I Sold My Company at 31: My Detailed Breakdown of the Decision

We're all one decision away from massively changing the direction of our lives. We can take one drink and get into our car. We can sleep with someone that we shouldn't have and destroy marriage. Um or we can quit a job or we can sell a company. And so one of the things that's always been interesting to me is that billionaires, millionaires, hundred,000s, people who are have zero dollars, people who are in massive debt, the only real thing that distinguishes these people is the quality of their decisions. And so what I wanted to do in

this video is walk you through the decision process that I went through in selling the majority stakes of three companies uh for over $50 million last year. Um and my name's Alex Moszi. And so I make this stuff because I want to document the journey uh mentally for me because I think I'm going to forget the details of these things as I age and like kind of what I was thinking and the different pieces of it. And so I made this little presentation based on notes. Uh because I actually took really extensive notes throughout this entire process of what I was thinking through, you know, different variables I was considering because this is not a an instant decision. The whole process for me actually took almost 18 months um and a lot of deliberation, a lot of back and forth. All right? And so that's what I'm going to kind of focus on in this

video. So uh to sell or not to sell. So there were seven variables that I looked at. One was kind of the story externally and internally. The second was uh money and finances, you know, for me uh personally. Third was kind of energy and head space. The fourth was team resources in terms of like what am I going to lose? gain? Number five is the future and the vision for myself. Number six was what was the best decision for the business. And then number seven, I'll loop around and tell you what I ultimately ended up doing and why. Probably more importantly, why. All right, so my name's Ashos. My wife and I are business investors and we own six portfolio companies. Here's your YouTube proof because I know there's a lot of people out there. So you can just Google APG gym launch and you can see all the top results are you know public disclosures of them purchasing making a big investment in the company at a 46 those two were at a $46. 2 million valuation the third sale I can't disclose the number the company did 12 million the year before I'll just tell you that okay so quick backstory I

