Your Business Is an Asset, Not Your Baby: Lessons from a Capital Strategist

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Tyrus Shivers. He's a partner in Legacy Wealth Capital Group. Welcome Tyrus. How are you? I'm doing great Armando. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Legacy Wealth Capital Group and how you got there? Absolutely. So, I'm going to give you the Campbell Soup version because how I got there is a long story. But at Legacy Wealth Capital Group, we primarily assist founders sub 10 million in revenues. So, from zero to about 10 million in revenue on learning how to raise capital, speak to investors, put together data rooms, and position their company to be fundable, scalable, so they can either acquire other companies as a goal or enter the public market. So, we have expertise around that. Now, I got here from a bunch of bumps in the roads that I'm sure that we'll get into, but it went from me doing real estate property management work to consulting work, fractional integrator, and COO operations work all the way through Legacy Wealth Capital Group. And I found this home because the partners that I have, they had a course and they wanted to scale their course, Capital Raising Academy. And I had experience in scaling courses to 10 $15 million in revenue, building mastermind groups and facilitating those. But when I saw the information, I told them I wanted a partnership, not just another service relationship. And they agreed because I gave them an ultimatum. We either do a partnership or I won't be involved at all. And so they agreed and we formed Legacy Wealth Capital Group. And that's how we get here today. Wow. Okay. So before we get into a lot of this because there's a lot to unpack here masterminds. So you scaled masterminds which is impressive on its own right and we can talk about that but can we first get into what is a mastermind and what's the difference **[00:02:00]** between a mastermind and just like a course or set of courses. Yeah. So if you think about a course you think about do-it-yourself. I'm going to go into this ecosystem or this um company and I'm going to consume their already recorded information. They may or may not have one-on-one calls or group calls or community based calls, but it's typically a larger setting, 100 people, 200 people. They're enrolled in this course. They're going through the material. A mastermind is more condensed. It is. If you think of Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich, he talked about one of those principles of having that mastermind. Today, I see a lot of people calling it board of directors. But it's a small core group of individuals that are likeminded that are trying to reach a goal and I would say reach it faster without all of the headaches, the bumps in the road, the mistakes, and you're leveraging that group. So, a core mastermind really should be about 20 to 50 people at most because once you scale it over than that, it does it's not a mastermind anymore, but it's usually a small group of people moving towards a similar goal and you can get that one-on-one direct help, one from the mentor or from the group or community that's inside that mastermind. Oh, is that then very tightly niche oriented or is it more that people are sort of in the same level regardless of where or what type of industry they're in? I would say they're mostly tightniched and it can be separated by industry or I've seen masterminds that they're not specific industry, but it often helps. It helps if I'm in a mastermind of other real estate investors. we're all doing real estate, but I can see the point of having those masterminds where you bring different industries because um Jay Abraham always talks about you don't **[00:04:00]** need to recreate the wheel or find something new in your industry to scale. What you should do is explore other industries and bring back what's working for them and figure out how do you apply it to your industry. So, if this is a supply chain company, what do they do well and how can I put that into a coaching company and make me scale from there? So, I've seen them both ways. Um, and it works as long as the end goal for everybody is to reach goals and maximize their abilities. Interesting. Is that a goal that is general in the terms of we all want to get to seven figures from six figures or to eight figures from seven figures or is it we all want to get to 100 employees from 50? What type of goals are we talking about? Generally, most of the time when I'm in a mastermind, I want everybody to have that north star or that very clear vision of what they want their life to be because the business side of it is only a enhancer of what your everyday life is. So, everyone should have their life goals and we talk about pillars and I borrowed these five pillars from different people but faith, fitness, finance, future, fun. So everybody should have goals in those areas that are specific to them based on their familiar relationship and how they if you have a spouse, if you have a partner, if you have kids, what is the family core goal? And now how do I take that to the mastermind to achieve a revenue goal, to achieve a personal goal, to achieve a hiring goal? But you start with where do I want to be in the next 10, 15 years? And how do I reverse engineer that? and bring that to the mastermind so we can help plan and build that out. How does one find a mastermind that it could be **[00:06:00]** relevant for them other than just seeing ads about them? We all see the ads and that's a great question. I don't think nobody ever asked me that question because we're inated with masterminds with groups and you don't know if they're quality. Mhm. The best masterminds that I have found have been come come from general networking. So you're in the rooms of the people that you're either aspiring to be at their level or you are peers and you're at their level. And from there you start to figure out, okay, here are private groups, private communities. They're not blasted on the internet. Is there anything wrong with internet masterminds? No. I've invested in a lot of them myself and been a member of them. But the ones I found that work the best are the ones that you're bellyto belly, shouldertosh shoulder. You're able to get in the room and then you join the mastermind from that. That makes a lot of sense. It's we are human after all and it's a lot of it is real networking and getting a feel for people and