Buying Businesses Instead of Property: A Different Way to Build Wealth with Akhtar Khan

When we think about building wealth, most people immediately think about property.

But what if there was another way to create serious income without tenants, refurbishments, or managing building work?

In this week’s episode, I sit down with Akhtar Khan, a business psychologist and acquisitions expert with over 30 years of experience buying businesses. And honestly, this conversation opened my eyes to a completely different way of thinking about investing.

Akhtar shares how buying businesses can be one of the most powerful ways to build income and diversify your portfolio. Instead of focusing only on property deals, he explains how you can acquire profitable businesses using creative deal structures and smart strategy.

We talk about how someone could make £15,000 from a single deal without ever managing a tenant, builder, or refurbishment project.

And the most interesting part? Many of the strategies overlap with the skills many of us already use in property.

This episode is all about opening your mind to new opportunities, especially for women who want to step into bigger investor roles and start thinking beyond traditional property strategies.

If you have ever wondered what else is possible when it comes to building wealth, this conversation will definitely get you thinking.

Interested in learning more?

If this episode has sparked your curiosity, we are hosting a live webinar on Wednesday 18th March where we will show you how you can get involved in buying businesses and start exploring this strategy for yourself.

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Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. How's everyone doing today? I hope you're great. We are now midweek through March and how is everybody doing? I say midweek, not midweek, midmonth through March. So how's everybody doing? I hope everyone is doing great. All of you are sending me your DMs at the moment about these really exciting projects that you're working on. So keep sending them to me, keep letting me know and... Today, we are actually going to do something a little bit different today, which again, I have never actually done on this podcast before. Now you're going to see from the title that you have heard this gentleman speak before, but today we are actually going to do something different because I've said often actually that whenever I've had conversations with this particular person, you can almost have two different types of conversations, but the conversations can interlink at the same time. And it's something that I'm absolutely fascinated with at the moment. which is this notion about buying businesses. So buying businesses and diversifying and investing. And I feel like as women and men, but as women, it's really this notion of how can we actually invest in ourselves? How can we have financial literacy? How can we understand the possibilities and not create our own blocks by thinking to ourselves that we can't actually achieve it when we can, we can achieve so much more. It's just about having the right people in your corner and the right tools in your toolbox to actually get there today. So today's episode is going to be all about value, all about overcoming your limiting beliefs, believing in yourself and showing you how you too can potentially buy businesses today with the right people in your corner. So you know who I'm about to introduce. You know, I think the world of him. So without further ado, I'd love to introduce actor can. Hey actor. Hey, Athena, this is really cool. I'm really excited about this particular podcast we're to be doing because this is something I'm actively doing right now. It's something I've done actively in the past and this gets to show people another side of me. So I'm really excited. Yeah, you are multifaceted. There are lots, lots of different sides to you. And I think that what's brilliant about today is literally just before we came on the podcast, I said to you, let's do about buying businesses and you straight away said to me, I've just come off of a call, literally closing on a business deal. And I was like, great, of course. So I think, I think today is all about just, you know, I remember the day that you said to me about Look, and you're going to explain obviously about your background about property and business. But when I was listening to you speak, I was thinking, maybe I could buy businesses and you were like, you 100 % could buy businesses. And I'd never even considered that as even a possibility for me because I thought it was really complicated and I thought it was really confusing. And if I'm honest with you, I thought it was only for like the guys in the suits that kind of played golf and, you know, lived in Mayfair and all of that. And you really helped me get over my own belief in that and what I really want to, I want to share. with everyone listening to this today. yeah, so as always there'll be people that know about you, you you're sort of in, you are literally one of, you're the divine masculine for the girls in the property essentially, so lots of girls know about you. But I think they don't know this side to you, like this buying businesses side. So why don't you take the time to first of all introduce yourself from the property business element for both people that have never heard of you or met you before. but also the girls who know one side of the subconscious work, but not this side of you. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give everyone a rundown of my experience and my background in business. So I've had 30 years experience in business and I initially started out in property. So many people would know I was quite a prolific property investor. The reason, and I'll share the property stuff and the mindset stuff. So part of my journey was when I was an 18 year old kid, I moved out of home and I moved into an apartment and I remember it was a big deal for me to move out. It me ages to get my deposit and rent together and I thought it was a big feat. I remember the agent calling me up one day saying the landlord's going to come around and pick up his mail. I was like, okay, fine. So there was a knock on the door one evening and opened the door and there was this young kid there. So I remember I was 18. I used to dress in like a baseball. I used to look like a road man when I was 18, right? So I had a baseball cap on, hoodie and all the rest of it. And this young guy looked the same as me. Turned up, he had a baseball cap on and he said, hey, I've come to pick up the mail. I said, oh, you must be the landlord's son. He said, no, I'm Andrew. I'm your landlord. I remember thinking, how the hell is this guy my landlord? So it turns out he was two years old and he was about 20. He received some inheritance money, borrowed some money from his dad, went to auction and bought a property for cash, refinanced and got all his money back out. So the flat was like 20 grand. This is 1993. This was the back end of the last recession. So I was like, wow, you can do that. So he went and rinsed and repeated the process five times. There was no buy to let mortgages back then. And I was like, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna become a property investor. But it took me 10 years to do my first deal. The reason for that was because I had such the wrong mindset. I grew up in a very toxic uh dynamic. had lot of unresolved trauma. I didn't have the right belief system and mindset. So I went around in circles. It was only when I started to learn about psychology and peak performance business psychology that I could see where my blocks were. So that's how I kind of transitioned into property and actually got some traction. So what I do today is I help people to execute. This is where the psychology, the mindset, the subconscious work comes in. But going back to property. Fast forward to today, I've done about 240 deals. I used to own a couple of estate agencies and I got to the point, I used to mentor as well. used to run property masterminds, I used to speak up and down the country. It was great until I got fed up of it. And I remember coming to, there was a point in my life where my ex-wife used to say that property was the other woman in our relationship and she was right because I was just fanatical about property. I think I got to a point where I was very tired around 2019. You know, I'd done so many refurbished, juggled many projects. At one point I was buying and refurbishing five houses. So there's a lot to juggle, a lot of stress. I had a young family. I was going up and down the country, like speaking. Everything was maxed out. I was flat out from like morning to night, 18 hour days. I just got burnt out and I got fed up with property. And an old mentor of mine, who was one of my property mentors, said to me, I to start buying businesses. And I was like, dude, I've got too much going on right now. I'm maxed out with what I'm doing. How do I manage businesses on top of everything else? He said, that's easy to get people to run the businesses. And I thought about it I thought, okay, maybe this is something I could do. But at that time, I didn't really understand having other people run your business and how easy it was. So we got to 2019 and I was just sick of property at that point. I was like, okay, let me look into buying businesses. So I decided to start buying businesses. And one the things I learned very quickly was it's not as complicated as people think. If you've been in property and you've learned some of the strategies, the creative strategies, lease options, vendor finance, ah you know, deferred considerations, you know, all that sort of stuff in exchange with delayed completions. All of those skills can be mapped across into buying businesses. The only difference is we need to understand the structure of what's a good business and what is a bad business and how to protect ourselves. So that was where was in 2019. It took me a couple of years to get started, but I then built a group of companies. uh I started off with one scaffolding company in Southwest London. I thought, well, you know, property, scaffolding, how hard can it be? It's kind of property related. And it was very easy for us to structure the deal. So back then, financing was not as easy as it is today. Today, we have a golden opportunity with financing. I'll talk about that in bit more depth as we go forward. But