E176: Guest Host Marty Fahncke Asked Ronald to Share His Top Insights On Buying & Selling Businesses

[00:00:00] Marty Fahncke: Welcome everyone to the How2Exit podcast. My name is Marty Fahncke and you are not expecting me to be talking. You're expecting Ronald to be talking, but we're going to be doing something a little bit different today. So about one year ago I was a guest on the How2Exit podcast. And since that time I've been a listener and I have loved what I've seen Ronald do with this podcast and he's taken it to the next level with content and newsletters and many other things.

And I have just been so impressed with everything that he's done. In that year. I was so impressed with everything that he's done that when the opportunity came up that Ronald posted, Hey, I'm open to somebody doing guest podcast hosting and bringing on somebody you would like to interview.

I jumped at the chance and I racked my brains for all the famous people I knew in the mergers and acquisition space and the things that I wanted to learn from people. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized the person I wanted to learn from, was Ronald himself. So we're going to talk a little bit about today with Ronald, about his podcast, his newsletter, mergers and acquisitions.

We might wander off and talk about trees before the interview is over, but sit back, strap in, listen in. Cause this is gonna be something different that you've never seen before on the How2Exit podcast. Ronald, welcome to your own podcast. 

[00:01:11] Ronald Skelton: Thank you. This is going to be fun. It's interesting to sit on this side of it.

I practiced yesterday and got recorded by somebody else for the second time. So this will be the third time I've ever been answering the questions instead of asking them. So, uh, we'll see how we do here. 

[00:01:24] Marty Fahncke: Absolutely. Well, I'll try and be as gentle as I possibly can. I've been on a number of podcasts as, as the founder of Westbound Road Mergers Acquisitions. I've probably done 40 or 50 podcasts.

So I know what it's like to be in your seat and I'll try and be as gentle as I can, taking over the host, uh, position. So let's get started. Let's talk about the, How2Exit podcast. Why did you start it in the first place and what were your goals or your intentions? 

[00:01:49] Ronald Skelton: You know, the interesting thing was, is I had actually kind of geared up to start a different podcast, right before COVID hit.

I was volunteering at a self help organizationwhere, uh, grown adults go in and kind of learn a different way of being and learn a different way of dealing with the world in its, in its entirety. And I met all these incredible people who had overcome so much diversity. I'd lined up about 19 of them, where we had rented a studio in Dallas where they were going to fly in or meet me in Dallas. We were going to record it and then COVID hit and all the flights got canceled.

So I already kind of, and I'm actually, I, and I have a friend, there who is a retired undercover police officer who had a cool podcast and they were doing 10 to 12, a thousand, uh, downloads per episode. And, and I met the guy that, that actually used to be Barney in the suit. He had a podcast at the same coworking space.

We were like, and they taught me how to podcast. They brought me in and we use their equipment. We played around and they taught me how to use everything. Then COVID hit and I didn't, I kind of had these skills I couldn't use. When COVID was around, I actually kind of figured out what I wanted to do.I had hired a performance coach when I was getting rid of my, we're selling off my real estate investment firm.

We were splitting it up, giving it to the partner, keeping some real estate type of thing. I hired a performance coach cause I kind of wanted to see what I wanted to do next. And, one of the things he said that rattled my cage a little bit is like, you should be playing a bigger game. Like you've done what you've done, do something bigger.

And, I don't give, I don't think I've ever given him credit for this, but one of the things that spurred this conversation in mergers and acquisition is one of my real estate investors had called me looking for money, to invest in a business. He was moving into mergers and acquisitions. I have a master's degree.

I'm an entrepreneur at heart. A master's degree in marketing. So I started diving into it just a little bit because just I'm naturally curious. So. Anyway, that's a long long way to get around to. I paid a mentor to teach me how to do this I read some books on how to do this. Paid a second mentor to teach me how to do it and I still had questions. So I was like, you know what i'm going to ask the best of the best in the market to do this. And some of them were easy to take the calls and some of them were a little hesitant And I thought i'll just fire up and record these calls making a podcast and I found it really easy. This is, it's the easiest sales pitch in the world to be able to be a podcast owner in my eyes. To call somebody up that's on the top of their game and say, Hey, look, I want to put you on a show.

I want to interview you and ask you all about what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish, who you serve, and pretty much make an hour long commercial for who you are and what you're up to. Would you like to join me? And we're just going to talk about you the whole time. I rarely get told no.

Sometimes I get told I'm too busy. 

[00:04:23] Marty Fahncke: Has anyone ever come back and said, Oh no, everything we do is so secret and I'd have to have you sign an NDA to be on your podcast. Like, have you had that resistance? 

[00:04:30] Ronald Skelton: No, I have some, I had some people like, yeah, sounds great. Hit me up in the summer when I'm not swamped.

There are some people that are just so busy. They just can't, they can't do it. And then I've had a few where like they schedule it and reschedule, didn't really schedule it. I had to tell him I'm not. Now the, one of them, now she's too big. She probably never come on my show. Right. She's like, she's on all the like top entrepreneur shows.

But no, I, I really do get great response. We've had 42 or 47 somewhere like that of the top authors that have written books on this subject.

We've had, uh, like top players. I haven't had the big, any of the big famous people on here yet. Like I've reached out trying to reach out to like Shaquille O'Neal. A lot of people don't know he's an acquisition entrepreneur. He's owned 400 plus businesses, right? Owns a bunch of franchises and a bunch of car washes and a bunch of pizza places and just chicken places.

And he's just a serial entrepreneur. And then like when Snoop Dogg actually bought, was it, I'm going to butcher this. The recording studio Death Row record. One of the, he bought, he bought a recording. 

[00:05:29] Marty Fahncke:Yeah. Death row. Yep. 

[00:05:30] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. I actually reached out, like to his team and sent an email and sent some stuff out there and said, Hey, we'd like to talk to you about that.

Didn't get a response. So for a while there, it was a weekly thing. I, I would do a big reach every week. I would send something to like, Gary Vaynerchuck or somebody like that and said, Hey, would you come on? And, yeah, they've got a big guy, like one of those big guys. But I've interviewed cool people.

The CEO of, you of course. And then like the CEO of EOS. It's the top authors, Walker Deibel from Buy Then Build. Top mentors in this space. I've interviewed some really cool people. 

[00:05:58] Marty Fahncke: How many interviews have you done total? 

[00:06:00] Ronald Skelton: We're a total interviews of just over 200. We have about 175 episodes that are public right now.

We do have a list of, episodes that are being edited and being released. Cause I kind of taken December timeframe off. So we've got episodes to be released all the way through January. 

