I want to hear it
46:36
from you, but you're still doing a whole bunch of stuff for the
46:39
first time. You're still figuring out a lot,
46:41
as a lot as you go along. Yeah, I am.
46:44
And you know, there's things that I've that I thought I was
46:47
like the best at that Now I realize somebody else is better
46:51
AT and I've passed those things on.
46:53
Like if you had asked me two years ago, what I got hired to
46:56
do over and over again was help people increase the revenue in
47:00
the company. So there's a lot of sales and
47:02
marketing and building sales teams and sales systems.
47:04
And now I have somebody on my team who's better at that than I
47:07
was. And so there's a lot of stepping
47:11
into the new and unknown where I am still, you know, like right
47:16
now I am personally under contract.
47:20
This is not like a client deal. I'm personally under contract
47:22
for a mold remediation company. And I'm going through every
47:27
aspect of the due diligence process to learn it.
47:30
Because normally when we do due diligence, like the accountant
47:34
does the quality of earnings report, our MBA on the team,
47:38
does the pro forma, I do the business growth plan if somebody
47:42
else helps with the financing part.
47:44
And so I'm going through the entire process.
47:46
And I really am doing parts where like I understand it
47:49
cognitively, but I haven't had to do it because that's not been
47:52
my seat on the bus. But I really want to learn all
47:55
of the aspects. So there's constant newness.
47:59
And then when I look at the companies, you know, when we
48:01
close and it should be closing in the next month or so.
48:05
I would say within six weeks, we'll be closing on this
48:07
trucking business. It'll be my first time owning a
48:10
trucking business. And while I have consulted on
48:14
businesses like this, owning is very different than consulting.
48:18
And so then we'll be learning a whole lot of new things again.
48:22
So one of the things I, I had a friend ask me, a friend from
48:26
church asked me, she said, you know, are things finally
48:29
starting to slow down? And I said no, but I am getting
48:33
better at going fast. And, and I think that's an
48:36
important mindset shift that most people look at the world
48:40
and they want it to be peaceful and they want it to be calm.
48:44
I'm just not really wired that way.
48:46
I've always been wired for growth and what comes next and
48:50
I'm really driven. But what I'm learning to do is
48:53
to be calm in the middle of the race that, you know, we can be
48:57
running fast, but my mind can be centered and grounded.
49:01
And that's been, it's been a big learning opportunity for me.
49:07
I I can't say I've been winning at that all the time for the
49:09
last two years, but I've been definitely working on it and
49:12
it's getting better everyday. Amy, what's something you're
49:16
thankful for? You know, this is, and this is
49:21
kind of a, a personal moment and I will try not to be emotional
49:26
about it. But we had a, we had a family
49:29
experience this week where on Friday afternoon, my husband
49:34
texted me. I was upstairs working in my
49:35
office and he, he texted me and I, I didn't quite get right back
49:39
to him. So he called me.
49:40
So I answered and he said, Hey, can you, can you like take your
49:46
next call from the car and drop me off at the hospital?
49:49
And I was like, no, I'll reschedule my next call and I'll
49:52
go with you to the hospital. And we got there and by the time
49:55
we drove to the hospital, his left side had gone immobile and
50:00
he couldn't get out of the car. And so we went in and, you know,
50:05
I, I had to go in and say the words to the person.
50:08
I think my husband's having a stroke.
50:10
And he did, he had a little stroke.
50:12
And like, thank God, it was not super serious, but he couldn't,
50:17
he couldn't walk, he couldn't get up.
50:19
He couldn't sit up. You know, like he would try to
50:21
sit up and he would fall back over.
50:22
And I just, it was a one of those moments where you look at
50:27
it and you say, I don't, I don't know what tomorrow is going to
50:30
look like. I can't plan ahead.
50:32
And as we were in this trial and it's been a week and as of this
50:37
morning, he actually got to use the cane for the first time.
50:40
So he is recovering phenomenally well.
50:42
Like every day he gets stronger. Yesterday when I took him from
50:46
the hospital to the rehab facility, he actually got out of
50:49
the car. And I just like, I just kind of
50:51
wanted to cry. I was like, that's amazing.
50:53
It's such a miracle that in one week he couldn't get out of the
50:57
car and now he can get out of the car.
