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Whenever people build up their business and wealth, they sometimes forget to plan for what comes next. Preparing an exit strategy is also a part of the success and should not be overlooked. Joining Michelle Seiler Tucker in this episode is Loral Langemeier, the founder of Live Out Loud, Inc. Loral talks about the mentality of simply moving forward towards your goal without a hint of stopping as a basic way to look at achieving success. She also explains why you need to start surrounding yourself with millionaires to improve your life by improving your environment. If you plan for your children to be entrepreneurs as well, Loral touches on what you need to be preparing to educate the next generation about the entrepreneurial way—something that school won’t be able to teach them.

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Perfect Exit Strategy: Moving Forward To What You Want With Loral Langemeier

I’m excited to have a good friend of mine and a fascinating businesswoman, Loral Langemeier to the show. She is a money expert, sought after speaker, entrepreneurial thought leader, and bestselling author of five books. She is the CEO and Founder of Live Out Loud, Inc. The company has served thousands of individuals worldwide and created hundreds of millionaires through wealth building educational programs. Loral is a regular guest host on The Circle in Australia and has been featured in articles in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, and was the breakout star in one of my favorite films, The Secret. She also runs a nonprofit called Serve Out Loud, a program aimed at providing discounted education and financial literacy to the United States Veterans.

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Loral, welcome to the show. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you here.

Thank you. It’s great to be here. This is the most interesting pandemic time which everybody needs to know about money. What’s cool is it keeps changing.

It does. Every minute and every day is different. What’s been changing in your life?

A ton. When this pandemic hit, I was planning on a different transition and that’s not what happened. One of my mentors said my organization is me and about 28 other financial experts. We have never been this active with clients and helping sort out whether their businesses should open back up, doing financial and business strategy, business-after-business from chiropractors to hair salons. Some of the stuff our teams have been buying. We picked up a Ford dealership for $500,000 in Texas, picked up the Raider fan base, which is cool. There have been many deals and it’s the coolest time. I love that we’re talking about exits when this is a time of huge entrance. There’s going to be so much on sale and there is. I have never been more active in helping people decide what to do with their companies. This is going to be an interesting conversation because a lot of times, their exit is a partner as fast as you can because you don’t have the cash to stay alive.

A lot of the industries that were dying before COVID are now thriving and then the industries that we’re doing well and on top are now dying. It’s imperative to pivot. You were changing directions, you went back, and are pivoting again so you can provide your financial expertise to the role because many people need it. How did you get started in your wonderful entrepreneurial career?

There are many people that work with me and on the teams. They think there’s this big master plan that happened. I kept moving forward. Many people that are reading, don’t move forward enough. I have five New York Times bestsellers. One of the books I wrote, The Millionaire Makers are a big Cornerstone book but I wrote the Yes! Energy book and I kept saying yes, figuring it out, and getting the teams together. That was one of my biggest yes energy moments. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska, no money conversation, which is typical of most people. I got the book Think And Grow Rich when I was seventeen which was a defining moment.

I’m like, “This book is how I think.” I committed to my life to studying how do people become millionaires and why? Few people nailed it and were taught improperly about money. I committed to my career in studying money. I took a little trajectory which is what got me to New Orleans and I have a Master’s in Exercise Physiology. I took my finance and exercise physiology degree. I’ll never forget, I got a massive contract with Chevron and I was flying around offshore. I was 24 years old and they said, “Can you build 92 fitness centers on offshore rigs?” I remember what this hard hat goggles ongoing, “Absolutely.” Thinking, “Shit, I have no idea how to do this.”

I kept taking steps forward. In 1996, I met Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. I call her my financial mom. I’ll never forget leaving Chevron. It was a huge contract. I had headquarters in San Francisco. I remember leaving and the other people in the business in Chevron were going, “What are you doing? You’re going to follow this Japanese guy and then game around. You are freaking crazy.” There are many lessons on all of that. I kept saying yes to the things that felt right. I knew money would always follow and it has. In 2000, I went on my own and been doing this ever since. I built a huge financial team. We do business and financial strategies for tons of individuals, families, and companies. It’s been fun.

You and I have that in common because I used to work for corporate America too. I worked for Xerox. I was the original manager of over 80 unruly salespeople in the South. I left Xerox and went into partnership with a franchise corporation. Everybody thought I was crazy. They were like, “Michelle, you’re living six figures and great benefits on the franchise organization.” They had sold two franchises. I made more money with that doing my own thing in six months and I made an entire year for Xerox.

