408 Marc Adams

408 Marc Adams

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Marc Adams is a sought after strategy mentor and the best selling author of Secrets to 10X ing Your Business and Cashing Out Tax Free. In his book, he shares exactly what business owners must focus on to multiply their company's value and secure tax free exits.

But Marc's story goes far beyond traditional business success. At the height of his career, Marc had achieved reMarcable milestones, taking a company from 140 million to a 1 billion valuation, building a 30 million revenue stream from scratch in Southeast Asia in 18 months with no budget, and turning around a loss making 15 million business to exiting for 140 million.

Many would consider these the pinnacle of success, but for Marc, his greatest triumph came from an entirely different battle. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given just six months to live. Faced with this diagnosis, it was a heartfelt commitment from his 10 year old son, Thomas, that shifted his mindset and gave him the strength to fight.

Amazingly, Marc survived, but it wasn't due to conventional treatment. In a twist of fate, doctors believe that contracting the original strain of COVID 19 actually defeated the cancer, saving his life. This astonishing story of survival redefined his perspective and approach, fueling his passion for helping business owners achieve breakthroughs that defy expectations and create generational wealth. 

And before we hop into the podcast, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. We have William, a graduate of Deep Both Mastery, and he says, I didn't have the time for Deep Both Mastery, but I made the [00:01:30] time and I'm glad I did.

What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've ever experienced. Or how about Bruce? Bruce says, before Deep Wealth Mastery, the challenge I had with most business programs, coaches, or blogs was that they were one dimensional. Through Deep Wealth Mastery, I'm part of a richer community of other successful business owners.

The idea shared forever changed the trajectory of the business and best of all, the experience was fun. And we'll round things out with Stacey. 

Stacey said, I wish I had access to the Deep Wealth Mastery before my liquidity event, as it would have been extremely helpful. Deep Wealth Mastery exceeded my expectations in terms of content and quality.

And you know what, my Deep Wealth Nation, why they're saying this is because Deep Wealth Mastery, it's the only system based on a nine figure deal. That was my deal. And as you know, I said no to a seven figure offer, and I created a system that we now call Deep Wealth Mastery that helped myself and my business partners, welcome from a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure exit.

So if you're interested in growing your profits, preparing for a future liquidity event, if that's two years away or 20 years away, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you. Please email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success, S U C C E S S, at deepwealth. com. We'll send you all the information about Deep Wealth Mastery, otherwise known as Scale for Ultimate Sale. That's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders just like you who are looking to create market disruptions.

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That's the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. It has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, you heard the official introduction. We have some talent in the house of Deep Wealth, a fellow entrepreneur, a fellow M&A advisor, an all around terrific individual. And here's my rhetorical questions, Deep Wealth Nation. Do you want to 10X your business?

Do you want to take your business to the next level? Do you even want to sell? Start on that journey now to open up the next chapter of financial freedom for you. And of course he said, yes, all that and more. So I'm going to put a plug in it. Marc, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us.

And there's always a story behind the story. So Marc, what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

[00:03:46] Marc Adams: So Jeffrey, first of all, thank you so much for having me. And I'm really excited to be here because as you say, we're fellow entrepreneurs kicking around the M&A space. And where do you start? So great intro, 10x in your business, but everybody talks about that. So let me just pre frame that. And then I'll take you to how did I get to this?

It's not just about 10x ing your business, so one of the biggest challenges that I see in the market, and I think you see the same, is that nine out of ten companies that would like to potentially sell, in the SME space, let's call that 50 million or less, for this conversation Come to market and a year and a half later, they're still there for sale.

Now, a lot of people will tell you that's because of greedy [00:04:30] brokers. And I don't think that's true. I can think that can happen when they're doing what a real estate agent would do and getting the highest, offering the highest price so that they can get the listing and then The owner has to bring the price down at some point in the future, but there's another more sinister reason why that can happen, that I see happening quite a lot, which is if you are thinking about selling your business, maybe because you want to retire, and you sit down with your CPA or someone else in your inner circle of experts, and they'll ask you the question of, well, what do you need in retirement?

Imagine that somebody's saying, I need three million, four million, five million in retirement. Then in many cases, and it varies depending on where you live, the advisor's going to say to you, well, if you need a net of five or you need a net of three, whatever it is, you're probably going to need to sell for, in this example, if you want net five, you're going to need to sell for between nine and 10, because after you've paid your taxes, in these states, that would be state and federal, and your fees.

Plus any broker commissions or any other fees that you've got, you're probably going to be on a nine million sale, landing up with about five. So there's the other piece of 10X in the value of the business is exiting it tax free or tax efficiently. And then there's a third bit to this, which is not covered in my book.

And the third bit of this is, well, imagine now that you've gotten yourself into a position where you have exited a business with five million tax free, let's say. What are you going to do with that [00:06:00] cash? Somebody's going to try and make a tax rate on it going forward. So, anywhere you live, they're going to try and tax it somehow.

And so there are lots of things that we don't cover, but there's lots of expertise available in the marketplace for this to help you take that cash that you've just earned through the sale of your business, liquidation of your business, and roll it into other investments that would be, in some cases, tax free or tax minimized or tax advantaged for sure.

So property schemes, for example, are good at this, depending on where you live, and I use the scheme to promote something legal above board, approved by the tax authorities in the country in which you live. And there may be other ones in the country in which you live. setting that as the pre frame, Jeffrey and studying a little bit of what you do I feel that probably resonates with some of the things that you see in the marketplace yourself.

I was looking at it from the point of view of private equity and coming out of, 2019 going into 2020, we hit this thing called a pandemic. Do you remember that?

