In this episode of the Creative Dealmaker podcast, Carl Allen interviews his friend and business partner, Abraham Gray, a prolific dealmaker and entrepreneur. Abraham shares his journey from a troubled childhood, including time spent in foster homes and boarding schools, to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He started his first business in sports cards as a teenager and gradually expanded into various ventures. Over the years, he has owned and operated numerous businesses across different industries, such as entertainment, retail, gyms, and service businesses. Abraham’s success is largely attributed to his creative deal-making skills, his focus on acquiring and bolting on businesses, and his knack for finding opportunities in diverse markets.

Abraham emphasizes the importance of creativity and strategic partnerships in his business acquisitions. He usually partners with operators who can manage the businesses effectively, freeing him to focus on acquiring more ventures. He describes how he structures these partnerships, often giving equity or a salary plus equity to operators who run the businesses on his behalf. For businesses that are bolt-ons, he highlights the advantage of cutting costs and expanding operations quickly. Abraham mentions that while he may own more businesses, Carl’s businesses likely generate higher individual revenues due to their different market focuses.

The conversation also explores the cross-applicability of skills between real estate and business deal-making. Carl shares his recent dive into real estate, noting how the principles he’s learned in business acquisitions apply to real estate deals, especially with creative financing strategies like “subject to” deals. Abraham, who has extensive experience in real estate, agrees and shares his experience with large-scale fix-and-flips and creative problem-solving. He narrates a particularly clever solution he used to navigate building permits by leveraging creative thinking to avoid costly setbacks.

Both Carl and Abraham discuss the success of their recent joint events, such as DealMaker Weekend and CreativeCon, highlighting the networking and partnership opportunities they provide to participants. They recount their adventures with event attendees, including a memorable ATV tour, which led to further potential business acquisitions. They also discuss future events, brainstorming exciting VIP experiences for their attendees.

Overall, this podcast episode provides insights into creative deal-making strategies, the value of strategic partnerships, and the importance of thinking outside the box in both business and real estate. Carl and Abraham showcase the power of leveraging relationships, creativity, and boldness to acquire and scale multiple businesses across various sectors.

Full Transcript:

And, literally, you know, that’s what all the richest people do. Like Donald Trump, when he’s running for office, everyone’s like, oh, you never paid any taxes. Because he bought all his real estate, he had all these depreciations. It was legal. You know what I mean? So that’s the thing that we did.

So we got there, and we were driving these, like, doom buggies or whatever they were, ATVs. And, I’ve got a I’ve got a call logged with that business owner. Because when he figured out what we were doing, like, oh, you know, you’re dealmakers, you’re business guys, you do deals, he’s like, well, you know, buy my business. He said he was cash flowing about a million bucks a year.

So what’s the cool thing that we should do? Should we, like, take over Disney one night or do something really cool like that? A very warm welcome to the Creative Deal Maker podcast. I’m Karl Allen. I’m your host, and I’m gonna be interviewing expert guests sharing investor strategies that will completely and utterly disrupt the market when it comes to buying and selling businesses all over the world. So hi, everybody. Welcome to the Creative Deal Maker podcast. I’m Carl Allen. I’m your host. Got one of my great friends and business partners, absolute badass dealmaker. On today, we’ve got, from Atlanta, Abraham Gray. How are you doing?

Doing good. And one of the first ninjas back in the day. One of the first ninjas back in the day. Yeah. So one of the old school people. Yeah, you’ve been in the programs for a while now, and you’ve done some insane stuff. Both in business and in real estate. But we’ll get into deals and your deal thesis and all that stuff in a minute, and we’ll talk about, you know, something really cool that you and I partnered in, Dealmaker Weekend and CreativeCon.

But just give us, just give us your backstory, the benefit of viewers. You got a really interesting kind of backstory, and you’ve done some, like, amazing things in your life. But, yeah, just talk about that for a minute. It’s really interesting.

