Real estate is a business, but we often don’t think of it that way. A single-family home here, a duplex there, at the end of the day we’re just landlords, right?

What if some large corporation or outside buyer wanted to buy your real estate business from you. Even better, what if you had such efficient systems in place that you could sell your business for 10x what you put into it. Sounds pretty sweet right?

Today we talk to Michelle Seiler Tucker and Sharon Lechter, authors of Exit Rich and Rich Dad Poor Dad. Michelle and Sharon have spent years building and selling businesses and have defined the 6 Ps to a profitable exit. Their main critique of most business owners: start planning to scale efficiently TODAY.

This can help you as a real estate investor start putting systems in place to grow your portfolio faster and with less work from you later on. If you’re willing to put in the upfront effort to start hiring right, systematizing, and opting for efficiency you most certainly will “exit rich”!

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Listen to the podcast here

 

How Are You Preparing To “Exit Rich” In Real Estate? With Sharon Lechter & Michelle Seiler Tucker

I’m here with my co-host, Mr. Rich Daddy Greene. What’s up? How are you doing?

I’m good. I’m in Maui checking out the condos that I bought and working with my Maui real estate team while I’m out here.

That’s exciting stuff. I know you have been killing it on that front lately. Speaking of killing it, in this episode, our guests, these two ladies, killed it. They brought a ton of tremendous amount of value, and something that you might not think is that important for real estate investors necessarily. Trust me when I say it is vitally important.

The topic is growing and scaling and then selling a business. Again, you might think, “I don’t have a business.” If you are in real estate, you have a business. The principles we talk about. Specifically, we go through the six Ps that Sharon and Michelle talk about in the book, Exit Rich. They talk about these six Ps. We go through all six of them.

Sharon Lechter, if her name sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen her name and read her books before. She co-authored Rich Dad Poor Dad and a ton of other books in the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. Sharon was CEO at Rich Dad for a long time. You will learn more about her story. She has been a huge influence on millions of people, and she continues to be. You are going to learn about that. Her co-author, Michelle, has been a mergers and acquisitions person forever and has a tremendous amount of business experience.

All that and more to come. First, let’s get to our quick tip. This episode’s quick tip, BiggerPockets webinars. I know that sounds like an advertisement but maybe it is. Me and David spend a ton of time putting together live training each and every week to help people invest in real estate to help them succeed because we remember what it’s like to be working jobs we didn’t like or to be working 100 hours a week to be making other people wealthy.

We pour our hearts and soul into these things and give you guys all the knowledge we can. Again, somebody is doing a webinar every week on BiggerPockets. I would love it if you attended. Go to BiggerPockets.com/webinar to sign up, and you will learn about a ton of stuff with them. Literally, thousands of people come every single week. Why don’t you join them? We got to get in our interview with Sharon Lechter and Michelle Seiler Tucker. We are going to learn about how to exit rich. Let’s get to it.

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Sharon and Michelle, welcome to the show. It’s awesome to have you two here.

We are delighted to be here. Thank you so much. I love this group.

Thank you.

Let’s jump in. Before we get into the book you guys wrote together, I want to hear more about that but I want to get a little bit of background on each of you on what you do in life, what you have done, where your background is, what your expertise is in, and then we will move over there. Why don’t we start with Sharon?

Thank you so much. I appreciate both of you, David and Brandon. My background, I’m obviously been around a long time. I started in the accounting field and quickly realized that people didn’t have a clue about money, and I ended up leaving public accounting and starting businesses. I started a woman’s magazine, started talking children’s book industry, and grew that around the world.

My oldest son ended up going to college and getting into college credit card debt. I was devastated and angry at him but angrier with myself, and I realized that we aren’t teaching our kids about money in school. That was December of 1992. That’s when I dedicated the rest of my career to financial literacy and financial education. Fast forward a few years, I wrote a little book called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

That started a ten-year business with Robert Kiyosaki. We were partners. I ran the company as a CEO. We wrote fifteen books together in the Rich Dad series. From that, I ended up leaving the Rich Dad organization because we became not so aligned in what we wanted to do with the business. That’s when I got the call from the president. President Bush asked me to be on the first President’s Advisory Council for Financial Literacy.

I serve both President Bush and President Obama. A few months later, I got a phone call from the Napoleon Hill Foundation. We know what happened to the economy, particularly in real estate, in 2008 and 2009. They asked me to step in and help reinvigorate the teachings of Napoleon Hill. Not only did I have the honor of building the world’s largest personal finance brand but then be asked to stand and step into the world’s largest personal development brand.

I’ve written four books with the foundation, Three Feet from Gold, Outwitting the Devil, Think and Grow Rich for Women, and Success & Something Greater. I’ve written 26 books. Number 26 is over my shoulder here, called Exit Rich, which I wrote with Michelle Seier Tucker. She’s a world-renowned specialist in mergers and acquisitions and a business broker.

This information needs to go out because too many people own a job. They think they own a business but they own a job. We are excited about it. Inc Magazine has picked it up. It has been published out of their imprint. I’m a huge proponent of the power of association. We are excited to have a new association with the two of you. Thank you very much.

That was the best explain about yourself I’ve ever heard. That was phenomenal. Usually, people are like, “I don’t know. I did this.”

I have been asked that question a few times.

I can tell you have been asked this.

That was the short answer.

Let me pad your ego a little bit more. Here on the BiggerPockets Podcast, we’ve interviewed over 400 real estate investors, business entrepreneurs, agents, and all sorts of people. One of the last questions we ask every single episode is, what’s your favorite or most impactful real estate related book? I would say 90% to 95% of everybody we’ve ever interviewed has said the same book, Rich Dad Poor Dad or one of them in the series. It has been phenomenal. My life, I would not be sitting here if I weren’t for Rich Dad Poor Dad. It gave words to this feeling in my heart. I’m super honored. This is a big moment for me. Thank you.

Be strong in your own power. A lot of people read it and did nothing. Brandon, you applied it to your life. I was a real estate investor at ten. I used to have to scrub out bathrooms to rental properties my parents owned. I’ve lived with real estate. The wealthiest people in the world either make their money through real estate or hold it in real estate. It’s an important subject but a lot of people read about it, go to seminars, and never take action. Congratulations to you for not only building wealth for yourself but also doing this show and sharing it with other people to encourage them to create a real estate foundation in their portfolio.

Michelle, tell us about yourself. What’s your background?

I have always been an entrepreneur. I’m in many different businesses and different verticals. I did get that three-letter word, job, for Corporate America. I’ve owned businesses and events space, graphics, technology, medical industry. I did go to work for Xerox. Xerox recruited me. I was there for about six months, and then was promoted to Regional Vice President overseeing 100 unruly salespeople and realized quickly that I didn’t like it.