[00:06:57] Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm trying to remember. It's vaguely familiar. Of course, whoever didn't crawl under the, from the rock they're under, of course, we remember that.

[00:07:04] Marc Adams: Yeah. And, pretty rough time for everybody. And so at that time, more on the private equity side, we were looking at 90 companies, 91 actually, that were good businesses, that were profitable businesses. But they all fell into that nine out of ten are more expensive than you felt that you could pay.

Not because private equity was being greedy, although a lot of private equity is a little [00:07:30] greedy, but because the price that a seller or an owner needed to achieve for that business was not reflective of the performance because of this kind of conversation that I mentioned a few minutes ago. So what private equity does is wait.

Until the price comes down, you might wait for a year or more. And typically you do because they're still on the market after that period of time. But often what you find is if it's somebody that's retiring is that they can't afford to sell it at a discounted price because they're not left enough in their retirement.

They're not left with enough to enjoy their retirement with, which is why I believe that you see a lot of business owners. Working in their companies, their 20, 30 year projects, their life's work, their pride and joy, well into their retirement years because they can't afford to sell and they've still got bills to pay.

Now, I mention that because you said, how did I get there is the piece I didn't mention is, and this came to a head for me, was around that January 2020 time, we started to go into the pandemic and everybody was in lockdown for most of that year. Unfortunately for me, in the beginning of that year, I'd been diagnosed with cancer but I couldn't do anything about it.

Through that lockdown period, because everything around the world was shut. Do you remember all those horrible images we used to see from, how many people had died in the United States, or Canada, or Australia, or Italy? And all the images of pulling those bits of string out of people's lungs, because they were all gunked up and laying in hospital beds, sometimes in hospital corridors, not a space anywhere.

So [00:09:00] we were going through all of this, and everybody was in lockdown. But then there was a glimmer of hope coming towards the end of 2020 when we opened up a little bit. And in the UK, where I was at the time, you could go out in groups of six. And me going out in a group of six then was to follow up on the diagnosis of cancer that I've been able to do nothing about through that year.

To then be told, unfortunately, that it was a little bit more, Serious than people had originally thought, and I'd got stage four cancer, and unfortunately, they'd given me just six months to live, which was the mind, put it that way, and so, at that point, you're thinking, have I done enough?

What do I do to make sure that I take care of, my personal affairs and look after my family for when I'm not going to be there. And of course, you're fighting every day, every minute of every day to survive and beat it. So, a lucky break came for me in as much as there was a private hospital in London that could take me for the kind of cancer that I had and operate and take it out. They were just unbelievable.

And if they hadn't, I wouldn't have made it. There's no doubt about that. So they took the cancer out. But sadly, for me, that wasn't the end of the story. Because while I was there I managed to contract the original variant of COVID as well, and we didn't have vaccines then. We were just starting to see them coming in.

But they weren't yet available for the key working staff, let alone the general public, but I've managed to pick it up in hospitals. So I'm recovering from the cancer operation with a pretty unpleasant bout of COVID at the time. Now, I don't say this for [00:10:30] anybody's sympathy. I say this because I'm back at home trying to get through that, and your time horizon, which you thought was six months, is 12 days, because if you cast your mind back to then, none of us really knew what COVID was going to be about.

We were all going through the journey, and you'd either get better or you wouldn't get better, and of course, there's so many horrible stories that I'll just never forget of people that I know, and people that we heard about, and everybody's got these stories, whoever you are, wherever you are in the world, so I'm not looking for sympathy.

But I tell you this because When you go from that to six days, and what I'm doing is looking at the next day of suffering with COVID and how do you get through that day, what should you expect? I'm also trying to get three decades of entrepreneurship from my head into a ten year old's head, my son Thomas.

And one of the things I was saying to him was, nine out of ten companies that go to market to be sold don't sell, the one out of ten does. And he asked me one or two questions about that, well, why don't they sell and what's different about them to the one that does? so I went through a little bit of explanation of some, that we spoke about at the top of the show, and he just immediately said to me, dad, you're working with the wrong people.

And I said, what do you mean by that? He said, you should work with the nine companies that don't sell. And I went, why? He said, because you can make them worth the money that they need. That's because he believes in his dad. God love him. If you ask him that now as a 14 year old teenager that doesn't even speak a recognizable syllable of English at the moment, he'd probably deny ever saying these things, and he wouldn't, but you've got [00:12:00] to, they get older and you lose them for a little bit and then they'll come back later one out, but it rang with me as a, well, that would be nice, but how would you do that? And of course, I was focused on getting through COVID and then seeing what would happen with cancer. But his reasoning was, I said why, dad, what's going to happen to their families if their mums and dads die of COVID and they can't sell their businesses?

Because remember, he's seeing the same news stories that you and I are seeing, but he's 10 and it rings and resonates in a really different way. And all he's concerned about is all those other families that might need. That cash, ooh, crikey, this is a bit harder than I thought. He's thinking about what happens to their families.

 And I've got to admit at that point, I'm thinking about whether I get through the next 10 days. Now, roll forward, and I, obviously, I was lucky enough to get through that difficult period. And when I went in three months later, which is eight or nine weeks is the period of time that you leave a major cancer operation in my case, and they go and check you out and see where you're at.

And in my case, it was going to be, could I get another month? Could I get another year? What was it going to be? But when I went in They said, we've got some good news and some bad news, and I went, well, why don't we start with the good news? And they said, the good news is, we can't find any of the cancer.