And now I pre screen them. I do a, you have to be a, if you're in certain career fields where you're hyperlogical, I'll do a 15 minute pre show and, or 20 minute pre recording and say, Hey, tell me the story of your business. And if they can't tell me a story, I'm not putting them on.

And so I got into it to learn. The whole, you know, 10 minutes we just spoke about. Yeah. Why did we start the, How2Exit? I still had questions and I figured other people did too. So I was like, let's just share the answers to what, you know, what this industry is.

And I still learn stuff after a hundred and, 99 or whatever, 200, uh, interviews.And that's hours. Hour, hour and a half each time. After all that time with the top guys, I still learn like interesting things and different angles and, it's just, 

[00:06:58] Marty Fahncke: Well that's a perfect segue to my next question because I was going to ask you. So you've got hundreds of hours into this.

I know when you, when you do the interview, you learn stuff and then you go back and look at the interviews and the edit process and everything else. So you're, you're double absorbing cause we know, right, we only, we only absorb and retain what 30 percent of what we, see and hear. So you're going back a second time and studying those interviews and understanding.

And so let's talk about the acquisitions part of this. So you've talked to many of the best players in the business from every angle. I'd love to have you share with the audience who are all interested in acquisitions, the top three, most important things you've learned by interviewing 200 people in the acquisition space.

[00:07:42] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. Number one, it's so let's take this, this, let's preface this a little bit. We're talking about small to medium businesses. So what I'm talking about, and I want to preface this cause it does, the game does change when you get into the mid market. I'm going to explain a term It's if you have a cap table of less than three people, so basically if you have you and a partner or you and a couple partners and you don't have investors, this applies to you. If you're a vc backed or whatever and you start you got five or six of partners in, the game kind of changes and you have to be, it becomes more logical and number driven because there's multiple players. And the same happens at mid level. So what i'm going to refer to all these three are, you're in the small to medium buying business.

You're buying businesses at probably 15, $20 million valuation or lower. You're buying $5 million SBA businesses and stuff. Out of that, I would say number one, the absolute most important thing, and this is important all the way through, but most important on at this level is rapport. Rapport with the seller, rapport between the different parties. Meaning that your, your attorney gets along with their attorney. That you manage, everybody gets that.

And I'm talking deep rapport. so deep that you really, truly understand what the seller is trying to accomplish. You really get where they're at, what they built, why they built it, what are they going to do after they close. And you, uh, you, you actively listen and they feel heard and understood, right? You may not win all your deals because you have deep rapport, but you'll certainly lose most of your deals if you have no rapport with the seller. 

[00:09:14] Marty Fahncke: Wow. That is so powerful and so true. And so many people do it wrong. 

[00:09:23] Ronald Skelton: Most of, the new people, especially they get on there and they're like, what are you making? How long, you know, how long have you been in this? How many employees you get to get the logics done? It's so cold to do it that way and it doesn't work. It actually, those deals fail to close more often than not because the owner doesn't feel safe that you're going to take their, their baby and take care of it. 

Like, the safe, you're not the safe pair of hands. Legacy is, and, and, and employee security is more important than money for most of these guys. 

[00:09:53] Marty Fahncke: Absolutely. All right. Well, that's a great number one. 

[00:09:56] Ronald Skelton: Number two is due diligence always happens. Whether you do it, a lot of these people are like you're trained.

A lot of the training I even went through, like do a dollar down and you don't have to do diligence. Due diligence still happens. It either happens before you put your money into it and put your time and energy into it, or after you acquire it and you start learning what you got your hands on. It's going to happen.

So the best thing you can do is front load it. I like to tell people that, everything prior to due diligence is a story that they're trying to sell. Right. And due diligence tells you what you're actually buying. So that's the one thing. That the number, yeah and I've seen so many deals, like if I had just done better, you know, the horror stories that I get when people failed, is if I had just done better due diligence.

[00:10:38] Marty Fahncke: Can I, can I sidetrack that for just a minute? And to a point. Do you think Elon Musk made a massively bad move in having a no due diligence offer when he bought Twitter? 

[00:10:50] Ronald Skelton: I think he knew what he was getting into and he had done pre diligence. He had done, so he's got the money to do competitive analysis beyond anything you and I would ever think of.

He knew that it was a political mess. He knew that he could go and, technically he knew he could go in and rewrite that code with his engineers within a, within a month probably. He could probably his, him and his engineers and the tools he has, probably could rewrite twitter. What he was buying was the audience.

So I think that's a interesting question in the fact that i'm sure you got surprises. You know, all these, all the political, like a lot of his conspiracy theories turned out to be true . righth? Other than that, you're the richest man in the world and you got billions of do you know, dollars.

It wouldn't, the difference between him and you and me, is if that would've went to hell on a hand basket, it would not have ruined him. So, 

[00:11:43] Marty Fahncke: All right, well, yeah. Okay. Good point.

[00:11:45] Ronald Skelton: And then the, you ask for three, the third one is communications. It's part of due diligence. It's part of everything. It's part of rapport building, but communications is absolutely key. And when I mean that I'm talking about, the full communications. Truly listening to what they're saying, the full spectrum, watching body language, making sure your rapport, uh, communicating with all parties involved.

The attorneys are, you're doing communications management. You're managing the communication between you and the seller, between the attorney and the attorney, between the CPAs. You have to make sure that everything's in communication and in alignment and truly you're communicating to build rapport.

But I think it's important to point it out, you know, managing like communications is how you kind of manage expectations. I have a kind of fun saying I like to say is everything you have now, everything you've ever had in the past, everything you want to have in the future is in direct correlation to conversations you either had, avoided having or should have. So the difference between me, 

[00:12:45] Marty Fahncke: Wow. Say that again, cause that's deep. 

[00:12:47] Ronald Skelton: Anything that you have now, anything you want to have in the future or anything you've ever had in the past, is a direct correlation for conversations you've either had, avoided having, or should have. The difference between me, here's a good example.

The difference between me and you and somebody like, Oh, I don't know, the top of the game of buying multi billion dollar, you know, the Blackstone,group, right. Uh, buying multi billion dollars. It's who they're talking to and what they're talking about. They're talking to investment bankers and, and, in multi billion dollar firms. You and I are talking to business owners and million dollar firms, right?

Just a different conversation, but it's all in communications. Change your conversation, change your life. I kind of, you always hear the joke that you got two years in one mouth for a reason. I would say we probably should have five years in one mouth. Communications in this realm is really, truly listening.

