Baktari MD

Top Tips to Start a Business w/ Mike & Bo (2024)

• Jonathan Baktari MD • Season 2 • Episode 50

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Welcome to episode 50 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode, we are joined by @mikeandbo , two serial entrepreneurs and best friends who have been doing business together since 2015! Have you ever wanted to start your own business? Or get into the business of real estate? This is the video you need to see! All of the tips and trick you need are right here in order to achieve financial freedom and build extreme wealth for yourself and your families!

So what we do, it isn't for everyone. So if you have a 9 to 5 job and you don’t have some kind of side hustle already, whether you're selling sneakers or baked goods or, handbags or whatever you might be into, if you're not doing something, it'd be the equivalent of someone saying, watching music videos and go, I want to be a music writer or whatever. Well, if you're not already writing poems and being interested in it, it's probably not for you. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. Today we're going to be continuing our Crash CEO School series, but I have a couple of interesting and amazing guests that we're going to learn a lot about leadership, organizational skills, and how to move to the next level. Really, really great show for you today I'm going to have Mike Merrigan and Bo Kort, who are best friends, business partners, and they've been in the real estate and many other fields for many years. They've acquired hundreds of properties and own over 43 companies. Boy, there's so much here, but they're really two small town guys from Arizona who have really decided that in life they want more. They want more for themselves, for their families, and have really reached the pinnacle of success by acquiring and growing many, many companies over many years. So they're not your typical financial gurus, but I think they have a lot of information to share for people, especially people who have been on the fence about becoming an entrepreneur, and just finding their own path, whether it's personal financial success and growth or acquiring new skills. I think, you know, in talking with them before the show, I got the impression that they really, really have found the secret to growing yourself professionally, financially and achieving goals that you never dreamt of. So we're going to have them on and we're going to they're going to share with us the secret to doing all this. I'm very excited. All right. Mike and Bo, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Definitely. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Well, you know, there's so much to cover, but, you know, why don't you both just start off briefly and tell everyone a little bit about your background? I know there's much. And then let's grind into some of the spec Go ahead Mike. All righty. I always, I started off really young and Bo will get into it also. My last job, I was 18 years old, working valet at a casino here locally across the river here. But always had a much more spirit when I was young. But I was always doing bake sales or lemonade stands, and it just progressed from there. After high school, I knew I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to get into business. I had a family, second type cousin that went to a funeral. He wanted to expand a video stores. I came back, did all the research. We opened up a video store. A year later, bought it out and opened up a small chain of video stores after that, got in the laundromat business because my washing machine broke down, checked out the competition, realized they needed more laundromats. So got into that. Started in being vending, washing machines and dryers open multiple locations. started, car wash, laundromats. And then I realized, after all these businesses in retail, I love retail. But I realized the land lord was always the happiest person because no matter who came and went, they always still had the building there to lease out to someone else with the next great idea. So my brother and I started, buying up real estate and getting involved in that. Bo came along later. We've always been best friends, and, he was building pools, got into other real estate ventures, and we just kind of blown it up from there. Okay. I was gonna say, I’m a few years younger than Mike. But the way that I first, Mike's got a younger brother and an older brother, his older brother, Dino, was out in Texas and handles a lot of the real estate acquisitions and managing the properties that we own out there together. But, I got to know Mike because it was odd. He’s 5 or 6, 7 years older than I am. He was actually in Rotary Club with all the old cats, all the OGs in town. And so they were all in the 40s and 50s. And Mike was, As an 18 or 19 years old. So I was in there and I remember my dad talking to me like, ay, this Mike Merrigan guy. He's I go to school with his younger brother Julian. But, I was honestly, a lot of times I use Mike is like a mentor, you know. Yeah. Dad and his his buddies were, in business, so I was I wanted to get into business. So I ended up getting into the bread distribution company, delivering bread to the casinos and grocery stores around town. Kind of blew that company up sold half of that off. Still own the other half of it, got into building swimming pools, construction. And like Mike said, probably 15 years ago, we started doing business together, started acquiring real estate. And, we're both just serial entrepreneurs. I mean, it was never enough, once we get something under escrow, it's like, where's the next one? And we're constantly building our team and and, scaled to 43 companies and. Yeah, a ton of real estate. You know, so as I'm hearing this, you know, you always hear about addicts