Carl Allen shares a whirlwind week packed with monumental milestones and transformative insights from his time in Tampa, Florida. Starting with his highly successful three-day Dealmaker Live event, Carl recounts an incredible gathering of over 200 dealmakers, including entrepreneurs, students, and real estate investors. Co-hosting alongside partners Abraham Gray, Chris Moore, and Pace Morby, Carl facilitated an event filled with valuable connections, deal-making lessons, and the celebration of new ventures. The event culminated in 40 attendees joining Carl’s Dealmaker Protege, a 12-month mentorship program designed to empower entrepreneurs to master mergers and acquisitions.

The highlight of the event came on the final day when Carl’s business partner, Ross Turner, surprised everyone by presenting a legal contract for a $125 million capital raise during a live session. Carl signed the contract on stage, marking a pivotal step toward a $1 billion e-commerce roll-up in the female health and beauty sector. The moment was deeply emotional, underscoring the transformative power of mentorship and the scale of opportunities created within the Dealmaker community.

Beyond the event, Carl ventured into real estate, inspired by his collaboration with Pace Morby and Abraham Gray. During a casual chat at the event, Carl expressed interest in purchasing a property in Tampa as his U.S. residence. Within hours, he was presented with a creative real estate deal—a $1.3 million quadplex that required only $40,000 out of pocket. Although he ultimately decided not to pursue the property, the experience gave him valuable insights into the real estate acquisition process. Carl drew parallels between buying businesses and real estate, noting the importance of taking action and learning directly from hands-on experiences.

Carl also shared his upcoming plans for a billion-dollar IPO for the e-commerce roll-up, which will be listed on Nasdaq in early 2024. To meet U.S. legal requirements, Carl is in the process of obtaining a green card, marking another milestone in his journey. While this shift involves higher U.S. taxes, Carl highlighted the opportunities for significant tax savings through strategic real estate investments.

Throughout his Tampa trip, Carl reinforced a vital lesson for entrepreneurs: execution trumps knowledge. While learning is essential, stepping onto the “field of play” is where real growth happens. Whether signing a transformative financing deal or exploring creative real estate opportunities, Carl’s week exemplified the power of taking decisive action.

In Carl’s words, the week was a “whirlwind” of growth, learning, and achievement, underscoring his vision to revolutionize the small business acquisition market while inspiring others to dream big and act boldly. From mentoring aspiring dealmakers to navigating billion-dollar roll-ups, Carl’s relentless drive continues to reshape the landscape of entrepreneurship.

Full Transcript:

Something really amazing happened to me. So there’s two stories I wanna tell you about that event. Right? So the first one 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. Karl Allen going to Starbucks. It’s actually a Sunday morning. I’ve actually not been to Starbucks for a while because, while in the UK, Starbucks because I’ve been in the United States. I’ve been in Tampa.

I had my three day deal maker live event. It was absolutely amazing.

Like, probably the best event I’ve ever done. I did it with my business partners, Abraham Grey, Chris Moore, and Pace Morbey. So there was a lot of sub two real estate investors there as well, wearing my sub two hats money.

And, it was just incredible. Like, there were about two hundred people there. We added about forty of those students into DealMaker Protege on the last day, which is my, my twelve month mentorship and mastermind program. And it was just a phenomenal, phenomenal three day experience.

We we went for twelve hours a day. We did a whole bunch of really cool things in the evening. We went to this gigantic tiki bar on the beach in Saint Petersburg, which we we rented it out for the whole night for all two hundred people. It was absolutely amazing.

I got to meet so many incredible new deal makers. There were deals set at the event. And, something really amazing happened to me. So there’s two stories I wanna tell you about that event.

Right? So the first one is on the Sunday, I was talking about the protege program. And one of my protege students, Ross Turner, he’s a partner of mine now in a in an ecom roll up. So he and I are buying up health and beauty ecommerce businesses for women.

And we’ve gone out, and we’ve been in the process of raising capital to do these deals. And I was talking to him on stage on Sunday. He was talking about the protege program and the, you know, the the massive value that he’s had from it. And literally, unbeknown to me, he whips out this legal contract from his bag and he said, hey, I just wanna do this.

Literally an hour ago, I got the final contract for the one hundred and twenty five million dollar fundraise that we’ve just gone through to buy all these businesses.

Like, if Like, if I hadn’t enjoyed Protege, if I hadn’t met Karl, none of this would have happened.

Right? Like, Abraham said the other day, like, dream big. This is, like, the biggest thing that I’ll ever do in my career, and I never would have done it if I hadn’t joined this.

Yeah. I I agree with it, folks. I thought we were probably gonna sign it on the Monday or the Tuesday. But he got the lawyers to finish the documents over the weekend. And literally, live on stage in front of two hundred people, I signed the contract for the hundred and twenty five million, which is crazy. And it was just it was such an incredible moment to do that in front of all these people. And I got really emotional.

Right? And normally, I don’t get emotional about deals and I don’t get emotional about capital. It is what it is. You just gotta do deals.

You just gotta raise money. So I’m quite I’m like the Terminator when it comes to doing deals. I’m I’m not emotional about it. But I was really emotional that a partner would do something like that.