I made more in my first few months and then was making what I was making at Chevron. In my 2nd and 3rd year, I was making what I made in a year in a week. Bob Proctor over there has been a great mentor as well. He said, “When your annual income becomes your monthly income, I take that down to your weekly and daily.” Some people have no idea. They think $50,000 or $60,000 as a job is a damn good deal. You can do that on a weekend if you get to it and you get how to be an entrepreneur. We’re not taught to be entrepreneurs. I love your exit idea because most people become entrepreneurs and they stumble into it. Quite frankly, I let a lot of people stumble into it because it’s easier than planning an exit.

Most times, when people walk into being an entrepreneur is, they want to replace their job. That’s their psychology, “I need to get the hell out of my job. I need $50,000, $60,000, $100,000, or $200,000 as an entrepreneur.” Once they’re in and a sustainable entrepreneur then I talk about the exit because most of them can even get their head around being an entrepreneur and selling. The biggest obstacle is marketing and sales. They have no idea how to get the lead, no idea how to get the customer, and once they can do that then it’s like, “What do you want to do to this thing?”

That’s why Exit Rich is huge because even before COVID, most business owners don’t know this but 70% of businesses were dropping flies after being in business for ten years. Many of these business owners are selling for pennies on a dollar and closing their business. That’s why Sharon Lechter and I decided to write this book together so we can help more business owners so they don’t lose a business, but they’re losing our family assets too.

A lot of the strategies, whether it’s their home, which some of the real estate investors are like, “What are you doing?” I said, “If there are families that are losing their home because they can’t afford their mortgage, put the home in an LLC. Find somebody who’s got $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, you partner into an LLC, they saved their home, and you would have a new investment.” Do the same thing, whether it’s the auto body shop, your hair salon, or your nail salon. Everything is on sale. This whole thing I’ve been calling an indiscriminate crash because you can make money in any category and you can take an exit. You can enter but what it is for the person you’re helping financially, it’s their exit or transition to a new entity that has new shareholders.

Keep moving forward. So many people don’t move forward enough.

 

There’s so much of that going on in the smarter parts of the world while everybody is worried about this drama and chaos that’s going on around us. There are many businesses. I used to be on stage, this is my new stage now and I’m not going to leave this stage. I sold my plane. I have no interest in running around the world. I did all that with my kids. We’ve been on every continent. We’ve trained everywhere in the world, which also planning for this moment because I have clients in this COVID because when is the world shut down that needs money help. Your money needs to be in more places in the world.

It’s been interesting this whole transition and the number of people. One of the biggest conversations I start my talks with is if you had the knowledge, resources, and money, it would be a shark on shark tank. Not like you want to take the seat on TV. I had an opportunity to do that. You don’t want to. You don’t get paid a lot of money. The deals, honestly, aren’t that great. I would rather do them in real life. A lot of people say, “I would love to be a shark.” This is your time. Everything is on sale from your hobby shop. I’m in Nevada so cannabis is a massive business here. In fact, cannabis is topping alcohol in this state. Cryptocurrencies are leveling out. Digital currency is leveling out. It is like, “What do you want to buy in an entrance and what you need to look for?” The people have no clue how to exit. We’re in this richest time. We have a huge opportunity to buy a lot of stuff.

There were more millionaires made out of the great depression and ever before. You’re going to have more out of this pandemic than the great depression. Opportunities are all around us. People have to take massive action and don’t get paralyzed by fear.

Live Out Loud has been the premise and the theme of my business and life forever. I always say, “You want to live out loud about money.” The more you talk about money and have conversations about money, the more you’re going to learn. Within five minutes, I can hear someone’s conversation and know what they are planning. People who say that there’s no money, the money is everywhere. A huge pool of money that most people don’t know how to access or then use is in IRA. Think of all the people that are laid off and still not going back to work. They had big jobs. I have tons of pilot clients. I have ones who have no idea how to get online and do this. You name it. There’s not a category we’re not working in but many of them have huge 401(k)s. In self-directed 401(k), you can use that capital to help fund this new acquisition. There are many that are available and necessary.

That’s without paying taxes and bounties. Most people don’t even know that. They didn’t know that the program exists.

Money is everywhere. You got to find it, pick it up, and do the deal right. That’s where people you and I, Sharon, some of the people you said you’ve been talking to, we know how to cut the deals. We know how the deal can be structured. We have good tax teams, legal teams, people who help with all that together. It’s the greatest time. One of the things, I’m calling this the COVID coma because many people are in a coma, sitting around, watching every Netflix Original on the planet, and they’re not engaging. You need to get to the playing field. It’s going to be the richest time of our life.