You really, there's a, there's an art inside of listening called active listening. If you study anything, study communication, study active listening and learn how to be a really good listener and really observant human being. I actually go as far as if I have more than one person on a call with a seller, one of them's a dedicated listener.

[00:13:54] Marty Fahncke: Yeah, this is a master class in, in how to get deals done.

Amazing, Ronald. Like I, I am loving this. I'm going to take, I'm going to steal some of this content. I mean, you're creating a training course for me, for my, my acquisitions team on the communications management. It was all very true. And a dedicated listener is a fantastic idea. And going back to your number one with, with rapport, that is something that we have, have just tried our best to, to help our clients understand whether buyers or seller. That this ultimately is a relationship game.

Everybody thinks it's a numbers game. And it's really a relationship game. And it, it takes some education to get them there for sure. And so this has been some really incredible kind of proof. Proof of concept for me, because this is stuff I've been kind of preaching, but not nearly as eloquently as you. So thank you for that.

[00:14:45] Ronald Skelton: It's funny you said that. I have notes on here that said, a lot of people think that selling a business as a poker game. You got to put a bluff out there. You got to kind of have the game face on and have your poker face on. And what it truly is, is a collaboration. Right. And, the first time somebody gives you an answer, it paints a story from your business.

It's not a hundred percent true. It's nothing, there's nothing right or wrong. The seller's not a liar. He's just been trained to put his best foot forward. So you got to kind of, 

[00:15:10] Marty Fahncke: Most entrepreneurs have to be optimists and so they always give you the optimistic story, right? 

[00:15:15] Ronald Skelton: Yep. So you just got to be trained to go ask the same question from three different angles and, two or three different times and get the different answer.

I'm a big fan of, uh, using some of NLP. I want to say, I don't want to be say, say, use NLP, but you can really use NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming and in very malicious and controlling way, but you can also use it in a very discovery and beneficial way. And there's an art inside of neurolinguistic programming that basically where you just repeat the last couple of words that somebody said and be real quiet. and, it's taught in um, negotiation systems such as, Chris Voss' Never Split the Difference. 

[00:15:52] Marty Fahncke: Chris Voss, (...) textbook. Yeah. 

[00:15:55] Ronald Skelton: So if somebody says, Oh yeah, we did pretty good this year. You know, last year's stuff, this year's a little rough. And then they try to skim over it and they go to talk to something else. And when they're done, just go, this year is a little rough?

And you give that four or five seconds of awkward silence afterwards, and they'll tell you a story. Or, Yeah, we're doing pretty good. You know, we could do better. I was like, could do better? And you ask, because you want to gather that stuff because it's, it's, it's glimpses into what they think should be happening and how they're going to get there. 

But, um, like you, you ask questions and when they answer it, you ask questions about their answers. And that's the way to build it because build the rapport, get the information. I can never, I can get through a whole conversation, maybe two or three hours with a seller. I have never physically said, what's your revenue, what's your profit, but I'll learn all that stuff because I ask other questions about their business, why they built it, and they'll naturally tell me everything. I really have to come out and ask it. 

[00:16:48] Marty Fahncke: That's brilliant. I want to circle back to something you said in your third point. The third biggest thing you've learned about acquisitions by doing your podcast. And you said something about, uh, studying,active listening, which is very important in it.

And it's, it's great for what you were saying. How do you recommend they study? Is there a book you can recommend? A course? A person? What would you, I want to make a presence of value to the listener as possible. So let's give them some resources. 

[00:17:11] Ronald Skelton: I've written a few articles on it myself. I think the best way I've ever done it, so here's what stops you from active listening. 

I'm going to get kind of scientific on you, but I'm going to butcher the term. So don't, this is Ron science. There's the, the frontal cortex of your brain is the same part of the brain that you use when you're talking in your head.

It's the same part where you're supposed to be using to listen to somebody else. And what happens is, is most of the time when somebody starts speaking, you're automatically start, you're using the same part of your brain that you should be using to listen to start formulating the next question.

Elon Musk is really brilliant at that. You ever watch him and get asked, asked a question and he has five or six and they don't edit it. He has five or six seconds of silence before he answers it. He truly listened to the whole question. Now he needs time to formulate an answer. The reason most people can fire off with an answer off the bat is they've already kind of started to answer the first thing you were talking about without fully understanding what you're trying to say. And the way to avoid that and the way that I had to train myself because i'm bad about it. I learned, I was on a stage in front of a thousand people getting coached in a coaching, for a business coaching program. There were a thousand people in the room. It's a self help type of organization.

This guy's coaching you and this lady looked at me she said, there's probably this one, she's probably about three or 400 people in the room. And she said, you didn't hear a thing I said. I said, sure I did. And I repeated back what I heard, but I heard their first sentence. She said, I said so much more than that, but you stopped listening.

Once you found what you're looking for and you started formulating your response. Here's what I said. And she said, here's what I want you to do, from now on when I speak and when we're having this coaching right now, when I speak, repeat every word I say to you in your own head. She goes, that'll shut down this part of your brain where you're wanting to formulate the answer.

And that's what I do when I catch myself being distracted, is when somebody is talking to me. In my head, I'm repeating back what they're saying. Just their words. I'm just like kind of repeating it back and in parallel with what they're saying. And now I don't have a chance to formulate an answer or take my next question.

It's just about what they're talking about. But, I can't point at a single book that teaches active listening. There probably is a good one. I learned on stage in a very embarrassing way where I'm getting coached like a drill instructor and there's a thousand people looking at me going, he didn't listen to her.

I don't recommend that way. I did it for two years straight. Every quarter I'd fly to a different destination on the planet, or mostly in the United States. LA, Chicago, and that type of stuff. There would be a thousand of us in the room. And then, you know, occasionally we'd end up on stage getting coached in front of everybody.

That said, it's, it's an art of just truly understanding and hearing every word that they said. And then, take a few seconds and figure out what's most important and then, and then respond. 

[00:19:45] Marty Fahncke: That's great advice. Let's get very specific to some acquisitions, uh, some questions. And I'm going to segment the questions into, newbie versus pro. 

Okay. So let's start out with, with the newbie to begin with. So, you're talking to somebody who has never had an acquisition under their belt yet. They're just out there starting down that path. They've seen something online or they've subscribed to some course, or they've, stumbled across your podcast or whatever's happened.

Actually, what we're seeing a lot now is what we're calling corporate refugees. We're seeing people who are getting laid off from their jobs or about to get laid off from their jobs or don't want to get laid off from their jobs. And they're looking, going, I want to control my own destiny. I want to own a business and be able to control my own destiny and not let somebody else control it.