I ended up leaving Xerox and starting a franchise consulting development and sales business. I ended up partners with several different franchisors. I had many buyers asking me for existing businesses because they didn’t want to buy franchises. That’s when I decided to start my M&A firm. We specialize in selling businesses $10 million and up.

I learned a long time ago when I got into this industry that what Steve Forbes says is true. 8 out of 10 businesses don’t sell. Eighty percent of businesses on the market will never sell. I learned a long time ago that if I don’t start fixing them, tweaking them, growing them, and putting on a build-to-sell program, I’m going to starve to death, and a lot of business owners are going to go out of business. I specialize in not just selling businesses but we buy businesses and flip them. I partner with business owners and invest my capital resources core competencies to grow that business, putting them on a build-to-sell model.

8 out of 10 businesses don't sell. 80% of businesses on the market will never sell. Click To Tweet

At any given time, I own 5 to 10 different companies that we are building to sell. I’ve personally sold over 500 companies. My firm altogether sold a little over 1,000 businesses. I’m an international speaker. That’s where Sharon Lechter and I met years ago at an event. I have written three books, Sell Your Business For More Than it’s Worth in 2013, Exit Rich, and then I have a book coming out after Exit Rich on acquisitions.

That was equally awesome. You guys are so prepared. I got to up my game here when it comes to talking about my history because you two nailed it. Michelle, we will start there. You mentioned that 8 out of 10 businesses don’t sell. We are talking about a little bit about buying, growing, and selling businesses now. Before I even ask that, I’m wondering, from the two of you, why should our audience, who are mostly real estate investors, maybe some agents in there, some lenders but the real estate investing world, should they care about this topic? They are thinking, “I don’t own a five guys franchise. I don’t own a consulting firm. Why should I care?”

Your real estate investing is a business. The issue is, “Are you doing what you need to, to create the foundation and strength of your business?” I always compare a business to a house, a piece of real estate. You have to go down first to build that foundation. The house isn’t going to sell if it doesn’t have an electrical system and plumbing system.

Understanding that a business needs all of those elements in it as well and many people get excited about their new business. They are out there selling their product and making some money but haven’t taken the time to build the foundation around the business. By not doing that, it falters. You can’t scale if you are a real estate investor and know how to buy 3-2s. After about ten, you probably need to start having some systems on how to manage those and how to grow them.

You’ve created a way that you to review and buy them. That is your system. That allows you to go from 10 to 100 to 1,000 or set aside and hire the right people to run that. Now you start looking and investing in multifamily. Those are all business systems that help you build the foundation of your business. Wouldn’t it be easier if you decide you want to sell your real estate business to have a big player come in and buy all of it for you at 10X, 100X multiples versus trying to sell them one at a time? You can do that when you build that foundation around your business.

I have a company. We call it Open Door Capital. We buy mostly mobile home parks. Some of the best advice I ever got was, “Build your business as if you are going to sell it someday, whether or not you are or no,” because then you have the systems in place. We are building a property management company in-house alongside all these mobile home parks. We got over 2,000 units now. We are building it.

Even if I don’t sell it all someday to one big hedge fund or some billion-dollar company, at least in the meantime, I could have that exit option anytime I wanted to. It also makes life so much easier. Maybe I can ask you this question instead of giving my opinion on this. When I say it makes it easier to buy, what does that mean? What does a buyer look for when they want to go buy a business? What makes a business valuable that somebody would want to buy it?

There are many things that make a business buyable. One thing is that buyers want to buy a business, not a job. Unfortunately, many business owners have created a glorified job in which you are going to work at every day versus a business that works for them. The number one reason that businesses are not sellable is because a business is 1,000% dependent upon that owner. As Sharon said, they don’t have the systems in place. You have to have the people, the infrastructure, and the processes. We call this voting your business to run on all six cylinders. In other words, all six Ps that we describe in our book, Exit Rich.

The other thing I would like to add to that is when you talk about owning a bunch of different mobile home parks. You have to have systems for how to manage all those. You have people in your office that are helping you manage it. If Julie ends up leaving, are you going to be hurt because you are dependent on a person, not a system? If you create the systems on how it’s run, Julie leaves, somebody else sits in the seat, and they can pick up and know what to do. It’s so much easier to manage a business with systems than manage personalities. The ability to scale is so much easier when you have strong systems that have been proven successful.

It’s always easier to rely on personalities and your own elbow grease. This is the problem that we all run into. With my real estate team it’s called the David Greene Team. Good luck selling that to anybody else that isn’t named David Greene. That’s going to be a tough sell for me. I can sell rental property super easy because somebody else can run it just the same. I’m curious. Sharon and Michelle, before we move into the six Ps, how often is this principle the number one thing that hamstrings a business owner that they’ve taken shortcuts that they didn’t realize they were taking?

It’s an epidemic. Most business owners take shortcuts because, as entrepreneurs, we are not good managers. That’s why the first P is People. Do you have the right people on your team? Do you have people who are strong where you are weak? Invariably, what I see over mentoring thousands of people, is when a business owner gets all excited, they build this business, get some success, and the entrepreneurial is the innovator. They like to start and create new things.

They drive new results but don’t like to take care of the day-to-day. They still try to do everything themselves. It’s important to bring in the right team to make sure that you have people on your team that is strong where you are weak so that you can continue being the innovator, being the one that’s driving the business, and know and trust that you have systems and people in place who thrive in the day-to-day management of the company.

What have you two found in terms of people? How do you know you are getting good people? Obviously, a huge key to success is getting the right people in the right seat on the bus. What do you see as the right people? Are there any secrets that you know, shortcuts or is it a gamble?

Obviously, there are lots of different personality tests. I happen to like the Kolbe test because it talks about the difference between the innovator, and the quick thinker, versus the one that likes facts and figures. If you have an element of each on your team, you are going to have the greatest success. I also think that when you are hiring somebody, you are investing in them. You always say hire slow, fire fast, making sure that you understand who they are, what their dreams are, and how that aligns and fits into what you want.

Make sure that they understand what your company culture is. I have all my business owners that I mentor have a code of conduct. What do you stand for? What’s your mission statement? What’s your code of conduct so that when you hire somebody, they are signing off and agreeing with that philosophy, and you are building that culture in your business right up front? In ten years, when you want to sell your business, somebody coming and looking at it, they are going to go, “They got it. They started on the right foot with building a culture that was tight and agreed to by all people.”

Maybe I will fire this one first to Michelle. How do you deal with the fact that you need competent people that are the best at what they do? This is something, David, you probably deal with a lot, which is you train people to be the best, good, and then they leave or could leave because you gave them all your systems and everything. If you don’t give them all that instruction right, then they are going to stay and be terrible. How do you balance that of having good people with giving them too much information? Again, that’s a problem with real estate investors all the time. They train people to work for them and do their selves. How do we avoid that?