Especially for the business owners that have businesses, if they’re not focused on their business, how to pivot, what they should be doing differently, innovating, and then marketing, they’re going to lose out on their business. You’ve been doing this for decades. What is the number one issue that you’ve seen with people’s association with money and why there are not more millionaires?

I had this cool grid that I could show people that I vision. It is what we’re taught since 1933, the industrial age came up about, the school systems did, the farmers did. All of this that we’re in the middle of this systems issues, whatever it is. We were taught to be employees. At the root of every continent that I have traveled to or taught to is go to school, get a good job. I’m a huge fan of school. I have a Master’s degree. My son is going to go on and get a Master’s degree. He’s in the middle of massive education. It’s not about not going to school but he’s going to school to go bring home a bunch of entrepreneurs that can work on all the stuff that we got going on.

He’s going to find CEOs, CFOs, and marketing experts. He’s finding his teammates while he’s playing football and having a damn good time. We’re entrenched and the only way that you’re going to make money is a job. If you need more money, get another job. There isn’t a real driving education for being an entrepreneur. Most people have it all tangled up and they think that they can jump from being an entrepreneur and you can’t. It would be fun for you, Sharon, Forbes Riley, and a bunch of us women that are millionaires like to do. Can you imagine an executive and an entrepreneur swap, trading places?

That’s an awesome idea like a wife swap.

It’d be an entrepreneur and executive. The problem is that the entrepreneurial would get back a very broken business, probably unless they’re a good manager. The entrepreneur can’t live inside the conference of the corporation. Even though entrepreneurs live in corporate structures, I teach corporate life, it’s not the corporate life that we’re trained. My son is getting a finance and accounting degree. I remember the first time he went to school, he’s texting me from class going, “Mom, they’re teaching us to be employees here.” I said, “I know.” He was eighteen. He got his first LLC. He said, “Everything you’ve taught me, there’s not a class that I will take.” He’s in the Harvard of the South. He’s in Florida, Georgia.

They won’t teach him how to be an entrepreneur. They’re going to teach them how to be a finance manager and accounting manager for a corporation. He’s not learning to be an entrepreneur. Unless you come out here with people like us, you don’t know that this world exists. Most entrepreneurs become millionaires quickly because they make money because we’re in that making money and we’re in the depths of a business. We know how to invest. They go together so we make it and we invest. All of a sudden, years later, you want a variety of things, whether that’s real estate or other companies. Entrepreneurs make the world move which is what’s frustrating about what’s going on with the undercurrent of the politics that are going on because small businesses are like, “We have to survive.” The small and medium-size business makes this world work.

Thirty million and two hundred thousand small businesses, the employees are over half of the US workforce. If you kill small business, you kill jobs and the economy.

There’s a section of our world that’s trying to do that aggressively to us. We’re fighting back like crazy. The biggest problem is most people are not taught to be good entrepreneurs and then wealth builders, corporate structure, how do you do banking? How does it work? Why did the work that I do for people the way I do it? It’s practical. I don’t teach in theory. We’re going to Boise, Idaho. The fastest demand growing market in the country because California, I call it the communist Californians. They’re moving in drought. They’re moving to Reno, our area, Vegas, Scottsdale, and Texas. They’re having a max exodus of anybody who wants to continue to be a capitalist, run a business, and have the way this country is built. We’re taught poorly. Unless people get introduced to it, people keep plugging on having a job.

Most people become entrepreneurs by stumbling into it, and it’s easier than planning an exit.

 

I don’t think that it’s taught in schools. There’s only one university that I know that teaches entrepreneurship. That’s High Point University with Dr. Nido Qubein. I know you’ve gone millionaires around the world. What kind of success have you had? Let’s say, you have a class of 100 people. How many of them do you think would become millionaires?

Typical percent, unfortunately, we have a little bit better success rate because those who do the work are 20%, 30%. Our promise in the Millionaire Maker book is 3 to 5 years but there are a lot of people because of how they grew up, it’s interesting how your family’s lineage, lifestyle, and even how you handle debt and all of it is ingrained and inherited from your family. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. When I left for New Orleans in 1991, I left at seventeen and never looked back. I knew I was not going to live that life. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do but I wasn’t going to be a farm wife. Not that it was a bad life, that was cool. I did that thing.