intuition and all that. And while it's a bit of common sense, right? Get in the right room, meet the right people, get in the right places. A lot of times people have no idea how to get into those circles because especially maybe they started from the bottom and they worked their way up. Literally worked their way up. Maybe they they became, I don't know, they were doing roofing themselves and then they grew and then they got a squad and then they built their company and then they they had more squads and they just grew and now they're they have this million-dollar roofing company, but still they're not they might not be in the right circles, if you will, to be able to meet people who might get them into proximity to a mastermind. What could **[00:08:00]** you say to someone in that position to help them perhaps find how to get into the right place? Maybe do they go to events? Do they just just start talking to peers? I know a lot of people sometimes don't talk to peers depending on the industry because they they fear they're going to steal their secrets or or whatever, which is not really the case. But what's what's your take on that? Yeah, that's what I call that scarcity mindset. I don't want someone to take what I've worked for, what I have. But an abundance mindset, there's more than enough for everybody. We're not running out of money. We just it's not a thing. But I would say for that individual as they step through, they also have to be growing themselves. So they have to go from an operator to what you just described to an owner to an investor. And so that's the point most don't think about. They read Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited and they say, "Let me go from a owner to an operator or from an operator to a owner." But they never take off the owner hat and put on an investor hat. And so, how does an investor think differently than an owner? They look at the business as an asset, as a piece of a larger portfolio. It's not my baby. It's not the thing that I'm in love with. It's an asset. It's a tool to help me reach my other goals. And so once they start thinking that way, they can have that conversation. And to your point, the more people you talk to that you share what you're doing, that you share your vision, you'll begin to attract those people who say, you know what, I heard somebody else talking about that. You know what? I think this group might work for you. You know what? I think this event. And so you when you move from operating in the day-to-day to owning to looking at it as an asset, you naturally will find and attract those spaces of other investor-minded people **[00:10:00]** or op or ownerminded people and then you will get into those rooms. But it starts with you as an individual thinking differently about the business itself. I was just listening yesterday to a little part of a podcast episode from the what are they called? The school of hard knocks. You know, the guy that goes and meets people on the street. So he was talking with another influencer, let's call it content creator that's really famous in in the UK and and his guest says, "What I like about content or the content game is that there's no competition. By me getting all your followers to follow me doesn't take them away from you. We just more people will actually consume the thing." and he was talking about what you just said, the the mindset of there's enough to go around if you really do the numbers and and the scarcity mindset has never worked that that have been proven and and you you've you've mentioned quite a few books that are all amazing and I'll ask you to give a list at the end for people but uh these these authors has have given us all this treasure trove of information of how thinking the right way can attract the right things. So as as you've just been saying, it makes a lot of sense that if you stop thinking in that way, then instead of attracting negativity or scarcity, maybe you're you're starting to attract these other people who might be interested in what you're doing and maybe even give you ideas. and then meet other people and and go that way. That **[00:12:00]** that's a great way to put it. How did you get into the mastermind game in the first place? Like because then you you started to scale them as well. So how how was your entryway to that? Yeah. So my entryway was working in government contracting. After I was medically retired from the Air Force, I went into GVC con work system administration, system integration engineering, automation work. So, I realized that while I made a lot of money, that wouldn't create generational wealth. I couldn't guarantee my kids a job. What was the thing then that would help me get that wealth? In 2014, real estate was booming. The crash in '08 had happened, wiped out a lot of people. It started to rebuild. And in 2014, that's where flipping, wholesaling, all these things came back, rentals, and people were trying to figure out how do I get in the real estate game? So, I got in the real estate game with property management. And I went to a group. It was the BWI meetup in Baltimore. And I saw the host um and he became my first mentor. He helped me build a property management company from zero to about 250 units in 18 months. So around about 1.2 million in revenue 18 months. After I did that, people wanted to know how how'd you do it so fast? How'd you build it? And that led me to the coaching and the mentoring. And from there, I started investing in I would say methodologies. You look at the entrepreneur operating system EOS with Gino Wickman and Marcy Winters. Um the integrators scaling up. Uh I started looking at these groups and I'm like I want to join these groups and learn. You you have D Sullivan uh with strategic coach and as I begin to get clients they were joining these groups **[00:14:00]** and the higher tier you go the people that you can bring with you. So I have clients that were in Tony Robbins Business Mastery Grant Cardone's 10X 360 and I got access to all of this. And so that triggered, okay, these mastermind groups, they have something. I mean, you're charging people 30 grand, 40 grand, 50 grand a year to be a part of this ecosystem. And then I went to work for directly as an employee, Dr. Eric Thomas, the motivational speaker, coaching, speaking, curriculum, speaking, um, masterminds and cohorts. He did all of that. And we created the UOOU mastermind. And that's where we were able to scale that mastermind