And I went, hang on, I've got stage four, we've got six months to go, and you're telling me there's no evidence I've got any cancer anywhere? And they went, yep. And I went, are we sure that I had it? And they, quick as a flash, went, yeah, here's the pathology report, because they not only do one before you go in for my kind of op, but they do one in theatre as well. In my case, they needn't have bothered, because they [00:13:30] were going to operate anyway, but they couldn't find it. And so my quizzical nature went, okay, so that's the good news, what's the bad news? And they went, the bad news is, we've just got no idea, why? And I said, oh you, must have some idea, and they went, no.

I said, well, what do you think? Have a guess. I'm not gonna hold you to it. To which they said, it turns out around that period of time, April 2021, that you were beginning to see medical journals popping up with stories of, a dozen or so stories of people like me that had late stage cancer, given a terminal diagnosis, no chance of surviving, then they'd contracted COVID, and now they're cured, but no one knows why.

And what they think, is that the COVID. Isn't what cures you, because I'm immediately thinking, can we bottle it and sell it as the cure for COVID and make millions? But they're going, but not the case. So what, they're saying is they think it helps to push the immune system in, into overdrive.

And actually, it turns out that the immune system is pretty damn good at doing an awful lot of things to help you stay well and help you get well, including clearing out residual cancers, if it, in some cases, not all cases. Which is what they think helped me. Now, I've got to tell you, I am not a medical expert.

I can't prove that, and I'm not going to go back and get the cancer put back in with the original strain of COVID to test it, of course, right? But I'm just grateful. But it put me in a, on the upward path, having reached that low. And then what happened over time is my son, every now and again, would [00:15:00] say, Have you done anything with these nine out of ten?

And I thought about it more, but didn't know how to save, solve the problem. When I tell you the answer's hiding in plain sight, you'll laugh at me because you're from the industry, so you'll immediately identify it with it, but what I did first was, Write a book.

And that's how the book Secrets to 10X in Your Business and Cashing Out Tax Free came into being. And when I wrote the book as a first time author, it just reflects the things that I see through three, nearly four decades of working with companies along this path. To sort of improve the valuation of them to exit those companies, not with the tax free piece in mind, I've added that, that came later, and not with the redeployment of funds for tax minimization, that came later.

It started me down the path of how would you do that? And then the answer that was hiding in plain sight was, if you didn't do what private equity did, Which is buy low, build the value, grow organically, acquire other businesses, for example, and then exit. But you, at say, five or six or seven years later, because a private equity fund, I can see you're raising your eyebrows there, and I'm, a really positive way, and I'm calling it out because we're on the audio, we're not on the video.

So other listeners can see that the esteemed Jeffrey is sort of raising his eyebrows quizzically at it, which is what I think you're doing, and I hope to God you are doing it for that reason, just a joking aside. But if you partner with the business and you bring your skills to their skills so that they can keep doing the thing that they do beautifully, which they've done for maybe [00:16:30] 20 or 30 years, but they wouldn't know how to go and buy a business as many of them don't, or they wouldn't have the confidence to think of some of the different ways in which they can organically grow a business beyond what they're currently doing in marketing, if they're doing anything, because a lot don't.

And then take that business to a point where you can 5 or 6x the valuation of it, and then get the other 4x through a tax efficient or a tax free exit. Then you change the dynamic. So what do I mean by that? Rough and tough, I use these numbers to explain it. They do vary by industry, but rough and tough, I would say that if you're a business that's doing less than a million in profit, dollars or pounds, you're arguably going to be worth times your, one times your profit.

And profit in this case means EBITDA. Some people would disagree with me and say, no, you're four or five times, but I see very few businesses selling at 5X. The EBITDA when they're doing less than a million in profit. So just go with the broad term because it's the end game that's more important. Now, if you can take a business and you can move it from less than a million in profit to say two million in profit, organically, if it's taken you seven years to get to the million in profit, or let's call it 750, 000, it could take you another five years to get to that next step.

So it shouldn't be as fast, but it's still going to be organic and it's going to be slow. So if you can combine that with an acquisition, where you are buying a company of a similar size and shape, especially in its profitability, and you take that from 750k to 1. 5 million in EBITDA, [00:18:00] and you've got 20 percent growth organically over a year or a couple of years in both, Then you're up to around 1.

82 million in EBITDA, and now your multiples change. It's not times one anymore, but it could be four, five, six, or seven. So let's put some numbers on that. So with where you started today was 1 million in value. What am I talking about? 750k in value in the example I'm giving. And you can move it to say 1. 5, let's call it 1. 82. A 5x on that could fetch you as much as 10 million in a sale. Now, it's never quite as simple as that. The market's got to be conducive to one. You've got to have a buyer that wants to buy the business and see that as value. And all of those other things that you'd have to go through anyway, but your multiples change exponentially in so many ways.

Owners don't realize that, especially if they're smaller businesses. And it seems like an impossible dream, but when you really get into it, it's not as impossible as you think. So the book was designed to help anybody follow 12 or so different steps in different chapters that they could look at. And really there's going to be maybe three or four things from the book that They could implement themselves that would really move the needle and help them. But then on the back of that, people started asking me, could I help them? So I started helping them, consulting perspective or mentoring perspective do these things practically. And now I've got a group of 10 or 12 people that I'm mentoring in a group and they're helping other companies do exactly this.

[00:19:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. So much to unpack there. And firstly, Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes. It doesn't get any easier. It's point and click. One of the links, it'll be to the book. Pick up the book, [00:19:30] Secrets to 10X ing Your Business and Cashing Out Tax Free. Now, Marc, my goodness, firstly, thank you for being vulnerable and for putting it all out there and being so open with us.

You don't always see that, and I really salute you for doing that. It takes a really strong person in my books to be vulnerable and put oneself out there. 

