Carl Allen shares his mission to revolutionize the global market for buying and selling small businesses by educating and empowering entrepreneurs. Reflecting on his recent two-week trip across the United States, Carl highlights significant experiences and deals that underscore his innovative approach to mergers and acquisitions. His journey included a mix of strategic meetings, business purchases, and speaking engagements, all aimed at expanding his vision.

Starting in New York, Carl met with an investor for a roll-up in the female health and beauty e-commerce space. He then traveled to North Carolina to strategize with his COO and marketing team on growth plans for the Dealmaker Wealth Society. A weekend visit to Alabama involved evaluating deals and visiting a bowling alley acquired through a zero-money-down deal. The highlight of his trip was speaking at a major real estate investor conference, where he drew parallels between real estate and business acquisitions, noting similarities in transaction structures but distinct differences in market dynamics.

Carl emphasized a pivotal trend in the business acquisition world: the increasing number of baby boomer-owned businesses entering the market. With over 2.4 million small businesses for sale in the U.S. and only 200,000 sold annually, the market is ripe with opportunities for entrepreneurs. He advocates buying businesses as a faster growth strategy compared to organic methods, allowing business owners to acquire new customers, products, and services instantly.

Whether acquiring businesses with zero money down or leveraging untapped opportunities in niche markets, Carl’s dynamic and innovative approach exemplifies his dedication to reshaping the business acquisition landscape. His experiences underscore the importance of creativity, strategic thinking, and building relationships in achieving success.

Full Transcript:

A big part of my mission is to educate and empower entrepreneurs, small business owners to go out there and do deal Dealmakers, what’s up?

My vision is to completely and utterly disrupt the market for buying and selling small businesses all over the world. Hey, guys. Carl Allen. Wanted to do a really quick video for you.

Just on my way to Starbucks. It’s Monday morning. Just dropped my son off at the bus stop for school in the village, and I just wanna talk to you about my time in the States. So I’ve just been in the US for about two and a half weeks, not got back, just a few days ago, and it was an absolutely incredible trip.

It’s going over some speed bumps here. Apologies. So I was in America for, wow, fourteen, fifteen days. Went to seven different places in my journey.

It was amazing. So I started off, in New York. So I flew into New York, had a quick meeting at the airport with an investor. I’m doing a big roll up in the female health and beauty econ space.

So I had that quick meeting in the airport. Luckily, the investor kinda came through into air side so we could have that conversation, say, being able to come out the airport. And then I went to North Carolina to meet with my COO, my marketing team, for Dealmaker Wealth Society. We were looking at the growth that we want to expand into twenty twenty three.

Lots of stuff about social media, hence why I’m doing a lot of these videos for my YouTube channel. And then hung out in Alabama with, with my partner Chris Moore for the weekend.

Went to see our bowling alley. We bought a bowling alley, zero money down deal, so it’s hanging out in there. And then was kinda looking at deals and and going and looking at JB partners, but the real kind of value that I had is I went to speak at a massive real estate investor conference. And what’s really interesting is real estate investing and buying businesses is very, very similar.

So transactionally, they’re very, very similar. There’s a little bit of nuance in the kind of seller psychology and also the dynamics of the market, and let me explain that. So what’s really interesting about real estate is real estate for the past, I don’t know, five years has been a phenomenal way to make money and and do deals. But what a lot of these a phenomenal way to make money and and do deals.

But what a lot of these investors were telling me is that, the inventory has come way down. There’s not a lot of houses out there to either buy and lease or fix and flip and all the great things that real estate investors do. And what’s also crazy is the values have gone like skyrocketing.

What I’m seeing in the business acquisition world is completely, completely and utterly different. There are more businesses coming to market now for sale than we’ve ever seen in history, and a lot of that is driven by baby boomers. So there’s ten thousand baby boomers every single day that are retiring according to the Wall Street Journal, and tons and tons of them, more than a quarter of them, own small businesses. So you’ve got two and a half to three thousand businesses every single day coming to market.

And if you look at the market statistics, it’s staggering. There’s two point four million businesses for sale right now in the United States, less than ten million dollars in revenues, and there’s only about two hundred thousand businesses are sold each and every year. So it’s a one in eleven to one in twelve hit ratio. So if you’re trying to sell your business in the United States, it’s actually very, very difficult at the moment because there’s just not enough buyers out there that really know what they’re doing.