from zero to about $10 million in revenue, 50k a year program. And that's where I really cemented myself as I can help launch, build, scale courses and masterminds because I've been around them. I've invested in them and I've helped build them. Your work with Dr. Thomas gave you the experience but also I could say the allowance to to actually say hey this is possible I can do it here's a proof right and then and then you can go do it which is outstanding and I A lot of people miss that part, especially in the the mastermind coaching area. People see money in it and they're like, "Hey, now I have this coaching program or I built this mastermind." But they were never shoulderto-shoulder with someone who was actually doing it and giving people transformations or **[00:16:00]** helping people through transformations and scaling it. So the fact that you did it later after having gone through all that speaks to like this is this is legit. That's that's why and then and I expect you you did well after that because of your experience. Absolutely. And what a lot of I would say coaches, consultants and individuals that are looking to build these programs. I came from a fundamental corporate and business background. So there was always some something underlaying that I went through that I could apply directly. No theory. This was proven methodologies, proven things that I learned. I wasn't regurgitating information that I saw on YouTube, repackaging into a course and then trying to sell other people when I have never done it. And that's why we see even during COVID around the 2020 mark, lots of online courses popped up, lots of coaches and mastermind groups. Now we're settling back down and those are disappearing. Why? Because they never had true businesses, they had content, they had influence, and they had regurgitation. But that doesn't create, to your point, transformation. Because when you really need to get a real estate deal across and you start running into these things that aren't you can't necessarily find on YouTube, what do you do? Yes. Now you're stuck. That's exactly the point. It's very easy to just regurgitate what you hear from other people. And while for for certain things it's okay if you just if you're creating content and you're doing stories and and you read something from Napoleon Hill or J Abraham and they have out outstanding advice um you you read that and then you can share it. It's fine. It's perfect because more people should listen to these. But creating a whole program based off of no really real background **[00:18:00]** can become an issue like you just said. And there's also the point of your Air Force background. Uh there there had was this conversation I had with Colonel um Joe Frankie that people don't see the behind the scenes of the army, the air force, the navy. It is like a huge enterprise with absolutely millions of areas and departments and sub areas and there's so much but and procurement and I in the air force there's there's so many things that happen here are just no way aware of everything that goes on and all the experiences that you get. Mhm. Whether you're serving, whether you're you're here in the country, whatever you're doing, it's there's so many things that go on that give you that life experience that when when you come out and you're talking business and and anything else, you have so many things to pull from for examples, but also for helping others overcome obstacles that they're seeing because they they map. Do you do you think that's accurate? That's 100% accurate. And I can even go I'll take it a step further. Most of my partners because I have ownership in six companies. Most of them are prior military, retired chiefs, Navy chiefs. My wife in our company, she is Air Force veteran. Um other Air Force veterans are in those ecosystems. One partner, he's still active duty army. Um there's a camaraderie there. There's a we have a sense of urgency. We also have a missionoriented viewpoint. So it's not about the emotions and how I feel. It's about accomplishing the mission. for me to take it a step further outside of the SOPs, the processes, the si the system, **[00:20:00]** the leadership, the reporting, all of that, the rank. I come from the intel community where my direct job and what I was doing impacted lives real time. So my sense of what's urgent and what's life and death, what's a real problem is entirely different than most business owners. They think that the fires that they have in business is life and death. No, it's not. They think that the operating under pressure that they do is life. No, it's not. And I can go into a situation and say look what I used to do it was true operating under pressure life and death life or death realtime decision making to translate that to business makes it so much easier. I can make a quick decision. I can operate under the pressure. I can see what real issues are because I have a different perspective. And so being able to translate into the business world, all of our military veterans, especially those that come out of combat, intel, military, police, any of those, you just see business from an entirely different viewpoint. And I think when we talk to founders, when we talk about being precise, when we talk about knowing your numbers, when we talk about really knowing your business end to end because in the military, you have to know your job end to end. There's nobody that's going to come rescue you. You got to know it because others are depending on you. That just translate differently in the business world. And when business owners realize that and they begin to transition to that, they perform so much better. You mentioned a little earlier about **[00:22:00]** stepping back from the business running to the business owner to the investor viewpoint. Does this align with what you've talked about with as a person running the business, a fire is like a fire in your head, right? Of course, not really. Um, as a business owner, still you get tense. You you stop thinking clearly sometimes. As an investor, it might be quite different because you see it as an asset like you were saying. So do do you think this this stepping back can also help in the mindset for people such that when something happens instead of freezing they're able to say hold on if I had these other businesses as well would I respond the same way or would I stop and do something different? Yeah great point. I think about number one an investor and