And so they're reaching out, looking for great lifestyle businesses or things like that. So, brand newbie. What would you give is the single, well, it doesn't have to be the single, but what, what advice would you give to that brand new person just starting out on an acquisitions journey to help them be more successful?

[00:20:48] Ronald Skelton: I would tell you to, you've seen these things where you see, they're doing these 90 day programs or 70 hard, hard and 90 or whatever. I would tell you to do something similar for this. Talk to, pick a number. Like I, and the next 90 days, I'm going to talk to a hundred business owners wanting to sell their business.

Don't intend on, and this is just conversations either off market or on market. You're not actually going to probably acquire the first of them, but you've got to build, there's a thickness or a skin or a reputation. I don't know what you want to call it. You need to be able to get over your own imposter syndrome and your own not knowing what you don't know.

And the best way to do it, the best way to be a cold caller is to cold call. The best way to be a real estate investor is to, to, of course, read and research, but actually jump in and do it. And the only way you're going to learn what business you want to acquire and what business you want to be in, if you don't know exactly already, and that's the problem I see with most newbies or even guys coming out of corporate. When I say, cool, what do you want to buy?

Oh, any profitable business. They don't know. And, you know, I set you in the middle of the forest and you don't know where you wanna go, you're gonna wander around. Right?If yOu don't know your destination and you're not, it's going to be real hard to get there. And the only way to fight, a lot of times, and I'm not saying it's wrong to not know where you want to be, but the only way to figure it out, it's just talk to sellers.

Research industries. Like there was a probably a good six months to eight months where I thought I was going to buy coffee roasting companies. I honestly thought I could take most coffee roasting companies and turn them into a recurring revenue model through subscription base. And I hate coffee, to be honest.

I don't, I don't drink it. I love the smell of it. I think it's a wonderful business. People that drink it are passionate about it. And that's one of the things I look for. So I was researching it. 

So one of the things I, uh, you know, we needed to have to move it out here to California to be close to some family members. And I realized I like being mobile. We, our whole system set up to be mobile. I live in a tiny home. The studio you're seeing in is a mobile studio.

I can take it anywhere in the world. And if I buy a brick and mortar permanent facilities that I'm going to be in my long term hold, I know I have to be there. Like, I don't care what anybody tells you. One of the biggest myths is I'm going to buy it, put an operator in it. Like, yeah, still make sure that you can own and operate that thing when the CEO quits.

I always ask people if the CEO quits and it takes you 18 months to do an executive for search to replace them, what's going to happen to the business? Can you run it? Is it going to be better? Is it going to be worse? Don't buy something you can't run while you're doing the executive search. I love the idea of buying something and putting somebody else in play.

That's great. But make sure when that guy retires, quits, or, gets hit by a bus that you're, you know, people think they can just hire a CEO overnight. That executive search process if you do the research, take six months, 12 months, sometimes 18 months. 

[00:23:25] Marty Fahncke: And it's expensive.

[00:23:26] Ronald Skelton: It is expensive. It's a few hundred grand sometimes. So, um, just, that's the one thing. 

[00:23:31] Marty Fahncke: That's really, really good. Let's turn our attention now to the, the expert. The pro. The people who've done multiple deals. 

They maybe think they know everything, but you've, you've had the benefit of talking to hundreds of successful, uh, M&A professionals. Learned a lot. What did, what could you tell them that, that's going to be like this bright idea, light bulb going off over their head?

[00:23:53] Ronald Skelton: If I was a, even if I was a top tier best M&A advisor in the world, the one thing I always continue to study is human psychology. You're not dealing with widgets and numbers and gears. You're taught, you're dealing with personality, psychological issue, you know, psychological aspects. Everything from issues to, personalities, to beliefs, to, uh, insecurities.

Most of these, especially in the small business space, most of these owners really tied their identity to this. And as an advisor, you probably get this sometimes. You're, you find yourself, you're, two parts, M and A advisor, strategic advisor, one part psychologist, right? One part psychological coach.

[00:24:36] Marty Fahncke: It is after the therapy session. Yes. 

[00:24:38] Ronald Skelton: It is. And a lot of people don't, they overlook that. They overlook that and think, well, I offered you a great number. It's the numbers like, yeah, but you still got to get past the insecurity and what they're going to do next. What their life looks like. I have doubts.

I say a lot of teams, like these guys have owned this business for 15, 20 years. Their entire life's wrapped up in it. And that goes for the new guys too. Understand that these, these business owners, you're buying their everything. You're buying their damn child. 

And a lot of people don't see that. They don't get that. Heck I think some of these business owners like their, I've even had some of them say it a while, you know, I like, I like my business more than I like my children. 

Especially if their children are adult and not in alignment with their beliefs anymore. So, 

[00:25:15] Marty Fahncke: Well and most people spend more time with their business than their kids too. So, I mean, just matter of fact. 

[00:25:21] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. So that, and the other thing I say is, learn to identify, especially if you're seasoned, you should be able to identify red flags super early.

A lot of even the seasoned investors I talk to, they'll work a deal, most of the way through and then realize that here's a good example. It's a good deal. 5, $10 million. You get into it, you're starting to work with it. You're the attorney, you're, you're doing this stuff. And the other attorney is a divorce attorney because that was a family friend.

That's a red flag from the start. And you should have the conversation with a guy. And I'm, I'm one of these guys. I'll have a, I'll have that bad conversation with anybody. I've never met anybody I'm afraid of. So I've actually turned attorneys like, I pulled attorney off of a call once and say, can I have a call with you one to, one to one?

Like it was a seller's attorney. And I just had a call with him. I said, look, you're absolutely hurting this guy. You have no business in this deal. Nothing about mergers and acquisitions and everything you say is a detriment to us. You're going to kill this deal. And I've, I'm already gone. It's not the right deal for me. Not because of you, but you're going to kill this deal for almost everybody that buys this. You need to advise your friend, your golf buddy, and he needs to go get an M& A attorney that actually says that, this is a, this was like, I want to say 15, $20 million business. 

Like I said, and you also need to tell him he needs to get rid of his broker because at the side of his business, he needs an investment banker. Now I would never tell you to tell him that if I'm the buyer, because an investment banker is going to put me in an auction process, and bid against other people.

But as the seller, he should know this, that there's, there's different tiers of this, right. And that's kind of on the new side, but on the senior side, just understands like human psychology is the absolute key to anything in this business. It gets a little away from it. And you're in the mid market because it has to be a little more analytical when you're having, uh, corporate investors and, institutional backers and stuff.