So, you know, my parents got divorced when I was, you know, a baby, and I lived with my mom for a little while then. I was a real troublemaker growing up, a really bad kid at school. I got kicked out. Ended up moving to my dad, lived with him for a couple of years, and that didn’t work out. I was still really bad. So by the time I was, like, eleven, twelve years old, I just went from foster family to I probably went to, like, four or five foster families, then ended up in a boarding school.

From boarding school, I left. I went to a few more foster families, then ended up moving to Atlanta right before I turned sixteen, when I was fifteen, to live with my grandmother, and I’ve been here ever since. I turned, you know, I collected sports cards my whole life, so I turned that into a business. When I moved here when I was fifteen, I went to shows, started buying more stuff, and then I started selling and buying. I was like, wait. There’s a lot of money in this. And from then on, I was just a serial entrepreneur. I literally went from business to business.

You know, the baseball cards lasted for many, many years. I saw other hot collectibles that, you know, started coming up, and I got into other collectibles, started selling more and more stuff, buying and selling a lot of stuff, then got into all kinds of other businesses. One of the cool things is when I was in sports cards, I got into other collectibles, Beanie Babies, and I had a big website.

The first business that I ever bought from someone was a bolt-on to add on to my Beanie Baby Pokemon. So that was my first bolt-on, and it was a creative deal. I paid about six hundred thousand for it back in my early twenties. But, mostly, I’ve been buying businesses for many years, but maybe, like, one every few years. I was really starting these businesses. I had these really hot businesses that didn’t exist anywhere that I would just come up with and start.

The ones that did really well, I scaled and opened up dozens, even hundreds of locations. And the ones that didn’t do good, I shut down before you really lost too much money. You know, I would try, like, ten things and maybe two would work. You know? And I would scale those two, get rid of the eight fast.

And then I ended up, you know, meeting you, got the Ninja back then, and you kept harping on, oh, you gotta buy businesses. You gotta buy businesses. It’s way more safe. And when I bought Ninja, I actually started buying multiple businesses every single year. I was like, yeah. You know what? I bought businesses in the past, but I wasn’t, like, focused on buying businesses. Like, I would buy one, and another few years later, I’d buy another one. And I knew how good they did because, obviously, with the bolt-on, you get to, you know, get rid of all the overhead. You get to, you know, grow your business. You don’t do all the advertising.

I lost sight of it. And then when I bought Ninja, I literally bought, like, twenty businesses within the first couple of years. It was crazy.

That’s amazing. And what type of so just talk us through the types of businesses that you’re buying because you’re more focused, like, down in the leisure kind of pocket of the market, aren’t you?

Yeah. I do different stuff than you buy. I mean, right now, I happen to have a lot of entertainment. So I have, like, a few dozen entertainment concepts, like axe throwing, escape rooms, arts and craft studios, putt-putt golf, you know, gyms. I have a bunch of martial art gyms and fitness gyms. But I really buy just about everything now. So, you know, I bought, as of now, I have four trophy stores I bought.

We use you for all of the tombstones that send our proteges when they buy businesses. Right? So, yeah. That was one of the first businesses I bought after I bought Ninja. The first trophy store. But since then, I bought three more because they’re bolt-ons. Like, bolt-ons are, like, those are, like, crazy. Like, those are my favorites.

So, I’m always looking for bolt-ons for every business I have. But, yeah. So trophy stores, I have retail, then I opened up… Well, I didn’t open up. I mean, I bought some ice cream stores, yogurt stores. I bought a few other types of businesses, oil change places.

I’ve got a studio where we film and edit content for people. So we do a lot of cool content for a lot of different people, a lot of celebrities, and just people that are big in business. And, literally, you know, when you start a protege, you know, one of my good friends, Mona, joined, and she was so hyped now.