actually ended up writing out the backstory for this in in more detail so this will get you 100% up to speed so you have the same context as I had. So, I spent the better part of two and a half years obsessing about a single decision, whether or not to sell my business. And I'm thankful to tell you that two and a half years later, I made that decision. So, what I want to walk you through is how I made it and hopefully help someone skip the 2 and 1/2 years of mental trudging that it took me to get here. So, let's start with why did I want to sell. So, let me take you back into a moment that I decided to sell and then bring you forward to this moment. So, Leila and I were on a walk in March of 2019 and we had just done $4. 4 million in revenue that month and taken out $1. 7 million in owner dividends that month. She stopped and she looked at me and she said, "Let's shut it down. I don't feel like doing this anymore. We don't need the money. Let's just shut it down and move on. " And being the motiv motivated entrepreneur that I was at the time, I was like, "Hey, now let's at least see if we can sell this. " All right, maybe we can get like a small payday before moving on to our next thing. And so I went up and hit my network up and asked anyone if they knew anyone who could help me, you know, value my business uh and let me know what somebody might pay for it. And that's when a good friend of mine, Rick Mayo, introduced me to investment banking friend of his who specialized in our space, which is the fitness space at the time. Um, and so within a day or two, I was on the phone with a guy named Mike Bakumian. And he was a banker in the fitness space and had transacted a handful of high-profile deals. And after a few introductions, I shared our dilemma and asked if there was, you know, he thought the company could be worth anything. And what he told me next really changed my life. And so I'm loosely paraphrasing, but he said, "Dude, you grew from 0 to $17 million in profit in two years, and you're now on pace to grow 50% again this year. " And I was like, "Yeah, I know. We're really tired of it, though. " And Michael was like, "Uh, if you continue this growth at the end of the year," he's like, "I can sell this for 150 million easily. " And I was like, "Really? " And he was like, "Yeah. " And if you can disassociate your brand uh from your face and maybe get another acquisition channel going, probably even more. And so my job just about hit the floor, right? I was used to small business ownership where when you stop wanting to do business, you beg someone to buy from you and you try and recoup your cost as much as you can get. But this was something entirely different, right? 150 million. That's not even rich. That's generational wealth, right? And as a reminder, I was 28. All right? And so my wife and I probably had maybe 20 million bucks saved up at the time, but this was an order of magnitude change in wealth for us. And so after getting off the phone with Michael, my head was spinning. And I felt like my world perspective had shifted forever. And it had. From that moment onwards, the next two and a half years, all I thought about was how do I sell this business for $150 million. And interestingly, from that moment onwards, my business plateaued more or less, right? I mean, we grew, but not to the same degree that we were going before. And it could have been because I was already burned out, which is possible. Um, it could have been because of macroeconomic forces uh because there was a little flu that went around uh that affected gyms or could have been because I wanted to I shifted from wanting to build something to wanting to sell it. And I have no idea. All I can say is that I stopped going I stopped growing after that conversation. And so I can truthfully tell you that 50% or more of my mental bandwidth for the last two and a half years was dedicated to the idea of selling. And what's more difficult about that is I can't really talk about it publicly, right? And so it's this kind of like this burden that you keep in the back of your head that just eats up a lot of your thoughts that you can't talk about. Right? And so what happened was all my decisions changed from what is going to provide me the most long-term goodwill with our customers to what would a potential acquirer think of this decision and would it make the company more or less valuable? And I think this ultimately hurt my business. Uh the heart behind the business had shifted from the process to the outcome. And over the next year, our revenue went up, but our profit dropped because I thought an acquirer would want to see lower churn, which is true, but I made a terrible mistake and lowered my prices in an attempt to do so. And end ended up cutting about $5 million in profit in the process. So, I went from 17 million uh in profit on 26 million topline to the next year, I think we did 37 million top line, 13. 4 million bottom line, which is still obviously not a bad, you know, outcome, but it should have gone the other way. like 19 million on 37. Like I said, although we grew by 40% topline, my bottom line shrunk by 25%. And so, you know, we also thought we needed to show we were legit and hired a lot more people to sit around and do nothing while the core team was still hustling to get the work done. Either way, we spooned up to like 135 employees, I think, at our peak for that those two entities. And so, either way, over the course of 2019, uh we pulled me out somewhat from the fulfillment and product divisions. So, that was somewhat of a win. And then in 2020, we committed to selling the company, right? So, that's kind of like speeding up to 2020. and we knew we could sell the story of the infrastructure cost being something that ate up margin and that we were still growing and we were on pace to you know keep it for a year and show some growth and then sell it concept. So, we went to market in February of 2020 and right, as you guessed it, there was this flu that went around kind of affected our business a little bit. And we had the option of pulling back, but Leila and I were honestly, you know, uh just like even-handed about being in the gym business, right? We wanted to not have that be the only thing in our lives. The bankers ended up adjusting our expectations and said, you know, I think uh and mind you, this was actually we weren't we were no longer working with uh the guy that was referenced earlier. He actually was just council. I we ended up using a different firm. I think we can definitely uh help you grow get and get 45 for this business, right? And at this point, we were fine with that. We just wanted out and not really out, just more like we wanted our focus back. And so over the next three quarters, our revenue and profit continued to decline as the fluid raged on. And once the second shutdown hit, the business really hit rock bottom in Q4. So we had gone from like 3 to 4 million a quarter in profit to like 500 grand in profit in Q4 of 2020, right? Uh, and so the bankers suggested that we stop the sales process and try, you know, try again once the flu had gone away, right? But Leila and a guy, Leila and I were kind of yet again really determined to be out of pain. And so we told them to just, you know, keep going with the process. And so they hit up all the uh private equity firms again and lo and behold, we got a few replies and some firms were interested in buying our company at rock bottom. What a surprise, right? And those replies after a lot of phone calls and meet and greets and information requests turned out to be two offers uh for the company. And then, you know, for context, I can't share the actual numbers of the trailing uh 12 that came up to this for 2021, but I can tell you that they just consistently straight line went up. Um, so basically Q4, Q1 was kind of like the bottom of it. Like December of Q4 of 2020 was like the absolute bottom. And that's really what because there was almost no hope, you know what I mean? Like it had the second round of shutdowns. A lot of gyms had shut down. It was [snorts] just kind of looking bleak, no ended side, etc. And so I'll bring you up to speed kind of internally. We realized that we would have to build this business to run on its own because we didn't know if we were going to be able to sell it. And we knew we weren't gonna like want to shut it down or something like that. There's too many families that relied on us, too many employees, too many customers. Like it just it didn't make sense. And so beyond that, uh tactically we started an outbound call center um so that we could have a second channel. So we started to take the steps that we knew we should do and from the feedback that we had from the first round, which was like you need a second channel. It needs to be less branded to you, etc. This is important to understand. Uh over the next 12 months, I stopped attending all product meetings, all client-f facing calls, all client-f facing events. So I didn't show up to my own events like there was nothing. Uh we built an outbound call team that did 50% of our sales volume. And we promoted a team of gym owners to become the face of the consulting brand overall. And so the all that remained for me was a weekly one-on-one with the CEO, uh a weekly executive call team that was 90 minutes and quarterly meetups internally. So I was no longer public facing at all. It was only uh internal that I was kind of facing. And so now let's get back to where it was interesting. So we signed and accepted an LOI and at this point you know the profits had gone up significantly from kind of the Q4 bottom and uh I have to skip the actual uh numbers of what was around there. I can just tell you the overarching number which was which ended up being uh 46. 2. And so here was the decision-m process and that's what I want to get into which is like okay so what did you guys end up doing and why? All right, because during this process, the business kind of almost shot out of a gun. 2021, it kind of had a really strong rebound. Um, that's obviously why there was way more people who were interested. First, there was two and then there was two more interested parties. And so, we had a handful of private equity firms that saw that, okay, they saw the bottom. They saw the the fast rising back and they're like, wait, we could buy a company that just did, you know, 15 million in IBIDA a year ago or two years ago. Uh, and they can bank on the fact that it'll probably do that again. Let's dive in. All right, so that's the backstory.