I go back there. My family still runs a 5 or 6-generation ranch, but it’s not my thing. I wasn’t going to do that. Many people don’t decide what are my rules even rituals. They don’t say, “Who am I going to be? Who is my family going to be and design their life that way?” They go along and get along. Here’s what I can say to the 100 people, “If you do everything we say, I don’t care if you’re freaking homeless or a single parent with five kids, I have made homeless people billionaires. I’ve had some B’s in my life too. If you are willing to do the work and understand the action, I’ll say work like work roll up your sleeves. It’s thinking. There’s leadership to it. There’s a posture to it that many people aren’t willing to cross the chasm.”

That was my promise to Dr. Phil. Give me anybody and I’ll make them a millionaire but they have to do the work. I’ll never forget a couple in Atlanta. I flew out to Atlanta, I did a makeover to the family, we came up with a plan, and they’re like, “We’ll do the work.” The next week, we’re out coaching. At 5:00, they came up from the job. I said, “Eventually, you’re going to quit your job to be an entrepreneur. During the nights and weekends, you have to go market.” They were like, “I’ve already cracked a beer. I had a bad day.” I’m like, “You don’t get to have a bad day.”

I remember calling Dr. Phil and going, “These people won’t work. They’re lazy.” There’s inherent laziness of, “You got to want it not for the money, but for a bigger goal. What do I do all this for?” My kids are going to have a fabulous legacy left to them. I do it because I love helping people. I love the light bulb moment. I love living this lifestyle of helping people do it. It’s a mission beyond yourself. Your programs and mission beyond yourself. You don’t have to do this. Until somebody decides they want something bigger to affect people’s lives, they go in their day in and out. They don’t get it. You’re not going to get there that way. This isn’t a lottery ticket.

You have a bad day by cracking open that beer and not doing the work, you’re going to have a bad life. It always puzzles me how you can take a family, even my family, for instance. I have three brothers. I’m the most successful of them. The rest of them got a job. I look at different families and I’m like, “Six siblings here. One is successful. They all have the same upbringing. They all have the same parents. The rest of them are not.” What makes that one person different than everybody else?

One thing I would say about a lot of this, I could go off on the school systems on what they’re doing, which is ridiculous. I learned early on that your environment is more powerful than anything else you put in your life. You and I can call each other, we can have a little chat every morning, and be accountability buddies. Until you’re in the environment of living, being, and seeing how millionaires live, there’s nothing faster. If you want to be a millionaire, you have to hang out with us. I’m not talking hanging out on Zoom. You need to get to Boise, Idaho. You need to get to Kansas City, we’re doing an apartment tour then because apartments are going to be on sale. We’re buying a ton of great stuff. You have to be in it. You have to see how we live, how we spend, and how we go out for dinners.

All of it is different. How we live? How we make financial decisions? Buying a $3 million aircraft, I didn’t even blink at it in 2007. I bought it because I knew my time was valuable and I knew how I could monetize it. It wasn’t like, “This is a big expense.” You start being around people. How I learned a lot about deals, entrances, and exits, and businesses were being around the people who do it. I’ve been asked to be on a massive international team and it’s going to be a huge private aviation roll up and buyout. I got a big board seat because I have experience. How does 1 out of 6 make it? You chose an environment and you surrounded yourself with the right people at different energy and different behavior. What we do is different than what normal people do. It doesn’t even occur to me doing what they do.

It’s having a higher level of standard than my brothers. I wanted more.

I’m glad you brought that up, Michelle, because what other women here that, “She’s a bit.” Men are powerful when they do what we do. We expect a lot. I expect a lot on my kids. My kids know it. My kids know because they’ve gone to other people’s houses. I remember my daughter coming home going, “Thank you mom, for doing what you’re doing.” There are moments where they’re complained about the single life, being drug around the world, and doing all this stuff. Now later, they’re like, “Thank God, you made us do all that.” I couldn’t imagine having anybody championing. No one having high expectations for you saying, “You will do this. This our life is going to be. This is how you’re going to be treated.”

It’s different from the environment of millionaires than the average person. This whole environment going on where somebody would rather sit on their ass, get an extra $600, and live on unemployment than be purposeful. I didn’t say, “Work.” I said, “Be purposeful.” Do something to contribute versus taking energy that is too vital. First of all, the middle-class is an interesting little place that everybody plays but the rich have been rich and the poor have been poor. It’s designed that way. Until you decide to raise your hand and say, “I’m not going to live this anymore and I’m going to have something different.” For some of you physically, I doubt your broadcast those people on, but they have to pick up and move physically. Look at New Orleans. I don’t know if you were there during the big flood.