the first thing I did was a small scaffolding company. It was 300 grand. It was making 108 grand a year uh profit. And initially, the owner was like, look, we need all the cash up front. We're like, can't get financing on it. Here's how we're going to have to do the deal. We'll put down a deposit. and will pay you off in installments over a three year period. He agreed. Now the key thing with buying business is you want to buy good businesses, not distressed businesses from people who are retiring because they become motivated sellers. So we completed on that acquisition. It took a long time for the first deal to go through. uh The seller insisted on using his solicitor who wasn't experienced in mergers and acquisitions, which is the fancy name for buying businesses. When we got the deal done and got it over the line, we only actually put down 18 grand deposit. And the first month, who made 15 grand, literally 15 grand profit landing. And I was like, oh my gosh. And I reflected, was like, I had the pain of dealing with contractors, doing refurb, you know, sometimes like on site things wouldn't get done. I'd literally go there, take my suit off and start shoving stuff in the skip to get things done. There's all that pressure. And I was like, how is this so easy? How is this so easy? So that was the first deal that we did. So fast forward, you beyond that, we got to a group. acquiring 13 companies in about 19 months. We went from that one company to another company and the whole group turned over 30 million. And was a beautiful thing to do. Did it quite quickly. But I exited that a couple of years, about two and a half years ago, because me and my business partners in that day weren't aligned. So I thought, okay, I'm going to go into a bit of a semi-retirement, which as you know, I spend a lot of time in Marbella. But in between, like one of the things that I do outside of property, outside of the subconscious work and all the kind of mindset work is I consult. So what do I consult with? I help people to buy businesses. I've run a business mastermind before. I help business owners to either get into business, grow and scale. And as you know, cause we've done this work together, we've done this work in the accelerator. There's three things that you need to succeed in life. Okay, the first thing is you need to understand what the strategy is. How'd you go from point A to point B, whether it's a property strategy or a business strategy. The second thing I think this is the most important thing is you need the right psychology. so you can execute and overcome the human blocks that we have, the internal resistance, and then it's down to skill set. So as long as we've got those components together, and this is what stitches me together with property, business, mindset, and bit of spirituality, it's how do we get all those three components together so people can start buying business. So as you said earlier on, I literally came off, I didn't know we were going to be about businesses today, I literally 15 minutes before our call just came off a call of a business owner, they're trying to retire, it's an award-winning painting and decorating company. And they're doing very well figures wise, you know, and they're ready to retire, they're ready to go. And we looked at the numbers, we looked at them, we're like, great, this works and let's put an offering. Now here's the beauty of doing these business deals. I'll just talk about how you do them and what you're looking for. And I'll then talk about how you structure deals. So pretty much anyone can buy a business. And I think you have to decide what you want to do in the business. Do you want to be an owner operator where you go into the business and you run it yourself? which you perfectly can do. If it's within your skillset and something you understand, that's one thing you can do. Or you can be like me, where you can be a business investor, which is, don't want to run the business. I want to be the person that works on the business rather than in the business. So instead of being the musician, I'm the conductor of the orchestra. This fits with my personality because I like to be strategic. I like to see the action plan. I like to execute. I don't like to do the data running stuff. So you can either be an owner operator or you can be a business investor. or the other thing I do is called consulting for equity. What does it mean? If you've got a skillset where you can help a business, you can go in and say, right, I'll help you with this particular business because you've got this problem. I can solve that instead of buying the entire business. might take 20 % and a consultancy fee. So what happens is I have a consultancy fee for my time and working and I take the share of the profits and the share of the dividends without the full responsibility of buying the business. So this is how I operate. I'm not an owner operator. I'm a business investor or I'll consult for equity. So that's how you work. So the first thing you've got to decide is what do you want to do in the business? Yeah. Where is your skillset? Many people will be listening to this podcast thinking, Hey, I've been in property. I don't know about businesses. You've got lots of transferable skills. Some of some people may have had corporate careers, transferable skills. There's always going to be something that you can bring in. That's a transferable skill. And a lot of things are common sense. The kind of businesses that we go for are long established businesses. nothing rocket science, know, pharmaceuticals, brain surgery, keep all that complicated stuff out of the way. You want simple, boring businesses that have been established and they've got good profits. That way you've got an established business that's working, working well. It's making money from day one. Cause what we're doing is we're buying profits. Once you've got that and you've got a retiring owner, they want to get out because they've been in the business for 20, the guy I just spoke to earlier on, he's been in his business for 28 years. Okay. He's in his 50s, 56, and he now wants to retire and get out and he wants to do what I do, live life, wants to travel, he's into skiing. He wants to have his time now. And I shared a personal story with him. Like my father, you know, he passed away at 67. You know, he retired at 65, got to 67 and thought, what's he going to do with his retirement? He went back to his home country, sadly only lasted six months and he passed away. So this idea of deferring your life to your 65, I think is bullshit. You don't know if you're going to have health. You don't know if you're going to be well enough. And one of my passions is sailing. see lots of old sailors. They can't sail because they physically haven't got the strength. So I believe you should live life now. And this is another conversation, another story. It's what we're talking about tomorrow night. But if you live your life now, then you can use businesses to fund your lifestyle. And that's what I do. It's about building a lifestyle. It's about building legacy. So you see, you get a lot of these business owners. They want to go live their life. They're now in a place where They realize their golden years are coming up. They haven't got a huge amount of time. Health isn't guaranteed. They want to leave the business. So the business that may have served them for 20 or 30 years now becomes a bit of a prison and a restriction. So they want to leave. The thing that happens is there are more businesses for sale than what there are buyers. Okay. And so there's plenty of good businesses out there. Up until recently, funding has been difficult. So if you're looking for a good business from someone who's retired, it's profitable. You want to motivate the seller, not a distressed business. So coming back to what we're saying, the first part is decide where you want to be business owner, business investor, or do you want to consult for equity? That's the first thing. The second thing is what industry and sector do you choose? You choose something that isn't rocket science, something you're familiar with and something you can understand. Now I've had scaffolding businesses and the roofing businesses, the three businesses that we're acquiring right now, painting and decorating. It's not really rocket science. One of the businesses is a very high end gift shop. They sell high end gifts to like Harrods, Fortnum and Mason, know, things that go in hampers and stuff like that, incredibly profitable. That's been going for 30 years. Another business is an online translation service, which is B2B. Again, highly profitable, least amount of staff, not complicated, long standing businesses. I look at these businesses and go, I'm buying profit. Does it work? Can I grow it and scale it? Can I make it more profitable? What are the risks? So that's what you're looking for. Sometimes simple, boring businesses that we long established with a good client base. That's it. Don't need to do anything complicated in rocket science. The next part then is how do we fund these deals? And this is the beauty of doing these deals. With businesses, we can get even more creative. So previously I've done deals where I've put zero money down and got 100 % vendor finance. So my objective, and this is what I've taught in my masterminds, is to buy businesses for very little to no money down. And there's different ways we can structure these deals. So in the best case scenario, If you've got a good business, the owner doesn't need all the cash out of the business. You can do almost like a lease purchase, a lease option on a business, right? It's beneficial to the business owner because if they sell the business and get all the cash upfront, there's a huge tax bill, 40%. If you do a lease purchase or a lease option type transaction, they pay minimal tax over a longer period of time, so it becomes beneficial to them. So we can get super creative with how we do deals. We can do no money down, we can do little money down. And with what's gone on recently, there's now a government-backed scheme. It's almost like a bounce-back loan, but it's not a bounce-back loan. It's a government-backed loan for buying businesses. So the government backs 75 % of the loan. What does that mean? It means the lender's criteria is super easy to get in with, okay? They've still got criteria. They don't look at the directors. They don't look at the people. They just value everything