a oper and an owner business owner investor going to have this thought process from dad Sullivan who not how. So not how do I fix the problem but who do I get to fix it? And investors looking at the return on investment for their money. So what issue in this asset the business is hampering or delaying my return on investment and how do I fix that thing? Pinpoint precision. A lot of times when I talk to business owners, they're trying to solve the the symptom but not the problem. They're putting out the fire but never diagnose what caused it. What's the root? An investor looks for the root, not the system because or the symptom. Because when you only pour water on the fire, but you don't fix the root cause, it will continue becoming a fire. And for investors, and I've heard this in different ways, money solves all things. So most of the time, the root **[00:24:00]** problem of the business is you don't have enough capital because if you did, you could hire the new person. You could hire someone to replace you. You can build it, bring in the software, you can deploy AI, you can do all of these things, buy more merchandise or product because you have capital. So most of the time, the root cause of all issues in business is a lack of capital. For me and from an investor mindset, you're looking deeply into something's going wrong in this business. I'm not trying to fix it. I'm gonna give information on how do we deploy something to that root problem versus the owner mind who I might get flustered. I might have to jump back in and then the operator I got to do it myself. And I'll leave one last piece on this. There's a book clockwork by Michael Mallowix and it talks about the four Ds. Doing, deciding, delegating, and designing. Operators spend all their time in doing and deciding. They're doing the work. They're deciding how the work is being done. Owners move sort of towards that op the the delegation and designing. They delegate it. They wait for it to happen. They say, "Okay, great. I delegated the whole outcome. Now I'm designing more of my business." An investor, they're going to stay in designing all the time. How do I build a ecosystem of assets that support my goal? And for businesses, they first have to identify that as a business owner and then be able to move each step and spend less time on the doing, more time on the designing. That's excellent advice. A company can for sure have this exact issue and I see it every day and it's super common. They could be masters at their craft. They could be the best service providers. Their competition **[00:26:00]** could be terrible, but their competition has capital. Unfortunately, many times by the time this the a big issue arises that needs capital, the company that doesn't have capital will will be in an off position to request capital. So, how does a business owner who needs to have cut payroll and maintain their family and keep the business running and pay for all the machinery etc. While they are doing well and producing, if they suddenly need or not suddenly, but if they need more capital to actually be able to keep growing and continue what they're doing, which they're doing great and they have clients and all that. I ask because I see it a lot. What what can they do to be in a position to be you mentioned at the very beginning fundable? Like what is fun? what makes a company fundable such that it's not hey I'm asking you for a loan but rather this is what I'm producing and this is what people are saying about it and and I just need more capital to keep it or to grow it to get over this hump. Yeah, great question and you said something and I'm glad you said it because most miss it. They think that access to capital is the same thing as raising capital and it's not. Access to capital is largely dependent on being bankable. Can I get a loan? Can I get a business line of credit? Can I get a business credit card? Or am I bootstrapping my way through this? And that's most business's idea of capital. They don't think about raising capital. We see the billion-dollar companies do it, but businesses don't translate to that to **[00:28:00]** themselves. So, as a and I sit on a lot of panels for incubators and accelerators. I judge a lot of pitch competitions. I'm in the universities and they all do the same thing. They take you through these programs. They sprinkle access to capital. They bring a banker in. But none of them have a curriculum that talks about capital raising and the ability of a business to can that they can do it themselves. The only idea they may have is venture. Mhm. And we know that venture is looking for the next billion dollar company. They're not interested in these companies that are we considering mom and pop. So to answer your question, how does a business get there? You have to be capital ready. Do you have your sales engine dialed in? Your marketing engine dialed in, your human resources dialed in? Do you know your KPIs? Do you have your SOPs? Is the business keyman dependent? Meaning it's dependent on the owner. Are you stable? Is your corporate governance documents correct? Are there attorney reviewed? Do you have your IP together? All of those things build out to make you capital ready. Very similar. So, if you take what a bank is going to ask you, have all of that documentation ready, and then just put a pitch deck together, you'll be investor ready. And you want to have an idea, like my partner says, that sizzles. How is this going to draw people believe in the business? See that you have traction? There's a lady, I can't remember her name, but she raised couple billion dollars off in an idea. No product, nothing built. They haven't hired nobody, but she had background and they've done something great before. So investors are oftent time investing in the owner. Your belief, your vision, your ability to communicate it. so clear **[00:30:00]** that it draws me and say, you know what, I'll take a flyer and give you 150K. I give you 200K. But you have to know that that's available to you and you have to build the business and position it in order to raise that capital. Does it make a difference if you're considering raising capital from bigger investors versus crowdfunding type investors? Do you need the same type of materials for both or preparation? And is there a a time where it makes sense to go to one side or the other? Great question. So, you're going to need more information to raise from the crowd. Why? Because when the