It depends on what position we are referring to. If we are referring to upper management, in most of my companies, we have them sign non-competes, employment contracts, and things of that nature. A lot of people say, “Non-competes don’t hold up.” That’s not true. It depends upon what state you are in. It depends upon how it’s written if it’s written correctly, etc.

At some point, you got to trust. You are going into a marriage here almost. When you hire somebody, you are going to have to trust them because you have to give them so much information. We have people sign non-competes. I haven’t had an issue with somebody leaving in all the companies that we’ve ever had. Sharon, have you ever had any problems with this?

 

I love Richard Branson’s quote, “Teach people enough so that they can leave. Treat them well enough that they choose not to.” It is related to elevating them to the position of the highest potential in their world but giving them enough trust, and support and treat them well enough that they are so happy being with you that they are not going to leave. You can’t control individuals.

The people have issues at home. They end up moving out of state. There are times when people will leave. The issue is, “Is it going to be that you support them?” I celebrate when I have people because I teach people to be entrepreneurs. When I have people that have worked with me and they decide they want to start their own business, I’m their first investor. I support them. I want the baby bird to lead the nest and create success.

When you have a corporate environment and key man positions, it’s important to protect yourself and that position and to make sure you have a system for monitoring and understanding the content of that individual if it’s somebody that you have total reliance on. Everything in life comes back to communication. Having that communication, that ongoing check-in with them to make sure everything is okay. You will know if habits start changing and you start seeing coming a little later, taking a Friday off when they haven’t taken a day off in years. You must start paying attention to that stuff and keep that line of communication open.

That’s huge. Nobody likes meetings but to me, the most important components of a meeting are that I can hear the tone of their voice. I can see their body language. You can catch those micro expressions. When someone else on the team has a victory, and they look angry about it, you will notice that in a meeting versus when you’ve got this checklist of tasks they are supposed to do and they want to work from home. Everybody wants to work from home but you don’t see the resentment that’s building. That’s a super important part. Oftentimes, they are going to leave you because of that. If you nip it in the bud, you can address it and make a change right off the bat.

Gossip that’s the culture of the company. Gossip can create such problems within a company and within an organization. That’s unnecessary stress and worry. We have a weekly meeting. The first thing we do is we do check in with everybody. They will tell us if something is happening at home. It’s a normal thing if we want to know you as a person as well as an employee. I hate that word, by the way. I use the word team. We want to know what’s going on and what’s happening. Let’s check in with each other and then get down to the business of the company.

We almost lost my father-in-law. We have been spending a lot of time out there. There are other things. My mind hasn’t been focused as dramatically as it normally is. People who know me pick up on that. Same thing in a company where you know the people that are working for you. You can see when there’s something happening.

Michelle, anything you want to add to that?

Depending upon the size of the company, it’s good to have a liaison, a human resources manager. My husband and I own medical clinics, and we have a lot of employees. If it wasn’t for that one liaison, that one COO that reports everything back to my husband and I, we can’t communicate with everybody all the time. It’s impossible. We have multiple locations. She has been with us for many years. She’s our right-hand person. She’s our eyes and ears. She communicates everything with us.

Depending upon the size of your corporation, it might not necessarily be the owner. The owner is not always the best manager. A lot of times, owners don’t know how to deal with employees. They are not necessarily always the best leaders. You want to make sure that you have that liaison, chief operating officer or human resources that can work with employees, communicate with employees, and then make sure they communicate that to the owner.

Often, owners don't know how to deal with employees. You want to ensure that you have that liaison, that chief operating officer or human resources that can work with employees, communicate with them, and make sure they communicate that to the… Click To Tweet

I’m going through that.

My husband is not the best at that. My husband was like, “The best thing I ever did was getting a liaison to help with that. I don’t know their names after they have been here for six months. I go, “That’s not good either.”

We had two agents on my team quit, and they gave no indication that they were going to quit. They quit out of nowhere. When I asked them what happened, they said, “These buyers are draining me of all my energy. They are calling me every single night, all night long.” Nobody was checking in to find out they were going through that. They finally hit a point where they said, “I can’t do it anymore.” I realized I need exactly what you guys mentioned. I need a liaison in the office that is talking to my staff and picking up on that. That’s what I’m hiring now.

It’s important in the real estate industry because you have many different personalities. If you are doing development, you’ve got all the tradesmen, the manager that’s on-site, then you’ve got the person handling all the ordering. If something doesn’t come in, it explodes down the line. Again, it all comes back to communication but understanding that each role that’s there requires a different set of skills. When you have an owner that’s upset that something is not happening right in the house, you need somebody that knows how to manage those temper issues, not somebody that says, “Get over it.” It’s important to have the right people.

That’s why I said the owner isn’t always the best person because the owner’s mentality a lot of times will be, “Deal with it. I’ve had to deal with it to get here.” That’s a lot of times the owner’s mentality and perspective. You do need that person who can be empathetic.

The bigger you get, the more you need people. The more you need people, the more complicated and complex your problems become because people are, so the more you need a person to manage those. That’s a great point. The first P here is People. What would the second P be?

The second P is Product. When I talk about the product, I like to give a little history. When I wrote Sell Your Business for More than It’s Worth in 2013 and did the research, I learned that 95% of all startups would fail. We all know that. That’s common sense. When I did the research for Exit Rich, I was flabbergasted because the landscape has changed dramatically. I showed it to Sharon, and she’s like, “Are you sure? You should research that again.”

The business landscape is a flip flop. Now, only 30% of startups will go out of business but out of 27.6 million companies, and this is all across every vertical you can imagine, those businesses have been in business for ten years or longer. Seventy percent of them will go out of business. You hear about the big public companies all the time but you don’t hear about the private businesses that are exiting poor, selling for pennies on the dollar. Don’t you find that shocking that 70% of businesses are going out of business that has been in business for ten years?

That’s nuts because you think, “You’ve made it over the hump. You’ve got traction. You have been going for 5 or 10 years. You should be fine.” I would assume 70%, 80%, and 90% are fine for decades longer but crazy. That’s not the case.

It’s a flip flop. The reason it’s changed because I always say it’s lack of AIM, Always Innovate, and Market. You always have to innovate and market. Look at Toys“R”Us. It went out of business after being in business for 75 years. They never innovated. Blockbuster looked at Netflix. They had an opportunity to buy Netflix but didn’t do anything. Many business owners are going out of business because they stop innovating and marketing. Product is the second P. You have to ask yourself, “Is your industry, your product, and your service on the way up or on the way out?” Real estate is on the way up. It is booming and thriving especially in a residential estate.

 

You got the right product, the right fit there, and the right people. What else comes next?

The third P is Processes. That comes back to business systems.  When we talk about a business, I can’t believe I haven’t used my favorite word yet, asset. You are financially free when the income from your assets exceeds your monthly expenses. You want your business to be an asset. You don’t want to be the asset. You want your business to be an economic engine that works for you.