So Mona and Juliana. So now they have actually bought multiple businesses, and I partnered with them on a couple of businesses. So we bought some cleaning companies. We actually bought two together now. That one was the first one that we bought a bolt-on to add them two together. So really just all kinds of different industries.

Nice. And what’s your favorite business that you’ve acquired, like, across all of your portfolio? Because you must own, like, a hundred businesses or partner in a hundred deals right now. Like, what’s your favorite deal? I don’t mean the one that pays you the most cash flow. Like, what’s and I’ve been to some of your businesses. They’re amazing.

The axe-throwing stuff is crazy, but, like, what’s your favorite business that you own?

I mean, so I like them all for different reasons. You know? The first one that I bought was cool because that’s, like, the first one. You know? Your first one, like, you always remember. The one that makes the most money is the one you’re always gonna remember. The one that, you know, you have the most fun at is you’re always gonna remember.

So every single one is a little different because some I have the most fun at. Some make the most money. Some was my first. Some was, like, the hardest deal that I was able to put together, the hardest negotiation. So that’s kinda cool. Like, when you have to negotiate with someone that’s, like, a very tough person to negotiate with and you get the deal done, that’s special too because you’re like, wow. You know? If you could do this, you could do anything. You know?

So each one has a special story. But, ultimately, the ones that, you know, I probably enjoy the most are the ones that I take my kids to, which are the entertainment. I go to a lot of these gyms that I bought, you know, every single week. So those are the ones that I’m at the most. I don’t really run any of them, but, like, you know, I use it for what they do. So those are kinda cool.

So, like, you mentioned you don’t run any of those businesses, which is obviously smart. Like, I don’t think I own as many businesses as you. I’m at twenty-six today, probably at thirty by the end of the year. But I don’t work in any apart from DealMaker, I don’t work in any of my businesses at all because I’m a terrible operator. Right? The businesses would fail.

But, obviously, for you to have all these companies, you’ve obviously got a model with how you partner with people. But, yeah, just talk about that. So how do you normally partner with people? And then how much time are you spending in each of these businesses, like, in a certain week or month?

Yeah. So I probably have a little bit over forty businesses right now. I literally spend some businesses I haven’t been to in a year, you know, or spent time on in a year. I haven’t been to some of them in many, many years. But I would say that I might have more businesses than you, but I think I target different types of businesses. Like, I think your average business probably makes maybe a lot more than my average business.

So maybe, like, income-wise, you know, you might have the same amount or even more, but I just have quantity more. So, you know, everyone’s different. You know? Some it’s better it might be you know, some people, it’s better to have less and just make more money. So my average business probably is making close to twenty thousand a month in profit, where I’m assuming yours is a lot higher because you target stuff that’s a lot higher.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But my goal is to have every business make at least, you know, twelve, fifteen thousand a month at least. But then I have some that make fifty, sixty, seventy thousand as well. And before COVID, some of the ones I had were making over a hundred thousand a month. But, COVID, you know, happened, and they’re doing about half that, which is still great.

But the way I partner with people is this. You know? I’m the one I’m I’m just like you. If I ran these businesses, they would all go to shit. Mainly because I can’t focus on, like, to run a business, you have to focus on certain things, and my brain’s too scattered. I’m like, I see something out. I wanna try to work the deal. I wanna work the deal. You can’t, like, buy all these different things and run everything. There’s just not enough time in the day.

So I partner with people that are good operators, and, basically, they either are partners with me, and we have general managers and they run the general managers, or with some of the businesses I have, like arts and crafts studio, the first trophy store that I have, I basically found a partner that actually is in the business and runs it, and I gave them a percentage.

So the percentage I gave those two partners was twenty-five percent. So they get twenty-five percent of the business. One of them just gets twenty-five percent of the business. No other salary. But one of them is, like, there all the time and runs it, so they get, like, a salary plus twenty-five percent of the business.

But, typically, I don’t give people a percentage of the business. Usually, my partners, me and them, put in an equal amount of money compared to what percent we have. So if I have fifty percent, I’ll put fifty percent. If they have twenty percent, they’ll put in twenty percent of the money.