being addicted to that dopamine surge of getting their next fix. So what you guys have done really is turned you know, addiction that normally goes to bad stuff to improving the lot of you your, your your lot and your family's lot is actually a very interesting way because I think you guys have used the term scratch, the scratch, the next itch. That's really how addicts talk, really. Because if you really think about it, and this is what a constructive way to lead your life, where you can use that power of addiction. You know, the dopamine rush of doing and the next great deal, to, you know, to really, impact your families in ways that they could never dream of. So I like to hear that. So let's circle back a little bit, because I want to talk about what people at home would want to know. I think the first thing is for people, especially for people who have 9 to 5 jobs and they say, well, you know, I can't think of a business. I can't think of a business to, so, so circle back to what some people at home would want to know is, you know, people who are working 9 to 5 and they want to know, you know, I don't know anything about business. I don't know of a good business know. And I want to go and pick a business. Where do I start? Now, in talking with you guys that you're driving by someplace and you see something, you have a conversation with someone. But for the typical person at home, how do you go about evaluating what industry you want to go into, what business you guys have been in, you know, laundry, video, construction, pool. Someone says, you know. That sounds like a potpourri of a bunch of stuff. How do I pick something if I want to get started? If for me, I think, Bo and I talk about being self-aware quite a bit. So what we do, it isn’t for everyone. So if you have a 9 to 5 job and you don’t have some kind of side hustle already, whether you're selling sneakers or baked goods or, handbags or whatever you might be into, if you're not doing something, it'd be the equivalent of someone saying, watching music videos, and I want to be a music writer or whatever. Well, if you're not already writing poems and being interested in it, it's probably not for you. What we do is really entertaining now because it's a popular thing to be as an entrepreneur, but it's not for everyone. So decide if you can't sleep and you're miserable because of the job you have, you just have to get it. Now we can talk, but if it’s something because it's popular, don't do it. Stick to your 9 to 5. Go buy a Ford Rex. Stay in that lane. Get it paid off in 15 years. Got some travel money later on, and you've got your retirement and everything's fine. But if it's something that you have to have now, we can talk. So- You have to grind, you have to do a lot of work and people with balance in their life, especially starting out, if that's important, then we don't really have much to talk about. Tell me about that. What do you mean balance in their life. Expand on that. Because when you start out, if it's a real business that you're going to grow, you're going to have to feel some pain. You're making sausage baby. No one likes making it. Bo and I like making the sausage. The dirty part of business is fun. It's exciting. It's challenging. It's go go go go go. If you don’t like football practice. You probably shouldn't try to be a football player. Yeah, yeah. You have to practice before the game. Okay. You know, I think you touched on several things, and I'm just going to tell you, like, three podcasts that I did, and I'm just going to give you the title of them. And then I think you could expand on it. One, this whole idea of work life balance, you know, like people like, look, I, I got to keep a 9 to 5 because I need work life balance. You know that phrase work life balance or do I know you're ready to jump on that? But hold on. Yeah. For me, for me, those are trigger words, but okay. But work life balance. Let's talk about that because I always hear that and this whole thing is, you know, like, you know, when I get home, I got the emails have got to stop. You know, I can't always be on, you know, so I have this whole thing that there's, you know, if you want to do what you guys do, you're on all the time. There's no such thing. It's not a full time job, you know? It's an all the time job. And that don't mean you're working all the time, but means you're on. So this whole concept that if you want to elevate your game, even inside of a corporation, you're like an intrapreneur. That you're either you're going to one have to always be on. And this whole idea is you're doing this. So later on, like you said, when you finally pay off the fourplex, then you can have some semblance of work life balance according to the current definition. So in my podcast I talk about, yeah, if you really want work life balance, why don't you work towards that? Meaning, you know, get that fourplex. And so do you want to expand on that. This whole idea of work life balance. And you know, I don't I don't want to be answering emails after 5:00 and talk to talked about it. And and when people come to you, how do you how do you address that. Oh yeah. And then that way it's just. Like with anything it's like not like all of a sudden one day you flip the switch and you have that work life balance. You have to figure it out. Mike's in a situation with his wife. We both got fantastic wives, families, everything. And his wife is probably cares less about things as much. And my wife cares a lot more. So it's easier for Mike. Mike can show up right now in15 minutes at his house and say, hey, we're flying to Texas. I forgot to tell you, we found out two weeks ago and his wife won’t say jack shit to him. Well, she’d be tripping out. Right. It'll be proactive, because when I first started out as an entrepreneur. I was in the bread distribution company.