As we’ve already shared a little bit already in this interview, the importance of business systems, those processes that allow your business to be not just successful but make it sustainable and scalable so that it can be saleable at some point and have an independent unit from you so that if you don’t show up, it’s not going to hurt business that day. Your business is already thriving and moving on its own.

What do you say to the business owner who says, “I hear you, Sharon, but nobody can do it as good as I can do it?”

I can tell them that they are not going to reach the success they deserve and that I’m going to suggest to them that they find a mentor because a mentor is going to help them realize that there’s more out there for them. Many times, we want to hold onto everything. We have to do it ourselves or we are afraid to delegate. At the end of the day, that means you are not going to grow. You are not going to reach the heights of success that you deserve because you are self-sabotaging. That’s what I would say to them a little bluntly. They are self-sabotaging by not building in those systems that can allow their business to thrive with or without them.

When is the right time to start putting those systems and processes in place? If somebody is starting a new business, whether it’s a real estate thing, they are buying rentals or starting a consulting thing, should they wait until they figure everything out or systems day one?

They should start building those processes and procedures from day one, in my opinion. You have to let go of that control. You will never grow unless you let go of the control. Entrepreneurs have to focus on their strengths. We are not good at everything. Let’s admit it. We have to focus on our strengths, not our weaknesses. Otherwise, we will never grow. That’s the biggest issue. Processes, in my opinion, need to be started from day one. A lot of owners get this wrong, processes need to be designed around the customer experience, not around the owner’s agenda.

Can you explain that?

We must ask ourselves, what do we want our customers to experience? It’s like McDonald’s. Did you all watch the movie, The Founder, based upon the McDonald brothers?

We want to design the processes around the customer experience. What do we want our customers to experience? Click To Tweet

I did.

I haven’t.

That’s a great movie. Back in the 1950s, McDonald’s started McDonald’s. They said, “We want to start a fast-food restaurant. We want to design the processes around the customer experience. What do we want our customers to experience? Great tasting food that’s fast and hot 30 seconds or less.” Remember, they went out to the tennis courts throughout the processes. Even though it was done way back then and has been tweaked along the way, you can eat at McDonald’s anywhere in the world and get the same experience.

The problem is that business owners stop asking their clients, “What do you want? What do you need? How can I make it easier for you to do business with us?” Consumers buying habits have changed dramatically. Whoever makes the easiest for the consumer to do business with them is a company that’s winning. Amazon is winning because you can practically buy a horse on Amazon and have it delivered to your house. Processes are huge. They need to be designed from the beginning. Do you agree, Sharon?

Absolutely. It’s so much easier to design it right upfront than to try and have to go back and untangle the mess. Same thing with attorneys. Having the right attorneys up, you set yourself up and get these agreements in place. People say, “Attorneys are too expensive.” I go, “They are a lot more expensive later on when you haven’t done it right, and you are trying to untangle the messes.” It’s a matter of using that professional mindset to say, “I want to build this to be successful, so I’m going to do it right. I’m going to create the systems.” The systems that you start off with as you get bigger, and you may have to evolve to larger and more robust systems as part of the business.

That’s a good thing because that means you are successful. I had an interview, and this gal was talking to me about a client of hers, a $50 million construction company that had been in business for twenty years and had no database. Their customers were in paper files and filing cabinets in separate rooms. That means they think they have a system. The question is that system isn’t saleable.

No, it’s not. In evaluation, the first thing that we would do is do a cost analysis of what it would cost to bring that company up to 2021 and deduct that from the purchase price. We sold a distribution company, same kind of scenario. Everything was on paper and on Rolodexes. Their entire inventory system was on paper. We are selling a $70 million company of 300 employees. You would think they would have all their processes and, policy procedure manuals, and SOP checklist together.

Hence the importance of Exit Rich. You want $10 million for your business. If a purchaser is interested, they come in. They ask you for your corporate docs. They are not in order. That $10 million goes to $9 million.  They ask you for the agreements with your vendors and your suppliers. “Some of them are here. I can get them for you.” That goes down to $8 million. All of a sudden, you are not dressed for the party.

You want to create that foundation and be prepared, have your documents in order, and have your valuation. Discover that intangible asset. That fourth P is Proprietary, your intangible valuation. Identify, protect, and leverage it. That’s the value that we provide in the book, Exit Rich, taking you through this process on how to strengthen the core of your company so that it can grow much more quickly.

Otherwise, it’s not going to be sellable. We are not going to going to be able to maximize value or we are going to have to time out and have to go in and get everything in working order.

Sharon, you mentioned that it seems too expensive to do some of this stuff. I’ve noticed that in our companies, one of the biggest enemies to success in the companies I run are when people say, “It was faster to do it myself.” It feels too expensive at the moment to stop and create a procedure and train someone to do it, even if it’s as simple as, “Can I go to a website and click a button?” Over ten years, how many button clicks did you have to do because you didn’t want to show somebody else how to do it and make a system?

What that does is it turns into having all your files in a filing cabinet twenty years later when you go to sell your business, and now it is expensive that you didn’t systemize it. I constantly have to be disciplined and say, “It would be faster and easier to do it myself but if I make that decision every time, I never have a business. I always have a job.” Is that, in your two opinion, the genesis of where this problem comes from when it grows into something that’s a huge problem when you try to exit?

A thousand percent.

You ask a business owner, “Are you unique?” “Yes, I am. Nobody does it the way I do.” “Where did you get your legal agreements?” “I download them off the internet.” If you are unique and using pedestrian agreements, how unique are you truly? Let’s get the right talent onboard that can identify that uniqueness and protect that uniqueness so that you can get the greatest valuation possible. Again, if you are too cheap to invest in the foundation of your company, you will never reap the rewards of the value that you can create.

I was going to say in the other big issue that I find that the biggest reason that businesses are not sellable is that all the data is in the owner’s head. Even this company that we are selling for $70 million has 300 employees. Buyers are going to buy a percentage of the company because the company still will not operate without that owner because so much of the data is in your head. You have to get the data out of your head onto paper. Otherwise, you will never be able to scale, and we won’t be able to maximize value.

 

Can we take a side detour here real quick and talk about how a company is evaluated? The real estate investors think, “That house is worth what those three houses sold for.” It’s comp based but that’s not quite the same when it comes to buying and selling a business. Maybe, Michelle, can you explain how a business is valuated? What are multiples? How does that whole world work?

I’m going to give you a crash course on valuations, and then Sharon and I will take you in a proprietary. All those proprietary assets and synergies can take you from a 5 to 7 to an 8 to a 10 multiple and up. This is a perfect transition. I always say the companies are under $1 million in EBITDA. EBITDA is Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, and will typically trade anywhere from 1 to 3, 3 and a half depending upon synergies unless you are in SaaS. SaaS is a multiple of revenues. The sweet spot is when you get your EBITDA over $1 million. Over $1 million, we have many buyers. There are five types of buyers.