But when I have a partner that’s an operator partner that actually runs the actual business, which is not very common, most of my partners don’t actually work in the business. They just kinda manage the managers. You know? So they’re not in the business. Those types of partners don’t get a percentage. They just whatever they buy in, that’s the percentage they get.

But it is worth it on some businesses to have the person running it be your partner because they’re gonna care a lot more about it. Of course. And they’re gonna, you know, ten x it, you know, because it’s theirs. And they’re gonna make sure they’re a partner. They’re a shareholder. Right. It’s a psychological shift that they go through.

For sure. So one of the other things that’s really funny. Right? So when I well, I know you’ve been in the programs for years. I think I met you in twenty nineteen, in December at the Miami event. And I knew back then you were doing a lot of real estate type stuff. I think you’ve probably even done more real estate than you bought businesses in the last, like, five years. And then even when when I came to your event last November, which was the catalyst for us to have DealMaker weekend and CreativeCon, and we’ve just come off an amazing event in Scottsdale. But back then, I wasn’t a real estate guy.

And I remember in November of last year, everyone’s saying, like, yeah, sub two. Like, you can buy real estate as, like, a sub two deal. Could you buy a business as a sub two deal? And I’m like, I don’t even know what the fuck a sub two deal is. Like and when they explained it, I said, oh, yeah. We call that buying on a going concern. That’s the English phrase. But now I just use sub two.

And one of the things that’s blown me away is, well, I’ve done a I’ve done quite a lot of real estate deals this year. I’m proud of you, by the way. I’m proud of you.

Thank you. I bought five houses, and then I’m partnering with Ross and Chris. And we’re gonna do five hundred houses in the next five years. Well, I’m going to New York next week, raising I’m raising about a quarter of a billion dollars right now across three or four major, major projects. You know, one is econ folio. The other one is the big coaching roll-up. And then I wanna build, like, a fifty to a hundred million dollar real estate fund, and then basically just buy loads and loads of black sub twos, all these auction deals, or all these other creative deals.

And, like, what’s really surprised me is how transferable the skill sets are between doing business deals and doing real estate deals. And I think half, like, there’s, like, a thousand people in Prodigy now. Like, there were probably two hundred last year when I came to your event, and it’s the first time, like, the sub two community, like, knew who I was. Right?

And then I met PACE and, you know, I joined sub two, and I got to know all these guys. And then, like, all these real estate people that are coming into Protege, they’re amazing because they’ve got all of those skills. Right? They know they gotta build funnels. They know they gotta look at a lot of opportunities. They know they gotta get really creative on the deal structure. They know how to raise capital if they need it.

And I’m ashamed it took me all this time to realize that because I was never in the real estate market. Well, that’s because in the UK, there is no real estate market. Like, none of the stuff that we do in the United States. So if I lived in the UK, I would think the same exact thing. You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

Yeah. You can’t do sub two deals in England. It’s illegal. You can’t do it. You can do sub two deals over here. I’ve done four this year, and they cash flow like absolute crazy. My Airbnb is down in Disney. Oh my god. They’re cash flowing each at least five thousand a month after all of my management fees and PITI and, like, repairs and all that kind of stuff.

And the appreciation, you get the depreciation tax write-offs. I mean, like, the tax write-offs, like, PACE buys crazy on its real estate just so he doesn’t have to pay taxes at the end of the year. Like, literally, he has a meeting every month with his team. Okay. How much money am I gonna owe in taxes? I need to buy this much in real estate. And, literally, you know, that’s what all the richest people do.

Like Donald Trump, when he was running for office, everyone’s like, oh, you never paid any taxes. Because he bought all his real estate, he had all these depreciations. It was legal. You know what I mean? So in the United States, the real estate’s really powerful for building generational wealth, but also saving your money that you’re making every year.