on the business. So it's like getting a commercial loan on a HMO or a buy-to-let. They're not so interested in your earnings and stuff like that. They're more interested in the business can sustain itself. So we've got this opportunity now, I till 2030 where there's government backed loans, which makes the lending criteria even easier. So at the moment, it's up to 2 million pounds per business, unlimited amount of loans, and it's just got to fit their criteria. So this is even easier than what I was doing three, four years ago, because back then, you know, the lending criteria was super hard. The interest rates were ridiculous. They were like 18, 20%. Well, you're looking at 8, 9 % now. And the banks are wanting to give this money out. They're wanting to get it out as quick as they can. They can't get it out quick enough. So there's this funding available right now. So here's what you do. So they're acquiring the business, decide who you want to be as a business investor, decide the sector that you want to go for. And it's about how we structure the deal so it can be minimal capital down. just to give you an idea, one of the businesses that we've just offered on, it's a million pound business. We've said we'll give them 800 grand upfront, which is what we can get from the bank. And we'll defer 200,000 pounds over a two year period. It's industry standard to do that. Like people understand some money now, some money later. So what happens is when you do it, deferred consideration is just a fancy word for vendor finance. What it means is the vendor's gonna, you're gonna owe the vendor 200, 300, 500,000 pounds and you're gonna pay it over a certain period of time. If the business is a good business and it's making profit, why would they object? You know, we haven't had people object that they're happy. It's more of a trust issue and how it's all secured, which the lawyers tend to take care of. So this is the simple way that you can buy businesses. It's that simple. Now, I don't know if gonna be people watching this. When I go back and think about it, I used to work so hard on a refurb to get 500 quid a month cash flow, then another one, then another one, and another one. And you do all that blood, all that sweat, all that tears, all the building work, don't need to do that. It took me three meetings to close a 12 million pound business that was making 1.1 million pounds, and I put no money down on that deal. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is so easy compared to. what I found, know, property was a good thing in its day for me, but this is the natural progression now. So it's quite easy if you know how to do these deals and learn how to do it, to structure it and do it in the right way. And especially with the finance right now, now is the time in my opinion, to make hay whilst the sun shines, which is why I've gone hell for leather. The other beauty is this, now when we used to do due diligence on deals and we used to go to our expert teams, it used to take us eight weeks backwards and forwards, lawyers, accountants, this, that and the other. With AI now, we can evaluate a business in 30 minutes and it's so fast. I'm not talking about ChatGTP. We have our own custom AI that puts everything in and it spits it out, says yes, no, and what to ask. It's so quick. So the time of looking at the deal, evaluating it with our AI tools, making an offer, we can do that almost straight away. So before like today, we had the meeting. I'd have one meeting, I'd go to site, three or four meetings. It'd be six, eight weeks before we could put an offering. We're putting an offering next 24 hours because we can do it from the desktop so it becomes faster easier and safer So that's the process so think about this, know, some someone might have a portfolio of properties You might have half a dozen buy-to-lifts. You might make five hundred six hundred seven hundred pounds a month profit on each one Imagine having a portfolio of businesses where each business and my minimum criteria is you don't want anything with less than 200 250 grand profit per year So if you've got half a dozen businesses with that level of profit, each business should be making you six figures. And if you set up like how I do, which is I'm the operator, I've got management teams in place, all I do is oversee the managers, all I do is the strategic part, all I do is maintain it. So if we relate this to property, you've got a portfolio of properties, you have an estate agent or a property manager managing for you, that's what you do. And then all you do is work on it and oversee it. The key thing is looking at how you can grow and scale the business. And that gets a little bit specialist, like you'll get your business and go, where are the weak spots in it? What can we do? So all these businesses that we're looking at, they don't have modern systems. They don't use software. They still use paper. They don't use AI. You can look at a business and go, okay, how can we improve this? How can we remove the inefficiencies? How can we make it more profitable? And that's your way of fine tuning. That's your way of value engineering. So if we bring this back to property, you might look at property and go, it's got a garage. It's not really good to put a car in, but why don't we turn that into a bedroom? we can go up in the loft. We look into value engineering and how can we make more cashflow. Same principles from property, but we're just bringing it into, into businesses. It's how can we make money? And that's the fun bit. Like I'm not loading up skips. I'm not dealing with builders. I'm not dealing with contractors. I'm not dealing with all that headache and the stress and anxiety of doing refurbs and getting it done on time. I find it way more fun. Way more easier, way more sociable, but there's way more money to make in this. And in my opinion, it's a lot safer as long as you structure the deal in the right way. Does that make sense? Yeah definitely my god I feel like you just monologued and I was just like yes I was like brilliant and I love it and I love like those three little gems at the beginning about think about what type of person you want to be in the business as well. think that's so important and I bet all the listeners are sitting there right now just like the, you know, that emoji of like a mind blown because they're like, I didn't even think about this. Um, I'll just say, because I, you know, I've said this to you often and, and what, what, what I don't want the listeners to do, which to be fair, I did about six months ago is whenever you used to talk to me about this, I always used to think that's great for you, but I could never do that or that's great for you and I don't like what I want to try and help today is any listener listening to you going that's great for you actor but I don't think that I can do that so let's just really break this this down to make it really really super super easy for anyone who has that block right now so go back to this notion of vendor finance and go back to this notion of a purchase lease option because that those conversations might make sense to them. by the way, if they if what I've just said doesn't make sense to you, vendor finance or purchase leads option, do me a favor and just pause this episode and just go and literally just Google about vendor finance and purchase these options, because then you can you can understand it or even act on much to explain that quickly to you. But I want to just show it in its simplest form, where if a person today wanted to go and take their first step to looking at buying a business, What could that be and how could they start to get involved? Yeah, absolutely. you know, go, I'm actually in the process of recording a webinar for this in the next few days. You know, something we, can, I can share at some point, go watch your webinar or training that give you the depth of it, but really the simplest is, let's talk about the mindset first. Okay. One of the big things that people have is, oh I don't think I could run a business. That's one of the common beliefs that people have. And the thing is, you're not, you're not having to run the business. If you find a business with a management team in place, they can run it for you. And it's just the case of when you buy a business, there's normally what's called a handover period. The owner will sit with you, you'll shadow them. They teach you how to take the business over. So that's one aspect. You're not gonna get thrown in the deep end. The other thing is the fear of, what if it all goes wrong? What if it all goes barely up? There's a fear around the unknown. A lot of times it's fear of the unknown. When you've got a decent business, we can plan out how things are gonna work. And unless something catastrophic goes wrong, which doesn't really happen. you're gonna be pretty safe. And the way you structure businesses is through limited companies. So you protect yourself and your liability. So the biggest thing is like, how do you look, so first thing is, we're talk about the steps and stages, which we kind of run through already. This is the process of how you do it. It's always good to be in a community where there's people or you've been around other people who've done it. Just like if someone wants to get into property, they're coming to your accelerator, you're around other people. Because what that does is it gives you the mindset and confidence that there's other people that have done it. And you can use that peer group to support to say, hey, look, how did you do it? And it gives you the conviction when you start seeing other people doing things. So the right group, the right mastermind, the right communities is going to help your belief system to change. If they can do it and you can see what they're doing, it gives you the conviction. The second thing is just overcoming your fears of what the fears are. You can I run a business? You can learn to run a business or you can manage a business that's being run by other people. That's the second thing. We tend to see that people have fear. around doing the first deal, like that's the first hurdle to get over. It's all the fears and insecurities that come up. And this is something we talk about and it's something we teach in the accelerator. The second is you see where people have bought a business or they're going to go and buy their second business. All of sudden they've got two or three businesses and they're like, how