jobs act was passed in 2012 by Obama and Congress, it said that you could raise capital. It brought in the regulation CF reggae. And you could raise capital, let's just say under direct CF crowdfunding up to $5 million in a year from both accredited and nonacredited investors using general solicitation, meaning I can market, I can do it on Facebook, Instagram, via email, webinars, in person. But because they're nonacredited investors, the crowd, you have to file a form C, which is all of the information about your company. Everything that I just went through has to be filed and you have to use a FINRA registered funding portal or a broker dealer. So I can't go out and just sell this on my own. They have to go through a platform and you have to have all this information. So the investor is protected. Now a regggd D506c you can raise unlimited capital but is from accredited investors only and you **[00:32:00]** file a form D which doesn't need as much information as a reg CF because these are more sophisticated investors. They know a little bit more. So depending on the instrument that you're going to use to raise the capital legally or the exemption that determines how much information that you have to give. Now crowdfunding I would say would be great for local businesses that are pushing a business that they want to bring the crowd. They want to bring their local audience. They want to bring people on board. I also see it happening widely for biotech new inventions to detect cancer sooner. That creates a lot of people that want to support that from private investors who are writing larger checks and they're accredited. It's just about your story. It's about really what am I doing and what impact is it going to make? And you don't necessarily have to tell that crowd story to them because you can talk more onetoone. But you want to just make sure that whatever that story is is clear, is concise, and that it draws individuals to you versus repels them. That's a great answer. What makes a an accredited investor accredited? So, the SEC has its rules and they I think they're actually trying to change some to add in where you can actually take a test, but it's usually if you are an accredited investor, you're making at least 200k a year in revenue, 300k if you're married, and then you can have a million dollar net worth or not including your personal residence. or if you have a financial license, series 7 license, series 65 I believe qualifies. So those are your general qualifications **[00:34:00]** for being accredited. And to get accredited, do you go to the SEC to get accredited or how how does or it just just means that you meet those requirements? you meet those requirements and typically when a broker dealer is doing that check or you as the investor or is using a platform or you're doing a manual check, you can request a letter from their CPA, a letter from an attorney, something that verifies that they meet those requirements. It's very interesting. I heard from Alex Formoszi of course he he got really famous recently um because he's sort of building in public a lot right he's doing everything he's trying to share everything he learned from the bottom up and uh and trying to break records and stuff but something that he said recently was that it's really valuable to buy a business versus other things or invest in a business. And a lot of times when we're thinking if you're not in it, right? Or especially if you've always been an employee and then you're sort of starting to think so you think, oh, I'm going to invest in real estate or I'm going to invest in stocks or stuff like that. But but we don't see that investing in a business, well, a business that's doing good has way more enterprise value. And I'll let you explain enterprise value in a bit, but it it has a lot more benefits if if all goes well. Is that is that correct? So let's divide those. There is investing in businesses. So investing in private company. So just like I said, you can raise capital as a business owner. You can be an everyday investor and invest in these businesses that are still private. oftentimes we don't get access to those businesses because if we're not banking with a JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley or any of the private investment banks, we don't get access because we don't have large enough check sizes. However, if you are **[00:36:00]** using a site like Weunderer, Star Engine, um Republic, they have all of these companies that are raising under these exemptions that are small companies. Now, you need to do your due diligence. You need to read the offering documents and statements to understand this business and understand their exit strategy. But you can take small amounts of money and invest in these companies. I also like Armando. Everybody wants to invest in Amazon and Netflix and Nvidia and your large cap stocks. People don't think about small caps and companies that maybe it's $2 a share, $5 a share, and they're a hund00 million company. That's still a great company. Because let's be honest, how far is Netflix really going to move in a given amount of time? They may go from $250 a share to 255. Well, if you can only afford to buy 10 shares, you made 50 bucks, a hundred bucks over how much time? But if you go in a small cap company and you can buy a 100 shares because they're $5 a share and that company goes to $10, you've made real money. Now, that's not to say don't invest in large cap in the stock market, but there is to say those aren't the only investments and you need to do your research. That is one way business owners can invest in these companies and make money themselves. Now, the other factor of that of what you mentioned with Harmonoszia and they're talking about buying businesses. This is the new phenomenon. This is the buy real estate now. It's buy laundromats, buy businesses. It's the Cody Sanchez, the Alex Hermoszi, the Roland Frasers of the world telling you to go out and buy a business instead of build a business. **[00:38:00]** Meaning instead of me starting from scratch, I'm going to go buy something that's already revenue generating and it's already has employees in place and I don't have to build it. And so that is entrepreneurship through acquisition. that is being a searcher or what they calling that. Some people are becoming entrepreneurs. They're going to work in businesses that are already existing as a entrepreneur, but they're asking for equity instead of