And I think, you know, one of the things that’s really shocked me about the real estate market is just how creative you can get with these sorts of deals. Right?

And I want you to tell the story of how you got really creative one day with tell the electrician story. This is, like, my favorite story that you tell. I want the viewers to kinda listen to stories.

You wanna hear my electrician? Yeah. Tell us tell the viewers the electrician story.

Alright. So I do, as Carl was saying, I do a ton of fix and flips. And, in two thousand twenty-one, two thousand twenty-two, I did almost about three hundred fix and flips each year. So a crazy amount. And to do that many, you can’t really go and pull permits and everything and do it. It just takes too long. It costs a lot more. So I always just do everything, and if I run into a problem, I figure out a way to work it out.

So there’s this one house that I was ninety-some percent done with. And literally, at the end of the job, I cut down some trees in the backyard. And there were big trees, and you’re not supposed to cut them down. So one of my neighbors complained, and the code enforcer came.

I tell you, the neighbor’s name was Karen. But, basically, the code enforcer came, and they’re like, yeah. We, you know, got a complaint. We gotta, you know, do you have permits to cut these trees? We don’t see them. I was like, no. I didn’t know I needed permits, all this other stuff. I got in trouble. I could pay some fines, but the guy looked around my house. He’s like, dude, this house looks brand new. Like, this is a house built in the nineteen fifties. Like, it looks brand new. Like, did you just remodel it?

I was like, yeah. Yeah. We just, like, painted it. You know? Nothing much. He’s like, I don’t know. So, you know, I need to look. And he peeked in. He’s like, the breaker box looks brand new and this and that. I was like, okay. Alright. I did all this stuff. He’s like, you don’t have permits? I was like, I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I don’t know.

And it ended up I didn’t have permits. Of course, I knew I didn’t have permits. And he’s like, well, we have we’re having some big problems with, you know, people like electricians coming in and changing all the wires, breaker boxes, and not getting permits. You know, we had a house fire about a year ago, and we’ve been really picky about it. So, like, we’re really trying to cut down on it.

I was like, okay. So he’s like, you know what? You’re gonna get in big trouble for this because we can make you rip out every single thing in the house, all the wiring, you know, do all this, take that sheet right now. And, literally, that would have cost, like, tens of thousands of dollars.

I was like, well, what can I do to not have to do that? He’s like, well, what we’re doing is people that are doing this stuff illegally, without permits, you know, if you turn in the electrician because we know this is a real electrician because he did everything like, it looks like everything was done pretty much right. You know, we can’t see everything because the sheet rock’s out. But we’re trying to bust these people because we can’t just let people do this.

So if you turn in your electrician, we’ll let you off the hook with just, you know, maybe ten percent of the cost that you’re gonna have. If you don’t turn it in, you’re gonna have crazy costs. So I was like, alright. Fine. So I need you to send me an email saying that if I turn my electrician in, you’ll basically let me just do this minor stuff. It’s gonna cost me, you know, a few thousand bucks and, you know, let go. He’s like, alright. Fine.

So they send me this email. And now I’m like, oh, shit. Now I gotta turn in my electrician. Now this electrician, I literally have been dealing with him for twenty-five years plus. Like, he’s been doing my stuff forever. Right? You couldn’t turn him in. I couldn’t turn him in.

I couldn’t turn him in. But he’s a good friend of mine at this point, and that’s all he does. Like, he has, like, his wife, his kids. If he turned in, he’d lose his license. He’d be screwed. Like, there’s nothing else he knows how to do. You know? And he’s a good electrician.

So I’m thinking to myself, well, I already told him I’m gonna turn this electrician in, but I can’t turn in my electrician. So what do I have to do? So I started thinking about it for about twenty, thirty minutes, and I thought of the best idea. And, again, this all comes down to being creative.