So, these are the considerations. the story/milestones that I was telling myself, the money, energy, headsp space, team resources, future vision, best decisions for the business, and ultimately why I decided what I decided to do. I wish I could have given you

more visuals for this, but [gasps] I this already took me a lot of time to transcribe all my notes into one presentation. And so there was two kind of components to this. I and it was really kind of having this like devil's advocate in my head conversation that was going back and forth. And I even just put these directional arrows to like what I said first and then what I responded with mentally. I'm sharing these thoughts with you because I want to show that like I don't think these thoughts ever go away. You know what I mean? Like I said and this is like I mean I was like I need a sale to be legit, you know, as an entrepreneur. And then a friend of mine was like, "Dude, you already have seven successful exits and a handful for multiple millions, right? " And I was like, "Well, yeah. " He's like, "You do 7 million a month right now? Like you're legit. " I was like, "Huh, okay. " Uh he's like, "This is not a reason to sell a business. " And I was like, "Okay, that's fair. " Um I was like, "But a big exit is an entrepreneurial right of passage, right? " And he's like, "So Jeff Bezos suck. Elon, they're not legit because they didn't exit their businesses. " I was like, "That is also a good point. " I was like, "Well, there's kind of like the four-minute mile component. Like there's no e-learning companies that really sell for, you know, or personality driven brands that are selling for these types of numbers. Not many at least. " And so I could prove that, you know, these types of models are sellable. I was like, "Well, can't I just prove that I have a higher net worth and keep it? " I was like, "That's also not a good idea or not good reason to sell You know, another story was like you can't have more than one thing and so that's why you should sell. But you know, in terms of keeping it, it's like well, you just need to level up your skill set. Like there are it is not physically impossible. There are other entrepreneurs who do this and so you just need to be better and this is just a great growth opportunity. So that's not a good reason to sell. I'm like, all right, fair. I was like, ah, it's a big nice f you to everybody who doubted and, you know, spoke out against me over the years. And then it's just like, you're better than that. That's also not a good reason to sell. So I'm sharing this stuff very candidly. You can reinforce uh the lesson of selling my gyms. And so the big lesson there and this is one that I I've spoken about a lot is that you know sometimes you have to give up what you have in order to give up uh to get the bigger thing that is unknown. So you have to let go of something that you do know that is good in front of you for something that you don't know that could potentially be great. And it kind of hinges on the idea that what we don't do are the things that we regret rather than do and then fail at. That was that's kind of the story uh there. And the keeping argument of that is like well that might be the wrong lesson to learn. like maybe you needed to exit those things, but it doesn't mean you need to exit everything. It's making sure that we apply the correct lesson to the story and that might not be the right lesson from that story. I was like, okay, that's fair. And then, you know, finally, doing a sale or at least selling the majority portion of the business would unbrand me somewhat from the fitness industry cuz it's still something that drives me a little nuts. Uh it might also be because of how I look. So, that's possible. Just being real. Like, I still see comments are like, "Hey man, I still find your content valuable even though I'm not a gym owner. " And I'm like, "I haven't made a gym piece of content in three years. I'm glad. Like, it's just funny. And I consciously made that decision in 2019 when I rebranded my podcast uh from Gym Launch Secrets. Uh and I hadn't spoken about Jim Stuff in a while, but I consciously rebranded it to the game, which you can check out if you want. And so, my keeping story around that is like people have already moved out from that, dude. Like a handful of comments is not like what everyone thinks about you, right? You're not just like some gym dude. You already have the majority of your money is made outside of gyms now. I was like, well, yeah, but people don't know that. And so, anyways