And a big part of my mission is to educate and empower entrepreneurs, small business owners to go out there and do deals. And a lot of people, a lot of business owners that I speak to, they say, well well, hey. Why why should I go and buy a business if I already own a business? Like, surely, I’ve got my own business, and if I I wanna grow it, I can just generate more customers and generate more products and services and and do it the old fashioned way.

Well, you can, but it’s gonna take you a lot longer. What if I told you if you’re under business owner, you could double double the size of your existing business in, like, a day? And that’s the day you go and acquire another business. So if you want more customers, your existing business, go buy them.

Go and acquire a business that has those customers, and then you can sell to them. You want new products or services, and you don’t wanna go through the time and pay of actually building them, go and acquire them. Go and acquire a business that not only has more customers for you, but has all of those other products and services as well. So mergers and acquisitions, it’s the number one strategy to generate cash flow and to build value, to build wealth.

Because the value of a business is really determined by a multiple of its earnings. And the more customers you sell to, the more products and services that you deliver, the more earnings you generate, so the more valuable your business is. And because you’re probably the owner of your business, whether you buy it for the first time or or whether you own the business, you can buy another business instead. If you’re the owner of that business, the value of that business is your value.

It’s your net worth. So really, really important.

So I had a whole bunch of different things going on at this real estate event, and then, I also bought a company, which is really, really cool. So I was in Scottsdale, Arizona, and as I mentioned before, I’m doing this health and beauty, you can’t roll up. And I acquired a company, really cool business. Let me tell you about it.

So it’s a product that does, eyelash products for women. So serums, gels, all those products that that women wear, and they use. And I bought this business. I did this deal.

It’s did about a million bucks in revenue.

It’s making about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in profit, EBITDA as we call it, and I agreed to do the deal to buy our one times multiple. So I’m paying a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the business, which is low. Generally, at that kind of level, you’re paying around three times. So four fifty is probably the market value.

I paid one fifty for that deal, so I could do the deal really, really quickly. But then the coolest thing about this deal is I negotiated with the seller to make the payment in sixty days. So I took ownership of the business. No money changed changed counts.

I don’t need to pay for the business until sixty days. What also came with that business, which is really, really cool, is three hundred thousand dollars of inventory, and that inventory sells at at about an eighty percent gross margin. So as soon as I turn the ads on for that business and I start shipping that inventory out to customers, that’s gonna generate at least one point five million dollars in revenue, and it’s all gonna be profit less the cost of my ad spend. So it’s not gonna take me very long to generate about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash that I need to pay the seller.

Now clearly, I could have just cut the seller a hundred and fifty thousand dollar check, a wide enough money. Absolutely no problem. But I don’t need to do that because I’m deploying creative financing strategies to do this deal. So this is really, really cool because I was at the real estate mastermind, the sub two mastermind with with PACE Morby and Abraham Gray, and I was speaking on the Saturday, and then I was also going on PACE’s TV show on the Sunday night.

It’s it’s kind of live YouTube podcast. And I disappeared for a couple of hours on the Sunday, And I got back to the event, and people were saying, dude, where have you been? Like, you know, we’ve missed you. Have you been to the gym?

Have you been for a walk? I’m like, no. I’ve been and bought a company. And they thought it was hilarious that I was in Scottsdale at this event, and I found a business to buy, which I did.

And I went up there and literally closed the deal in the afternoon. Now I own that business, which is absolutely, phenomenal. So hope you find that useful. That was a really kind of quick stop tour of all of my different, trips to the States.

Went to some place I’ve never been to before. Went to Portland, Oregon, to meet somebody about a potential JV with the American Waste Facility. That was really, really cool.

So, it was an absolutely phenomenal trip. So I’m gonna speak to you every morning when I go to Starbucks. Starbucks is like my part of my morning routine, my morning flip. I’ve been up. I’ve been to the gym.

I’ve done my reading. I’ve done my affirmations, my meditation, done all that crazy stuff, which is amazing. Just dropped my son off at the school bus, and I’m going to Starbucks for my grande non fat caramel macchiato. That’s my go to.

That’s my OG drink, when I go to Starbucks and, just topped up my Starbucks app. So, cashless deal today, my friends. Alrighty. Well, hope you found that useful, and I will, I will speak to you guys tomorrow.

Until then, bye for now. Have a great day.