50:58
That's a blessing. But within that, there's a
51:01
million things I'm grateful for, but one of them is my dad
51:04
reached out to me and he said, aren't you glad that you've
51:08
created and designed your life in a way where you're going to
51:11
be OK no matter what? And then I was talking to my son
51:15
about, you know, how we're going to, we've, our insurance plan is
51:20
a like a high deductible plan. So I need to pay $10,000.
51:24
But then he's going to be able to have unlimited surgery from
51:26
now till the end of the year. And then the beginning of next
51:29
year, I'll pay another $10,000. And then he'll have, sorry, did
51:32
I say surgery? I meant therapy.
51:34
He'll have unlimited therapy next year as well.
51:37
And, and they think this is really a year long, like a year
51:40
long therapy type situation to hopefully get him back to 100%.
51:45
And when I was talking with my son about this, he was like, you
51:48
know, feeling a little overwhelmed or stressed, like,
51:51
well, what can we do to help? And I said, here's the thing, I,
51:54
I'm not saying, I'm not saying this to be brazen at all, but it
51:58
is easier for me to make $10,000 and it is for most people.
52:02
I'm not worried about this. And by the next day I had it
52:06
figured out. And so I'm super grateful right
52:09
now in my business that the hard decisions that I made in the
52:15
years past to really step up and lean in to doing the
52:18
uncomfortable, that now it's putting me in a place where
52:21
literally the most uncomfortable thing that I can imagine just
52:25
happened. And we're moving through it.
52:28
And the if, if, if the worst happened, you know, the absolute
52:32
worst that I lost my husband, I can provide for my family and I
52:36
can provide for all of our needs.
52:37
Would we be emotionally so distraught?
52:40
Yes, but we wouldn't be having to look at now moving my
52:44
children, we wouldn't be having to look at not being able to pay
52:47
for funeral expenses or, you know, all of those different
52:50
things. We, we're so covered.
52:52
And even when he comes home, I, I work from home, I can go
52:58
downstairs and I can help him with the things that he needs.
53:00
Like, I'm just very grateful that we did the scary things
53:04
before so that this scary thing doesn't feel nearly as scary.
53:10
And this feels like it kind of fits into the bigger mission
53:14
that you had when starting the exit school is giving people, as
53:19
many people as you can, financial independence, the the
53:24
structure and the the opportunity that they probably
53:29
didn't think was available to them before.
53:32
Yeah, I remember when I was very first getting started as an
53:36
entrepreneur, coming up with this phrase, which was I want to
53:40
be able to make decisions based on what's best for my family,
53:43
not based on what we can afford. Because when I was growing up,
53:47
like the college I went to was based off of what we could
53:49
afford. The the cars we drove, literally
53:53
everything we did was based on what we could afford.
53:55
And that was always the primary decision maker.
53:57
And I had forgotten about that until this week.
54:01
And then I, when we were thinking about it, my sister
54:04
reached out at one point because we were having a hard time.
54:07
We, we just don't have a lot of acute rehab centers in our area.
54:11
So we were having a hard time getting my husband into one
54:14
because like, they're all out of out of network for insurance and
54:18
there's just not very many close by.
54:20
And she said, well, what are you going to do if he doesn't get
54:23
in? Are you going to send him
54:24
anyway? And I thought about it and I was
54:26
like, yeah, because that's what the physical therapist have said
54:29
is the best option. So, and she in the, you know,
54:33
the person doing intake was like, well, we're not going to
54:36
let you know, we're not going to have you come and then get a
54:37
surprise $30,000 bill. And in my mind, I was like, OK,
54:41
so if it is a $30,000 bill, I would need to do this, this and
54:44
this. OK, got it.
54:46
You know, but just like everything that came up, I was
54:49
able to look at it according to what is going to be the best for
54:51
him. And they're just financial
54:53
stress was not one of the stresses.
54:55
There was a lot of other stresses, but financial stress
54:59
was fortunately not one of them. And I'm so grateful for that.
55:02
And I and I don't even feel like we are like super wealthy.
55:07
You know, we're, we're pretty firmly in upper middle class,
55:12
but we're not super wealthy. We don't drive fancy cars, we
55:15
don't live in a mansion, but we've created financial security
55:21
and we've created financial options that I think a lot of
55:24
people who are still working for somebody else, I don't think
55:27
that they have the ability to say, you know, like, for
55:30
example, my daily rate if somebody's just hiring me to
55:33
come in as a consultant is $5000.