[00:19:46] Marc Adams: Thanks, Jeff. There was a moment through that when it was a bit tough, but I appreciate you saying that. Thank you very much.

[00:19:51] Jeffrey Feldberg: I was, I quietly listening, but my heart was with you all the way on that. I'm so tempted to go down the business rabbit hole, and we will, but before I do that, let me go back to the personal side, because offline, I was sharing with you the Deep Wealth Our tagline is Helping you extract both your business but also your personal deep wealth.

And so when you had that stage four cancer diagnosis that just came upon you and couldn't have happened at a worse time with COVID, you're isolated, you're on your own, you can't get the time and attention that you normally would be able to get. I'm just wondering as you look back at that now and thank goodness you came through that and whether it was the unintended consequence of Picking up COVID that put the immune system into overdrive, maybe it was a blessing from up above, all of the above, whatever the case may be, thankfully, you're healthy again.

Back in the day though, when you weren't sure how many days you had left, your days were numbered and there were a small number of them, how did that change you as an entrepreneur, as a person, as you looked at your life and I'm sure you looked back and you're looking forward, what was going through your mind at that time?

[00:20:54] Marc Adams: Oh, my God. There are key moments that I look back on and will never [00:21:00] forget. So one of the key moments was, every morning, my 10 year old Thomas, at 7 o'clock he would come in and open the door, because we're in isolation, he couldn't come in the room. And he would just chat and say a few words to see how I was, and then he'd do it at 11, and then at lunchtime, and then at 4, tea time, and then when he went to bed. In the first three or four days, it didn't register with me the concern on his face because also, his mum, my lovely wife, had COVID as well. Now she's younger than me and so it wasn't pleasant for her but it wasn't quite as awkward and she wasn't recovering from a major, surgery at the same time so that made it a little bit easier but no less important.

But she was still unwell and you've got a 10 year old looking at both parents and hearing all this crap on the news about how many deaths around the world are going on and in the back of his mind in a way that he couldn't really verbalize because he's 10, he's concerned about, he might be an orphan and not have either parent.

And it registered with me because on the morning of day seven I'd gone through the worst. So on the morning of day five or the evening of day five, I got a call from a friend of mine in California. And we had a quick chat and she said, Marc, you sound terrible. And I went, thanks, Angela. She said, why is that?

I said, well, I've just had major surgery and I've got COVID and I'm feeling a little bit crook. And she went, why are you talking to me? I said, well, because I thought you needed something from a business point of view, and you called me, so she went, get off the phone, I'm going to send you something. So what she sent me was, a document that apparently had come from one of the LA hospitals, from one of the senior staff nurses. That talks about how [00:22:30] you treated and what you did with patients that had COVID. Remember, we're in stage one, we're in the original variant. So number one is you don't let them lie down, you sit them up. Because when somebody lays down, turns out they have 20 percent Less lung capacity, and it also turns out, point two, that you can't drain the lungs as effectively when you're laying down, but you can do it much better when you're standing up.

And then, my oxygen sats around the time that Angela called had dropped to below 90, and then I wasn't making good decisions, but I thought I was making good decisions. And I should have been checking in with the doctors to get an ambulance crew out to me, but I thought I could manage it, that was a dumb mistake.

but it turned out okay because of what Angela sent me. So the next thing was, every half an hour or so, you've got to stand up you can't, people won't be able to see this. But if you go, And that's me sucking in a great big intake of breath and holding it for five seconds and then you breathe out really hard and you do that three times, if you can, it's not easy to do when you're feeling like that.

as I look back now, I feel a huge imposter syndrome. Because I look at it and think, why was I the lucky, I'm so grateful and appreciative that I was the lucky one, but millions of people were not.

And so the imposter syndrome is, why me? And I do think that somebody upstairs is looking out for me but why? and when you connect the dots together of having the COVID, the conversation with my son, the document that came through from Angela, the look on my son's face, getting to that three months and being completely clear, it [00:24:00] was there's a reason for this.

And it can't be because I'm the nicest person in the world, because I think before this I was a pretty selfish son of a bitch that didn't really care about anything other than my family and myself. And that's part of the imposter syndrome of why me. Then that started the book, which takes time to write.

As a first time author, I'm very much a get started, make the three mistakes and get a better position, make another three mistakes and have a better model, and don't procrastinate, because most people do. But that gave me the drive to start the book, and I'd made a promise to my son that I would look at it and try and figure out a solution.

But then the next issue was, I can't help everybody. There's only a few that I would ever meet. How am I going to get the message out? So that was the reason for the book. And then just one thing after another has helped me along the way. Last week, we secured 22. 5 billion dollars of funding from two sources to help us along the way in this direction.

That's not dedicated funding that I have the power to write the check for. It never is in private equity. It never is in venture capital. It is somebody supporting you with the cash. that believes in the direction that you're going and with the right things that fit their criteria, they're willing to back it.

And it's unbelievable to me. And biggest debt of thanks or gratitude or whatever you would call it that I have looking back is just to be grateful that I'm here, grateful that I have a second chance to Take care of my family and spend as much time as I can with them, which really changed the balance of how one works and plays, because I was a workaholic before.

And now I should do something with it, and that doing something with it is, these things line up to [00:25:30] having a strong calling to help other people, because It's pretty miserable for owners that can't sell a business that are in their 70s or 80s working in a business, especially as I know I can do something to help some of them, but not all of them.

I can't help everybody and not every business can move in the right direction to get the outcome that you want. But I've only got to help one

[00:25:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly.

Marc, again, you're being open and vulnerable as you're sharing your thoughts and what you're going through. Our health is really our first wealth.