Now you gotta, you can actually tell somebody, check your ego. This is about money, right? And you can't tell somebody that when, it is their ego. It is their baby. It's a small business, right? 

[00:27:12] Marty Fahncke: Yeah, for sure. I want to touch on something you said about the attorneys because this is a, this is something I see.

A matter of fact, I hope I'm not going to steal your thunder because I'm going to, I'm going to share something and then I'm going to ask you a question that this might've been one of the things you shared. We'll deal with that. But I see one of the biggest mistakes I've seen people make, is hiring an attorney who's not an M&A attorney.

And I saw something really profound a while back that really outlined kind of why that's important. So in, in almost every other field of law, whether it's family law, divorce, personal injury, et cetera. An attorney's job is to win the case. And so there's a clear winner and loser when there's an outcome.

With acquisitions that, if you have an attorney with that mentality, they are going to kill your deal. I've seen so many deals killed by attorneys. A good acquisitions attorney understands that the goal is to make both parties happy. There is no winner, loser, or you've got a bad deal. And that's a different mindset, mindset for most attorneys.

And so, yeah, using your friend who's a divorce attorney or using or whatever could wipe you out completely. I'd love your thoughts on that. 

[00:28:25] Ronald Skelton: That's exactly where I was going with that. And it happens more often than not. In the small business world, especially if I'm not going to, I don't, it's kind of like, I don't give a poker device when I'm playing on the poker table, but I might pull you aside as I'm walking out of the room.

You're like, dude, you probably should leave. You're the, you're at the wrong table. Everybody at this table is pro, a pro, but you. I do the same thing when I, when I walk away from a deal, I'll actually do a big write up. I just did this recently with a young, a couple of ladies. I call them young cause they're younger than me, but, they run, run a really cool business.

It was doing a couple of million dollars a year, but man, they kind of need to do a lot of stuff. They weren't ready to sell, but they were on the market. I did a one or two page write up and I said, I sent it to the broker. I said, please send this to them. I promised you I wouldn't contact them directly, but here's the stuff they need to fix if they want to get the valuation that they want to fix.

And they, they sent me a letter back thanking me for it. I was like, and I do that the same way. And often the call is, I'll call their attorney if it's like if it's the family attorney and I just let him have it. In a polite way. I was like, look, you're not doing this person any service. if I was involved in this deal more, I might call the state bar association and tell them what you're doing.

This is an ethics violation. You have an ethical obligation to that client to tell him you're not fit to do this. The guy didn't even know what reps and warranties were. And he didn't know a lot of the terms and stuff. He could Google them and start reading them, but he just thought everything was like, Oh no, that's one sided.

That's all I need. Like this is standard stuff in a contract. All right. 

[00:29:51] Marty Fahncke: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we just talked about one of the biggest mistakes we see, people in acquisitions make. Whether sell side or buy side. And which leads to my question. So after interviewing, you know, 200 of the top experts in the space and learning everything you've learned, what are the top three biggest mistakes that you see people make in acquisitions?

[00:30:12] Ronald Skelton: Top big three, we talked about some of it. Not having rapport, would be probably be the one. They just, they try to get through it, like you know, without actually really getting to know the parties involved. Like I said, just not to over beat this topic, but that includes the attorneys having rapport with each other and stuff.

A lot of times if the attorneys start going at it, they hurt, they hurt the deal too. If the attorneys trying to up the other attorney, like you were talking about. So the rapport is definitely one of them. I think another one, maybe I'm going a little out of order, but, a lot of these deals, not getting the deal done, but after the deal, a lot of these deals, they really destroy the business or hurt their business and have to recover.

If you look at like the pattern of like what happens after you do the acquisition. The integration phase or what do you want to call it, the post acquisition, the biggest mistake most people make is making changes right away. And I'll rephrase that. If you have a e commerce business, and the software, a SaaS and you're changing code, that's one thing. 

We're changing the web design. That's one thing. Changing, you know, basic stuff. And I'm talking about fundamentally changing structures and the way you do things. Where the human beings there, you're going back to the psychological impact of humans. Humans typically hate change. For the first 60, 90, or even 180 days, you should just observe what's running and how they're doing and really get to know and build rapport with the employees. Communicate with them, find out what they, you'll have your list.

I'm going to step back. You'll have your list of things you need to change. Keep that. Then having a one on one, you know, an hour, take every, every single employee, I don't care if you have 50 of them. Takeevery employee to lunch for an hour, spend an hour with them, go, Hey, if you could fix anything at this company, who would, what would you fix?

I have my favorite four questions. I asked three of them at every single meeting. Then I asked a fourth one, everyone about every quarter or so. And it's like, what are we doing really well? What could we do better? Like what could we improve upon? And then what did we totally miss? We're doing something out there.

We're not doing something we probably should be doing. And then once a quarter, I like to say, what are we doing? We should probably totally stop. We're doing something that just doesn't make sense anymore. It's waste of our time, energy, and money. And, if you do that with the employees and you just ask every single point.

I mean, it's like what are we doing really well? And I'd even throw at the beginning, if you're getting to know who's the most valuable employees here, like a lot of times you'll find MVPs that you didn't know. 

[00:32:26] Marty Fahncke: Let me stop you there for just a second, because I would dare say that 95 percent of current business owners should be asking that question now of their business and aren't regardless of if you're a new acquirer. Like if, if, if business owners would just ask that question, regularly of their team. What would happen to their businesses? 

[00:32:51] Ronald Skelton: Even better if they have those same questions and they ask it of their team and they turn around and once in a while they pull in key customers and ask those people, their business would, they would dominate the market. There's a company that I seen that did it and I just switched my email server because they do it.

They reached out to,customers all the time and go, what are we doing well? What can we do better? And they don't ask it that way, but they, they really have their finger on the pulse what the customers need and want. And they're growing like mad because of it. I think that's a question that can be done both internal and external.

And then we'll go back to my statement. It don't change anything for 60 to 90 days. You're trying to build rapport and trust with his employees. Start changing that when you do get ready to do changes, change the ones they suggested first. It's because look for the alignments of stuff that was on your list you needed to do.

And the stuff they brought up. Have them do the ones where, it was their idea or that looks like there was their idea. First, that builds trust and it builds that muscle of change. And when you do need to change some things that are just kind of off that are yours and not theirs, they have a lot more trust in you and they can actually do it. 

You're not, there's even, there's tons of books written on it. Like you're not moving their cheese so far, right? Like who moved the cheese is one of the famous books on change. You're not moving the cheese so far because they kind of get what you're doing and trying to understand it.