I was, during Katrina.

It was an interesting little purge, wasn’t it?

That’s why I always say you need to diversify. You need to have multiple different businesses. Businesses in different states. You need to have your money in different places. As you said, having money in other countries. That’s why I was able to survive Katrina is because I was diversified and I am diversified. Tell us about your five books. I knew you wrote five books but I had no idea that all five are New York Times bestsellers.

Small and medium-sized businesses make this world work. If you kill small businesses, you kill jobs.

 

I got some interesting credits. I don’t know that there are many people, even in most of the gurus of people who don’t have five New York Times. They have books but they weren’t New York Times bestsellers.

I hope your next one will be a New York Times bestseller, Exit Rich.

It’s a challenge to get them. I have 52 books. I have one coming out as we speak, Make Your Kids Millionaires. I’m writing that with a partner who’s an Air Force fighter pilot now retired Lieutenant Colonel. He, in a very different way, made his kids millionaires. He became a client of mine and we both had millionaire kids, but so different. I said, “It would be fun now that I’ve done The Millionaire Maker series is to do a book on how I did it. Now, he did it.” He’s a normal 2.2 kids in the white picket fence family. He did travel around the world as an Air Force fighter pilot lead squadron in a ward battle.

It’s an interesting spectrum of how you can live your life to become a millionaire. The same things we’re talking about. You surround yourself with the right people, you put yourself in the right situations, you’ve got to have a bigger goal, all that. How the books came about was I was asked to do it. I want you to do my first book. That was in 2003 and 2004 with Jay Conrad Levinson was Guerrilla Wealth. I was the only guerilla author on Jay’s day who wasn’t a marketing expert. The way I got him to do my book on wealth was I told him I’d make you more money doing a book with me than anybody else because that’s what I do, help people make money.

The minute it was published, within 30, 60 days, McGraw Hill called me and said, “We’ve been watching you. You make millionaires. You’ve been a millionaire for years.” 1999 was my millionaire year. In 2005, they approached me and gave me a massive retainer to do a three-book series. We went from the Millionaire Maker to then how to build a 6, 7-figure business called The Cash Machine to then how do you invest a millionaire Wealth Cycle. Three years, three books, all hit the New York Times. Two organically, one was a little bit more work because honestly, the investing book, the alternative asset investing books, a lot of people were like, “She’s way out gas and oil and complete alternatives.”

That one is still my favorite book. I waited a few years and then Harper Collins picked me up again, called me and said, “Do you want to write another book?” In 2009, we’re in a crisis. People need to know about money, so I wrote Put More Cash In Your Pocket. This is the most pivotal book nowaday’s. How to put more cash in your pocket, how to make it, I wrote Yes! Energy book because I want to be a Hay House author. I approached them and said, “I got this whole lineup of books. I want to write a book on being the God Squad with Wayne Dyer and everybody in that Hay House book.” All of them are bestsellers.

Thank you for giving us a testimonial on Exit Rich. We need to work together on helping businesses exit.

We do. We work together. I want to get them in, get them successful, and then you take them out.

We will get powerful women together. I love your idea.

Few people do it, especially women. Few people create the desire to become millionaires. If you’re a mom, you have such an influence on helping those children of yours and it is your responsibility. Schools aren’t going to do a damn thing about it.

I am a mom. I always say she’s more complicated than any deal I’ve ever done. My next question is what’s your biggest advice to parents on how to teach their kids to be entrepreneurs?

The biggest advice though is I started planning before they’re even born at me. You stage it right. They work for your company, you have the Roth IRAs, you get them involved in the money conversation, and you bring them to my workshops. We’re doing how a kid’s version of this coming up soon. How do you put more cash in your pocket? Your languaging patterns early on, you never say, “Don’t ask for it if you can’t afford it.” You say, “How can we afford it? What are we going to do?” You include them. You take them to the bank. You get them accounts, debit cards, and credit cards early. I’m talking 13, 14, 15. They learned money early under your command.

Is that the age you should start is around thirteen? I started with my daughter when she was seven how she can have that money.