am I doing this all of a sudden? You know, I was working for HR or I had a corporate job or I was a QS. Now I'm here with two or three businesses. How have I got to this? And a bit of imposter syndrome kicks in. Or the final stage is where people have got a group of big businesses. and they want to sell to private equity. And all of a sudden they're dealing with these big boys from Mayfair in their suits, they're feeling intimidating like there's a bit of imposter syndrome. So we need to understand this is where the psychology part comes in. You know, I mentioned earlier on my story and my journey and my psychological blocks for getting into property. This is why I'm so passionate about teaching the strategy and the mindset and the psychology, because the strategy by itself is good, but if we can't execute on it, we don't overcome these internal blocks, we're not going to take action. So coming back to your question. It's about getting comfortable with the idea. It's about being in the right peer groups that can support you or the right masterminds that can support you. It's about changing your belief system. And when you start to see examples that are counter to your fears or limiting beliefs, then you start to know it's possible. So there's a huge mindset shift that needs to happen. It's like, I'm sure people who watching this podcast, they're all being involved in some sort of business or property. They've probably been to property masterminds. They've probably been to property networking events. They've been around people. They're in your community with its other people doing things. So them getting into a community or group or somewhere where there are other people doing this is what's going to change their mindset and help them to realize it's possible. There are people out there, there's even overseas investors that buy businesses in the UK. They don't even run them. You know, they have people run them for them. So you don't need to be an expert. I wasn't an expert in any of the industries. I just through common sense learned how the business work. What's the process? How does it work? And that's it. It's not that hard to do. When you can understand the business and you're looking from an outside perspective, it's just a process. How does this work? How does it? It's a sausage machine, basically. How does it work from A to Z? Once you understand the process, it's not rocket science. Who does what bit of the process? How does it work? Okay, there you go. So every business I've ever looked at and every business anyone is considering looking at is understand the business, understand the strategy, the numbers, but then you look at the process and how does it work and who does what. If that's all we need to do. And the more you do this stuff, the more comfortable you get with it. Does that make sense? Yeah, completely. And when you haven't done something before, it's really hard to, you know, the conversation always is around, well, how do we even start? How do we even do that? So, you know, I suppose what I would say is, literally what I just said, like, you you probably watch loads of webinars on property, but actually now let's start really thinking about business. And I think that it's so important as, as women as well. I think sometimes we stand in our own way to believe that as women, we can actually do something. And it's not just the the boys in the suits that can do this, but women can. And when I really think about it, I think about, you know, for example, like watching Dragons Den or watching women on TV, there's so few of us who are actually out there really holding our own, buying businesses and really showing that. And I think that what I really want to do is encourage women to believe that we too can do that. And it's not, it's available to anyone. And I think you're so right talking about the mindset with this, because I think that we are our biggest blocks. m you know, a year ago, I wouldn't have even thought about buying a business a year ago. I'd have felt like I wasn't educated enough. I'd have felt was too young. I'd have felt many things. But just from our conversations that we have, because obviously, you you mentor me in this conversation we have, you know, you make me believe in myself for me to be able to then believe that, I can do this. And then when you actually show it to me, and you're like, it's as simple as that. I'm almost shocked to go. what it's literally that simple and you're like yeah literally that simple and I'm like oh well anyone could do that and you're like yes but they don't realise that so yeah it's about people easy. We can sometimes get in our own way and I absolutely believe like, you know, there's a beautiful opportunity. There isn't that many women, but there are a few that are CEOs and buy and build companies. Absolutely. As you know, I'm a girl dad. I've got daughters. I've encouraged them to do exactly the same thing. And I will teach them when they're old enough to do so. mean, teenagers now, they're not so interested, but as soon as the time comes, I'm bringing my daughters in to show them and teach them the process and show them that they could do that. So yeah, absolutely. I'm all for it. And I think, you know, the girls, listening to this, you can be a CEO, you can be a business investor, you can be a business operator. You get to choose what you want. And just like Athena saying, you know, yes, you know, a few months ago, you know, your mindset wasn't in the right place, but when you see how simple it is, you know, you go, Oh, hang on a second. I can do this. And that's the thing to do. And the other thing I think it's important to mention is that Even when I started out, I didn't know everything. I was very experienced in property, but coming into the business buying space, I relied on expert advisors. I relied on accountants. I relied on lawyers, even &A consultants, business buying consultants, which is something that I do now. I've become that person. Like, you know, seven years ago, I wasn't in that space. So you don't have to do everything. It's like when you're in business, you have your dream team, your power team, you know, your builder, your lawyers, your this, your finance broker. do exactly the same when you go into business. You find a power team that can help you. So when you're making your decisions, it becomes easy to go, is this a yes or no? So, you know, is there a problem? And normally what happens is you do enough due diligence to go, this is a good deal. Once it goes in with lawyers, they'll do all the other stuff and they'll do all the, you know, cross the T's and dot VI's. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science. Most of this stuff is common sense. The thing that really derails people is the not knowing. and you know, their own fears and insecurities are getting away. But we can teach you the strategies and we can show you how to get the mindset. Once we get those blocks out of the way, people can go out there and do stuff. And I ran, last time I ran a business buying masterminds was about three years ago. I had one guy that literally within three weeks went out and closed like nine million pounds worth of businesses. He was an experienced CEO and he'd been buying businesses previously, but the wrong strategy. I had someone that went out and bought a property portfolio that was held in a limited company. Now that's an interesting thing because estate agents can't really sell it. Business brokers also don't really know how to list it because it's property held within the company. There's a client of mine, Maura, who went out and she did the deal, I can't remember the exact numbers, but she made about 200 grand profit on it and kept the portfolio. was three or four grand a month cashflow. So that's another opportunity. If you understand how buying business is and how to structure those deals. this property portfolio is held in limited companies. And I remember on my mastermind, it was a property mastermind. I was running it. I was teaching everyone how to buy businesses and she was like, why are you teaching us how to buy businesses? I said, number one, it's a bonus. Um, but also you might find deals that are held in a company and she was kind of like spat it out a little bit, but then about two months later she came to me, she said, I found this deal. like, now you know why I had you on that mastermind and teach you about buying businesses. So learning how to do these deals and structuring these deals. It's really powerful because you're not going from a few hundred pounds a month cashflow per month. You're going into the thousands. Or in some cases, you know, there's businesses I've looked at that are making over a hundred grand a month. They've become a bit more difficult to finance, but there's, you know, you can build generational wealth with a few of these businesses. So one of the things I also want to mention is this, you know, there are just some brilliant strategies. And once you've bought your first business, if you start to buy a former group of businesses that are in the same sector, So let's say we add uh a group of electrical contractors or a group of plumbers, know, heating engineers. Once you get to a group, what happens is you have economies of scale. All of a sudden, if you've got 10 businesses, you don't need 10 accountants. know, you go back to your suppliers, you renegotiate better deals. What happens then is your profitability goes up massively, right? You can see who the talent is in the business. You promote someone to area manager. You've got all these things that you can do. Now what happens is typically businesses are valued between two and a half to three times their multiple of profits, right? EBITDA, which is earnings before tax and deductions. When you've got companies in a group, the multiple goes up. It's not two to three or four. You can go to five, six, seven. So what the idea is you build your group of companies, okay? You get them to the super profitable and then you want to exit for a big payout, which is you set it to a private equity for a nice big 10, 20 million pounds. It's the same as building a property portfolio. same principles, but instead of being property and having 10 by to let somewhere, you know, the suburbs, you might have five or six businesses making six or even seven figures. That's what you want to do. That's the end goal. You either take the passive income from it and the profits and the dividends