And it's so easy to take for granted what's always been there. Until it's not. And with your journey, you're sharing, oh, I thought it was strategic. I thought it was this and that. And then there's a very humbling experience that literally brought you down to your knees, as it does with all of us.

So Deep Wealth Nation, some really powerful takeaways on the personal side of, hey, our health is our first wealth, so are the people. I mean, Marc, I would imagine, and you said as much, when you didn't know if you're going to make it. You weren't thinking of the business deals, as you're so open and vulnerable, you're thinking about your son and your family, your wife, and what was going to be and what that was going to look like or not.

That's really where it's at. And so just a reminder for us to count our blessings and to be grateful. I want to switch gears on the business front now, and again, Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes, point and click, pick up the book, Secrets to 10Xing Your Business and Cashing Out Tax Free. Terrific segments that you have, a lot of wonderful chapters, Marc.

In fact, each chapter. Could be an episode. Things like explosive growth through acquisitions, and you hinted at that earlier in our conversation [00:27:00] together, or scaling high impact face to face sales. I wanted to narrow in on one because we can't talk about them all. And I want to narrow in on your chapter nine, crafting a positive company culture.

And I'm very specifically honing in on the culture because I know here at Deep Wealth, in our nine step roadmap, step two, X Factors that can insanely increase the value of your business. One of the foundational X Factors, it's culture. Money and your competition and private equity, they can buy lots of things.

To copy us and what we're doing, money cannot buy culture. It's like a fingerprint. It's just unique. It's unique to us. It's unique to our companies. So from your perspective, for those business owners, they don't know it yet. Sadly, they're likely one of the 90 percent that aren't going to make it when they go to their liquidity event.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. They work with you. They work with us. They'll defy those odds. But for those that don't really realize yet, what would you want them to know about culture and how important culture is? 

[00:27:57] Marc Adams: Oh my god, it's critical. world is littered with companies or private equity or bigger businesses buying smaller businesses and them into the collective of the Borg, to use a Star Trek analogy and it doesn't work because If you remember that the business is a thing that's created by people and it's the people in any business that make the thing what it is, the most important asset is the people that you have in the business, whether you're product led or service led or both, your people are critical.

So [00:28:30] one of the ways, which is counter to what a lot of business owners would like to do, that I like to see how I can help them exit. So, what you're doing is slowly, because once you've identified that is the right fit for the business, it might be that they can't, in a position not to offer the most money.

There are ways in which you might be able to bring them in and stage the payments of them acquiring the business, which you might think is, no, I want all the money now, but for tax reasons, it's better to take the money over a period of time. So there's an advantage in doing that. But as you bring them into the business and you educate them and absorb them in the culture, what you're doing is transferring all the soft skills from your head and the collective heads of the people in the company into that person.

And then that person's team, because the name above the door and the way in which the company operates, those soft skills that form such a large essence of the culture, I think are probably one of the Grossly underestimated and undervalued aspects of many acquisitions that get done. And so what happens?

People leave when that happens, and then the company potentially could start to spiral. And if it starts to spiral, then, you've just wasted all the money that you spent in acquiring that business. Now, that's not always the case. Sometimes an acquisition might be made because it's going to take the competition out.

And in those scenarios, they don't really care about the culture because they're going to absorb the customers because they've taken a competitor out. That's less common because you'll identify that a lot of the [00:30:00] time when you go through the discussion about a merger or an acquisition and most business owners wouldn't sell that way.

And a lot of smaller business owners don't want to sell to big corporate exactly for that reason. Why go into a business and destroy three or four decades of someone else's brand building, their relationship building, the way they've looked after their customers, the name that they've built up in the local area.

I was in a conversation today from a different point of view with somebody local here that wants to grow their business. Now they run hair salons, it's a much smaller business than I would normally work with, but we were chatting. And they said, oh yeah, well, I'm just, going to grow organically.

I said, well, If you would consider growing by buying other companies, you'll get there a lot faster and we spoke about that and she went, oh, this is really cool. And she's running a really good business. And then she said, I could just put my name everywhere. And I went, don't do that. She said, why? I said, because you're going to buy businesses based on the footfall in that particular area.

And they've built up a brand name in that high street, in that town, and if you destroy that, you'll lose a bunch of the customers. But in your business, the most important person is the stylist, not street address of where you're operating from. That has to be right too, but the stylist. So, you've got to Buy the right business and protect that brand for as long as it's needed and slowly introduce your brand from the back to the front, which could take five years or more, but you've got to look after the stylist and all.

I could just see the light bulbs going, oh my God, you're right, because it's easier to buy business if you genuinely are going to look after the brand and the culture and the people. Then it is if you walk [00:31:30] in and say, well, I don't care about the people, I'm going to fire them and no, we're not going to keep the name above the shop, I mean, you're not going to buy it, and nobody's going to be stupid enough to say that, to be fair, but I use it as an example.

So, it's grossly underestimated, and I think it's critical, absolutely critical, and different cultures can blend, so leading on from that, a lot of people talk about systems and processes. And the importance of all of those things. And it absolutely can matter to half of your buyers, but it might not matter to the other half.

So it's perfectly feasible and possible to run a group of companies doing the same thing in a geography with different systems and processes and procedures. Don't get wedded to that change first, because you might buy a company that would like to, from a backend systems and process and procedure perspective, roll you into their stuff anyway. So you spend all that money doing that and it's going to be wasted. Why did you bother? But, and in other scenarios, you do want to have that because the lack of systems processes and procedures obviously can be detrimental to the efficient and appropriate running of the business. And so, it's a bit of a thing, but culture is critical.