I start when they’re young because we were traveling all over the world. My daughter’s seventh birthday, we went around the world. We picked up money across the world, we would always be talking about it, how it’s different in currencies and exchanges. It was always around as far as saying, “Here’s a debit card. Here’s how you use it.” In this day and age though, you could start as early as 9 or 10. At ten years old, I started a car account and between 10 and 16, whatever they put away, I match up to $20,000. I don’t think any sixteen-year-olds, statistically the record anyway. Nothing more than $20,000 and then they can go onto the next vehicle. I teach insurance.

Anybody can be a millionaire, but you have to do the work.

 

I teach digital currency. We had so much fun with the teens in our community when the market crashed between March 17th and 23rd 2020, how to pick stocks, why to pick them, and how to make a massive run. Some of the stocks were on sale. It was awesome to teach the kids. Being in a constant conversation that money is okay and it is associated with the tasks you do. One of the kids’ programs I do too is called Never Pay Your Kids an Allowance. When you pay an allowance, it’s a fixed amount based on what? It’s like a job. I have a whole program where they design their tasks. They have to negotiate for what that’s worth. They design the amount of money that they want to make per month. They can increase it every month, they can decrease it but they get responsible. Mom is not the money machine. You are the little money machine, you’re going to make it, and we’re going to figure it out.

Is that all going to be in your new book?

All of it.

I can’t wait to get my hands on it and I can’t wait to send my daughter to a class. You, as a little girl, I remember reading in your bio that at nine years old, they always put you all at the kids’ table and you wanted to sit at the big table. Tell me what Loral Langemeier was like as a little girl.

I am a little independent thinker. I challenged the norms early on. I was seven and I remember conversations like, “Why do we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Why don’t we eat when we’re hungry? Why, why, why was always me? Why do we do that?” That was that was more instinct. I had an aunt that inspired me. She’s also a huge part of my books. She traveled all over the world. She became a teacher so she could travel and spoke many languages. Anytime she came back from a trip, I was glued to her about to travel around the world because I had never even been on a plane. I was 16 or 17 before I even was on a plane. No travel, just South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, that was where we hung. My daughter’s first flight at three months old was on a private airplane. My son has become a pilot because of it. He was seven. They didn’t know anything but that. I’ll never forget when they were a little more conscious going through security, it’s like, “What’s this?”

I bet they are thanking you because of what a life. Based on experience, they got to learn much more traveling with you around the world than they would ever learn in a classroom.

It comes with a lot of challenges, but I wouldn’t do it differently. It’s been a fun ride for them.

You did it as a single mom which is even more powerful. I can’t imagine because even packing myself, packing and unpacking, I can’t imagine packing for kids.

You get this bag room and they stay packed. For years, I don’t know that we ever fully have unpacked. We change some stuff out and you go again. During my kids’ younger years, the car seats, the strollers, all the gear, it never left the back of the plane. I called it my minivan in the sky. We get in and go. I would teach, travel, they would hang out, and I bring a car with me. A lot of people don’t think creatively about what’s the solution and you know what you want. As we talk about an exit is to know what you want. There are few people that even know what the possibilities of an exit are. I’m not a fan of a big sale from the tech strategies. I love multiple-year staged sellouts and transitions with a lot of people. It transitions to the team safer. I prefer that usually over the most.

If there is big cash outsell then it’s important to make sure you have the right team in place to mitigate those tax liabilities and invest in the properties where you can divert of those taxes as well. It’s all about knowing what you want and focusing on the solution, not the problem. Too many people focus on the problem, not the solution.

One thing I want to report to somebody is the thing I’ve done it completely wrong picking some interesting wrong teammates. People will say, “What’s the best of times and the worst of times in this team?” Your team can create the best scenarios and situations, and your team can be complicated as hell in great lawsuits. Finding the right team, understanding due diligence, how to pick them, how to vet them, and how to put together the agreements. Many people, especially women, I’m going to pick on us women again. They’ll do the girlfriend thing not the business partner thing. They don’t put their agreements together. They tag along to whoever has the merchant service doing this basic stuff. You’ve got to set it up and you’ve got to control it.

You got to control the right variables. How do I learn all that? Hang out with us. How do I do that? You pay to have a mentor. That’s what I do. People pay to have a mentor. We have what I call a virtual meetup in the marketplace. We start with about 175 people coming and it’s only a $97 event, they will be taught to make money. I don’t care what level of entrepreneur, you will learn to make money into 3 to 5 minute period like fast cash. I went $10, $20, $50. I’d rather have 100 people give me $10 than one person gave me $100,000 because I have a database, a sales funnel, and people that I can continue to grow with. Most people don’t understand the basic principle of database building and entrepreneurialism, so I love it.