Over $1 million in EBITDA typically starts at five and up depending upon these synergies because, for five and up, you got private equity groups that buy based on platforms and add-ons. You got strategic/competitors that will typically pay the highest multiple because they are buying and paying for synergies not only in that company. They are going to catapult their current company to the next level like databases, contracts, and patents.

The last type that we talk about is the sophisticated entrepreneur. The synergies, the proprietary assets, are what get you the higher multiple. This, out of all the Ps, to me, is the highest value driver. There are six pillars that I talk about in proprietary. Number one is branding. I always say the more well-branded you are, the more I can sell your company for as long as your brand is relevant in the mind of the consumers. Is anybody paying any money for Blockbuster?

The more well-branded you are, the more you can sell your company for as long as your brand is relevant in the mind of the consumers. Click To Tweet

I had some friends. We all went to visit a friend who was running a race in the same town as the last Blockbuster, which is Bend, Oregon. They went and bought twenty Blockbuster jumpsuits. People are buying something from the last Blockbuster but that’s about it. Tracksuits.

Do you know who the most valuable brand in the world is?

Coca-Cola, maybe.

Coca-Cola is in the top ten.

Apple, maybe.

Apple is worth $359 billion. That’s just a brand. That’s not assets, inventory, real estate, EBITDA or anything else. Build your brand. Trademark is extremely valuable. Trademark your company name, your slogans, and your podcast. We have a company that’s got twelve different products that have a Federal trademark for each product because one product is exclusive to Target, and one is exclusive to Walmart.

The biggest mistake I see with trademarks, and Sharon can probably speak to this too because our husband, as a bonus, is an intellectual property attorney. Trademarks are huge. A lot of business owners come up with a name. They go to GoDaddy and punch in the name and go, “I got the dot-com,” and go to real estate, get a state trademark but then never check the Federal database so they can be in business for 5, 10, 15 years.

I see this happen all the time. All of a sudden, I receive a cease-and-desist letter in the mail, and I have to stop using that company name. They will hire an attorney, throw a lot of money at it, and probably unless, say, I have Michael Lechter, they are probably going to lose. Now I will have to start the rebranding process all over again. Do you agree, Sharon?

It happens all the time. It happened twice with the group that I was with. “I got the domain name.” “Have you checked the trademark?” It’s easy. It’s easy USPTO.gov. You search trademarks, and you can see who has the name. If somebody owns a name, find another name. Come up with something different.

I might have that issue on my own. I got to look into this, and this is obviously a deeper conversation. I have a company called Open Door Capital because I had a company called Open Door Properties. We have been around for several years, Open Door Properties. There’s a massive billion-dollar company out there called Open Door. I looked up their name, they started way after I did but they’ve got a lot more money. I’m assuming at some point. I’m going to get that letter in the mail and have to switch out my company name even though I can say I had it first but I don’t know if I ever trademarked it.

The question is, did you have it protected? If you can prove that you were using it first, you probably call my husband. You have the rights of a trademark when you start using that. If they didn’t register it until later, you have rights but those rights may only be in your geographic area. I am not an attorney, for everybody reading. Do not consider this legal advice. However, you may want to check it out to see what your position is because you may be okay. The question is, do you want to go global? Do you want to go national? That’s where you might have some problems.

One more question on branding. David mentioned a minute ago his company’s called the David Greene Team. I got another buddy. His name is Pat Flynn. His whole thing is Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn. It’s tied to his name. How dangerous is that when you are trying to sell a business where it’s connected to a personality?

Tony Robbins is probably a perfect example of that. He had to do an ESOP. He ended up selling to his employees. T Harv Eker, who wrote, The Millionaire Mindset, he was able to sell his empire.

It’s because it was not called T Harv Eker.

It was called Peak Potentials.

I talk about the difference between a mission brand and a celebrity brand. A mission brand is what problem do you solve? What need do you serve? When we started the Rich Dad company, we thought our brand was CASHFLOW, our board game but it quickly became Rich Dad. The world knows us as Rich Dad. Seven years into it, Robert decided he wanted to be a celebrity. It was all about Robert Kiyosaki.

Tony could not sell his company because his name was attached to the company, and he would have to go with it. When you are building a company, when you think about what you want your exit to be, you want to build that factor in. If your name is tied to it, then you will probably be tied to the company. It’s hard to separate the two unless you want to lose your name. That’s an important thing to think about as you are building companies.

If you were David Greene here, thinking maybe 2 years, 3 years, 5 years down the road, he wants to sell his real estate business. It’s a super successful real estate business. He needs that name to grow it or he thinks he does. I’m curious of what your guys’ opinion would be on something like that. Should he start the diversify from that name?

If I were him, I would diversify. There have been some success stories like Keller Williams and Seiler Tucker. I brand myself but I also brand my company, Keller Williams brands the company. It’s a celebrity brand or is it a professional business brand? I would rebrand at this process.

My education company is Pay Your Family First, and then my celebrity brand, my speaking, and everything are under Sharon Lechter. David could easily start dropping David and have Greene as the name of the company. It’s generic enough so that if he wanted to sell at some point, somebody would establish that brand. It’s something to think about as to where you want to go.

In a services company, a lot of times, your purchaser is going to be purchasing your contacts, your contracts, your employees, and your database. They would have an asset purchase as opposed to a company purchase. They might not be necessarily buying your logo but they want to have your reputation. It’s important to think about that in every aspect of what you are building.

I would also add to that and say 98% of sales are asset sales, not stock sales, for a multitude of reasons. Most of the time, the buyers want to continue that name. They will get their own entity doing business as and will continue that name. The only time that we see buyers change names is when they are doing big rollups.

You were talking proprietary. Branding was the first one. You said you had six things under that. What were those?

We talked about branding and trademarks. Patents are big. If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, they sound like a broken record, “Do you have a patent on that? Do you have a patent pending?” We sold a company for $18 million that wasn’t making much money but they had eighteen patents. Patents are extremely valuable. Does your husband work with patents, Sharon?

Yes. He’s internationally known for his patent and technology. He’s an electronic engineer. Patents are the strongest form of protection. They protect your idea. Copyrights protect the expression of your idea but somebody can read with something that you write and go ahead and make it and do it. There’s no protection against that. Trademark is the source of the goods. You protect the source of the goods. A copyright protects the expression of what you are writing. A patent protects why you are doing it and what it does, and what it can accomplish. That side of it is important. It’s important to do an entire arsenal of intellectual property. Have the trademarks, copyrights, and patents.

Have that IP in a different entity, too.

Always in a different entity. In fact, I’m doing some projects with Brandon Dawson. He started Cardone Ventures with Grant Cardone. He sold his company for $151 million, 77 times EBITDA. I had known him for years. I’ve spoken for his organization. He rolled up a bunch of hearing aid companies. The company was called Audigy. He was a big fan of my book, Three Feet from Gold. I just learned this.