these are the stories I was telling myself at this time, right? And so next is kind of like what are the money things that I was telling I was like okay well selling cash would be nice but the keeping argument is uh well after you'll have a tax event so you'll actually be you'll have to give a portion of that to the government it'll actually net decrease your net worth because you already have that value in equity and because of the amount of money you already have. So my wife and I at this point have probably taken from those two businesses about 45ish million in dividends is not really going to materially change your living um which is true. Other thing though is that from a selling perspective, it's like I can take that cash and then I can reinvest it and then all I have to do is just make the delta, right? So it's like I can take, you know, whatever cash I would receive there, I can invest it and then I can build something else. And what I'd have to do is make up the net difference between what I do on my own, what my cash grows into versus what that 66% would be worth in 5 years, right? And so that's the net delta difference. And I was like, I feel like that would be still a pretty strong argument for uh doing the sale. The flip side is what am I going to buy that's going to make me the same amount of money that I could from this company that's clearly going to, you know, triple and then, you know, triple in value and go back to what it was worth um you know, pre flu. Fair argument. On the other side, it's like, well, you're super concentrated. You know, diversification is not a bad idea. And then I quoted Warren is a hedge against ignorance. Do you feel ignorant in this space? Do you feel like you don't like that the companies that you have, you don't know anything about? um will know. I actually feel like I know more about the stuff that I'm doing. Okay. Well, then you don't need to have diversification. Just go all in on the things that you know and then they will grow disproportionately, which candidly, my life is an example of that. So, it's hard to argue against that point. You know, rich people sell, wealthy people never sell. Another argument for keeping it. Yeah. Uh I could also take out debt and still continue to own the whole thing, kind of refinance the business and still keep 100% ownership if I did that. But the problem for me from that perspective is I knew that I would never do that because I was already very tired at that point in running an entire another process from scratch was something that I just knew I wasn't going to be willing to do at least not on any short-time horizon. I was like, "Okay, well, you can still do debt to fuel like M& A and start doing acquisitions and just use that as the umbrella brand. " And I was like, "Um, well, a couple things. One, I didn't have the debt relationships. Two, I didn't know M& A at that level. Buying majority of 30, 40 million, you know, 10 on the low side, 30 40 on the high side size companies. I was like, I don't that's those are mistakes that could potentially like undo everything I've done, and I'm just not willing to uh to quote a friend of mine, bet the empire for a pot of gold. " That was kind of the argument against uh just using debt to fuel M& A. The final, you know, keeping argument for money was like after tax, you're almost going to end up the same money as if you just take out debt on the company tax-free. And that is true in theory. Uh but it's unknown based on promises from bankers. That's not 100% because a lot of times they might inflate things. Uh just FYI, side note, bankers will inflate things for you because they want you to sign on the dotted line to work with them. big picture consolidated from this is that like the money wasn't going to change my life in either direction whether I sold or I kept it which brought me to the

