But then I suppose in your line of work, you're going to look at kind of like from a risk management perspective, like what's the worst case scenario? How do you then counteract that? Or if that was to happen overnight, like what do we do in that position? Do you see what I mean? No, I know

exactly.

No, it's a great, great question.

And again, like for every person looking to start a business or even transform their own business, this power framework will be good for offline business, online business.

And basically it's just price and platform.

You'll be surprised by how many businesses don't control their price.

or their platform.

The next one would be is around how should I be thinking about the multiplier? So if I'm looking to buy a business and I'm thinking to myself, well, what is a fair price to pay for a particular business? What is, I mean, is there a specific industry? Do you go with a specific type of industry diagnostic? I mean, how do you evaluate the multiplier? Yeah.

But I suppose TEDx is a different set up.

Yeah.

So again, yeah.

From teaching in my 20s, I got very comfortable with public speaking.

I took a public speaking course thanks to my dad as well.

He was like, you need to learn how to public speak better and get good at this.

I was like, all right.

So curious energy ways and I suppose other things as well that would go, all right, you need to put this on your bucket list.

So.

Yeah.

So again, like for people who are looking to just like, let's just say that make their first independent dollar.

The structure I recommend is like probably not the best idea.

Just build some brand new business.

I typically suggest figure out what somebody is paying you money for right now and then just do that for somebody else.

So if you're an accountant and you're working for an accounting firm, you're solving a problem, right? The closest path to making your own dollar or making your own money is just to find clients or consulting in the accounting industry.

and i mean you have done this you know in multiple countries every country has its own compliances regulations its own processes and then different buying and business practices as well any any interesting insight that you've got that you would like to share you know because online doesn't mean that you know i mean you can go global i have had very interesting experiences with amazon global but yeah

Now, how should someone think about those two parts?

Yeah, it's a constant debate I have.

And I've helped a lot of people.

And a lot of the framework comes is how much capital or money do you have? How much time do you want to invest? Right.

on average, most businesses I've seen to like really take off, take at least three years, um, to buy a business typically looking above, you know, you can buy smaller ones, but they're usually a lot riskier.

I typically recommend above a hundred thousand and especially the more, usually the more, the better, but it's not, it's always a case by case sort of, uh, evaluation of a business.

Yeah.

Now, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see first time online entrepreneurs making when they are trying to scale?

the buying opportunity changed over the last 10 years from say when we started back in 2016 to today.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot has definitely changed, especially the big milestones that I can think of is during COVID and during the aggregator space where everyone was focused on FBA, e-commerce.

And now it's kind of like a weird market where I don't really know where it's going to end up.

I kind of have my guesstimates or thesis on what's going to happen.

But I think AI is going to disrupt... every industry and every sort of business is going to have some impact.

And that's why like my sort of thought process is let's find a business that's under optimized and AI is another tool that we can use to grow and scale it, outsource some of the automations, outsource some of the like team functions or customer service and in general, just make it a better business.

They started off, I think, at 15, but they've still raised it steadily because it was just easier in terms of getting the fun done, you know?

the buying opportunity changed over the last 10 years from say when we started back in 2016 to today.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot has definitely changed, especially the big milestones that I can think of is during COVID and during the aggregator space where everyone was focused on FBA, e-commerce.

And now it's kind of like a weird market where I don't really know where it's going to end up.

I kind of have my guesstimates or thesis on what's going to happen.

But I think AI is going to disrupt... every industry and every sort of business is going to have some impact.

And that's why like my sort of thought process is let's find a business that's under optimized and AI is another tool that we can use to grow and scale it, outsource some of the automations, outsource some of the like team functions or customer service and in general, just make it a better business.

They started off, I think, at 15, but they've still raised it steadily because it was just easier in terms of getting the fun done, you know?

Tell me about Empire Flippers.

Yeah, so Empire Flippers is the largest curated marketplace to buy established, profitable online businesses.

Meaning they're making money, they've been making money for years, and the founder is looking to have an exit.

And basically, they can do a full exit through the platform.

The difference between Empire Flippers and some of the other platforms is it's curated, meaning they reject around 70% to 80% of online businesses, which keeps the standard on there.

And just imagine you go to Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or whatever.

There's that curation standard that isn't really there.

What should those people be considering before they invest a large chunk of money or get into a lot of debt to go acquire a business when they've never ran a business before?