Like, literally, I get out of trouble all the time in every situation just by thinking of really cool creative stuff. So in this particular case, I was like, you know what? I went to my assistant. I’m like, go look like, go online and Google and figure out all the electricians that died in the last six months that live in the Atlanta area. So that’s what he did, and he found, like, four or five.

And, you know, we called the first one. He’s like, oh, is, you know, Larry there? We’re trying to get, you know, he was my electrician. We need him to do some more work. And the first one’s like, oh, no. Larry just died a few months ago. He’s like, oh, that’s terrible.

Is there somebody else in your company that could come do the work? And they’re like, oh, yeah. Yeah. We have a big company. We have, like, ten other people we can send. He’s like, nah. We don’t wanna get that company in trouble and, you know, whatever. They might have records.

So this happened, like, on the second call, third call, same thing. It was bigger companies. The fourth call, Larry there, this old lady answered. She’s like, no. He just died a few months ago, and my partner is like, oh, man. That’s terrible. Like, is there anyone else that could do the work? Because he’s been we’ve been using him for years. You know? He’s a great electrician. She’s like, no. He was like a one-man show. We shut the company down, and boom. So we had the person.

So that was the person we were able to use. So we literally took that company, and we knew that this person couldn’t get in trouble. The company couldn’t get in trouble. Like, if the code enforcer called, the lady was gonna answer the phone and say exactly what happened. Like, everything is gonna be planned out.

So yeah. So we used that person, gave it to the code enforcer, and he called me back a couple of days later. He’s like, Abraham, you’re not gonna believe it. I’m like, now what happened? Did I do something else? What else am I getting in trouble for? He’s like, no. We called and talked to, you know, talked to the electrician, and his wife answered. And, you know, he just died in the last few months. I was like, oh my god. No way. Like, that’s the electrician I use all the time. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. That’s terrible. I need to call her right away and wish her condolences.

And, yeah, the bottom line is, you know, that’s how I was able to get out of that trouble. So instead of it costing me, like, tens of thousands of dollars to basically rip everything out and redo it, it probably cost me under five thousand dollars, and I got it all done.

But that’s my electrician story. That was, like, the quicker, faster version of it.

It’s crazy. So I was driving one day, and I was in a rush. I went through four different speed cameras, right, within the same day, and I got four tickets. That would be like an instant ban, which wouldn’t alter my life that much. I’d just get a driver, but, you know, I like driving my cars. Right? So, I was in my Audi R8, so I’m literally speeding away.

So I got creative, and what I did is, I wrote, because you get a form and it said, who was driving your car? I just put a fictitious, like, German name and said, “Oh, yeah, it was one of my business partners. He was over here. Like, he’s gone back to Germany.” What’s really interesting is, like, the UK licensing authority, they—because now we’re out of the EU—they can’t tap into the other databases. So they wrote back to me and said, “Hey, appreciate that. Thank you. We’ve tried to contact Mr. Fritz over in Hamburg, but we’ve not heard back from him. So, you know, we’re just gonna let these go.”

It’s absolutely crazy that people do that. But, yeah, pretty amazing. So let’s talk about CreativeCon. What was really awesome about, like, you—you know, last year, you came to my event in Vegas and, you know, you were speaking on the stage and everybody loved you. And then you said, “Hey, Carl, come to my event in Atlanta in November,” your Gray Method event. What’s really interesting about you and I is we both look at deal-making from a different perspective. Mine’s a bit more of the Wall Street stuff, which is where I was taught how to do this, and yours is really from the Main Street stuff, which I think is even more powerful because you’ve learned how to do this.

I know you’ve been through all my programs, but, like, you know, you did this at a younger age. You were doing all these deals. And I think that combination of me and you, and then when we factor in Chris and we factor in Pace as well on some of his stuff. Like, these events are insane. Every event, I think, is getting better and better and better. Tampa was really good. Newark was even better. And then Scottsdale, wow. That’s, I think, the best event I’ve ever co-hosted. It was insane. We added about forty proteges into the community from that event, did a whole bunch of, like, really, really cool networking.