[00:34:07] Marty Fahncke: All right. All right. I like that. Those are some great,great mistakes to talk about. I think we addressed some really important, important things there. All right, I'm gonna ask you a question that is maybe really tough. I don't know. Maybe it's going to be easy for you. Maybe it'll be really tough, or maybe you don't want to answer it.

It'll make you squirm because, you don't want to offend anybody, but you've done, you've released what, 175 episodes of How2Exit. You've become in that time, the number one rated Mergers and Acquisitions podcast that I just read. Congratulations on that. Do you have three episodes, yeah, I'm doing a lot of three stuff today.

Do you have three episodes that you feel everybody should listen to who's involved in acquisitions? 

[00:34:48] Ronald Skelton: That's a good one. I truly enjoy most of the people I've interviewed and I don't want to put anybody out there. I think it depends on where you're at. The three, that's that's that's a tough question.

I love that. If you're a search entrepreneur, all right, and you're in your, you're a search funder, then I I interviewed David Dodson, right? The guy who was a OG. He's a legacy, in search funds. He created the second search fund in the world. Maybe the third. He's out of Stanford. Now he teaches ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisitions for Stanford.

He's the Stanford professor. I interviewed him, right? It's funny thing is I told him, he had a PR firm that pitched me to be on my show. And, uh, I told him they missed the pitch. Like they totally buried the lead. Like they were pitching your book. And I'm a mergers and acquisitions guy. I told him no, the first time. This guy's an OG and I told him no, the first time cause they were pitching a book. And it books on, I think I have it laying around here. His books on a managerial.

It's like a manager's handbook or something. It's a brilliant book. I've listened to it on Audible and stuff. That said, I'm not an operation. Like I don't, we do some shows on like once you bought it, I bought it now, what? Like, you know, the, how do you operate it afterwards? But most of ours are about acquiring or exiting.

And, we got to talk about the history of search, searches and acquiring companies and what that started. And, uh, that was, so if you're a search funder, that would be that one. I would say my interview with Walker Deibel and Walker Deibel's book, Buy Then Build. If you're very OCD, very logical, everything has a place in order, that is the absolute system for you and book for you.

He is extremely logical, step by step, do this, didn't do that, didn't do that. If you're like me, a little bit more and you're like, you know, ready, fire, aim. You solve things on the fly. There's some other guys out there that do better. Let me think for a second. There's just so many after 190.

I enjoy all the conversations I've had with you and our shows. You're extremely brilliant in the subject. It's, it's hard to say that it's just I learned something from almost everyone.

[00:36:46] Marty Fahncke: I wasn't expecting you to put me in the top of everybody. Not necessary.

[00:36:51] Ronald Skelton: I'll be honest, I don't know if I put you in the top three, but I loved I loved our conversation stuff. And i'm trying to think of who the others would be. It's tough, right?

There's some really cool ones. There's some really memorable events, right? I had the CE-, current CEO of EOS, talking about operations. I had the current CEO of EOS on here. And part of the show he talked to me about taking, he told me a story about taking his leadership team to climb like Mount Everest or one of the top mountains.

There's those cool stories that happen. I've heard stories where like a guy bought a business, it had 20 something employees. And this guy was, I think he's out of Australia and started making changes, every single employee quit in the first week. The previous owner had, had some illness and would have let the employees just run it on their own.

And they was kind of on coast mode for the last few years. And he wanted to be in growth mode and he just made some major changes and they just all bailed. So now he owns a company and a customer list and products deliver and like every, it was an advice, like a tech advisory firm, everybody quit. That's a memorable experience. But, um, 

[00:38:51] Marty Fahncke: And you have that on an episode?

[00:38:52] Ronald Skelton: I do. The one I think that's coming out that I'm most looking forward to the world scene is, I love scrappy people. There's a, I'm gonna look at my list real quick here. His name is Bakari Akil. He's been on a few episodes of other people's stuff.

And Bakari, the reason I like him is he's scrappy as hell. He couldn't afford to go to college. He was in college. He had to drop out because he didn't have the money. And then he realized they weren't taking attendance at these classes that he wanted to be in. So he just walked into the classroom for a Cambridge's ETA program. And they did the same thing at Stanford. 

[00:38:22] Marty Fahncke: I just, I just, I just listened to him on another podcast. Oh yeah. 

[00:38:26] Ronald Skelton: Our episodes coming out with him. Like I said, we were backlogged. So he interviewed at the same time, but we were, we'll come out, I think. Cause the next, 

[00:38:34] Marty Fahncke: I can't remember what, yeah, I was just kidding because I always listened to podcasts before I appear as a guest. And I just heard his episode on somebody else's podcast.

I can't remember who it was, right. That is a cool story. And later, and later he, he went back and like spoke at Stanford 

[00:38:48] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. He speaks at Cambridge and he actually, he knows David Dodson. He actually, he flew to San Francisco. That program that David does it, that Stanford university has a two year wait list. And, uh, he snuck in there.

He knows, he basically, you can audit courses, right. And not get a grade, but he knows they don't take attendance. Like every time he's walking in and sat down in the back room, started taking notes and, learn. And now he gets to speak at him and he's done two really big deals. 20 plus million dollar deals where you made, six to seven figures on each deal.

And he's traveling the world, doing a year abroad type of thing right as we speak. But I love that scrappiness. I'm a big believer that an ant can climb a mountain, is the way I put it. And he's just an ant that climbed a mountain. He was, a kid grew up in Harlem. Not the old school like you see the violent Harlem.

Harlem is actually a nicer place than it used to be. But he grew up there, couldn't afford to go to college, and he figured out a way. He just scrapped, he scrapped his way through it, and I love that overcoming adversity. I'm a big fan of the underdog. So that one was one of my favorite ones. It's coming out, I think next week or the following week. By the time this comes out, it'll be out. 

[00:39:48] Marty Fahncke: Well, why don't we, you'll have time to, before you post this, you can put in the show notes, like some links back to some key episodes that you talked about. 

[00:39:54] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, we'll do that. Absolutely. 

[00:39:55] Marty Fahncke: People can check those out. So that's fantastic. All right. We're getting, getting down to the home stretch here.

So, at the beginning of this interview, I asked you, why did you start it and what were your goals and intentions? And I'd love to know now,you've been doing this a couple of years. You've, you've, you've had some good successes with it. Have you achieved all those goals? 

[00:40:14] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, yeah. I've learned what I needed to learn. I really, I still learn new things, but I have the skill I need to do what I'm doing. But I found that I, what I also learned is I love learning. I love, I'm insanely curious. I think you kind of have to be, to be a good podcaster. You have to be insanely curious about the world and what people are up to and how they're doing what they're doing.