And then controversially, I say on systems and processes and procedures, leave that till a bit later, especially in what we do a lot more of is. In order to get the value that a customer needs, we're going to be acquiring with them. So when I take you, Jeffrey, through the process of acquiring another business to bolt onto yours, I mean, obviously not you, but to bolt onto yours, you can ask all those questions that you're worried about in terms of the risks that you might be exposed to in buying [00:33:00] another company.

Once you've just done that and the business has been bought, it just takes a few sentences and it goes something like this. It goes, Jeff, We've just bought this business. Now, you know, in a couple of years, when we sell your business, everyone's going to ask you all the same questions and look for all the same things and guarantees and comforts that you've just been looking for.

We need to start paying attention to this. And then when you do it, if you feel that you should do it it's a much easier thing to move forward with, because don't forget, it's a cost center, not a revenue center, until the point that you want to build a business for sale. So if you can get them to do an acquisition, they're going to see the benefits of it because of the risks, and now it's easier for them to see why they should be doing it.

[00:33:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: Along the same lines of thinking, what I really appreciated, Marc, of how you structured the book, Secrets to 10Xing Your Business. You're coming at it from a potential investor or buyer. This is what I want to see in your company. This is what you should be doing. So as an example, explosive growth, and you alluded earlier why that's so important. Having a business with 1 million in profit, it's a very different game if it's at 2 million or more.

Just reflect that. And it's not fair necessarily, but we didn't invent the rules. That's how it was going to the kind of replicable sales. And you talk about that in chapter five of the face to face sales and high impact to chapter six, operations and efficiency. And, you know, in my mind, I'm saying, yeah, this makes perfect sense because as a buyer, I'm either going to walk away from the deal table.

Or penalize enterprise value if I don't see certain things. And so you're covering off in almost a checklist type format. Okay, do this. Here's why. Do [00:34:30] that. Here's why. I want to circle back though to Chapter 8. And it's so often overlooked by most business owners. In fact, here at Deep Wealth, when someone comes into the community, they're going to be going through one of our programs, the 9 Day Deep Wealth Mastery, as an example.

One of the first questions we ask is, Does the business run without you? And please, no stories, no ums or ahs, yes or no. And Marc, what's amazing to me, and again, you're going to share on base or off base, what's amazing to me, well, these business owners, and they have a built out management team, but when we speak to the management team, yeah, so and so put us in place, but we can't make any decisions.

Everything, particularly the big ones, have to run through the owner. So for Deep Wealth Nation, can you explain to them from a future buyer, investor, from your perspective? Why? Not just having a stellar management team, but a stellar management team that operates the business without the owner is so critical.

[00:35:22] Marc Adams: Yeah. Simply put, A one person singular business is very difficult to sell in most instances. Now I say most instances because people are going to go, what about Joe Rogan? And things like that, right? So those kind of newer businesses to one side, the big podcasting shows, a more traditional business is difficult to sell if it's just, it's the owner, is the face of the business.

And I see it. And also if the owner is the bottleneck through which all the decisions get made, even if there's a number two, number three, number four, it's still difficult to sell. A way that you can deal with that, is first you want to get yourself into a position where you can start to [00:36:00] retire from the day to day operating decisions and actions that get taken in the business, which means that you're going to bring in a new MD or CEO, which means you need to be at a level of profit to afford that, of course, so you've got to do things quickly.

In the right sequence, for sure, then that person is going to bring in the right people with your approval, for sure, in terms of the other key roles, so finance, operations, sales, marketing, to allow you to take the next step in retiring from the day to day operations, and then, once that's running satisfactorily, You get to resign from the board and once you've resigned from the board and you're now in a strategic advisory role, you are not going to go away from the key oversight and reviews and providing advice and guidance to the team underneath you or working in the business now in place of you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, but they're making the decisions and the reason that you're not going to walk away from that is because You haven't yet sold the business.

And it's very likely that when you do sell the business, it's not going to be money up front for 100 percent of it. It's going to be staged payments. So until you've been paid out, want to pay interest to the business. Now, in actual fact, in some of the things that I do with companies in the UK and in the US, if I'm going to get you out tax free, I need you to be taking these steps.

That I'm outlining here on the podcast. And if you don't, it's much harder for me to do for you what I'm saying that I can do for you. And [00:37:30] most of the time it's in tax free exit, but it's not always possible because it depends on the situation, the timeline, how long I've got to, you know, I need a little bit of time and you've got to be willing to do it.

But if you're not going to take those steps, then it's going to be harder to do anyway. And in fact, in the UK, if you don't take those steps, I can't do it. So, so there are a lot of incentives when you sit and explain to a leadership team, not just the emotional ego side of letting go, which can be very difficult.

You've been running a business like that for 15 or 20 years. It's not uncommon and it's not unnatural to find it very difficult to let go. But when you put money on the table to say it's going to make this kind of difference to your business and what I can put in your bank account, it does Tend to influence and change the dynamic, but it's a moving feast and one that I describe as a journey, Jeff.

Not a, it's not a snap decision all of a sudden I'm in that mode. It's a journey and it's continually reassuring and mentoring and helping with them to make sure they get to that position with key goals. So retire from the day to day operations in favor of the right leadership team that you've got in place, which should be your second line management selected because they can step up.

Retire from the board or resign from the board to allow them to be the board and run it, but you're still the principal shareholder, and that makes it easier for an investor anyway because you've already taken the big steps to getting to the point of making it more investable because you're the owner, you're not absent from the business, but you're not running it.

And if you're not willing to do those things, then it doesn't mean you can't sell the business, but it will influence what you can get for the [00:39:00] business.