In one of my conversations with him, he was telling me about this training that he’s developed for all his companies within this group, Audigy. I said, “That’s your stuff. This is your knowledge. Are you putting this in a separate entity?” He said, “No.” I said, “You should because then you can license it back to the company. That’s you. That’s what you know.”

When he sold the company, and that company continued to grow, it’s over $4 billion now, and he has a license with them. Now he’s able to take that intellectual property and build Cardone Ventures because he’s got that technology and the rights to use it. It’s important to understand. I have a separate company for all of my intellectual property outside my financial education company for the same reason.

Seventy-seven times EBITDA that sounds crazy. Is that because there’s a competitor that wanted it, and they were going to pay way more, and it got bid up? Is that why that happens?

It’s because of the intrinsic value that he was able to roll up across the country, all of these individual mom-and-pops, Audigy clinics, and rolled it up and a big player bought it. He did well. What he did was, when we go back to that number one, which is people, he made sure every one of his employees got a big reward, and every one of the companies that he rolled up got more than they would have if they tried to sell individually.

Let me summarize this whole valuation thing for people. I want to make sure I got this right. Let’s say a business is going to sell for a 10X multiple, which would be high for most businesses but let’s say it’s a 10X, not 77X. This company brings in an EBITDA or profit for simplicity’s terms, of $10 million a year. It brings in $10 million a year and sells for a 10X multiple. It sells for $100 million.

The cool thing about business and why I love this concept of buying or building and then selling businesses is because if you can take that company from $10 million and increase their revenue up to $12 million using the same stuff we are talking about, the right people and processes or you buy a distressed company that should be worth $10 million. You buy it for $5 million because they don’t have any of the right things in place.

You put it in place, and now you take your $10 million thing and turn it into a $12 million a year profit business. At that same 10X multiple, now it’s worth $120 million, not $100 million. An owner could buy a company for $100 million, fix it up a little bit, and sell it for $120 million. When you say flipping businesses, that’s what you are getting at, Michelle, right?

Absolutely. Here’s the bottom line, valuations are more of an art rather than a science. When we get EBITDA of over $2 million, $3 million, $5 million, private equity groups won’t even look at platforms unless you have an EBIT of at least $3 million and up. We go to market without a price because we know we are going to bring so many buyers to the party that, in most cases, we are going to create a bidding war.

Valuations are an art, not a science. You have to look at the synergies, and then you have to determine what buyers are willing to pay top dollar for those synergies and outbid everybody else. There are a lot of things to take into consideration here. Number one is not just the synergies but economies at scale. A lot of buyers look at a business and go, “I can take advantage of these economies at scales and decrease overhead and increase EBITDA like that. Also, what can they decrease in infrastructure?” We are selling a manufacturing business with a $5 million distribution center.

 

We have a manufacturing buyer that has distribution all over the United States. The first thing they are looking at that we knew they were going to look at, that’s why we targeted them, is that they are going to take and cut that distribution center decreasing $5 million from operating expense, increasing EBITDA from day one of closing on the sale of the business. It’s all about bringing the right buyers to the table who are willing to pay maximum value for those synergies. That’s what we go into great detail in Exit Rich.

One of the reasons I wanted to stress on this point for a little bit here is because our audience, of course, is a lot of real estate investors. When we are talking about the residential property with small deals, your house is worth what another house is worth. When you get into the larger stuff, 5, 10, 50, and 100-unit properties, this is how those deals are evaluated.

We don’t use the same terminology necessarily. We are not usually talking about EBITDA. We are talking cap rates and NOI but the concept is exactly the same. For example, Open Door Capital we are aiming to buy $1 billion of mobile home parks over the next seven years. We should close this 2022 at $150 million or something like that if we can take $1 billion of real estate and improve the profit that it brings in, the NOI, the Net Operating Income, every single year that comes in by decreasing expenses, increasing income, and the efficiencies.

If we own one mobile home park or one apartment, this is what it costs. If we own 50 of them, there’s a lot of efficiencies. We can cut down costs. We can sell that $1 billion of real estate for $1.5 billion, $1.6 billion, and $1.7 billion because we’ve now improved the NOI. My investors get a huge chunk of that. I get a huge chunk of that. Commercial real estate is a business, which is exciting to me. I love this stuff.

I have a good friend of mine that owns half of Chicago multifamily. He will tell you he owns the wrong half. He owns a lot of multifamily. He’s the first one. I said, “You have to read Exit Rich,” because he does everything himself. He doesn’t have the right people in place. We have been friends forever. We have been to different conferences. Sharon, you’ve probably met him. I’m not going to say his name here.

He doesn’t implement any of these things that we are talking about as far as processes, people, and everything else. He’s like, “No, Michelle. If I want it done right, I got to do it myself.” I’m like, “You are never going to be able to maximize value.” Again, he has a business. He has several multifamilies. I forget how many doors he has. He needs to start running it as a business, and that he’s not doing.

Let me comment on that because you are right. He should be doing exactly what you guys are saying. Part of what makes real estate beautiful is that you can get away with running it sloppy and terrible because there are so many less people involved. Real estate is like cheating in business. That’s because borrowing money is easy at such low rates. Valuing is incredibly simple. Nobody likes property management. Compare that to business management. You will love it. It’s not even close.

If you look at the 20 agents that I have to manage on my real estate team for the money I get versus the 20 houses that I have, I don’t even need 1 person. I have half a person because the property managers deal with it. Real estate is this amazing sweet spot in a business where you can get away without all the same work that we are talking about here. That makes it enticing to cut corners because you can get away with it.

Imagine if you did everything that Sharon and I were talking about. Everything that we’ve outlined in Exit Rich how much more profitable you would be?

That’s exactly where I was going with that. Don’t take that bait. You can get away with it but it’s not good. You should be running it like a business. You should be making sure you are maximizing rents because that’s maximizing profit. If you run a business, you would be maximizing your profit for sure. You wouldn’t be selling an apple for less than what you could get.

Landlords would be like, “It’s fine. I’m doing good enough. I won’t raise the rents.” They are not creating systems so that most of us buy real estate, assuming we are going to hold it forever. You guys have me thinking, what if I bought real estate with the purpose of exiting into a REIT? What type of property would I buy? What would a REIT be looking for? How would I structure this?

That’s exactly How I built Open Door Capital. I was thinking, “I’m going to sell this to a REIT or to a hedge fund. What do they want?” They are going to want systems. They want people.

A REIT is not going to be interested in you if you have even $1 million worth of property, $10 million worth. If you are $150 million, they might at least take a call but when you are at $1 billion, they are going to sit down and talk to you.

If my financials are in order and I have the right people in place, and there are systems that they could grab, plug it in, and make it work, they are going to be looking at me. Remember the Dumb and Dumber scene where they wrote down the IOUs on the back of napkins of all the money they spent on the suitcase? That’s how a lot of investors run their businesses like, “Here’s the one for the Ferrari. You might want to keep that one. It’s worth a lot.”