So I don't know that I'll ever quit. I am going to do a lot more with what we're doing right here. I'm going to have a lot more guest hosts on. I'm glad I have more because I learned a lot more when you're interviewing somebody I like, because you're going to ask questions I never thought to ask. I came to find that I have a tendency to ask the same questions over and over again. And I get this different answers from different, or the same answer sometimes with different answers from different angles, uh, a lot of times. So it helps round my learning, but I love the aspect that you ask something I would never ask.

I like pick, I like use books. I read a lot of books. I got books laying all over my office, right? This is a heck of a book for anybody out there doing it, right? I get that on screen. It's financial intelligence. I would prefer to get a book. I haven't found a good used bookstore here. In Oklahoma I had a really good used book or i'd go through, look through all of them and i'd look through them. It's like i'm looking for ones that had a bunch of, i'm wanting a cheap book. I want this book for two dollars, instead of what? 20 something. Because it's got all kinds of highlights and underlines in it and notes and side notes.

I love a good somebody else's opinion or somebody else's, you know, what they found valuable about something. Because that's, I'm curious, why did they find that invaluable? I'll read a book, it's all highlighted up and underlined. And I go back and go, why do they highlight that? There's got to be something significant.

Why was that significant to them? Oh, I get it. That makes, that's more important than I thought it was when I read it because of X. And it makes you kind of refocus on things. And I think the same thing happens when I have guest interviews. That's my goal anyways. When I, when we edit it and I write, cause we, we edit it.

Then we, like you said, we have multiple vote modes, of, um, getting this content out. What we did last, last year we started converting everything into articles. And then this year we actually, so every, there's an article written for every single podcast. That's that way you can read it instead of listening for an hour.

And then this year we actually started reviewing for one of my other newsletters, we reviewed other podcasts. So we're writing those in depth reviews. Detailed reviews and then to honor the podcasters, we're not trying to steal their thunder. We actually embed their show at the top so you can watch it while you read the review.

And, uh, do this, we, we basically do show notes on steroids, right? 

[00:42:42] Marty Fahncke: They're fantastic. You reviewed one of my episodes I did with another podcast and it was, it was probably the best writeup I've ever seen of a podcast. I mean, you're, you and your team are just really good at that. 

[00:42:52] Ronald Skelton: We use a combination of my team, AI. We fix what the AI gives us an outline of what we should be, because it, it, it takes a transcript. It's a combined effort, but, it cut it down from taking, they used to take about eight or 10 hours to do one of those. Like we'd have to listen to an hour and it'd take a long time working, writing and re listening. And now we can get them done in a couple of hours for, per show. Because we have the AI analyze the, analyze the show notes too, and then they give us suggestions.

So it's, it's a refined. But I enjoy doing it. We do four or five a week right now. 

[00:43:21] Marty Fahncke: That's fantastic. All right, last question for you. So, I just recently released a video called You Get What You Ask For. Which is a twist on, you know, you don't get what you don't ask for, but, we can talk about that some other time, but basically it's, it's when you put out to the world, what you're looking for, the world can conspire to deliver it for you.

So I'd love for you to share, Ronald Skelton's, um, wishlist of what have you not accomplished in acquisitions, podcasting, or anything else that the audience out there may be able to bring to you? If you had your wishlist, what could, what could we do to help you? 

[00:43:59] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. I'll give you a two or three.

'Cause I have things I'm working on now that I wanna see, grow and do. And then there's things I, there's one project that I want to do a couple of. And each one is going to take a couple of years. So I'll do that one last. So what I'm working on now and I'll actually share it. So, I really want to see our newsletters grow.

So we've actually have both newsletters. I'm going to, if you're watching this or you can, if you have it on a different tab, now's the time to switch it over. I'm going to put a QR code up here. Subscribe to Deeper. Deeper is a deep dive into the How2Exit podcast. This show will be on there. And every week we cover, we released two shows per week on the show. 

So there's two hours of content every week to watch. That's a lot for most people. So every Tuesday we released the last two shows in written format, those deep dive articles. We have them on there. They're on the website, on the blog, but we actually have them in the newsletter.

And then we also do a deep dive on some subject. So like this last week was a very simple one. I did 101 ways to find, sources for off market deals. And I brainstormed that and kind of one sentence on each one, like, you know, do that, here's an off source, here's an off market deal source and here's how you, how you go about doing it.

And, but most of the time they're, what is QSVS? Like deep dives into things I learned and, uh, usually 1500, you know, to sometimes four and 5, 000 word articles. There's a bunch of them even like deep on what is rapport and how to do active listening and exercises you can do with other human, human beings and individuals on how to, how to practice active listening and that type of stuff.

There's articles. So that's deeper and then the other one is, we're currently calling The Hub by the time this comes out It'll be rebranded. It's going to be rebranded to Growth and Acquisitions newsletter because The Hub just doesn't stand for much. So when you see The Hub you're like, what's The Hub?

But when you see Growth and Acquisitions, it kind of says what we're talking about. And it's a curated newsletter of everything that's happening in the small to medium business space. And that's where you find these four to five, deep reviews on small business podcasts that we review. And I say podcast, it's anything on video or audio.

So we've hunt down, we go through 15 or 20 of them. We find the four or five best that happened that week. And then we do a deep dive or do our article right up on that. And I post those on medium and then we put them in the newsletter. So that's where that is. As far as, uh, I love that, for the podcast, if you've got somebody that's got deals done, closed deals, bought a business and failed miserably, anybody's got a hell of a story.

I want to do a lot more. We've interviewed a bunch of advisors. I love advisors. If you've got a great advisor, I'll interview them. But I'm really wanting to do a lot more, in the weeds, you've done it. You either did it and succeeded or you did it and failed and you're willing to tell your story.

The more interesting, the more crazy the story, the better. I think that'll draw some audience. So that'd be fun. And then for my mergers and acquisitions phase, we buy newsletters. We buy media, pretty much any business I can run remotely. I'm a, what you call a digital nomad kind of guy. I own a tiny house.

This is a mobile studio. We live in the Redwood forest of Northern California. So if I can pick it up and take it with me anywhere in the world, that's the kind of business I'm looking for, for the acquisitions and that's for a holding company. So, and it could be anything. I just evaluated a podcast, guesting service.

I've evaluated, you know, support like, um, I would love to acquire like a social media and content management marketing company. Where they actually take the content, turn it into short firm. Our team's not great at that and we could, we get really good, we're good if we had the right people to do that. We either JV one with one or buy one.