just a paycheck. So, all strategies I like buying businesses because I can go get a SBA 7A loan. They'll fund up to 90% of that business. I can bring in an equity partner for 5% and then I put down 5% and hey I may get into a million-doll business with 100K with 50K much easier entry point for a revenue generating business that I don't have to operate. It will have managers in place if I buy it right. Just like real estate you got to buy it right. The deal is made when you buy it. It's a whole another world that exists that doesn't require me to go start another business, bootstrap it, and grow it from scratch. Why do you think we don't hear as much about that in the sense of well, it sounds if you have some capital a really decent way to grow your wealth? Why isn't this talked about as much as flipping houses and that sort of stuff? I say it is the influencer space. Who has the loudest microphone? Because to your point in earlier in our conversation, we both know that most people won't go out and network. They won't find the right groups. They won't get in the ecosystem. So where are they getting the information? YouTube University. They're getting it from **[00:40:00]** Instagram. and they're listening to people who are trying to sell you the cheapest way to get into business. Here's how you can get into this with no money down. I don't care what you do. You need some level of capital and and good credit. You can start doing creative financing and all that no money stuff once you get a foundation, but it's very hard as a beginner to create be able to negotiate. you got to have great negotiation skills to pull that off. We're just not listening to the right message. We're listening to those people who, to your point, they haven't done it themselves. So, only thing they can do is regurgitate what somebody else did. And so, business acquisitions, investing in small cap stocks, investing in general in the stock market is becoming bigger. Most people just jumped into real estate. They didn't really get into the market. understanding how to take your own company public. We spent all our time investing in other companies. Why not build a company myself? Take it public and get people to invest in my stock. That's what they're doing. We're just not listening to the message. And to close this off, we want the quick fix microwave version. Building business and business acquisitions, going public, these are time inensive and the long game. Warren Buffett talked about the long game. Yes, we know him for being the Oracle or Omaha in the stock market. But what is his real business? Acquisitions. He's buying businesses and then he's using that money to invest in a Coca-Cola and to have ownership there. But he started with acquisitions. If you look at Amazon acquisitions, Facebook acquisitions. You don't build a hundred million dollar plus company without buying other businesses. We've missed that. And if we just go back to the blueprint of big business, which I can **[00:42:00]** do, we could talk a whole another hour on this. Look at your JP Morgans, Andrew Carnegie, Rockefeller. What did they do? They either acquired or they out competed or they just outright took over the competition. They didn't build it by getting new customers and clients and selling more. They built it by building a ecosystem of companies to where they got paid. JP Morgan, he when he bought Andrew Carnegie out when they were building the Panama Canal, he financed the deal. They used his steel on his trains to bring it in. He got paid on every part of the deal. That's an ecosystem. Yes, I I remember a series. I don't recall who produced it, but it was like Titans or Industries something. That's my show. That is so good because you see the behind the scenes what happened between all these gentlemen and the ruthlessness of them being, well, I'm not going to let you go on my tracks. and they had to do a deal because otherwise they would get stuck with all the barrels. Like it was it was just that the first hostile takeover all that happened right in front of our eyes and it's great to see it for what it is because then a lot of people see all the SEC rules and and things. You're like why why all these rules? Well, because a lot of people have done some pretty ruthless things and so sometimes we need to create these rules to to prevent that. How does someone who is starting to do better? They're they're they're growing their company. They have some capital. they they are thinking about **[00:44:00]** becoming fundable and perhaps getting some some capital raise. What's the the first step they should take apart from what you already mentioned which is get all your information in order, right? Does it make sense today to start generating content and all that sort of stuff? getting more information about you as a brand, as an as an owner out there. Does that affect at all what what your outcome might be or is it more start knocking on doors, going to investment groups, capital groups? What what do you think is a good starting point for for someone in this position? I think today in this world, it is definitely having some level of content online. And I'm not talking about you got to be Alex or Mosy, but um there's a book, I can't even think of the book, but it talks about you have to be in four different locations with 11 different touch points and I think seven different types, something like that. People when you have a conversation with them, they're going to go look you up. They're going to go to Facebook, Instagram, see what's out there. They're going to go to YouTube, see if you have any content because they want to know more about you. They're going to go to to your website. So, yes, you need to be generating some content to tell your story, your mission, your vision, your why, and how this makes an impact on others and how big can it grow. As you have that and you're having conversations with investors, that'll start to open up the door. I think that every single business needs to think about raising capital and having that as a part of their capital stack. And let me break down what a capital stack is. There is bootstrapping, meaning you're putting your own money into the business. There is business credit, so business credit cards, lines of credits. There are business loans, and then there's capital from investors. **[00:46:00]** It's not a which one do I need, it's you need them all at different stages of your business. And if you're