This is awesome. We don’t want to keep you guys all day. Why don’t we wrap up the rest of the Ps so we can get you all out of here? Encourage people to get the book, which we will talk about more in a moment. The last thing we talk about is proprietary stuff. What comes next on the Ps?

The fifth P is Patrons. That’s your customer base. Most businesses follow the 80/20 Rule, where 80% of their business comes from 20% of their clients. They have customer concentrations to customer diversification. I will give you a perfect example. We are selling a media company. We are selling them for around $15 million. Five clients, that’s all. They were catering to casinos.

Here’s the problem. The problem is that they lost two clients. They lost two casinos. That’s why we were selling them. The revenues dropped in half. Their EBITDA dropped even more than that. The big issue is that they had to keep the talent for the other three casinos. They were not sellable anymore. We ended up merging them with another marketing company. You want customer diversification. The other thing I see too is a lot of businesses that have been in business for 20, 30 or 40 years. The customers are aging out.

The business owners are not innovating and marketing to reach new customers. The newer generations don’t purchase the same way as Baby Boomers do. It goes back to, “What do you need? What do you want? How can I make it easier to do business with us?” Patrons. Profits, obviously, everybody is in business to make money. I always say, “Lack of profits is never the problem.” It’s always the symptom of not operating on 1 of the 5 Ps. Clients come to me all the time and say, “Michelle, I have a profit problem.” I’m like, “No, you have a people problem. You have a process problem.” Lack of profits is never the problem.

Lack of profits is never the problem. Most of the time, it’s a process problem. Click To Tweet

I would like to talk about patrons for a quick moment because, particularly in the real estate industry, my husband and I got involved with eXp Realty to help train and get realtors to understand that it is a business. They are running a business. You can have transactional revenue and commissions but commissions only go last onto the next commission. Let’s build that ongoing passive income stream. In nowaday’s world, particularly in this younger generation, they think their database is in the sky, in Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Clubhouse.

They get excited because they have all these followers but you don’t own those. They are great to be there. You want to be there. They are lead generations but you have to invite them home to your database. Entice them to come back. Top five things to know before you sell your house. Top five things you want to know before buying a house. Get them to come and download that so that you have their names and you can create a relationship.

Particularly in real estate, too many real estate agents have transactional mindsets. Somebody buys a house from them, and they forget about them. I go, “Let’s create a relationship with all of them so that you have an ongoing opportunity to maintain contact so that they refer you to someone else. When they decide to buy an investment property, they are going to call you.”

For years, I’ve always talked about when real estate agents, people want you to cut your fee. As an investor, I pay my agent more than what they are asking. When they get a good deal, who do you think they are going to call? Again, as patrons, having that patronage, the loyalty, that relationship with your database. There are companies that are sold because of their database when you’ve got a competitive company coming in to buy you because they want your customers.

That’s huge now. The whole big data concept in businesses, isn’t that what they are getting at?

Yeah. We didn’t get the finished proprietary, so the database is proprietary. It’s one of those pillars. It’s like Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp, and WhatsApp was hemorrhaging money but they had a billion users. Databases are huge. We always evaluate databases.

Brandon, this idea of owning your database and making it an asset in your business. This is similar to what you are doing with your text newsletter, Behind the Beard.

Sharon and Michelle, I have 250,000 followers on Instagram, which is great. I raised a lot of money over the last couple of years for my real estate business through that. However, I don’t own that. I’ve heard of people get their Instagram accounts are hacked and then like, “If you don’t pay us $1 million, we are going to delete your account. If you don’t pay them, they delete your account.” That would terrify me. I could have done an email list. I have that as well but I figured out where the world is moving towards. I started a text letter, I call it.

They join this Behind the Beard newsletter. Every week, I text them five things that I’m learning, buying or doing. Now I’ve got this list. I have almost 10,000 on that. Those are mine. I can communicate to those people. I can talk about what I’m working on. I can raise money. I can build relationships because that’s mine. I would encourage anybody who’s in, especially in internet marketing of any kind, if you have a website, that list is vital because you don’t own your social media.

It’s a huge problem for particularly younger people that are starting businesses. They don’t even think about a database because they are so excited about being popular on social media.

I got the blue check mark on Instagram. I should be fine until you lose that or until Instagram changes the algorithm.

I have been hacked on Facebook twice.

I lost my personal profile on Facebook. It got hacked by somebody in Vietnam. It took over my business page, too. We were able to get our business page back but I can never get my profile back.

It’s a good reminder for everyone to set up two-factor authentication now on all their social media. They still got in.

I have that. Somehow, they got in and changed my emails and my cell phone out of the account, so I can no longer access it.

It’s a crazy world. Own that list. That’s yours of your people whether you are a real estate investor or business owner, own that list.

That’s to any business. You have to build that database. Don’t have Rolodexes.

Social media is great. You want that but look at it as lead gen and bring them home. Nurture them home.

The last one was profit. Do we hit all the Ps there?

Yeah.

Too many people focus on the product and the profit. They don’t have the success they deserve because they haven’t built the structure of their business. That’s the whole reason Michelle and I got together to write Exit Rich, to share people the information they need. 1 or 2 things out of the book can increase your valuation of your company tenfold. What we want you to do is to invest $24 for a book that’s going to help you create greater value and longevity, and success in your business.

It can also help you not become part of the 70% statistics that business is going out of business and the 80% of businesses that will never sell. There were three things that are proprietary contracts are extremely valuable. Buyers will pay a lot of money for contracts, manufacturing, vendor, distribution, franchisor or franchisees, and any type of exclusivity.

Obviously, client contracts are the most valuable, especially if they have a subscription model with reoccurring revenue. The caveat to contracts is the mistake that always sees business owners make because most sales are asset sales, not stock sales. They never have the two-sentence transferability clause in our contract. It says, “This contract is transferable.”

Like a wholesale deal and/or the assignee.

The problem is that the buyer doesn’t agree to a stock sell. I got a client who’s got 5,000 customers. They are not going to get 5,000 consent to the transfer. You want to make sure you are proactive and put that in the language in there. Also, celebrity endorsements are huge. We have a client that has products with Oprah. Strategic will pay a lot more money for celebrity endorsements. I call it digital real estate. When you have radio personalities, those celebrity endorsements, they can only endorse one real estate company at a time or one skincare line or something like that because otherwise, they lose credibility.

That’s prime real estate. eCommerce businesses, any of those top positions on Etsy, Amazon or Wayfair. Strategics will pay a lot of money for that. Content. We are selling a huge educational platform business, and they have so much content and many books in our pipeline. That’s worth a lot more money. That’s worth a higher multiple. Do you agree, Sharon?