You get up at 3:

00 in the morning, you deliver the bread and you don't stop till the breads delivered. And my wife will show up at the grocery store with our baby at 7:00 at night and go. You left at three this morning? Yes. It’s 7 at night, what’re you doing? That literally happened. Yes. Oh no. It was a lot of years of just going. Stay with me on this. Stay with me on this. We'll get through these times. And today she's as thankful she can be about it. She's like, I get it, honey. I mean, I see now everything you're working for and the vision that you have, and it's played out for us. And we’re able, we got so much freedom to do what we want, when we want. And my kids are going to have that generational wealth that's going to get passed down to them. And and get them a lot of opportunities that they want to take. And so the work life balance thing there are, you know, there's work arounds. But so many times you hear people go, hey, I can't meet with you on Tuesday because, I'm booked. Well what does booked mean? Get up an hour earlier or stay an hour later, you know, and Mike and I'll work 14 hour days. And it's not like it's a grind. We never go home and talk about how it's a 14 hour day. Right. It’s a normal day to us. And we enjoy what we're doing. So that that's one big thing about it too. You gotta enjoy it. Yeah. You know, it's a grind, but it's like going to the gym, you know, just the fact of finishing what you do there. It fuels a sense of accomplishment. That's the way I feel every day whenever I go home. And then. And then there's the time period of everything you just said is then. Then you get to the point where you can't pull off the throttle. Yeah. And he just got back from Costa Rica. Took 15 family members to Costa Rica, all the waiters, the the in-house services, everything else staying at the top of the mansion, whatever. Do whatever you want. He gets back. Two weeks later, he's on a cruise for another month with the wife and him just taking a trip so you can do those things if that's what you want to do. But in order, you can want that. But if you're not willing to put it in the work, that story he told me he's probably 24. When the baby shows up at the grocery store 7:00 at night. But if you're in a relationship where you're not going to be allowed to do what you wanna do, he did that because that's what he wanted to do, needed to do. And the things I do is because I need to do them. That's it's just you can't stop me. It just that's what I want to be doing. I want to be doing those things. So once you have that burning desire and you recognize it, just surround yourself with people that can support you, including your spouse. They can support what you're trying to get done. You know, it's just okay. So, okay, I want to move past this, but let me just add one last thing. So I come to you and say, I have a 9 to 5. You know, I want to do I think I want to be an entrepreneur. How- how do you what do you want to ask me that tells you that I got what it takes or it's just something I wish. But would you can you feel it when you talk to people? If if they're a younger Bo or a younger Mike? What? Like what are the tip offs? That. Yeah. Okay. This guy's got it. I just need to coach him versus this guy doesn't want to. Doesn't want to do the hard work. I have some family members that are in that 12 step program, and we might be there at a waiter or something and I’m not recognizing anything. And my brother will say, oh, he's in the program. I go, what do you mean he’s in the program? How do you know that? He just brought his bread and da da da. And he goes, I can just tell by the way he said whatever. And so, my brother will go, I got 35 years clean, what about you? I got 12 months clean or 12. They just know. So when we're in a room with entrepreneurs, like minded people, it don't take long to realize that's the cat right there. Yes. Wow. That's the guy you know, right? Yeah. It happens all the time. He's got a great story. He's talking to me. This is going back eight years ago. Yeah, it’s 7 or 8 years ago. He's talking to me on the phone. I went a little five phone calls a day between us or ten, whatever it is. And he goes, I got to go. He goes I just went- I just went to the McDonald's drive through for a quick burger or whatever. He goes, I'm watching this dude out here clean up the trash around there and spraying down the trash can he goes, I got to go talk to him. He's he's a badass. He goes over there, talks to the guy. The guy ends up working for him. His dad ended up working for him and another family member. Yeah, it's just that he recognized it just at the drive through, seeing something in someone, talking to this dude, if you ever want more out of life, I can start you out at this or whatever. Sure as shit, this guy comes knocking on his door. Guy still doing it today, doing killer, but it just you know what I mean. So you recognize those things, you recognize like minded people and it's not for everybody. And since this is a rare thing that you can be an entrepreneur and be successful at multiple businesses, you can kind of tell, yeah, you don't always get it right, but yeah, you can't, you know, it's. So your spidey sense, okay, let's move on because we have so much more to cover. Let's talk. Let's go back now to actually picking a business. You guys said something interesting off line that when you go to evaluate a business, it's not all the performa and the financials. You look for other intangibles. So let's say I'm looking for a business and I come to Mike and Bo and say, okay, I've got a sector. I'm I'm kissing a lot of frogs. I'm looking at 40, 50 businesses in the laundromat area, in the video store area when there were video stores. Whatever. What, what what are my looking for besides the financials, all things being equal. All I see. Oh, you said it many times. It's personnel. But but the thing about it is obviously the company's got to make money. You gotta see the opportunity. You got to check out the financials, all of that. But one thing that we know is when you own 43 companies, how much time can Mike and I actually put into that company. So we're either going to partner with