People are your assets.

Your number one asset is your database.

Your environment is more powerful than anything else you put in your life. 

 

I call it my six Ps and people are number one in my six Ps. It’s like the database. That’s the number one value driver of a business. What’s the number one tip you have for business owners? You’ve given so many golden nuggets. You’ve dropped them all along the way.

Number one is the same cash you swipe to put this marketplace together. You have to stay in cash. You’ve got to be creating new cash constantly. It’s interesting to say this because I would say have diverse revenue streams. Some people who are too young as an entrepreneur or too green then they become chaotically scattered and nothing is working. You have to get that one core, I call it cash machine business running and then you do additive things that add to it, not a whole bunch of scattered stuff. You and I have been doing this for a long time. I got all uncorrelated things intentionally that don’t have anything to do with each other like this international aviation. Look at the building hangar there in Dubai. It has nothing to do with my real estate in Boise or a Ford dealership but that’s later. Now, businesses are because of investments. In the beginning, an entrepreneur needs to find your lane and get that thing way past the $100,000.

First, here’s the other thing I say to new entrepreneurs. You can sit on unemployment and this one, the stimulus runs out, your choices become an entrepreneur. Get to cash and get past $100,000. Don’t think about replacing your income. That’s not the formula. The formula is never to do because your employment income is overly taxed. If you bring home $4,000, all we need to replace in cashflow was $4,000. We don’t need to replace your $60,000 job because you weren’t making $60,000. It’s all being taxed to pieces anyway.

I don’t think a lot of people know how to set an initial goal that’s proper. If you don’t get past the $100,000, you live on a bunch of it, and then there’s not enough money to hire a team. You can’t hire me, Michelle, copywriter, web designer, or social media advertisers. You need some money to hire a team that knows how to run a company with you because you’re not going to go out and do it all yourself. That’s the biggest failure of entrepreneurs is they try to do the marketing, the sales, the accounting, the fulfillment, the technology, the HR, they’re trying to do everything and they’re horrible at most of them.

That’s not their core competencies. They need to do what they’re best at, do what you’re best at and delegate the rest and hire above you.

You got to make the money to do it and these guys are crazy when I hear people say, “I don’t have the cash.” I was like, “Make it. It’s not difficult.” When COVID hit, I hadn’t done this workshop. It did come out of this 2009 book, this marketplace technology that I made up and how to help people make fast money. We did it 9, 10, 11, 12, and then we dropped off because then my Yes! Energy book came. The economy changed and I dropped it off. Once COVID hit, I knew we were going to bring it back. I knew exactly what people needed. They needed to make new money. Entrepreneurs need to make money constantly. Six figures are nice but go to seven. It’ll change your life because you can live on and run your company on say the first $250,000, invest the rest. You’ll be in and out of this thing in 3 to 5 years.

You made a good comment earlier when you said don’t hire your friend. You don’t know what you don’t know. I always tell people you can’t afford not to hire the right expert for what you’re trying to accomplish. If you want to sell a company, I’m your person. If you want to make cash, Loral Langemeier is your person. Don’t go to your friends. It’s funny because we’re negotiating a $10 million contract. My casteller wants his in-house legal attorney who’s never done a M&Amp;A before, who’s never had anything to do with negotiations, due diligence, etc., swap for contracts, and didn’t know what he was doing. All of his comments are bad as they coming from a place of ignorance because he’s never done it before. You have to hire the best. You have to make the money so you can hire the best. I want to ask you one more question. The other book that you keep talking about the Yes! book. Tell our audience real quick about your Yes! book. I’m all about the power of yes.

It’s called Yes! Energy. The theme is “Say yes and figure it out.” The real more mature process of that is “Say yes and figure out” who knows how. I don’t know how to run a Ford dealership but I’m going to get some equity because I know how to put the deal together and I know how to teach people how to raise capital. “Say yes and figure it out” is an attitude about how to live your life. I write a formula on how to have yes energy in your life. It’s a clear formula. It takes about 7 to 10 days to go through it and put your own formula together. Here’s what I tell people. You have yes opportunities every day. Your whole community guaranteed if you got your head out of your computer, out of Netflix, Hulu, or whatever you’re doing, drive down the road, walk into businesses, and see how are you doing. They’re going to say whatever they’re going to say. They’ll say, “How you doing financially is going to change the conversation.” The next question is, “Are you going to make it through COVID? We don’t even know how long this is going to last.”