and put yourself in the right tax bracket or the right tax jurisdiction, or you set it for a nice big lump sum of cash. So where I'm at right now, you know, I built one group before I'm building multiple groups with people and you know, we'll, I'll probably do three, four, five, six. groups of companies as I grow with various business partners and that builds generational wealth. That builds like a lot of wealth but also gives you a lot of time for it. Yeah, yeah, see it's just so interesting like all these conversations about I just feel like each time the conversation happens I get nearer and nearer thinking yes that will make sense and I think it's just about starting those conversations and kind of leaning into it and thinking, okay, because it can be daunting, but it doesn't need to be daunting. It is literally, as you said, it's like instead of just taking the property, adding value to it and then selling it on, you're buying a business, adding value to it and effectively selling it on or keeping it. It's completely up to you. Um, exactly. Go on. spoke about the whole strategies of big groups and what I'm doing. For people to be an owner operator and just acquire one business that makes 200 grand a year, 250 grand a year, can be life changing. literally life-changing yeah without tenants which would be nice I get it tenants. Yeah, that's another story. Let's not get started on that. But one business is probably going to make you more cashflow than a property portfolio is unless you've got a very high performing property portfolio or very high yielding. The other beauty is you need less cash to acquire a business because if we do the deals creatively, we're using the bank finance and we can even use the bank finance and there's clever ways that we can pay for the legal and everything else out of the business. So, you know, if you strike the right deal with a solicitor, you buy the business, once you've completed, you pay for the legals out of the business you've just acquired. you know, it can be zero cash out of your own pocket. So one business, just, I'm gonna assume that most of the people on here are just, you know, they're gonna be new to this. Just one business that makes a quarter of a million pounds will give you a six figure income. And for most people, that would be a very comfortable income in the UK. and you're not dealing with multiple tenants, you're not dealing with multiple headaches and things like that. And if you've got a management team in place, you can be a little bit hands off. That's enough to make a big difference in your life rather than doing the blood, sweat, and tears of refurbishing properties and all that kind of stuff. That's one. So my advice is get your first business first, which is what we're gonna do with you. We're gonna get your first business first, get you over the line. Get your mindset adjusted. I mean, I remember when I bought my very first buy-to-let, which is just up the road here 25 years ago. The experience was daunting. I didn't know what was going on. It was a big deal for me. In hindsight, it's just a buy-to-let now. Like it's nothing, but it was daunting because you don't know. So if you've got someone that can hold your hand, show you the process, like get you that first deal over the line and you settle into that and go, huh, I'm now a business owner and you've acquired that business. and you settle into that, the rest will be easy. Because once you've done the first one, second one, third one, fourth one, whatever you want will come. Some people might only want one business or two businesses and you can live a very comfortable lifestyle with that. If you're a bit more ambitious and you want to do something big and bold, sky's the limit. This guy literally is the limit, absolutely. And then if we just take a break for a second, because of course, as always with girls and property, we always also talk about what we're celebrating at the moment. And, you know, I don't want you to miss out on celebrations as well, because it's part of the journey, like everyone needs to celebrate as it were, whether it's personal, professional, whatever it may be. you know, what is it that someone like you is actually celebrating at the moment. I would say just what I'm doing right now with the business stuff, it's what I'm celebrating because it's probably the easiest time ever, especially with the government-backed funding that's available to make hay whilst the sun shines. So as I explained earlier on, we're looking at acquiring 20 to 30 million pounds worth of businesses in the next 12 to 18 months. And just to give you an idea typically those businesses will make between 350 and 500 grand a year profit. That's a big deal. And again, I'm not saying this to brag or boast, like I live a comfortable lifestyle. This is about me dealing with something generationally to set things up for my children. I obviously am very passionate about doing charitable work. There's people I want to support. So it's more about my purpose. It's about me going to that next level as a man, as a business owner, as a entrepreneur, even spiritually, this is part of my spiritual path. It's about contribution. So this has made it easier to build the wealth, generational wealth that can contribute and make a big impact in the world. I love that, a beautiful celebration, that's amazing. And I think that if I think about my celebration of where I'm at as well, I think, you know, I think you asked me a question once, which was like, you know, what is it that you actually want? Like, what do you want? And I was thinking to myself, like, what do I want? And I've sort of sat with that. And my thing that I keep coming back to each time is, you know, this notion of wanting to really help women believe that they can actually do anything that they want to do, whatever it may be. And I really feel like I'm beginning with the, you know, the work that we're doing together. you know, really getting to believe that I'm getting to understand me and understand like what it is that I'm, I'm my soul's driven to do. And my thing is all around really supporting, contributing to women's lives to make them happen. So, you know, no spoilers here, but I really feel like for the rest of the year for 26, it's really around kind of thinking to ourselves, well, how can we inspire from an investing point of view, a buying businesses, a property. a uh whatever it may be but but not to get so condensed in just girls and property but to expand that and to think about prosperity and really prosperous opportunities and I think that's something that I'm really celebrating at the moment is I almost feel like my I feel like my vision which might have been blinkered for a while has almost slowly being like opened up a little bit to go well why why just the narrow focus why can't we expand why can't we help in all different versions And I've been starting to have these conversations with women in my DMs and they're coming forward saying, my God, Athena, I'd love to learn how to invest. I'd love to learn how to do that. So for me, the other thing I'm celebrating is I'm literally doing at the moment what I'm hoping to inspire other people to then do to show them that I'm doing it so can you. So for example, for the longest time, people have been trying to convince me to put my own investment together. So I've had like a financial advisor for a long time and he's been investing like all my money. He's great. Like everything's fine. It's really good actually. But I never invested in my own stocks and things that I wanted to do. So I think last week I set up like a two one two trading account and I started to just like invest my own money into what I wanted to invest it. And it came from my decisions. And I think that that's such an important first step to take. Even if it's just like that small step, it's going, well actually this is what I want to do. And then I'm gonna, I'm learning as I go. And then I can share my knowledge with others um at my age to kind of be like, well, let's, let's all, let's all do this. And I think that's what people really love. Actually, people love the fact that I am doing what I'm trying to teach others to do. So I am knee deep in the mud with all of you, you know, trying to help you, trying to grow and us all growing together. So yeah. And, and obviously, you know, I take your knowledge and then pass it on. And so it's part of the legacy that we're speaking about the contribution in general. Yeah, you're doing a fantastic job. mean, you know, you're willing to get neck deep in the mud and go through the crunchy sticky bits of growth and you're leading by example. So, you know, kudos to you for doing so. And absolutely, I think it's a brilliant thing that you're doing, but showing you these women that they can be, know, um CEOs, can be business owners, they can have all metrics of wealth. Because one of the things I think is, you know, this is my personal belief around wealth. It's not all about money. It's about, you know, it is wealth, financial freedom. It's relationships, it's health and wellbeing and it's legacy. Those are the four things. If we can build that out, you live a life that you truly love. And that's part of what I'm about. So, you know, I think you're doing exactly the same thing. You know, you're, you're going through your own growth. You're going to go through your own leveling up. If that makes sense. You're learning these things that you show other people. Look, here's how I did it. You can teach them to it. It just helps everyone to elevate and want to like raise their consciousness, but raise the bar as well. So, uh, I hope off the back of this, this podcast, we get people that. are open to doing this or inspired to do this because anyone can learn to do this. One of my clients has got his 15 year old son, I'm mentoring him at the moment in business buying, his 15 year old son is learning how to buy businesses. 