someone or have a great manager. And if they're really great manager, eventually they're going to be a partner of ours. And so we're open to partnership, but we're always looking for that special person. So there's got to be enough bang for the buck, too. In everything that you do in your work today. You know, in a 14 hour day that we're going to put in today, I need to make sure that I'm maximizing my value in everything that I do today, every minute of every day. I got to be making sure that I do that. So I'm looking for people that also have that same mindset to be able to maximize their efficiency of the abilities that they have every day, and they've got to breed a culture and have the same mindset to do that with their staff underneath. So if it's a business that doesn't generate enough revenue for the effort that we got to put forth into it, then we don't get into it. So there's got to be enough topside on it. But when we first started buying real estate. Guess what size real estate we bought? 100, 200, $300,000 buildings. Now we buy $1 million buildings because we realized for our effort and our time that we're going to put together, we're still serial entrepreneurs where everything looks good and we're just puppy dogs just running around, you know, looking at real estate. And, you know, it's hard to pull our hands back from driving the next 3 or $400,000 deal. But you got to make sure that you're getting the most bang for the buck of every minute of your day. And the people within that business are doing the same for you. And we’re coaching people up today. Also, everything he just said, I agree with. Is and I wish someone would have. I wish, you know, there was no coaching back then. There was Tony Robbins, which obviously a much younger man, and in my mind he was like a motivational guy. Well, neither one of us needed any motivation. And then there's the late night televisions were 1-800 get rich quick things. So there was nothing like the internet now and the reaching out and the possibilities. But one thing that Bo and I know we wish we would have concentrate more often younger, was what's the exit plan and is it scalable? Because we have gotten in businesses that aren't scalable, and our desire and it's not for everyone. Someone may just want one business and build it with their family. Everyone work there. And you know, that's great, but we wanted more. So there has to be for us what's the exit plan? And I wish we were able to figure that out a little sooner. And we wish we would have recognized scalable businesses from non scalable businesses earlier. So we would sit down with someone and go what's your goal? I want a place where my wife and kids can work, and we can just all grind out to get a lot of opportunities there. Hey guess what I want on 15 of these and whatever I want to grow these taco stands across the nation. Different person, different situation. So we'd like to find out. And then how are you going to get out of this? Because sometimes businesses aren't that sellable. If we want to sell the storage complexes, guess what? We're going to get a letter today and a phone call today, almost every single day someone calls us wanting to buy a piece of property. So those are easy to get out of. I own furniture stores. They're not easy to get out of. This- it's just it's, you know, it's brick and mortar on the side of the road with furniture. It's not that attractive. It's not that fun. It's not it doesn't attract enough people to want to come in and buy it. Well, I mean, like, equity firms will come and buy a storage place, but they're not going to come buy a furniture store. Just to give you a slight idea. So I hear what you're saying, but it sounds to me that to rephrase what you're saying, any endeavor you're going to go into, besides the cost is going to require some brain damage. It’s going to require a certain part of your brain bandwidth. So the question is, if I got to put it in this bandwidth and brain damage into this, besides getting the business, if it was also scalable, it makes my initial brain damage or the amount of bandwidth it makes it worth it. So if I have a certain bandwidth, I can only do so many projects and I have only so many hours in the day. So even if three things have the exact same performa, but one is scalable and one is easier to get out of, that will trump even maybe something with slightly even better, performa or financials, because I'm going to have to put the same amount of energy and time into it. But in terms of multiplying my exit and and potential, you're going to look. So it's a very interesting point because I think when people evaluate businesses, I think it's great for people who are watching this, understand you can't just evaluate a business based on the current numbers necessarily. Of course, that's going to be very important, but also say, where can I take it and how quickly can I exit and is there an exit? So I'm glad you said that. eNational Testing makes getting a simple laboratory test as easy as ordering something online. With three simple steps you can have your test ordered for STD's, general health, allergy testing, diabetes screening, blood titers, and more. You can simply go in for testing the same day and get your results quickly to your email. eNationalTesting.com’s complete health care panels come with easy to understand results at over 2700 locations nationwide. It's time to focus on yourself. eNationalTesting.com; easy, convenient and tailored to your health needs. Which then let's talk about exiting. So you're into the business and you got 40 storage places. And you're thinking about exiting when like how did what goes into that? I mean why not do 80 storage. And then exit? Well why exit at 40? Why not exit at 50 or what are the calculations? Is it when the amount of grief and headache is more than the revenue or is it, you know, at this point you're going to get the optimal money anyway. And and growing it more is not going to add a whole lot more. So tell- talk about some of those calculations in broad terms of when to exit one of these and what you look for. I can tell you exactly what because this guy says it about every week. He's going