55:36
And so I looked at that as like, OK, this many days I could do 2
55:39
per month or take me this many months.
55:41
Got it. We're good, we're good to go.
55:43
You just don't have those same options when you're not a
55:46
business owner. And I'm so grateful.
55:49
I'm so grateful for that. Like can't even express it.
55:52
Incredibly grateful. I appreciate you sharing that.
55:57
What's the future of the Exit School hall?
56:01
We, you know, what's funny is I feel like it's ever evolving and
56:04
ever moving. So I'm trying to decide if I'm
56:08
legally allowed to share this. I, I mean, it's not legal.
56:11
It's just, we haven't really started talking about it yet,
56:14
but this is on the horizon. We have a banker that we like to
56:19
work with and he was like, listen, I find I have great
56:22
deals come to me all the time. And the reason why they can't
56:26
fund is because the person just doesn't have the 10% down
56:29
payment. Could you guys like, could we
56:31
send you deals and you could help them raise the 10% down
56:35
payment? We're like, yeah, I think we
56:37
could do that. So that would open up, I mean so
56:42
much business that I we would, we would be expanding our team
56:46
really rapidly. So that's something that we're
56:48
looking into this year. We have been small on purpose
56:53
and really fine tuning our process, really making sure that
56:58
we have a high success rate. Like right now we have 50
57:00
clients that we're working with and 13 of them are under
57:03
contract. So we, we want those success
57:06
rates and you know the rest like there's some that are every week
57:10
we have new people submit LO is. So we, we want a very high
57:15
completion rate of deals. And that's what we've been
57:17
focusing on this year is fine tuning the process so that we
57:20
can support the high completion rate of deals.
57:23
Last year we had 20 clients and 12 of them bought within that
57:29
year. So you know when you look at the
57:32
our competitors, one of our top competitors has 12,000 students
57:37
and they've done 100 deals. So we definitely want to be
57:41
completion focused and we want to make sure that our clients
57:44
are moving towards the finish line and that is top priority
57:48
number one. And then after that, we'll look
57:50
at expanding. That ratio difference between
57:53
you and the competitor you referenced is enormous.
57:56
Yeah, yeah. And you know the other thing is
57:59
we work with our clients until the deal is finished.
58:01
So even the ones that like didn't finish last year, a lot
58:05
of them are real close to finishing finish line right now.
58:08
The ones who aren't under contract yet, they're making
58:11
progress towards getting under contract.
58:13
So we're just very, very focused on client results right now and
58:18
fine tuning our process. But then once that happens, we
58:21
have some really great opportunities to maximize and
58:26
just open up a lot of doors. So we're actively working on
58:29
increasing our relationships with investors so that we can
58:34
get to that point where the 10% for the down payment is never an
58:37
issue. That's the goal.
58:40
That's amazing. Amy, I just have one more
58:42
question for you, But before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
58:46
Everyone listening today, pause for just a second.
58:48
Go to your podcast app that you're listening on right now.
58:51
Hit the follow or subscribe button.
58:53
It helps to make sure that you get more great interviews like
58:55
we've had today with Amy Walker from the Exit School, and it
58:59
helps other people find our show as well.
59:03
Amy, I also want to let people know the best way to get in
59:05
touch with you directly. What would that be?
59:09
Yeah, I would say Instagram is a great place.
59:13
So I'm Amy exits on Instagram. Reach out, I answer my messages
59:18
and would love to be able to hear from you.
59:21
Last question, You and I reconnect a year from now, Amy,
59:24
and you're celebrating something big.
59:26
It's a big thing. It's a year from now.
59:29
What is it? That's a great question.
59:36
I would say the thing that I want to be celebrating a year
59:41
from now is 40 transactions done.
59:44
I want to have closed on 40 businesses.
59:47
It's lofty. It's lofty.
59:50
We'll follow up. Awesome.
59:52
We'll follow up and get the update.
59:54
Amy Walker from the Exit School. I want to be the first to thank
59:57
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
59:59
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
1:00:02
It's been just a pleasure to chat with you.
1:00:05
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
1:00:08
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:00:09
today.