15 year old son is learning how to buy businesses. It's not rocket science. Yeah, it's not rocket. feel when you're mentoring like a 15 year old boy? Like, so young! It's beautiful. Like it's beautiful. I'm like, hang on, I just need to get my daughters on here. Like, you know, they're too busy out doing stuff and being girls at the moment. They're not ready for it. But I'd be like, you know what, let me get my daughters on them to learn it. Because if you can teach it to a 15 year old boy, you can teach it to a 15 year old girl. I've got, you know, a daughter who's 14, nearly 15. I've got a couple of 18 year olds. It's like they, want them to learn this stuff, because it isn't rocket science. And, you know, just them understanding the process, them understanding how easy it is. You know, it just goes to show. So if we can teach a 15 year old boy, girls how to do it, anyone can learn. As we said earlier, Ron, it's not the learning of the strategy. It's really just the fears that stop us. So this is where the mindset piece comes in. We overcome those fears. We challenge those beliefs. We challenge all the insecurities. Once they're out of the way. You can see it for 15 year old kid can learn this stuff. He's already bringing deals to us for us to analyze. He knows how to do the due diligence. He knows what a good deal is. And again, it's easier for him because he doesn't have to be a rocket scientist. He's just tapping into the AI. AI is telling us it's a good to go or it's not good to go. It's that simple. So we've taken the hard work out of doing it. We have my client's 15 year old son bringing deals to us. So, you know, we're then getting on the calls, assessing the deals and then offering on them. It's that simple. God, they do not teach that at school, do they? Like at 15 you are not learning that school. You don't and you know what you mentioned earlier on is you thought this was and I you know I used to think this as well and I've had lots of clients come up to me who have come on to previous masterminds business masterminds that I've run they're like I thought this was for the elite I thought this was for the suits in Mayfair I thought this was for privileged families no it's not anyone can do this you know you've got small medium and large businesses what we're talking about a small business sweet spots up to sort of two three million pounds or less than that, anything over that requires complex funding and it's big and so, know, not required for what we're not required for what we're doing. So yeah, they're not gonna teach this stuff at schools. Why would they? They want kids to learn, getting into jobs, being in the societal system or the matrix. This is gonna give you true freedom. Yeah, this is why, you know, people are here wanting to get into property because they're wanting a form of freedom, financial freedom, freedom to do, freedom to be, freedom to have. Yeah, quite a few. your, whatever the standard rent to rent deal is, or, you know, Airbnb, whatever you're doing, 500 quid, thousand pound a month. How many of those would you need? And in one deal we did 15K, but of course, as I progressed and I started to do larger deals, which by the way, become easier. When you've got deals that are more profitable, they become easier to do. They're easier to finance and they're easier to get creative with vendor finance because normally a successful business owners, they've got their life sorted out. Yeah. You know, they've got everything sorted out. The business is almost like a lump sum of cash. It's like a pension for them. So then always need all the cash upfront, which is why when you get into doing creative deals and you do like a lease option deal over a five or 10 year period, that money comes in and drips into them like pension money for them. They're going to spend it. So it's easier to do that rather than a small business where they need every penny out of it to retire or pay off their mortgage. So it gets easier and easier as you start to do this stuff and you start to see what businesses work, what's the ideal seller profile. But yes, we can teach 15 year old kids to do this. It's not rocket science. you know, yeah, I think this call is making me think I'm going to go pull my daughters up and get them involved in this. Oh hilarious. Just be like, look, I've been thinking about it, you need to get involved in this. think honestly, I think it'd be brilliant. I think it's such a good opportunity. If I'm just thinking about the listeners right now, I think one of the blocks that they might have is around this notion of... you know, they might be in a full-time job, they haven't got a lot of money to start off with. It's literally the same blocks that you have when you get people starting in property. So like, do you need money to do this site by businesses? How does it work? Not necessarily, I think the thing is what you're need to do is educate yourself. So you're gonna need to invest in some education, right? That's a small amount to pay or to invest in. In terms of time, when I say to people that if you're gonna do this and you're be actively buying businesses, you probably need about five hours a week, right? So what do you do? And it's got shorter now with the use of AI tools or the AI tool that we have. So. All you're to do is the way there's two ways to find deals. One is to go online and find brokers. I'll talk about the pros and cons with that. Sometimes when you speak to brokers, the way brokers work, they're different from estate agents. Estate agents list your property and they take their fee when you sell. With business brokers, they charge a listing fee. They get people a little bit excited. They charge a fee when the deal completes. The problem that you tend to have is that business brokers can give sellers an unrealistic price or they'll inflate it a little bit. you when you get to do your numbers and you propose a deal that, okay, that's not gonna work. So I was out with a guy last week. The business broker suggested his business was worth like a mil to 1.2 mil. But based on his net profit figures, it was actually worth about 350 grand. So I showed him the formula. I said, look, this is how the bank's calculated. This is where bank finance would be. This is the most we can give you for your business. And I said, look. If you're wanting 1.2 million, I can't buy your business. I'm just gonna walk away and give you some best friend advice. He'd actually put about half million pounds into the business. I said, well, you can't sell it. You need to get your money back out and do something. And I advised him on what to do. What happened in the end was we decided that I'd consult for equity. I'd consult, his business up. I'll take a slice of the equity and then later down the line, I either buy the full business or if he sells it or I help him to sell it, I take that 20 % chunk of the business. So it's a win-win. So if you think of how you do a lease option on a deal, like a property deal, you secure today's price and then you sell later on, you get to keep the uplift. So if you buy a property that's 200 grand and down the line, you sell it for 250 or 300 grand, you get the uplift. It's the same thing with the business. The only difference is you're not then having to do the day-to-day operations and you don't have to pull responsibility. You have a slice of the equity and a slice of the pie. So that's how you can sort of buy these businesses. That's kind of what you can do. Does that make sense? Yeah, honestly, it's amazing. just hope that this, I hope that this conversation. just allows people to listen even just like a little window to just lean in slightly to go okay this is a new conversation to be had this is a new world to to be living in and you know anyone who's coming to the retreat on Friday 24th of April you already know that Axel is going to be speaking there so anyone who wants to also talk to him about I'm offering your services here anyone who also wants to talk to him about buying businesses you know go and have those conversations because these are the conversations that are important to have it's important to to sort of have that. I know a couple of girls are actually going to be staying over and I think Actile is going to be staying over as well. you know, even in the morning, if you want to have a conversation, just to even just take you forward that 1%, that's all that matters. You don't have to go out like a racehorse. It's just about investing in the right people and learning from the right people who can just, just by one, like, literally so. we've actually said this and I'm going to put this out there as accountability for me and out this to the universe. I think when was it like two weeks ago? and you were having a conversation like two weeks ago and you said to me, Athena, by the end of 2026, you were going to have bought your first business. And you said that to me. I was like, Ooh, okay. So accountability, I'm going to have bought my first business. knows what, but we'll see by the end of the year. And I have literally no experience, I'm happy to admit that and I'm going to go and learn how to do it and show you all how you can do it too. So I'm very excited about that. you you can do it. It's not rocket science. We'll show you the steps and stages, paint by numbers. And then it's more of the mindset of the, I do it? Can I do it? And you ask the question, like, what if someone's got very little money? So let's go back to that for a second. So yes, you can learn that, you know, I'll put together my webinar. We'll share it. We'll do joint webinar. If people want it, there's enough demand. We'll do a webinar with a Q and A so people can understand how to do it. Okay. The second thing that you can do is you can always work with someone like me or can work with an experienced business buyer. You can invest a little bit into a deal and take it and share the business and you can learn and like earn kind of thing. So what that means is we've had people that come and they invest, they go, look, we'll put some cash down. What can we do? They want me to do the work. They come in and they see the whole process from A to Z. How does it work? What do we do? We've acquired the business. We grow it and scale it they see it as a safe way. Just like people doing property development, know, you have people, know, earn and learn with the developer. come and see, they see the whole process. So they can learn and see what happens without having the risk and the responsibility and the fear. So that's another way that you can do things. The other thing that you could do is, you know, if you're ready to take that next step, just work with someone like a mentor or, you know, someone who can hold your hand or a consultant to do it. you don't need a huge amount of money to do this. You know, it does help you've got a little bit cash because you've invested in your education. But most of the way that I structure deals is how can we do it for very little to no money