to pick the option that is going to make in the most amount of money. By the time he turns 82 years old. So it's just that it's just remembering- Chasing- He's chasing the dollars. So if it makes sense and we're gaining equity and it's cash flowing, then we'll run it for a long time. And if it's something that, that our money is tied up and we could actually use that money that's sitting in equity to, to take down another business or another larger piece of property that we can get a better return on. Then it's time to move on. So a lot of it's based on the other opportunities that you have out there. And then scalable. But scalable is part of it too. And when to sell for me, I know that I recognize it. You got to put in some years before we start recognizing patterns in your life. But I do get a little bit bored after about ten years in a business, I find myself like I’s rather be doing this, you know? So I'll so I'm I don’t really love the day to day operations of running companies. I like starting them and building them. And the real estate's like that too, because you're starting the deal, you’re working the deal.. So that must be what it comes from. And as far as the day to day of managing furniture stores or anything else, it kind of is like, oh, I'd rather be building. So as long as the building, the business is growing and there's growth and this is where it goes scalable, you know, then we’re more likely to stay into it. One thing just circling back a little, little conversation is I had, when I exited out of the, laundromats. It was 12 years and everything was great. There was no competition pressure or anything Business we decided to sell. I just wanted out, you know, I just, you know, got tired of it and wanted to move on to something else. A few years later, I get a call from a young lady and a couple wanting to buy my furniture store, and they came to me at the laundromat, one that I'd already sold and had sold again since then. So they came to me and asked me for my advice. Sure, come on in and we talked to them. But what is, the main thing I wanted to say is don't go to experts or people if you're not going to take their advice, we’re not going to hire you unless you use the advice. But so they came to me, hey, here’s what the numbers say, this this and that. I go, good, I’d love to help you, get me their water bill.. I go, with their water bill. I already owned it. I started from scratch. I know exactly the IRS. That's how they catch people stealing money from laundromats. You figure out how many machines they have. How many gallons they use per wash I and how much they charge per wash. It's a it's a simple math problem. I knew exactly how much he was making and he was lying by a lot trying to sell it to these ladies. And I told him I go, hey, you're not being honest, which isn’t unusual in a business. You try to up your get the most you can right. But I go he’s way off and it hit the business, in the area, they didn't maintain it, everything had gone down and I go, He's lying. Don't buy it. Well they went and bought it. They lasted six months. Oh no. I felt bad for them because I couldn't have been clearer. But hey, this is how much he says he's making. But this is how many gallons of water he’s using. He's lying. Run! And they didn’t listen. And so I don't know any of the details of this it’s none of my business. But it was just an observation. The advice that Mike is getting across to us, whether it's real estate or business, and we talked about it earlier, is don't get emotionally tied up. Yes, they had, which I don't get and they're emotionally I got to get this business here. Like you describe some little words. You will do that. No exactly. You get emotionally tied up and you can only buy a building one You can only buy a building once. A business once. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s then transition to you guys do mentoring. I've already heard, like, people come into your office. Someone's come into your office today. Talk to me about how you talk to people and realize they're going to take your advice. They're not going to take your advice, meaning are there some people who are more amenable to being mentored versus other people. You know, some people always want to be the smartest guy in the room, no matter who they're talking to. Like, they could be sitting in your office, and you tell them something they, you know, like if Michael, if Michael Jordan's teaching you how to shoot a basketball, there is no comeback. I mean, like like if my Michael says, listen, this is how you hold the ball before you shoot, I'm not going to come back and say, well, hold on, Michael. You know, I do it slightly differently. Like what? Like, what are you talking about? I just like, shut up, you know, like, yeah. And so when, when you're in front of those people and you're like, okay, let me tell you about buying this laundromat or let me tell you about buying a fourplex. Do you, do you evaluate whether they're, they're coachable or not? And the different levels of coach ability, how do you deal with that? How do you struggle with them? Do you just call them out and say, listen, I can't help you. Sounds like, you know, like you're the smartest guy in every room. And I just can't I can't help you or I see you're laughing or we. We got two different ways, we both chase it as fast as we can., but we got different ways of going about it. Mike is a machine gun. He's going to put it down your throat. He's going to tell you all the, you know, all the dirty work that it's going to take to be an entrepreneur. He's going to tell you everything about it. But I'm probably the one thats like. I might go right and come back and go left on him. You know, I'm just have a different approach, you know, like, get them to admit that they're not really wanting it as bad as what they're saying, that they want it. Well, Mike is just going to give them the cold, hard truth and take it or not. Yeah. And luckily we had two good examples, local people coming to us. One of the furniture suppliers, in the furniture industry, which is my age, was asking me about hey, could I set up a meeting with you, like, sure. You know, but