So those are the things around the, my media holding company. I have a, it's called Payaksu, like the, the mythical creature, uh, media holding company. So that's what we, we want to hold on long term. My passion project and something that would make a lot of money and a lot of do, do a really good service for a small to medium business is, I'm, I kind of joke and call it, I'm unicorn hunting.

The unicorn I'm looking for is business, it's a business that has 25 plus employees, maybe 25 to 75 employees, maybe a hundred employees. It's doing enough money and has enough real estate that it's valued at least 10, 000, 000 probably under 50, 000, 000. The owner wants to sell, needs to sell pretty quickly and would eventually like to see the employees own it.

So the key, key elements are is it needs to own the real estate that's underneath it. Because that's how we're going to give the, the seller, some of his money up front. It needs to be a big business doing, the, where the valuation and the profit margins make sense, and, and enough employees.

And to kind of give you the synopsis of what I'm going to do with it is, I want to acquire it. I'm going to take the real estate and do a sales lease back on it to help fund the deal, help pay the, to give the seller some money right now. Bring in a team that teaches them, teaches the employee what it means to own the employee ownership.

I think a lot of people don't understand that the employees need some training. To be an ESOP, they need to learn how to, how to, not employees are not typically operators. There's a great company out there called The Great Game of Business. They own a coaching program where they can come in and teach people what it means to, to be, employee owners.

Once that's up and running, I would sell it into an ESOP. Retain maybe 20 or 25 percent of it and move on and do the next one. So if, if, if you're a business owner out there, you need to sell, I don't, you got, you're in a divorce, you're sick, something's happening. You got to sell the thing.

And you'd really like to see long term the owners, the employees owning it. I'll put it in contract. I'll bring in the team. We'll set this up. I think it's a passion project. I think more companies. Out there that are in that range, should be employee owned. I've seen it that, um, the great game of business guys they've done, they've acquired over 60 something companies with a hell of a success rate. 

[00:49:41] Marty Fahncke: What a cool project. Wow. yeah, I, that's really cool. I'm going to keep my eyes open. If I find that business, I'm going to come straight to you, Ronald. And hopefully anybody else listening does that. So thanks for sharing those needs, wants, and desires.

And I hope that, that through this, uh, episode, lots of people listening in, the phone starts ringing with lots of, lots of opportunities. So, with that, I think it's about time to, to wrap it up. Is there anything else you want to share or final words you want to share before we close out?

[00:50:07] Ronald Skelton: Well, I want everybody to definitely understand. Let's go, let's take a step real quick and, well, how do people reach out to you? You're in the, you're an advisor in this space. I have a lot of trust in you. Let's turn the table a little bit real quick before we wrap this up. Who are you? What do you do? How do they reach you, if they want to work with you? 

[00:50:23] Marty Fahncke: Sure. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll do a shameless plug.

[00:50:25] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, we got to do it. We got, we have to have, you got, you got to plug yourself here. Better to get it plugged.

[00:50:29] Marty Fahncke: My name is Marty Fahncke. I'm a founder of Westbound Road. And Westbound Road is an M and A advisory firm.

We help buyers and sellers. We focus primarily on digital businesses. So agencies, e commerce, SaaS, publishing, et cetera, is our, is our primary clientele. Although we do venture into a home services and, and, some professional services as well. I've been doing acquisitions for over 22 years. I, I built and sold a sporting goods business when I was in my twenties and that led me down a path.

And since that time I've done, just about $500 million worth of deals. And a couple of years ago decided to help others. And so I, I actively acquire businesses. I actively sell businesses of my own and we help others do the same and I can be reached at westboundroad. com. Or on LinkedIn or just Google me.

If my name is right here on the screen, I have a very unique name. I'm the only Marty Fahncke in the entire world. And so I'm pretty darn easy to find. And the other thing I really love to say is that you can Google me and thousands of results will come up and none of them will be bad and I'm very proud of that. So thanks for letting me share that Ronald. 

[00:51:34] Ronald Skelton: And then if you're looking for me, I'm probably most active on Twitter and LinkedIn. Ronald Skelton on Twitter. I've got about 80, 000 followers there. On LinkedIn I think I'm only at like 11, 500 followers on there, but it's a LinkedIn slash in slash Ron Skelton.

Unfortunately there is a professor named Ronald Skelton and he managed to get the, the other one first. So Ron Skelton on LinkedIn. But, uh, if you Google or if you search LinkedIn for Ronald Skelton, you'll see me. I'm the only one with a bald head and a long goatee. I love to, to work with people.

If you have something out there that you think meets my criteria, or if you just have something where you want me to come in and JV with you and help you buy a business, I'd be interested in doing that. If you bring something to the table, I get a lot of the calls where the, the, they're so new, they have nothing, no skills, no money, no resources, and they

[00:52:22] Marty Fahncke: listen to the podcast.

[00:52:25] Ronald Skelton: But if you're just trying to, if you've got, if you've got what it takes to run it, you're going to be the operator and you've got the skills and the history and stuff, and you just need the help.

The other thing is I do, and I don't, I don't, I probably should put this on my LinkedIn page. I'm willing, and you'll know when I'm doing it because I cut the beard down and I actually probably grow a beard more like yours. I look a lot more professional when I'm doing this as I'll play a role occasionally in somebody else's team. Like a fractional, uh, chief development officer type of role where I'll come in and like, you're wanting to grow through acquisitions.

It'll cost you. I'm going to, I want to want a salary and I want a little bit of equity. But I'll, I'll come in and, every few years I'll, I'll go and play a role like that, on somebody else's project. And we'll go out and buy some companies together and I'll, I'll run the advisory side of it and bring in people like Marty and other to help us.

But, if you need a, uh, a fractional, I want to do it full time. But if you need a fractional, like Chief Development Officer or Chief Growth Officer or something like that, and you want to grow through acquisitions, I'd be willing to talk to them about that. 

[00:53:18] Marty Fahncke: Cool. All right. Well, with that, Ronald, we're going to wrap it up.

Thank you so much for being here. My name is Marty Fahncke. I am the guest host of the How2Exit podcast today. And I had Ronald Skelton as the guest guest. And he'll be back in his chair as the host in the future episodes. But in the meantime, it has been an absolute ball, to be able to dig into your brain and extract some really great information from, uh, that you've learned from hundreds of interviews with M and A professionals.

I hope that you found a ton of value with this episode and keep listening. 

[00:53:50] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. Well, thank you. You did a great job. We'll call that a show.