down? And remember, This was the skill set that I acquired from property because in my property journey, in the early days, was saving up cash, refinancing, pulling deposits from here, there and everywhere. And then I think it was 2006, 2007 when we had the credit crunch, my commercial building, this one here, I remember getting to about six weeks away from completing and then the commercial manager called me up and said, look, we can't refinance you, we're taking your drawdown facility away. And that was the beginning of the credit crunch. People were queuing up at Northern Rock. I had all my money tied up in a deal and no money. So that's what forced me to get very creative in, in property. So I've done so many creative property deals in property and we can bring that skill set across. If you understand the creative strategies in property, they can all be mapped across into buying businesses. So my objective, and this is my objective for anyone I work with is how can we put the minimal amount of cash into a deal? And I'll always structure a deal or show people how to structure a deal where there's either zero cash in or minimal cash in or a small amount of cash in so you can get started. It doesn't need a huge amount of cash. What it needs is more about the skill and knowledge. Once you've got the skill and knowledge, and I'll be teaching you this, Athena, you'll be shadowing me, we'll be going out to do deals live together. I will show you how to do this and you will see for yourself what it's like. So the object of the exercise, as it is with properties, how can we buy this from minimal cash down, maximum profits and minimum risk. That's the ethos behind it. So like I say, of the 13 I've built in the previous group, 12 of those deals, I no deposits down. In the deals that we're proposing right now, we're using majority of cash, which is bank lending, and the shortfall would differ. So let's say you used to go buy a property. Normally the bank would want you to put your 25 % deposit in and they give you the rest. It doesn't work like that with businesses. What happens is the bank give you the cash, the deposit part, they don't ask for a deposit. You've got to make the shortfall up. So what do we do? We don't put the deposit in, we just say to the owners, okay, we need to give you 200, 300, 400 grand over a two, three, four, five year period. And it's just about what we negotiate. And here's the beauty of this. We can sometimes pay above market price for the business because guess what? We can do so because they give us a bit more runway to play with, to pay the money off. So when you're buying a business, you wanna be paying off any loan or debt? You want to be paying off any deferred consideration, which is the vendor finance, and you want to make sure that you are earning from it. So we always adjust the figures. So you're taking an income, any debt gets serviced and it's happy days. So you can, once you learn how to structure deals, structure deals from minimal cash down. So people who've got very little cash, you can still learn and do. If you've got some cash, you can put some cash into deals. But ideally what we want to be doing is if any cash goes into deals, we want to get it out as quickly as we can. Just like when you're doing a let's say a BRR deal on a property, you want to put the cash in, your money back out as quick as possible. We take those same principles from property and apply it to buying businesses. Yeah, fantastic. I absolutely love this. I can't wait to talk more about this. you know, we've obviously got our next cohort for the accelerator coming up where we're going to start the application processes. In fact, the application process might have already started by the time this episode comes out, because we're going to be starting the next cohort on Thursday, the 30th of April. And like every time I talk to the girls and obviously the testimonials that they've made, it's just incredible because it's so versatile, like what we can teach and how the women have just come out of that and changed so much. you know, it's incredible. what, like the investors they've managed to get, for example, the fact that one of them has now left their full-time job to go and do her business full-time. And it's just really, it's like I see it firsthand. I obviously believe in it and I always believe in it. But when you actually see the results of not just me, but you see the results of others, it's incredible. obviously, because there's only 10 of us, it's um so tight-knit so that it's like the right people do it. Yeah, I just call it for the second one because I think that the second accelerator, I also want to bring this notion in about about the buying of the businesses and really sort of um doing that and getting way more in person events as part of it. Because for me, I always feel like when people are actually in your energy and in your presence, I think that's where the biggest breakthroughs happen as well. So lots more in person events as well coming up, which I'm looking forward to. Absolutely. Just one thing that's popped to mind Athena is like I've done business startups in the past. I've started projects, I've started things. I would never do it again because what you're doing in essence is when you buy a business, someone else has done the blood, sweat, tears, the sleepless nights, they've gone through a weathered all the storms. You're going straight into a business where you're buying profits. It's turnkey from day one. So it's like, you know, there's companies out there where they'll do a turnkey HMO for you. You know, it's bought, let out, already done, you know, for an armchair investor. Whereas someone else can go, I'm going to find it, refurb it, go through all the headache and everything else. So I went, just, just what's, what's come to mind is I saw an interior design business and one of the girls in accelerator is an interior designer or she's a stager. So I'm just thinking now the best way to grow a business is to grow by acquisition. So if you already have an existing business or anyone who's watching this, if you have an existing business, the minute, you know, you can try and grow it, scale it, bring more customers in, or you can go and buy another business to bolt onto it. Right. bolt that other business straight onto it and boom, guess what? You've got instantly in however long it takes you to do the legals and acquire the business, you've got a jump in profits, you've got a jump in client base, you've got this ready-made turnkey business that's already there, which is way quicker, way faster than the blood, sweat and tears of starting and growing something. So that's the beauty of it. And this is one of the things like the businesses that we're looking at 30 years, 28 years, someone's already done that. And then we go straight in and we get the benefits of the profit. So I think there's a particular lady in the accelerator that I'm going to plant this seed in that mind about. She's listening to this, she knows what she's talking about. The fastest way to grow and you can grow from zero to six figures, three to four months for legals. So by the time you've gone out, you've negotiated, by the time it goes to legals to complete, it's a little bit longer than a property deal, but three to four months, you can have that business, have the keys, have it running and have profits dropping straight into you. your bank account and your ownership. So it is the fastest way, in my opinion, the easiest way to build wealth and generational wealth. But it's something that I think until recently has been a little bit hidden or people think it's complicated or it's not for them or it's for the guys in suits in Mayfair. Anyone and everyone can do it. When I ran my last mastermind, had men and women from all walks of life. uh Youngest one was still in university. She was in university. I had people who were a lot of property people that come in and they realized it's a transferable skill because in my opinion, property is still okay, but it's not as good as it was 10, 15 years ago for me. was back back after the last recession and the credit crunch, I rode away and I had lots of distressed properties. It was a great time for me. So I think where we are now and with what's going on, you've got all these baby boomers that come up to retirement. They want to get out and you know, it's difficult for them because it's not so easy to sell a business like it is a property. But once you understand the fundamentals, the process, and you see what you can do and how you can get other people to run those businesses, it becomes pretty easy. It's like setting up a biter layout or HMO. Once you set it, you can set and kind of forget it. You just need to work on the business and maintain it and make sure it's running right. But that's what you've got other people to do. You leverage those other people. But one business, six figures, can change your life. Yeah, oh I can't wait to have more of this conversation because this is this is just one part of the conversation, you know, there's so many more more to have. I've actually got a question for you to finish off this this podcast, which I've never actually asked you this question before, but this question was actually asked to me on a podcast once upon a time, and it literally just stumped me, I didn't really know how to answer it and I've asked this question to a few people on the podcast now and each time it sort of stumps them. I don't think it's going to stump you, but I'm curious to know your answer to it. So the question is, is what's one question that nobody has ever asked you that you wish that somebody would have asked you? That has stuck me. I think the thing that's coming to mind is... If I was to go back again and do everything from like day one, what would I do differently? And I think the thing is in hindsight, I spent a lot of time in property. Uh, what I would have done differently is, and I didn't know it back then. I would have learned to buy businesses first and taking profits from my business and then put it into my property portfolio assets. That's probably. Yeah. Well, no one's asked me and what I would do from a business perspective. Right so you'd buy the businesses first and then then you use that to buy the property. Cause what happens to this is where I started out, right? People try to bootstrap their way through property. Haven't got a lot of cash. Guess what? I'll be a deal