next one which is energy and have space on one level it's like the story is you can't have more than one thing which I'm a very big proponent of the counter to that is while richest people own lots of things okay well that's also true too but I think the main difference and I I'll hit on this later is that I think you can only have one active thing split attention is one of the most dangerous things in entrepreneurship and I can tell you that when I did split my attention when I started another company um and then a third company. My revenue pretty much just continued to flatline. So doing more things just does not like you have to focus and I think that you can have mult lots of things that are going on but you can only have one active thing. So like if I own a building I'm not active in that. I could invest in Apple and I'm not active in that. And so you can own lots of things. It's just to make sure that what you're owning is not owning you. The next point here is that selling is a story. It's not reality. So, it's like the idea that I'm just going to like walk away magically and not care about the company or the employees or the customers. It's just that's a story I'm telling myself in my head. There's still 100% going to be things that I'm sleeping, you know, going to bed and thinking about the team and the company and all that stuff. And so, it's like you you're not going to get what you think you're going [clears throat] to get from selling. I was like, "Yeah, but I could treat it like other portfolio companies because I'm just it's kind of redistributing my net worth, you know, accordingly across more enterprises and then I could care about them more evenly. Whereas here it's disproportionate in terms of like lopsided for my net worth. Um so I was like okay that's fair. Another strong argument for keeping is like you'll grow faster never selling just never sell and uh let it compound taxfree. The counter you know for that is like I just have to outpace that delta what the cash can make me from investing plus what I'm going to make on my own uh versus what that 2/3 share would grow into. Right? That's what I have to make up. If I can make that up then it would make sense. And then this one was actually from my closest friend. He said, "What's the objective? What problem are you solving? " He said, "I feel like you just chose the nuclear option of like, okay, you know, I want to get Headspace back and so therefore I must uh, you know, sell 2/3, you know, sell majority of my company. " He said, "Why don't you just match the conditions, right? Like what is what do you imagine life to be like when you have sold majority uh and then look at what those conditions look like and then match them in your current condition and then you can keep the company and still have the effective sale that happens in your mind. " And uh I was like that is a fair point. But you know my counter was that like I don't think I can do that. Um I feel like I'm still I would imagine it's like having kids where even if you're spending zero time you know taking care of the kids even when they go to college you're still thinking about them right? They're still taking up shower time. walk morning coffee chat time right? And so those are kind of some of the headsp space considerations I had.

Team and resources. The big line here is that uh you know when you sell a company you lose the resources, right? and I'm so used to being on top and having a lot of leverage in my decisions. It's way more just deciding at this point. Like I'm not doing a ton of doing um within any of the portfolio companies. And so giving up that kind of all those resources like hey if I'm like hey I want to go recruit somebody I just go to the recruiter and say hey can you recruit this person right? If I want to like go build a site or I want to go put a book on Amazon I just say hey can you go put this book on Amazon and then it just gets done. Right? So I would lose that and that might actually be a big asset for what I wanted to do next and actually allow me to move faster. Right? So that is a strong argument for keeping it. Right? So these were these are the four thoughts that I had written down during the process was like okay well I could lose the team and uh but like I could coach them to become like the type of people that could work you know at acquisition. com. It's like well different needs require a different team. That's not a really good shortcut. Like there's different skills, different backgrounds, different experiences, etc. That's not really good to try and retrofit uh a team that was not designed for this right. You know obviously I love the team. Um they've been with you since the beginning. This is me arguing to myself. Yeah, but I need to give them room to grow. And if I'm still there kind of on top of it, they're not going to be able to like blossom into what I think they can really truly grow into. You could make your employees wealthier, you know, if you kept it. You could, you know, do some sort of ESOP program there, which is an employee stock ownership program. I was like, yeah, but they can also become wealthy um through the stock ownership plan that the new, you know, owners would put in. It's like, okay, that's kind of moot. Richest guys all said that they regret selling their teams. That's something I talked to people who are wealthier than me and they're like, they all regretted doing it. The counter to that is, but they're all really wealthy doing their next thing. So, you know, I get and I can understand the I can understand both