Crazy, crazy bonus speakers and events that we did after. You know? Like, everybody went out and even Monday, we went sightseeing, went on the ATVs and all kinds of cool stuff for everybody. It was really cool. So I didn’t don’t know if I told you this. The ATV thing that we did. So we got there, and we were driving these, like, dune buggies or whatever they were, ATVs. I’ve got a call logged with that business owner. Because when he figured out what we were doing, like, “Oh, you’re deal makers, you’re business guys, you do deals.” He’s like, “Well, you know, buy my business.” I’m like, this is a freaking cool business. Right? It’s probably a very simple business to operate. You just got the permits to drive on the land. You’ve got the mechanics. You’ve got the coaches and instructors. Probably the biggest cost in that business is liability insurance.

But, yeah, he said he was cash flowing about a million bucks a year just for that business. Can you believe that? That’s crazy. Wow. That was crazy. He had a lot of ATVs. But, yeah, that’s a lot of money for a business like that. I think he’s probably got about fifty percent margins. I reckon he does about two million revenue. I reckon his cash plan is about half of that. Do you know what it cost per person that we had to go there? Because we paid for it. You know how much each person was? One eighty. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It was so worth it. It was so worth it.

After, we have to pay for a few other things and with tips. It was close to almost two hundred after it was all said and done. Definitely worth it. Who was in your car? I had one of my sons, and I had this one girl and this one guy that drove the whole time. I’d let him drive the whole time because I’ve done it a few times, but no. It was cool. We talked. It was good. You know? We’re still in communications and stuff. So I was in a fall. There was me, Erin Gray, who’s doing loads of really cool marketing acquisitions in Protege. Crystal Anderson, who owns a big roofing company, she’s doing bolt-ons. And then we had Andrea Chin in the car as well from sub two.

She didn’t really wanna drive. So I took the first one out to the checkpoint, and then Erin took the second one. Amazing dealmaker, drove like Max Verstappen. Oh my god. She can drive one of those things. She’s literally, like, really close behind the other car, and she’s doing the racing line. It was absolutely amazing.

So what are we gonna do then in, because the next event’s in Orlando in February? Right? What’s the cool thing that we should do? Should we take over Disney one night or do something really cool like that? What’s the VIP bonus event? I mean, you’re probably too scared to do some of the stuff I would, like, swim with alligators or bungee jumping. I know you don’t wanna do that type of stuff. I don’t mind swimming with alligators or sharks. I don’t like jumping out of airplanes, and I don’t like—I have a little bit of vertigo. So, yeah, there are lots of cool things we can do. We’ll come up with a list of stuff and see what makes sense.

So what other deals have you gone at the moment? Have you got any of the deals under LOI? Yeah. So there’s a tree company that I’m working on here in Atlanta that we’ll hopefully close by January for sure. That’s a really good business. I’m partnering with someone that was at the New Jersey event, actually. We met right before the New Jersey event. He came to the New Jersey event to learn all that stuff, and now we’re gonna partner. There’s so many people at all these different events that I’ve partnered with.

That’s the really cool thing about these events. Not only do I partner with a ton of people, you gave the statistics at the last couple of events, which was crazy. Like, a few years ago, people in Protege, maybe ten or twenty percent were partnering. And at these events now, it’s like over fifty, sixty—I mean, some crazy amount of people that are partnering. So I’m partnering with Nick on the tree company. I just partnered with Angelo on some businesses. I just partnered with Mona on a bunch of businesses. I mean, you name it. Like, there’s all kinds of people in all these events that we’re partnering. The list goes on.

Are you partnered with Mona on the roofing company? I’m not partnering with her on that one. I just have the two cleaning companies. She’s got a couple of other people, but she’s partnering with, like, three or four other proteges. I know. It’s all these proteges that are partnering together. I know. And what I love about Mona as well is, like, she’s got that letter writing business with Juliana. This is, like, one of the great examples where you and I together do, like, really cool stuff.