Yes. It is also important when you have content that when you are building the value of your company and using outside third parties to distribute your content, you know that little thing online that says, “Check the box that you agree to our terms and conditions.” Do something new and different. Read them. A lot of times, when you read them, you are giving that company permission.

You are letting them have a perpetual license to your content that they can do whatever they want to with it forever. We see this time and time again. How many times do you check the box and not read that? You have to see what it does, what it says, and what kind of ownership because it can impact the value of your company if you’ve given somebody else rights to it.

Even if you hire people with the right content, you want to make sure that you own that content. Not the employees, the interns, and the freelance writers.

 

The number one issue in small to medium companies, people that are now using Fiverr and outside sources, somebody to do their website, you have to have a work for higher agreement, which says, “When I pay for it, I own it.” Your headshots, big one. A lot of people don’t get that. You don’t own the headshot. They do. You are restricted to your use. Every time we do anything here, every agreement is, “This is mine. I own it when I pay for it.”

I found that out of the first photography headshot I ever did several years ago. I posted the picture online later, and the photographer reached out. This was a friend, too. She was like, “Just so you know, I own that. You are not supposed to post it on online.” I’m like, “I hired you for me to do a headshot.” She’s like, “Put my logo on the pictures you put online.” I was like, “Screw that. I’m not going to do that.” Good point.

We got to start wrapping things up. We got the last part of the show here. We call it our Famous Four. It’s the part of the show where we ask the same four questions to every guest every week. We are going to throw all four at you. I will go with Michelle, Sharon, and each one of these. We will start with Michelle and end with Sharon. The first question, is there a habit or a trait that you are trying to improve in your own life?

Working out consistently. I get up at 4:00 AM to workout. Sometimes I don’t do it. Doing that consistently.

What’s your go-to workout?

The actual climber. I do 100 pushups and 150 squats with weights.

Sharon, what habit or trait that you are working on?

Once a quarter, getting to the beach, to the ocean at sunset. That is something that I promised myself a long time ago. I have been pretty good at it but not the last couple of years. You can add the same thing. I’m getting up to a new exercise routine and a new nutritional plan. I’m working on that, too.

Come visit me out in Maui. I live out here in Maui, Hawaii. Come visit sometime. Question number two.

Next question, what is each of your favorite business books?

Exit Rich, can I say that?

You could say it but we will ask for another one, too.

I love Rich Dad Poor Dad. I love the original Napoleon Hill Foundation. I also like, The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. I gave you more than one.

Think and Grow Rich, hands down, by Napoleon Hill released in 1937. It’s as relevant now as it was when he released it. I tell people I read it every year. The book doesn’t change but I do. Every year I find something in there that I don’t remember being there the year before because it’s what I needed at that moment in time. I like Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends & Influence People.

I read Rich Dad Poor Dad every year. It doesn’t change but I change. Number three.

What are some of your hobbies?

I love to write. I write songs, poetry, and anything. That’s one of my biggest hobbies, travel and friends.

We have a ranch. It’s a guest ranch, CherryCreekLodge.com, here in Arizona, three hours outside Phoenix. Every time we can, we get up there. We have 4 new horses, 2 colts and 2 fillies, that were born in the last few months. That’s a pretty big hobby. We have fishing, shooting, horseback riding, and all kinds of fun. We do business retreats up there. That would be it. Reading, I’m an avid reader. It is probably not a hobby. It’s an avocation.

That’s on your website. That looks like a lot of fun.

If you all sell enough books, you can go there. It’s one of our book buys.

I have been offering people a gift certificate if they sell ten books or more.

Everybody, buy a copy of Exit Rich because I want to go to Cherry Creek Lodge. Last question from me, what do you think separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started? Obviously, there are a million things but if you had to narrow it down to one thing, what separates those who succeed from those who don’t?

There are a million things. The first thing that comes to my mind is grit. It’s grit, perseverance, and mentorship. That’s more than one.

What separates those who succeed from those who don't is grit. Click To Tweet

For me, it’s faith. Faith in yourself, faith in what you are doing, faith that is needed and necessary. Successful businesses solve a problem or serve a need. We self-sabotage because we allow fear to paralyze us. If you can learn how to get rid of the fear, Outwitting the Devil can help, one of my books with the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Converting that fear into energy and faith. When you have faith, you can do anything.

Ladies, where can people find out more about you?

Michelle?

For my main website is SeilerTucker.com. Sharon, do you want to tell your main website, and then we will give them information about how they can get Exit Rich?

You can find me at SharonLechter.com and @SharonLechter everywhere else, LinkedIn Clubhouse, and Instagram. To get the book, Exit Rich, you can visit ExitRichBook.com. We will get you an electronic copy right away. When the book is released, we will send you a hard copy. In addition, you get all kinds of bonuses when you order the book. Michelle, why don’t you share those?

You can follow me too on social media, @MichelleSeilerTucker. ExitRichBook.com, $24.79, which is less than Amazon. Before June 22, 2022, which is our official launch date, we will ship the hard cover to your doorstep with no additional shipping. You will get a lifetime membership into the Exit Rich Book Club where you get video content, where we do deep dives and different strategies and techniques, plus documents to operate your business and documents to sell your business. We are also giving a 30-day membership free membership into Club CEOs, which is an entrepreneurship mastermind where we do hot seats Q&As to help build the sustainable, scalable, sellable business.

I’m such a big believer. I have this theory in life. If there’s a book that I think maybe I should buy, I buy it no matter what. I’ve never read a book and had it not give me significantly more value than what I’ve paid for it. It doesn’t matter. I could pay $1,000 for a book. Every book I’ve ever read, that’s non-fiction anyway, has given me more value than what it costs. If you get 1 idea or 1 thing that helps you at any point in the next 70 years of your life, is it not worth $25?

My friend, Steve Forbes, his testimony says, “It’s a gold mine for entrepreneurs,” because it truly is.

Thank you two so much for writing this book and for all the books you guys have written, and for all the work you’ve done in the world. It has been phenomenal to have you here. Thank you.

We appreciate you, Brandon and David. Thank you so much for making this opportunity and providing this learning resource.

Thank you so much, Brandon and David. We truly appreciate it.

Thank you, ladies.

 

Important Links

• Exit Rich
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• BiggerPockets.com/webinar
• Three Feet from Gold
• Outwitting the Devil
• Think and Grow Rich for Women
• Success & Something Greater
• Sell Your Business for More Than it’s Worth
• Open Door Capital
• David Greene Team
• USPTO.gov
• Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn
• The Millionaire Mindset
• Pay Your Family First
• Cardone Ventures
• Behind the Beard
• Instagram – Brandon Turner
• The ONE Thing
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
• Think and Grow Rich
• CherryCreekLodge.com
• SeilerTucker.com
• SharonLechter.com
• @SharonLechter – LinkedIn
• Clubhouse – Sharon Lechter
• Instagram – Sharon Lechter
• @MichelleSeilerTucker – Instagram
• Club CEOs

 

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