he didn't want to meet at the furniture store , he wanted to come to our office. Okay, fine. and so he's asking me about all the real estate we own and how we buy him and whatnot. And and as we're talking and I'm looking, i’ve known this man for years, and well we’ve never had this type of conversation. it's always about what he's trying to sell me, the supplies or the furniture, and. But I looked at him and go, oh, wait, he's scared. He doesn't have anything other than his job of selling. And when he quit selling, his income's going to stop, and he's panicked. And so I looked at him and go whoa, okay, I get it now. He. So maybe you start out of the duplex or fourplex and try and coach him up that way and, you know, break down those barriers while he keeps his job and you know, so that happened. And fast forward right now is probably 18 months ago. He's never done nothing. At the same exact time, a father son came to us just at about the same time. The old cat that I've known for years, Bo’s known for years. Great guy, worked his ass off in a blue car type business and able to save like a mil and three. And he had a great son, has a great son that's taken over the business with his dad, and he's not a hand-me-down kid, he’s a worker man. He he's burly. He's better than his dad, smarter than his dad, and as much hard work as his dad. We're all we're partners now. And dad is hanging on that 1.3 like the Hope diamond, get 1% return. Young son is watching us. And everything that’s happening. Other entrepreneurs and everything was happening. So he sets up a meeting with father son and they go, what’re you guys doing and how’re you doing it? We coached them up in one day, one conversation, tell them go back to your Rolodex on your desk because I know you still got one. And go in there. You’ve been in business for 30/40 years in this town. Find me an older guy that has an old building that quit going to his business cause he just, is done. He did exactly that. Called me up the next day, hey we found something. Two days later, they're in escrow, they bought it and they killed it. They're on the first building. But they were hanging on to that money so tight. And the young son brought them both in. And so I didn't know that they were going to go do that that day after coaching. And I didn't know that the other guy was never going to do nothing. So we did try to help out with it, and you got to take the ball and run. I could hand it to you or help you, but me and Bo can’t make someone do it or I can’t, right? So we never know. But when someone keeps coming back and that happens and they never do nothing. Nah, we don't have time for you anymore. Cause you didn’t do anything about it, Right. But the other couple, we have a talk with them today, and looking to let's get to your second building. So it's fun to help people. Yeah. Okay. You guys are doing you guys are doing amazing. I tell you there are not many people who their doors open who are successful and say, hey, our door is open and you want to come in for a quick conversation. We're here to help you. That, really commend you guys. Let’s just, I want to cover a couple more things. I want to just go back to one thing is, I realize that people may want to know more about this. You said earlier that in picking a business, you look for business that are scalable in broad terms. If someone wants to know, like, okay, define for me, obviously, you know, more locations, whatever, but how do you know a business potentially is more scalable versus not scalable? What are there any telltale signs that you look for? You just study the industry. What do you so someone says, well, scalable, schmalable. How do I know what are the telltale? Is there any broad advice you could give people on identifying things that are more scalable than others? For instance, like the, just like this, the small, construction company, there's just so many businesses that takes the owner to be there, or you just get a lot better product when the owner is on site or is in the hands of it, and takes care of the, well, customization of whatever that product is and whatever needs to be done. And that can be a restaurant and not the restaurants can't be scalable, but a lot of businesses, they're hard to scale. So as opposed to a Taco Bell or a small franchise. So someone that wants something scalable, I kind of I love the franchise concept. Could you make this, so someone of, of normal intelligence could repeat this over and over again, and it's still profitable enough for a manager and profits. That's scalable to me. And so not everybody wants to be scalable. But if you have do, make sure that it is scalable, because a lot of times it takes the hands of a, of a special artistic type person. That's not a scalable business, you know? So there's a lot of people out there. It is dry cleaning. It's not impossible that it’s not scalable. But who's getting the dry cleaning? Someone did come to us saying by the local dry cleaner. I'm like, hell no. First off, color clothes are so cheap anymore, they throw them away. No one gets nothing dry washes. It’s casual Friday every damn day anymore. So I wouldn't get into that business so I'd coach him up on something like that. But if you want to be scalable. But what are your interests? What what in what what can we help you find? And again, going back to the people within the business, I had a meeting with the guy that wants to sell his business to me, two weeks ago. And whenever I met with them. He didn't realize what a disservice he was doing to sell me his business, whatever he was telling me. But he's like, well, yeah, my my main, estimator, he's been trying to retire the last two years. So he's probably got about a year left, and I go, well who else is doing your estimating? He goes, I really don't have anybody. And then he goes, and then I do this, and thenand once in a while I got to drive to Phoenix to go pick up the you know, this. So he's telling me all of the loans and how whenever I buy his company, I'm going to meet no longer have him, and I'm no longer have his estimator, and I'm no longer gonna have this person or that person. So guess what? You got nothing! You got