It was so incredible, and I got to share that moment with so many people in the room. It was it was crazy. So now we’ve got a whole bunch of money to go out and spend buying econ businesses. So, hey, if you have you own an econ business that’s doing at least a million dollars of profit and it serves females between twenty five and fifty five in health, beauty, skin, probiotics, supplements, apparel, all those different things, hit me up.

Hit me up. Go to my Facebook, Dealmaker World Society, and, tag me in a message, and, let’s talk about that deal. Something else that was really cool that happened was, so one of my business partners for my Dealmaker weekend live events is that it’s PACE Boardby and Abraham Gray. They’re both real estate investors.

So PACE Boardby is all about real estate. Abraham Gray is both. So he’s been one of my students for about five years. He’s acquired over a hundred businesses and he’s also acquired hundreds and hundreds of real estate properties.

So I’m his mentor in the business buying world and Pace Morby is is his mentor in the real estate world. And Abraham’s just a phenomenal, phenomenal entrepreneur and dealmaker. So we’re doing this event.

And on the Sunday night, Pace, myself, and Abraham, and our other partner, Chris Small, we went out for dinner. So we’re still having dinner in this restaurant, and we’re just kinda chatting about the event and chatting about deals. And I joined about three weeks ago, Pace’s sub two mastermind. Pace invited me out to, Scottsdale Sub two, and I ended up joining because I thought what a great community.

I definitely wanna do some some real estate deals. Because all this this capital raise, this hundred and twenty five billion capital raise that I talked to you about a few minutes ago for the econ deals, that roll up project, that deal’s gonna get floated on the Nasdaq probably early twenty twenty four. And what’s really interesting is I can’t be an officer of a public company in the United States without being a permanent resident. So I’m going through the green card immigration process right now.

And I I could have done this years ago. Right? And I’ve had green cards before. But one of the challenges for me as a as a Brit, as a guy from the UK, is when I become permanent resident in the states, even though I won’t live there all the time, I gotta pay tax in America.

Now tax in the United States is a lot higher than tax in the UK.

That’s why I’ve always remained a UK domicile for tax purposes. But I have to switch it for this IPO. This is gonna be a billion dollar valuation on Nasdaq, so it’s worth it. But what’s really interesting about real estate in America that doesn’t apply to real estate in England is in America, you could buy real estate, there’s a tax write off.

There’s a bit more involved, obviously, and I’m not a real estate guy, so, you know, I joined SUBCU to learn about all this stuff, how I can save millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars in tax over here in America by buying real estate. Alright? So that that’s why I joined sub two. But I’ve been so busy with businesses I buy, you go to these events that I’ve actually not dived into the sub to community.

The pace was busting my balls on Sunday night. It’s like, dude, forget about the training, forget about the videos, forget about going all the calls, forget about posting the Facebook group. Just get out there and start doing deals. You’ll figure it out.

Right? Execution trumps knowledge every single time. Just get out there and do stuff, and that’s how you’ll work. And it’s so true because that’s the advice I give my deal breaker students.

Yeah. There’s stuff I need to teach you, but you’re not gonna buy businesses watching videos that go in on coaching calls. You buy businesses by taking action. It’s the same in real estate.

So literally the following day on Monday, I’m in the lobby and I’m just chatting with a couple of substitute students at a time. And I said to him, hey, you know what? I’ve gotta get out there. I wanna do a deal.

I wanna buy a house at Tampa. I like Tampa, say Pete, Clearwater.

Look. Let’s let’s get a house there. That’ll be my US, like, residence.

And he’s like, I got a deal for you. I got a deal for you. There’s literally it’s a one point three million dollar home in Tampa.

And you need to buy it for about forty thousand dollars out of pocket. I’m like, really?

He’s like, yeah. So what then? It’s just like a business acquisition.

And he’s like, yeah. I’m like, woah. So I’m like, you can’t do this in the UK. You can’t do creative real estate deals in the UK when you can in the US. So literally, the following day, I went to view the house. Right? And I learned so much about the process.

I learned so much about the the way that you would define a buy box to buy real estate. And it’s just like business deals. The things you would look for, the the kind of the deal math. So all the same, buying businesses, buying real estate, very, very, very similar.

So I’ve actually not decided to do this house, in Tampa, but I learned, like, so much in the space of an hour just going to see it. It was near a really big highway, and it was actually I I thought it was a four bound house. It actually wasn’t. It was a quad I think it’s called quadraplex.

It was four, like, one bedroom units within the same house. It had no, off road parking, and it had no, like, like, lot. It’s just a house underneath the kind of freeway. So, brilliant location and a great house, but just didn’t fit my bibles.

But I just learned so much about just going away and and doing it rather than studying it. You gotta do both. You can’t just study. You’ve gotta study it and do it.

So that was really, really amazing. So it was a whirlwind it was a whirlwind seven days. I got back a few days ago, which was amazing. So it’s good to get back with my family and do stuff.

So, yeah, that was the kind of the two big highlights of my seven days in Tampa when I did the three day Dealmaker Live event.

Almost bought my first piece of real estate. But it was all about understanding the process and just getting out there onto the field of play. And then the second thing which is really really cool is I signed a hundred and twenty five million dollar financing front of everybody. So I can go off and do a one billion dollar roll up in the female health and beauty sector.

So it was an absolutely amazing thing. So boy, do I need some caffeine. I’m just pulling up at Starbucks now, and I will see you on the other side. Until then, bye for now.