sides of it. Future and vision uh in terms of like what I want my my life to be like. This could be the cash to build the conglomerate, you know, that funds all of these new acquisitions that I build into my conglomeration. I was like, "Yeah, but I could use the cash from the sale to do the same. " Okay, fair. Um the version of me that I want to be can own multiple companies without running them. Yes. Um, but you still need to give, you know, like that's not reality for you right now. And then, you know, finally here, you'll still care about uh the team the same and or still care about the company the same, uh, but you'll just have given up the upside. It's like, so you're still going to do the same mental work and mental decisions and strategic planning the way you always are, but you'll just give up the upside. And the counter to that is like, yeah, but I'll still have four companies rather than one, and that's going to really distract me from what I want to do ultimately, which is acquisition. com. And so um that was kind of like the future and vision component

of it. All right. And so uh the last thing before I I'll tell you why I made the decision that I did is uh the business component. You know on one side I was like okay do you want to do what is required to get to 200 million. I could just do the playbook that the private equity was going to do cuz I know what their playbook is and so I could just do that. So that's an argument right? You know businesses always go up in value over time right? Unless they don't in which case they become unsellable. So it's like if you keep it and it goes up then like you would still own the thing and it would be making more money in the future. So the value goes up and you get dividends the whole time which is why business ownership is very lucrative but in case it doesn't in which case you don't make any money and the thing that you have has no value right um you know they don't have a magic pill they're not going to do anything you don't know how to do it's like yes but they're going to put all their focus on it and I am not because I'm doing other things that I want to do you know imagine what you're going to learn watching them do M& A if we sell it. Um yeah, but you don't need to learn, you know, learn from them to do that. So that's a different, you know, perspective on it. Um if you want to do uh what they do, just buy it from yourself, you know, and have it have your new self buy it from your old self, still go through the transaction mentally. Um install the same incentives, run the same playbook as them, but just own the whole thing, right? Um but I really thought about that and I was like, I feel like it's fear that's driving that decision. Fear of losing what I have. And uh it's like, hey, you need to have the skill uh of being passive. Well, I already have that. It's just not I just don't feel like I have that about a company that I founded myself. And then um you can always just use the transition plan that I already designed during diligence that I presented to them and just execute it yourself. And it's like, yeah, I can do that in theory, but I don't know if it's going to be that clean. And so, you know, the oneline summary for this is like, do I think selling or keeping it is the best decision for the business? I think that if I uh keep the company, I will increase my net worth more. Do I think the company will realize its potential if I uh keep it? Maybe, maybe not. Um I think that the people who um who are going to potentially buy it had a very good uh skill set in growing companies of this size. They're more experienced in M& A than me. And so I think that the business would benefit from that. All right. So what decision did I ultimately

make? I will give you my quick oneline summary of kind of selling and keeping after giving you all those different variables. Uh for selling anything that distracts from my Birkshire Hathway will be a net loss. So get into a better boat. Uh and this is just the classic example of like everybody told me that I was crazy when I was when I sold my gyms to start the licensing company uh gym launch. But it's because like what they saw in front of them was six gyms that were making money and I was 26 or something and they were you know like why would you give something up that you work so hard for? And it's obviously making money and it's because like in some way it's like I have to believe in me more than they do because in their minds maybe that's what they think I'm limited to capacity-wise and I think that I can do more. Uh and so that's the you know the argument for selling. The argument for keeping which is also very compelling is you know become the person who can grow a cash compounding conglomerate without ever selling ever. You know Warren Buffett never sells wholly owned companies. He also says get into the best boat. So he has two pieces of advice that contradict themselves and uh they're both very good and very fair. So, what decision did I ultimately