As you know, in the old ninja course, and we still kinda have this in Protege. I have the direct letter template. Right? And it’s very boring. It does the job. It builds the rapport. You send it out. But then what you did is you pimped it up with, like, all these shaped envelopes. You put stickers on. People kind of started doing your version, and their response rates have skyrocketed. Who’s not gonna open that letter? Like, it’s impossible not to. Shout out to curiosity alone. I know. You gotta open it.

It’s so funny. One thing I used to do, I have not done it for years now, along the same line is, instead of just sending them a letter, I got a designer to do me a mock-up of the front page of The Wall Street Journal, and I called it the Dealmaker Times. It had a photo of the business owner that I’d snagged off LinkedIn or whatever, on the page with an article that said, “Mr. Smith, whoever it was, wins dealmaker of the year award,” because he’d sold his business to me. That was the story. And then there’d be articles in there, around particular types of businesses in that industry.

So it was industry-specific. Let’s say I was targeting a PR firm. So I’d have loads of articles about PR. I’d have the photo and then the generic article. And I would put it in a frame. I could buy a frame for, like, two bucks, and I would ship it another two bucks. And, literally, everybody used to call me. Like, everybody. Even if they didn’t wanna sell me their business, they just say, “Yeah. This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” One guy said, “I don’t wanna sell my business right now, but I’ve actually put this on the wall.” This is how I bought my first PR deal in the UK. He put it on the wall, and he just said, “I’m looking at it because it’s really funny, and my employees think it’s really funny.”

Then about three months later, he calls me. He told me originally he was on, like, a three-year time frame. He’s like, “Three years, I’ll call you. I’ll give you the numbers in three years, and then let’s figure out a deal.” Literally three months in, he calls me. Because I send out hundreds and thousands of these, I don’t remember everybody. So it’s like, “Yeah. It’s Jeff from the PR firm. You sent me that framed picture.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” He said, “Well, hey. I’ve been staring at that every day for, like, ninety days. Every day I come into the office and I’m looking at it. Yesterday, I had a really bad day. A lot of things went wrong, nothing major, but I came in this morning, and I just looked at that poster again, and I just thought, you know what? Maybe now it’s time.”

So what you’re doing with these approaches is, some people send them, and let’s say they get a twenty percent response rate. And then, all the eighty percent that don’t respond to you, they will at some point. They will at some point. January is my busiest month for inbound deals because all the letters I’ve sent out, all the connections I’ve made, but they weren’t ready. They’ll get into their businesses after the Christmas holidays, and it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s wet. They’re miserable. They’re fighting with their wife. Two really cool statistics. January is the biggest month of the year for divorces and selling companies, which is crazy.

As you know, sometimes, people sell businesses because they’re going through a divorce. They need to liquidate the asset. That trophy store that I bought, the first one after I joined Ninja, I bought it because of a divorce. The five—they call it the five D’s: death, distress, divorce, distraction, and depression. Those are the big five reasons why people are going through these things. Well, hey, man. I know you’re super busy doing tons and tons of different things. I will let you go.

Really appreciate you coming on with Joe and sharing the story, and thanks for telling the electrical story again. That story never gets old. It’s so cool. But, no, I’ll catch up with you. As I said before we started recording, I’ve just gone under contract for a real estate coaching company. Can’t wait to close that. That’s a really creative deal. We’re probably gonna close on that within the next two to three weeks probably. Depends on how quick my attorney can get the legals done. But as soon as I own that, I’ll give you a login because I know you know a million times more about real estate than I do. But, maybe we’ll have you on as a guest coach in that program.

Yeah. I’m excited. I can’t wait to hear the details and see when it closes. Alright, man. Well, great. Thanks for coming on the show. I will see you later. Alright, buddy. Bye-bye.