[00:39:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, so much that's there. And again, Deep Wealth Nation, think about it. If you're investing in a particular stock or even in a company, Do you want something that's here today gone tomorrow? And the answer is of course not. You want something that's here today and hopefully for many years and it's thriving and prospering.

And Marc, one really key thing that jumped out for me and as we say here at Deep Wealth, when you have a management team, we're not abdicating, which is, we're just walking away and what's going to be is going to be, and hopefully they make the right decisions.

We're actually delegating, where there's going to be responsibility. There is going to be oversight, but it's not us that's in there, day in, day out, and we can really. lose those golden handcuffs. We can mentor the leadership team, go back to what we do best, whatever area that is in the business, being the chief visionary or coming up with new services or products that are going to create a market disruption, but to be there for the management team to help them and mentor them, but they're handling the day to day.

And we're really there like that bumblebee going From flower to flower, we're pollinating, we're making a difference out there, but very much we're in alignment in terms of what we're saying. Marc, let me ask you this. We can go in so many different directions. There are a lot of questions I didn't get a chance to ask.

If there was one question that I didn't ask that I could have asked, or if there's a particular topic, or even a message that you'd like to get out to the Deep Wealth Nation, what would that be?

[00:40:15] Marc Adams: Plan early, don't leave it to the last minute avoid the mistake I made. What we didn't talk about was when I was going through the health scare, I'm, by the way, if anyone's interested I'm now in the last year of remission and are considered cured and I'm unbelievably grateful, [00:40:30] but I didn't mention that in case anybody was, but she's still doing it, you had six months to live, so I'm sort of four years down the line and I'm in the last year of remission there's very little chance it was going to come back, so I'm grateful for that.

But one of the things I had to go through is. If I'd valued my business at 10 million in the situation that I was in, there was little or no chance I could liquidate it because I was still principally too close to the business. And therefore, if I could have sold it, let's, and let's say the market agreed that it was worth 10 million, I'm going to be looking at less than five.

And in the timeframe that I had six months down to 12 days, of course, you're never going to get it done in 12 days, but within six months, it could have been difficult. And people knowing the situation I was in were going to discount it even further. So let's say I would have managed to get the business sold for two and a half.

Hobson's choice, which was no choice. And then taxes and fees on top of that. I'd have left my family with about one and a half after all of that, which was not enough. And it wasn't until I was in that situation, faced with that reality, that I thought, there I am going through life thinking I'm building a decent business, and I hadn't done the things that we've just been talking about here, having the right succession management in place that could take over, and now I'm finding the very real possibility that ten becomes one, or one and a half, and you think you've done a good job and you haven't.

So don't be me. Don't make the mistakes I made. But part of the reason that I bolted on the exit tax free and then looking after that investment going [00:42:00] forward once you've got it. It's because of the situation I was in and what I had to go through. So I hope to God nobody goes through what I did, but I hope they can pick up, plan, and make sure that you've got the right things in place a little bit earlier than you thought.

Because I, look at things, Jeff, in, in three age groups and I call this grow, Go and guard. So the grow is up to 40 years old. You're not thinking of selling most of the time. Yeah, maybe you're going to take a little bit off the table and sell a bit of it because you want to pay down the mortgage and do some school fees and things like that.

But you're normally growth not thinking about selling. Between 40 and 60, or let's say 58, No reason for that, I just like the number. The closer you go from 40 to 58, the more you're pivoting from grow to grow and go, and then grow and go, and then just go. And then when you get over 60, it's about go, but not grow.

But then you get into the 60 plus, which is go and guard. So the guard piece is protecting the nest egg that you've just created through the sale. And redeploying that cash tax efficiently or with no tax at all into different things that you can do. And so when you think about those three things, you're never too young to be caught in the situation that I was.

So even saying that, very few people that are below 40 will take that on board and plan for it. But between 40 and 58, really start getting after both things, even if you're not going to be ready to sell yet, start getting after both things and don't leave it too late. And if you're in your mid 50s, you should be planning and executing on this right now, assuming that the use case we're talking about here is potential retirement, because [00:43:30] you want to make sure it's all, set up correctly and it's all quite smooth, and then you can that you need.

In order that you can retire, not the valuation the market is going to tell you that you're going to get based on how you're currently running it, and then protect that money going forward. So Don't be Marc Adams, don't be an idiot plan it and work with the people around you. And by the way, if anybody would like to grab a copy of your book, thank you for thinking of the link.

We didn't talk about that, but I'm perfectly happy to make a QR code available to you in the show notes. And if anybody, people can buy it, that would be great. I'll make 10 cents a copy. It's not a money earner for me, it's a It's get knowledge out, but if people are not comfortable to spend eight or nine bucks on a copy of the book or Audible, they can also have it for free.

They just can click on one of the links and then they can get a chapter a week. They'll get the Audible chapter as well, and they'll get a two minute summary of the chapter. So, there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to at least familiarize themselves with what they could do. And one of the things I learned, Jeff, is that 75 percent of people that buy a book stick it on the shelf and never open it.

And that's why I've done it as an email as well, because I want people to be able to at least be aware of it. And I think the last thing I can kind of say on that, it pops in, it's out of context, but Jeff Bezos and Amazon banned the book. And they banned it and they wouldn't tell me why. And they said copyright.

So I know, no copyright. Here's the chain of proof of, I think they call it proof of copyright. Well, I was going to say chain of command, but they certainly don't call it that. And then didn't relist it. And I went, you know, I'm wondering if you don't like the title, 10x ing your business and cashing [00:45:00] out tax free.