make? Right? So, everyone has a plan until there's a check in front of them to walk away for 46. 2. So, um it's one thing to say no in theory and it's another when you're one email away from that, you know, money

right? And so, uh these are kind of the soft decision frameworks that I applied. So, the first one is that I had to acknowledge that there was no wrong answer, right? So, I knew that if I did either of those directions, ultimately I was still always going to be very wealthy and none of it was going to make any material difference in my life. And whatever decision I tried to go to, winners win and I would have probably executed on either way and it probably wouldn't matter. I knew also from a happiness perspective that I'll probably be happy in either direction and you know rationalize whatever decision I made either way. That was like first and foremost none of this matters. The

second one is like okay well you know is it I could still make a better decision versus a worse decision even though they're both might be quote a right decision. Um which has just reminded me of this the story of the boy and the horse. you know, father buys a boy a horse. Everyone in the town says, "That's amazing. " The wise man says, "Time will tell. " Um, then the kid falls off the horse and breaks his leg. And then everyone's like, "Oh, that's terrible. You bought the kid the horse. " And then the wise man says, "Time will tell. " And then army comes around and recruits all the young guys to go to the military. And then, you know, half them die. And then everyone's like, "Oh my god, that horse was a blessing. " And so ultimately, you kind of get where this is going, right? Is that you don't really know whether something was good or bad until the day you die. And once you die, it won't matter. Food for thought, noting that the three

hardest decisions of my life, uh quitting my job to start my gym, uh selling the gyms to start Gym Launch, and then potentially selling Gym Launch Prestige and Allen uh to start Acquisition. com and go all in on that. Uh each of those are the three hardest decisions of my life. And it's because I had to give up something that I knew that gave me status that people uh gave me praise for um that most people considered big material successes for something that was potentially bigger but completely unknown. So some the bird in the hand versus the two in the bush. And the thing is that the hardest decisions I think in life are giving up the one that's in your hand for the two that are in the bush. Um and so it's like you have to take big risks sometimes to take the next kind of like quantum leap, you know, take the next uh jump of in order of magnitude. So these are the three hardest decisions I've ever made in my life. And I would say that in order they were most difficult quitting my job, second most difficult uh selling my gems, third these companies or my majority interest in those companies. So I I give this for context because I think that a lot of people who are listening to this like you're probably in one of these decisions where you have one in your hand and there's two in the bush. Like I think the hardest decision of entrepreneurship or really life in general is when do you give that up? When do you not take the rational move and take the upside? So for me, I just knew that regret would be more guaranteed from paths not taken rather than failed execution. This is a

question that I get from Ila and it was uh one of the things that we both thought about a lot which is what am I most afraid of? Like which of these decisions makes me mo the most afraid keeping it or selling it? And for me selling it was the thing I was most afraid of because I was like what if I can't recreate what I've done? What if it's you know what it's a flash in the pan? What if I'm a one hit wonder? which was silly anyways cuz we already have seven other businesses we've sold. But I'm just telling you these are the thoughts you have, right? And so yeah, like what am I most afraid of? That was what I was most afraid of. And so

finally or second to last, I had my 85-year-old self test, which I have I've talked a lot about and I will talk more about which is uh I run and I I'm doing this almost like without knowing now because it's been so ingrained because it's been probably the most effective decision framework I've had in my life and so I'm just going to keep using it which is like what does 85-year-old me think about this decision? And the honest truth is that 85year-old me in this decision was useless because he was like it's not going to matter anyways. Uh do the thing that excites you. And you know it's like what are you and like I'm talking to my 85-year-old self and he's like what are you afraid of? And it's like that I'm not going to be successful if I do the next thing. It's like well that's not a very good reason not to do it. And so I was like okay I guess that's fair. Does who you want to become? You know I was like well I really want to be a rational investor. I want to be somebody who makes rational decisions. He's like, "Yeah, but you know the up like you're limited on your upside in this and so like if you believe that your life can be bigger than this, then you're guaranteed to not get it if you don't take the big jumps. " I was like, "Okay, that's fair. " And so that was kind of like the main shifts that I got from my 85-year-old self.