thinking like that, like if I knew what I knew today back in 2014, I would never have bootstrapped my first three businesses. I would just raise the capital starting from the beginning because that gives me the room to operate. I went to an investor one time, Armando, and I asked for I think 150 200k and he told me no. And I said, "Why? What could I have done better in the pitch?" He like, "No, everything was spot on." You didn't ask for enough because if I give you my 150K, you're going to come back to me in 90 days talking about you need more money because that's not enough money to build a real business. You should have asked for three years worth of capital. Go get your operating expenses. Do your projections and figure out how much do I need to actually operate this business? If I'm firing on all cylinders, doing everything I want to do, what is that number? Raise that number. So, you can focus on growing the business without going back and getting more capital. Most business owners miss that. They underestimate how much money it takes to really grow a business. I come to because I own a marketing agency as well. They come to me wanting to run paid ads. I'm like, "Okay, you need to start out with $2,500 a month, 3,000 a month minimum." They don't have that. So, I'm like, "Paid ads isn't where you need to be." And then that's the other fault of these pitch competitions. You're winning 10,000, 5,000. That's no money. The moment you get it and drop it is burnt up. Yeah, you need a large amount of capital to compete and to scale. Raise it first, then do the work. Bootstrapping, yes, you can do. It's going to take you a long time. That's **[00:48:00]** why most businesses 50% go out of business within 5 years. They don't have enough capital. They're not you're you just don't have enough to keep going and you burn out. You're always struggling to pay payroll, pay the bills, pay for marketing. You're picking and choosing. You got to have the capital first and that starts with positioning your business, positioning your model, putting your vision out there and attracting capital to you. If you have a great vision and you're putting it out there on social media, people will come to you and want to know how they can support. So valuable advice. And to clarify for those listening, I know some of you will say, "What do you mean $10,000 would change my life?" Yes, but if you're talking about a business, you have to see like Tyrus has very well explained throughout this show. If you get into those right groups, which to mean people who have run actual businesses and done well with them, you'll learn really quickly that it is very expensive to run a serious business because of payroll and taxes and insurance and a bunch of other things that come from the right and then emergencies and things like that. And while it might seem like a lot of money, if you're creating a business, you very likely are not creating a business that will generate that amount in a year or a month or even a week, right? It really you want to do something where you can sustain employees and sustain a an economy uh of sorts. So, it makes a lot of sense to to just pick that out because yes, these competitions sound great and people put a lot of effort into a lot of these, a lot of effort, which could have been maybe better spent in preparing their deck for actual investors, but we might be afraid. I would never think to go to an investor and like, hey, here's my dry cleaning company or whatever my roofing because **[00:50:00]** it sounds like, oh, they're just going to say no. They're going to decline or I don't know because you don't know the stats. We don't know the stats. We don't know how possible it is for them to actually invest in you and maybe maybe it is very possible maybe it is very likely we forget to put ourselves in their shoes they are looking to invest because for them it is profitable right it's like the whole people don't like to buy or people like to buy don't like to be sold but no no they they do like to be sold but they like to be sold what they actually need right so if you get in the investor's shoes like they want too. Yes, that's it. The mindset. We don't think like an investor. One of my partners always says, "Stop using your pocket to count an investor's pocket. You're you're you're afraid because you're thinking about you. You're not an investor. An investor is looking for somewhere to put their money every single day. They don't have a I want my money sitting in a low interestbearing checking account. They have a I'm looking for where my money can go and I can diversify my assets. They're always looking every day for an opportunity. There's just not enough opportunities that are being shared openly to get that deal done to make it just like meet up. It's it's amazing to me. I remember I went to a conference and they were congratulating this lady on winning like six different pitch competitions and I'm like why are you doing six? That lets me know it's not enough money because you're constantly doing it and people are making a business out of filling out grant applications, going to pitches. I feel, this is a personal opinion, if **[00:52:00]** you go through more than one incubator or accelerator, they're not good. They're failing you. Why do you need to be in multiple incubators and they all teach the same information, business fundamentals, you're going because you're trying to get a grant or a check at the end that's not going to fund your business. And I hear it every day, too, Armando. $10,000 changed my life. $50,000 will change my life. But when I sit down with them and I break down the math of running a real business and I say, "Did you think about this, this, this, this, this?" And really check it out, they're like, "Oh." I then tell them to read this book called The Entrepreneurial Leap that asks you, do you really want to be an entrepreneur? Because it's not your not everybody's built for it. you really need to make sure this is what you want. And then I use an example from my wife. Two years ago, three years ago, maybe my wife got maybe 50 grand in grants. We talk about all the time. That money gone. Oh yeah. Where did it go? When you and you go back and look is we spent it on marketing. We spent it on events. We spent it on exhibiting. We spit it on equipment, language equipment, cuz she owns a translation interpreter business. We need the mics and the receivers. We have all of that gone. Mhm. And