nothing. I found out he's got a phone number. Yeah. I'm looking for a business that I can turnkey and that baby is going because the people already, the cultures there the, you know the scalability is there because of the culture that other company and the people that are in it. Yeah. No, I get it. I mean, I guess taking it to this logical conclusion, like, for example, you wouldn't buy an attorney's practice because it's all tied to the attorney. So the more the business is tied to the product being more or less the owner or some of the key players, the less scalable it's going to be because of that issue alone. So above and beyond what the industry looks like. And if there's more, other opportunities. What I'm hearing from you guys is if it's very tied into the personalities in the leadership and they're doing the bulk of the work anyway, versus there's just the managers that that makes you a little more, scared of of diving into those kind of business. That's that's really great. I want to cover one more thing, which I love about how you guys operate, which is finding undervalued business opportunities. This whole idea of undervalued, I mean, who wants to find an overvalued business property, right? Or business opportunity? Like, no one says I'm out there looking for. So, I mean, on some level, people say, of course. I mean, why not? But you must mean something above and beyond what everyone normally would look for, because no one runs out and buys an overvalued business opportunity. So when you say that, what are the things that the average person may not understand about identifying, undervalued business opportunities? I'd seen there's kind of like two sides to it. One is when people just don't charge enough and they don't value their service or their product to charge the appropriate price for it. So if they should be charging a dollar and they're charging $0.75, I know the day that I buy that business, I'm not gonna charge $0.75, I'm charging a dollar for it. And I say it all the time. I said, charge like a badass and be a badass. And if you do that, people will buy your product. The other thing is, is if I can improve that product to get $1.25 for it. So that's the other side of it, is are they undervaluing it for the product or the service if they’re performing and then what? What are they meeting on the table still that they could be value adding that much more to that product to get more. It's happened with us in storage too. Yeah. The thing that, what what people don't understand is our mantra or whatever we want to call it is we buy properties 30% undervalued the cash flow in 90 days. And we’ve done it hundreds of times 150 properties we still own and we keep everything we buy. We have sold some. We have done some flips. So but generally speaking, the first building we ever bought, we still own. So with that in mind, what people don't realize is this country is filled with 70 and 80 year old guys that are done and they're stuck with their properties. Maybe they're an AC guy. They know every single thing about AC and how to get the trucks out there and all this, but they don't know real estate. And so they close down their company. They quit going to the machine shop or whatever it is. They are this age and the building sitting there. So we always call it death, distressed, or divorce, all three of those. The three DS gets it at 30% off. Whether in business or real estate. And real estate, most people, when they built it in their 30s and 40s the storage complex or four plex. So whatever it is, they turn 70/80, become friends with these people that get in and get their checks personally. They don’t have a website, they don't have automation, and they know these people and they'll never raise the rates. And what happens is we go in there and we a lot of times we give them their asking price. Because we’ve knocked on the door, they’re not going to realtors half the time we knock on the door or we befriend them and we ask them what they're going to do with their building, do they want to retire. Do they want to sell it? And if they say no, maybe or whatever, we always circle back. We keep a list of what they say, and we come back and we're very patient. And we build those relationships. Like Bo said and those old guys just want to sell their buildings, and they want to sell it to someone like us because they're emotionally attached and they want to see what we're going to do with the properties. We're going to reskin the building, we're going to paint it, we're going to do this. And a lot of times they've already made their money. So it's owner financing. They don't want to give it to Biden or anybody else. They want to keep their money. They don't need it. And so they’re going to take a lower down and they'll sell it at a price and they won't know it. All the prices have gone up so much since they quit looking, but there’s so much meat on the bone that we can usually buy in for 30% undervalued. Do the remodel, fix up added value. And in 90 days lease it back out. And- And it's a positive cash flow. We will not buy a building that breaks even. We don't do it. Well you know I hope people listen to everything. You just said right now, especially in the last five minutes in terms of an approach. Let's talk one last thing, which is before you find that, because I want everyone to have the whole picture before you find that property and befriend this old guy. Whatever. Talk about the work that's going to go into identifying that one property, because I think, you know, like you said, you know, I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? Maybe. But I don't want to go into the gym eight hours a day. Right? That's, that's that's what's keeping me from looking like Arnold. So in terms of this analogy of this being Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, finding this one property, getting a 30% undervalue, enrolling this guy into your vision, befriending him, getting to do owner financing. It's not like the first guy you knock on their door is going to say, yes, I'm an 80 year old guy. And I even, you know, I haven’t raised my price. These are lots of criterias to fill. And so someone listening