This was ultimately the one thing that mattered most. And then I'll tell you finally why I decided to do what I did. The next thing that I do will be 10x or 100 times as big. And if anything takes my attention from that, it will be a net loss. I would hate to look back and think I was holding on too hard to what I had and didn't have enough faith for what I could have if I took the leap and believed before saying and so at every level the fall gets bigger but so too is the reward and so like as you know climb the mountain right if you fall there's further to hit the ground um in terms of your perceived failures but like you still have to take jumps to hit the next mountain tops and so I think that was ultimately um the biggest reason for why we decided to do what we

did um and I'll tell you one interesting thing which is that like I felt the loss of the business but I didn't feel the gain of the money really I didn't feel it at all um and so that was kind of interesting so I felt like the loss of resources I did feel some level of relief for about 3 days and then it was back to normal which was nice and then now that we are back in this in this season of building I can tell you 100% that this was 100% the right decision um I you know obviously I'm going to rationalize whatever decision I But after really thinking through all of the different angles, this was the right call. Uh because I can already see and feel the momentum. It's so nice to be back in the trenches again. I love building things. Um I'm a builder and so uh it's great to build not only my own business, but to build all the portfolio companies and so I'm just I'm learning so much more. I'm being exposed to a lot more things, which allows me to make more lessons. And you know the mission of acquisition. com

is to document and share the best practices of building world-class businesses. And so you're like why does Alex make these videos? Part of it is because of that like I wish that Elon and I wish that that Jeff you know Warren you know wrote books and made YouTube channels right of like what they were thinking about at every given you know part of their journey because I hope that 30 40 50 years from now like people are like man if you look at Alex in his 30s what he was deciding what he was thinking about and look at him in his 40s what he was deciding what he was thinking about I want I wanted these videos to be kind of like proof of that um so that they could hopefully help others retrace the path but I am very confident that the decision that we made was the right one. I just can't tell you the amount of like creative energy. It was like the moment we actually made the decision, it was like my future unlocked again. Like I couldn't see past making the decision to sell. It was like I had to make this decision before the rest of the opportunities uh in my life opened up. And so um I think I made a tweet that was shared a zillion times which is like the heaviest thing in the world is an iron or gold but it's an unmade decision. And so I think um and I made that during the time when I was making this decision to stop or not. And so I think that for a lot of us there's these unmade decisions that weigh us down and like they eat up so much of our mental capacity that we just need to free ourselves up and do it uh and pull the trigger. Those are the soft decision firms that I allowed myself to think through a 99 cent

book if you want to give 66 cents of that to Amazon. Uh it's got 3,000 fivestar reviews. It's the first of 10 books that I'm making kind of detailing the process of scaling a business. I have a course that goes with that that's for free. You don't even have to opt in for it. So it's not like an email collection. It's just I think that the highest leverage thing that most people can do is is improve their offer. It's the first place that I start with all the businesses that we take on that we invest in. And so if you're curious like what we actually do, we invest in companies that are doing between 1 and 10 million in profit. Uh typically within uh the e-learning or service space, uh you know, chains of brick-andmortar service businesses that want to license or want to franchise or people who already have a niche uh that they have defined out that they do business services to. So, it's like, oh, I'm good at, you know, uh, bookkeeping. I'm good at helping lawyers improve their practices, whatever. Stuff like that are the types of niche licensing businesses that we go after because that's our playbook. And so, we work with those businesses to scale them to, you know, 30, 50 million plus. And I make these videos for everyone else to hopefully get there. Um, so that we can have the opportunity to, um, you know, invest in your business and help you go to the next level. So, anyways, this is part one. Uh, this was just like the thoughts behind the decision. I will do another video or two in terms of what I learned about the negotiation process. I'll learn explain sales process overall uh in other videos. This one I wanted to walk through kind of what I was thinking about uh for myself and everyone for why we decided to um to do that and then ultimately um sell the two3 stick. Hope you found value in this and if you did, watch another video and I'll see you in the next