it goes so fast. So, no, $10,000 isn't going to change your life. It's going to give you some breathing room to keep you from drowning for a couple of weeks. When my digital marketing agency was was at its height before I started automating a lot, I had payroll of like 30 grand a month. Just payroll. Yeah. 50,000 is not going to help me. **[00:54:00]** And that's why when you look at banks and investors and and venture and private equity, they're asking you what your burn rate is. How long can your business survive? How long if I give you this capital, will it keep you alive? Is this three months, six months? Like what? That's why it's important to know the numbers because I can then say if I get 20 grand, it's going to last me 3 months. I can reinvest it in the paid ads. I'm going to expect that I'm going to get this return 3, 4 one. If you're not getting those returns, if you're experimenting, you never ran paid ads before, you're going to spend 10, 20,000 before you know it, and it's going to feel like a waste. But it's not. It's optimization. is building over time. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier. This isn't a get-richquick thing. Business is a long-term and you got to be willing to stick it out and put money in to see the money come back. We talked about the masterminds and the coaching. Sometimes we hear that the coaches and groups of these type are like, "Oh, well, you go to one and then you go to another and then you're just spending money on coaches and you're just taking coaches." Well, yes, but you can choose the wrong coach, of course, but then you learn that you chose the wrong coach, right? You still learn something from it. So, what's your take on should people get mentors, get coaches, go to more than one mastermind? Is it worth it in the long run? So, that's a funny question. I love it because when I was in my height of running masterminds and being connected to a ET, you get connected to a lot of people. So, I would be guest coaching in other people's groups and masterminds. And I started to notice that I started seeing the same people, small ecosystem, minority owned businesses, they're running. There's so **[00:56:00]** many minority influencers out there. I'm like, I see the same people. Why are they in these different groups getting similar information? To answer your question directly, yes, you should have mentors, coaches, those I feel like you should be in three groups. You should be in a group that's above your level so they can pull you up. You should be in a group that's your peers. you're you're going through the same things and you should be in a group where you're pulling people up and you're the mastermind. You're the expert. So, I feel like you should be in these groups. You should have them. But I feel like if you're not implementing and you're just consuming. No. Like my groups, people don't like them at first, then they come to love it because I tell them, if we have an hourong call, but you don't have questions, I'm going to end the call in five minutes. I'm not going to hang out with you. I don't These are professional relationships. You're not my friend. And that cuts a little bit because people want to create that friendly environment. This is a business environment. And that sounds harsh, but I have no interest in watching you stay in the same place, stuck month after month, year after year. I've been in groups with people for years and their business never grows and they're working on the same thing they were work because they never apply. And so if you're not going to get in that group and apply and move the needle, get out of it. You don't need to be there. I also recommend going to a group with very specific questions. Get your questions answered and get off. You don't need to be in the Zoom meeting for two hours hanging out. That's what you're doing. You're hanging out. Get the information. One to two things that you can immediately apply and implement and go do that. **[00:58:00]** If you are in five different masterminds and they're not specific to your point, niche stuff. Maybe I'm in a roofers only mastermind because I'm a roofer. Well, I might need to get in a finance mastermind just to get some financial information. I might need to get in a marketing mastermind and get some information there because the roofing may not give me all of those pieces. Okay. But if you're not in different masterminds because they're helping you grow and you're just there for community, don't do it. You're wasting a lot. I've seen people waste hundreds of thousands of dollars. I knew a guy that sold something for $400,000 and the people didn't move the needle. I've known many people go through Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, and others and they're still in the same place. Well, these programs once you get beyond the initial ones are expensive. 20, 30, 40, 50K. Why are you here? And when they can't answer that question, I recommend you need to just go back to day one and really get really clear on what you're doing and then find the right group that fits. Tyrus, that's amazing advice all around. I really appreciate all your experienced and questions answered today. It's just like you said earlier, there's so much more we can get into and dive into all these topics. This is like business owner 101. There's a lot of stuff that people really need to know before they get moving and when they want to grow. So, I really appreciate your time coming on the show, sharing your experience with us. And I really like people to also see what else they can learn from you. So is there uh anywhere they can go **[01:00:00]** a website or channel or something where they can see more of what you're talking about? Yeah, legacy wealth capitalgroup.com all together legacywealthc capitalgroup.com that is everything that we have. It will link you to other programs that we have any content that you want to see on social media just look up legacywealthc capital group our YouTube channel LinkedIn everything will populate from there. Excellent. I'll put that in the show notes for the listeners. I'm sure we will all find a breath of information there. I'm I'm going to go there myself and take a peek. So, if you haven't liked and subscribed to the show, please do so so that you are aware of every new show and expert guests like Tyrus here uh for the next one. Thank you everyone. Thank you, Tyrus. And we'll see you in the next one. Have a great one. Thanks.