sourcer. Um, okay. Then I'll do rent to rent them from the rent to rent portfolio. I'll buy my first buy to that and so forth. Here's the best way to do it. In my opinion, go buy the business first, acquire the business creatively. That's going to give you a six figure income and take the profits from the business and put into your portfolio. So in the UK, if you've got a business and you have a holding company, get HMRC clearance, you can move profits up into your holding company and across to your property company. So you're not taxed, it's a smart way of doing things. If I knew, if I go back to when I said I was 18 and I met the landlord, if he told me about buying businesses, I'd be a billionaire now. really do reckon? ah to build portfolios, portfolios. I would have had 20 odd years of building portfolios, business portfolios and making serious money. But it is what it is. was a journey I had to go on. And I am here now having what I think is the best opportunity we're going to get whilst this funding is available. So I would encourage everyone out there. This is easier than when I was running a mastermind three years ago. This is the easiest because the funding is so easy at the moment because the lending criteria is easy. Obviously there's queues for finance, it takes time, but we don't know when we're going to get this opportunity again. This is like back in the days when self-serve mortgages were there. You go sign a paper, they throw money at you, away you go. Here's an opportunity and you can have unlimited amounts of business subject to the financing. There's no, know some mortgage lenders give you restrictions on how many mortgages you can have with them and what the portfolio balance is. At the moment, there isn't that. So you can go out and buy five, 10, 15, 20. And in the business buying space and the finance space, building groups of companies or building a portfolio is normal for people. So if you say, look, I want to go buy 10 businesses in this particular sector. We're looking for 2 million pounds worth of funding each. We need 20 million pounds for them. They're going to be happy and go, okay, great. As long as you've got the experience or experience people with you, which is another thing I do sometimes I'm asked to go and sit on. be on the board of directors or an advisor because it gives the lenders a bit of comfort that they've got the right guidance to build and grow, you can go and build some serious generational wealth. But it's just going to start with that first business, that first small business, whether you're an owner, operator or an investor, 250 minimum is what I say to do. That will change the game for you and put you on a different trajectory and a different mindset and paradigm. From that first business, my first scaffolding business was a 300 grand business. In hindsight, wouldn't go for anything as small as that now, but that one business can change the course of your life. Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to learn and just, you know, pass on that hindsight to me. I'm like, I'll go do it. So it's really, really, really exciting. Good. I'm glad I asked you that question because I think also it just helps us to really expand our minds to go, you know, well actually, you know, would I like to ask? But like I said, you know, you're going to be there on Friday 24th of April. As I have said, you are officially our first ever male speaker at the Girls and Property Retreat. ah Yeah, first ever one, but rightly so, like because you come at it from all angles, from the subconscious and from the business buying. And because, you know, I've worked with you so closely and I've seen the changes that you've made in my own life and I don't want to almost gatekeep that. I want to share that because you've been so transformational for me. And so that's why, you know, it was important for me to say, no, you need to be in this guy's presence to actually understand like the energy basically. So very very exciting times. um But yeah and the girls are obviously going to want to get in contact with you, maybe message you, ask any questions as it were so where's the best place for people to find you? go to Instagram or LinkedIn. Instagram is probably the best because they're probably connected there. just go and look on Instagram. There's a link in my bio where can book a call with me if you want to have a chat. I'm more than happy to have a chat with people. I will be putting a bit more content out around the business buying stuff because that's part of what we do. The other thing I do as well, which is also important, and again, just to share this with people, I teach people how to be the CEO and how to run businesses. It's a very different mindset and a different skill set to have. I do a lot of work with CEOs. I do a lot of work with people who are either buying or they're growing or scaling their business. And some of it is like the business strategy, but I would say 80 % of it is the psychology and the mindset. So we've got everything here for you. If you wanna learn how to buy a business, you wanna learn how to be a CEO or a director, we can show you how to do that and we can get you there. Whether it's with me or someone else, I can help you, but I would encourage everyone who's seen this podcast today, seriously consider buying businesses because... It can put you in a completely different space financially. It can change your life. And it's not as risky as people think it is. In fact, I think it's easier than dealing with tenants and tenant problems, in my opinion. But really, I just encourage everyone to just be open-minded to this, explore it, consider it. Because once you get your head around it and overcome any fears or blocks you've got and you move forward with it, it will rapidly grow your wealth. can really help you to... One business can help you to live life on your terms. It's minimum going to be a six-figuring. Yeah, amazing. I love that brilliant stuff. And obviously, you know, if you if you know, we're going to be obviously doing the next cohort for the accelerator. We're also going to be launching a mastermind, which is going to be centered around buying businesses, and really catapulting and hot seat coaching and all of that. you know, we're going to be sending out some information or I should also mention actually that we are going to be doing a webinar together on Wednesday, the 18th of March. I nearly forgot to mention this. So on Wednesday, the 18th of March, we're doing an open webinar completely free me and actor are going to do it. And it's going to be all around the four stages of implementation. So it's about how to take you from basically it's, it's, it's all about why 95 % of people remain stuck and why so many people are stuck and how we get you from being stuck. to actually having clarity and flow. So if you're interested in that, what I'll actually do is I'll put the webinar link to that actually in the show notes, because then you could just click on it and you can come and join us. So Wednesday, the 18th of March, it's open to everyone, not just community, it's free to come. So please register and we will be talking about that then. So yeah, as always guys, and any questions, of course, just DM me, thena.dobson.official, girls in property. Don't forget to come and join the community. Just DM me the word community. I checked this morning, we're at 130 members now within the community, which is amazing. So we do two calls a month. So literally two calls a month, first Tuesday and the third Tuesday of the month. We just did an in-person meetup in London where 20 women came together for dinner. Totally informal, just meetups. I think there's another one happening in the Northwest. think the Midlands are doing one. So yeah, any info you want about that one, my website will be up by the time this episode comes out. So just come and learn about it. Just come and ask questions, DM me. I love a voice note from a voice note me. And yeah, actor, I'm going to leave you with the parting words today for all the listeners. So what parting words would you like to leave them with? First thing before I give you the parting words, I just wanna say, you know, the webinar that you mentioned about the four phases of implementation, anyone who's on this call right now that might be thinking, I wanna do the business stuff, but I'm a little bit worried or scared, that's the webinar to being, because this is where we talk about how to get over the mindset blocks, so you do not wanna miss that, get on that one. Parting words. Really, I think the only thing that's come to me this morning is like live your life. Really live your life. One of the things that I've had conversations around with people and even the business sellers, we get to a point in life where we think, well, we start to realize our mortality. Like we start to realize, hang on, how much runway have we got, right? I'm 51. I don't feel it, but I know I've got a certain amount of runway left. We can't guarantee our health. So this idea of working till you're 65 and being retired, it's BS. Live your life now. Here is a strategy where you can live your life now. You can have the time, money, freedom, freedom to do, freedom to be, freedom to have. So my invitation to you is to live your life now. Life is short, life is precious. Live your life now and choose the best strategy that you can in terms of business to give you the wealth that you want so you can live your best life. Because we don't know how long we've got. So that's my parting words. Beautiful, I love that. Perfect passing words. ah Right guys, so DM us, DM both of us. We'll see you on Wednesday the 18th of March. Thank you so much for tuning in. Let us know what you thought of the episode and let's go and buy some businesses. I think it's super exciting. I'll keep you posted on the whole journey as well. I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna do it. As of March 2020, six, which is where we are, March 26th. I know nothing about buying businesses. I'm going to keep it documented. I'm going to keep you on the journey. Actile is going to be my teacher. He's going to show me how, and then I'm going to show you how you can do it as well. So keep us posted. Let us know what you're up to. Let us know maybe you might want to buy. If you're going to buy something, what do want to buy? Tell us. And have an amazing Monday. Stay tuned and we'll see you all soon. Lots of love. Take care. Bye.