There’s a whole regime trying to make this some new normal, which is ridiculous but you’re going to need some cash to make it. Do you have the resources to do it? I’m candid. I walk in all the time. I find all sorts of opportunities. I’ll say I’m a business financial strategist. If you’re reading this, you can now rely on Michelle and me to be your team and say, “I have a team.” Once you know that there’s an opportunity then be quiet because you don’t know now what to say. You could screw it up. Email me, call me, call my team and then we’ll help put the deal together and decide if it’s worth the deal. If there are a few broken, I’m not like, “This isn’t a charity thing. I’m picking up great assets with great opportunities and putting the structure together.”

We did the same thing but I don’t sell businesses. I buy businesses, I partner with business owners, I fixed, and then I have a bolt to sell plan within 3 to 5 years. Do you have any last words of wisdom?

Keep saying yes. Yes, is everywhere in your life but what happens to most people, when an opportunity comes because you’re occupationally trained, you’re about to say yes and then you think, “I can’t do it.” You got to stop valuating a deal against your skillset. You think, “Can I put the team together? Who do I know in my role at X that I could architect the deal and then I can help put it together?” If you don’t know how to do it, I didn’t know how to do it when I first started, I had mentors. I paid a lot of people. I don’t know how much I paid people to teach me how to do what I know now. It wasn’t school. Sorry to say but it won’t be learned there. There are a few places that you’re going to learn it. You got to come live side-by-side. We take people on tours. We take them out to understand businesses at the real core of where they operate. We take them out to see the operation. Start saying yes more and start noticing the team. One of the things I want to leave with a funny story because I love this story. My daughter thinks she’s like, “Mom, would you stop telling it?”

When we lived in a different place up in Lake Tahoe on the mountain, I would drive her across to a charter school. We had about a 30-minute drive across the Lake. That was our private time and our time at fam. Every once in a while, if I had an active day, she would be my little assistant, and then she would be paid for the task of being my texter while I was driving. We talk and she would text. I’ll never forget one day she looked at me, she said, “Mommy, what do you do?” I said, “What do you mean what do I do? I teach people how to make money. I teach people how to do deals. I teach businesses how to thrive.” “No mommy, what do you do?” I said, “That’s what I do.”

She said, “No, I text and tell everybody what to do. You tell them what to do. You go skiing. What do you do?” I thought it was out of the mouths of babes. It was cute. I said, “I lead and I strategically think and strategize. I tell other people to do what they need to do, who have expertise in that lane. Together, the strategy comes together. Too many people do things that shouldn’t be doing things and they need to learn to think.” The biggest thing I do as a mentor gets you to think and to behave differently because you’re in this little rut of doing all the shit you shouldn’t be doing.

How old was she at that time?

Do not be balanced in your life. Balance is stagnation.

 

She was in 4th grade. Whatever age that is. She’s like, “What are you doing?” It was interesting. It caused me to think like I lead, strategist, and think. Not do a lot of things. I don’t do the heavy lifting, I don’t need to. By the way, if you’re at a certain place in your life, you don’t need to either but you got to hire the damn good people around you.

I always say if you don’t have an assistant, you’re the assistant. You need to figure out what your core competencies are. Figure out what you’re A-game is and delegate everything else.

I say strengthen your strengths, hire your weaknesses. Do not be balanced in your life. Alex Mendoza is a dear friend of mine. He said, “If you look at the balance, it’s one of those old food scales.” Balance is stagnation. What you want is to have it all. You aren’t going to have it all at one time. I have a very rich habit all life, but sometimes depending on the year like 2020, we aren’t traveling. I’m married to a Canadian. I can’t even get into their country. That isn’t going to happen now but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a rich life doing everything else. I’d say have everything you want and do it in your time instead of having balance every day. That’s an insane possibility and not realistic.

There’s so much pressure on people. It’s not attainable and it puts so much added pressure. There might be days where I’m working twelve hours a day but then I might take a Friday off to spend time with my daughter. Entrepreneurship gives us the flexibility to make those decisions to choose. What we want to do and when we want to do it.

Can I give them a website to go to?

I was about to ask you.

It’s AskLoral.com and I have a copy of this free book. I have free software that will protect you in market downturns and a whole bunch of other little goodies out there for people. I even have the Don’t Pay Your Kids An Allowance Program out there. It’s a whole bunch of gifts that people can go get and assert to learn a different way with money.

You have been amazing. Thank you, I get to drop you here. Thanks for our readers for joining us on another episode.

Thank you.

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