like, well, okay, so I just have to one Sunday, go find that guy. No talk about what it's going to take. The amount of shoe leather footwork time, effort. But then of course the payoffs. Can you talk about that? Because I don't want to make it sound like, oh, this Sunday, go ahead and do, what Mike and Bo just told you to do. So, I'll take it from here because the majority of the time, what happens is people have excuses. So one is going to be they don't know where to start or how to start. So that's going to be the excuse that they never get off their ass to go do it. The other thing is going to be that they don't have the money. Well, let's say that you did have the money, but if you don't have the knowledge, then money is never the issue. Everyone always says it's the money. When we first started out, we had deals. But guess what? I look at him go, dude, we're not getting money. Yes, we'll figure it out if it's a good enough deal. And guess what? We all always figured it out when we conjure it together from my own businesses or got a hard money lender or whatever we did. So most people are going to have the excuse that they don't know how to start and they don't have the money, but there's no excuse today. I mean, go back when we were in our 20s. There was no YouTube. There was no internet. We just had to do it by asking the old guy down the street that owned a business, you know, try to get as much knowledge as you could from him. And half the time he didn't know shit either. You know. But now there's so much information out there to educate yourself right now if you do want to do it if you're 20 years old and if you're 25, if you're 45 and you want to do it at some point, start educating yourself right now. There's so much good information out there to just understand how it works. The other day, a way of educating yourself is just get out start knocking on doors, get with realtors, find out what it takes to buy that that property. Get, go to your local community bank, understand what it takes to finance that, analyze the properties. There's so many different ways to analyze properties and stuff to see what the value of that property is, to see if it's a good deal, to see if it’ll cash flow. What is cash flow? What is home money? What is owner carry? All that information's there, right. Well, that years ago you couldn't figure it out. The other thing is, is when we coach people, this is the person you just describe. How do you do this? You know, 30% is not on the list. First of all, the internet is worldwide. So we're looking at stuff that may or may not be true, blah blah blah. So keep it simple, stupid. Go home and draw a five mile circle around your house. Find out what you want to be a light industrial storage, fourplex. Just learn every single thing about the five mile radius. It's five miles. And how many three plexes or four plexes. How much is the rents going for? A what side of five miles do I want to be on? Because I get more from money. So figure out, stay in your lanes, keep it close to home so you can just drive down and take a look at it and you might end up owning it. And then it's just right down the street and you can marriage that. You can think about it. You buy some in Iowa because some guy online, hey, buy 150 homes. Bullshit. Buy one, but keep it in your neighborhood. Drive there, learn the research. Get to know a realtor. Just like he said. Learn the vacancy rates. That's easy to figure out. What are they going for? How? How many people will move into your area? If you're in a shrinking area? Move. You're doomed. If you're in a growing area and you draw a five mile circle, how many four plexes are there and it's not that hard, but you got to shrink it down and buy your first one and take action. And figure it out later. I love it, I love it, Mike and Bo someone's listening to all this and they don't get motivated and get up tomorrow morning and take control. I don't know what else we can do for them. This is such amazing advice, such amazing input. Mike and Bo, do you want to tell people how they can learn more about you guys if they're really interested in getting involved or just learning from you guys, what do you recommend people do. Honestly, you can follow us on every platform, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. So I could say DM us on @MikeandBo, for Instagram. Or a real simple way of doing it is a shoot us a text. Shoot us a text at (928) 605-4335. Real simple number (928) 605-4335. Shoot us a text. We'll get back to you right away. Let you know what we have to offer you. Love coaching people up. We love talking to business. That's it. So. Exactly. you know, main guy in the office there, he’ll get back to you, and, we'll eventually end up hooking up. But we love helping people. it's all about spreading it, you know? It's, we'll get just as much out of giving as you do, you know? So it feels good to help other people. Man. I love it. And we'll put all that in the descriptions to all, all your contact information and everything and we'll we'll spread the word. But I want to thank you both. I it's so refreshing. You know, I meet a lot of successful people. it's just nice to meet successful people who have this burning desire to give back and share what they've learned. And and I think if I'm reading between the lines correctly, you guys are putting out the product you wish you had. Yeah. And when you were coming out, like, if you're like, you know, that's the best way to make a product, right? Say, I want to put out what I would have liked to have had, you know, when I was 24 or 23. And I, I kind of sense that from talking to you for this past hour, you guys have been very gracious with your time and I really enjoyed working with you. Hopefully we can do this again in the future, but I want to thank you both for all the time, I know you’re busy means a lot that you came on our show. we'll, pass the word around and we'll do this again, hopefully in the future. By the way, thanks everybody for watching. If you like this content, make sure you comment, like and subscribe and we will see you on the next episode of Baktari MD. Thank you so much. Take care of bye bye. Appreciate it.