I'm wondering if that's your problem. But really guys, all I'm doing is sharing with the rest of the world what anybody wealthy has been doing for years. Like Jeff Bezos, like Marc Zuckerberg, like Donald Trump, like other people, right? Like Elon Musk. Because everybody can, but nobody knows. And so six weeks later it came back on the Marcet but they never came back and said, oh, yeah, you're right, that's the reason that we, we banned you and we're putting it back.

But then, um, because I've now got this group of people out there from a mentoring perspective, helping other people Grab yourself a copy, either a free copy or an Amazon copy there'll be three or four things that everybody can implement that will move the dial for them.

Don't over egg it. Don't try and implement everything. Just look at three or four things, do those, and then see where the next biggest lift might be. Here's another example. One of my clients outsourced 30 positions At 100 grand each, onboarded cost in house, overseas, reduced that cost to 25 grand each.

That created 2. 25 million on the bottom line, which you could take as profit, but they redeployed it into salespeople. That put 60 million on the top line. That's really quite significant. And, so you can do those kind of things and save a bit of money before you Go and, spend money on salespeople to make some money.

it's mind boggling what you can achieve if you just get a little bit of extra help in the form of a book or some of your experts to help you.

[00:46:25] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. Again, how do you master something that you've never been down that path or you've [00:46:30] never played that game before, but others have, and that's really where you want to be. And Deep Wealth Nation, think about this, because Marc, just before we go into wrap up mode, one of the things that you've mentioned that really resonates so much here with us at Deep Wealth, if we don't prepare, if we just show up, okay, world, here I am, let's go deep.

to the market. Let's have that liquidity event. Let's have that exit. We've got to play by their rules. And oftentimes their rules are, well, Jeffrey, your competition, very similar to you, not exactly the same, but close enough. They went for X multiple, so you're going to be X multiple. But to your point, Marc, when we can prepare, when we take the time, again, going back to our step two, X Factors, when we know what makes us unique, we can say, hey, not so fast.

Here's why we're in a category of our own. Here's why you're going to pay a premium for our company. Forget what you paid for the competition or others in the industry, we're nothing like them. That's where we get to write the rules and becomes really interesting in terms of what we can do. But that's not going to happen just showing up.

That's going to take preparation. It's going to take time and investing of our time doing the right things at the right time to make that happen. So love what you're saying. But all that said, Marc, my goodness, here we go. It's wrap up time. It's a tradition here on the podcast. I have the privilege and honor of asking each guest the same question.

It's a really fun question. Let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time. So Marc, the fun part now is tomorrow morning, you look outside your window and not only do you see the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open.

It's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. And you're now going to go to [00:48:00] any point in your life. Marc, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be. What are you telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom or life lessons or, hey, Marc, do this, but don't do that? What would that sound like?

Wow,

[00:48:13] Marc Adams: I'd go back to my 20 year old self. And and start working a lot sooner, helping other companies get on this journey that we're talking about because you definitely grow your business and profitability and personal wealth by more quickly by acquiring other businesses than you do by growing them. And so for my skillset that I now know as my older self, I'd go back to my younger self because I'm still an investor.

I still look at companies from the point of view of wanting to buy them, but nine out of 10 of them are not quite ready to be bought. So I'll put them into this window where they can be, and now I've got other investors around me that would want to buy them. So we do very well out of that middle piece.

I'd go back to my 20 year old self and start doing it 40 years earlier, and I'm doing it with my kids. So, my two elder kids have already started dropshipping businesses, and that, relatively at their level, they're doing really well, and they're already going down the path that they want to own and run their own businesses, and then grow through acquisition rather than go and work for other people, my youngest son, Tommy, he's absolutely chomping at the bit to do the same, and at the moment, I'm keeping him in school, but we're just getting to an age where he's going to start a side hustle, and I'm so pleased for him, but if I could take that that.

That back to me, to that point when I was 20, that's where I would go because I would avoid so many of the mistakes that I've made over that four decades since.

[00:49:26] Jeffrey Feldberg: such terrific advice. So, really, what I'm hearing you say is, hey, find out what you're really good at. In [00:49:30] your case, it's being able to work with these different companies. You're taking it from an investor's point of view and you're figuring out, okay, you can actually grow by acquisition, help you get to your goal a little bit quicker, find your superpower.

Take it out to the world as soon as you can. What great advice that is, as opposed to, we're socially programmed, well, do what other people say. Follow their dream, not necessarily our dream. Really love what's there. And Deep Wealth Nation, again, this is all going to be in the show notes, and Marc, thank you so much for sharing that.

And Marc, before we wrap things up, if somebody has a question for you, they want to speak with you, they want you to help coach them or come into their company, where would be the best place online for someone to find you?

[00:50:07] Marc Adams: They could go online, but it's all in the QR code, it's a link tree. they can WhatsApp me, they can email me, they can get a free copy of the book, they can buy the book they can go to the website. They can see all sorts of other case histories of things that we've done with other companies to give them ideas.

So, just in that one QR code, which they can use their camera to take a picture of like you can any QR code, they'll get straight to me and be able to message me immediately.

[00:50:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: Doesn't get any better than that. Deep Wealth Nation, it's all there in the show notes. It's a point and click. So go to the show notes. You'll have that link tree. You can check out everything that's there. Also pick up the book, Secrets to 10X ing Your Business. And cashing out tax free. We didn't get a lot to really talk about the whole tax free strategies, but it's all in there for you, Deep Wealth Nation.

And that said, Marc, it's official. Congratulations. This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

[00:50:57] Marc Adams: And you, thank you so much for having me. It's [00:51:00] been absolutely fabulous, I've really enjoyed talking to you. 

[00:51:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so much. 

God bless.