{ "episodeId": "SLP534", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "bobby_shell_of_voltage": { "name": "Bobby Shell of Voltage", "role": "guest", "tag": "BOBBY" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:00", "start": 0.12, "text": "I think the big question for Bitcoiners to think about is, if you've been stacking for a long time and your stack's getting pretty big, and you're like, \"Okay, I wanna go out on a leap and like take some of this and buy a business,\" like, do your research, you know? Just holding Bitcoin forever, like, are you just holding it to hold it, to talk about it, or are you holding it to improve your life?" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "00:18", "start": 18.08, "text": "So should Bitcoiners get involved in small business? Welcome to Stefan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics, brought to you by Swann dot com. Today we're talking about this question of whether Bitcoiners should also get involved in small business. Now, why would we do this? Well, maybe there are ways to earn more money, or maybe it's about the impact, the influence that you can have. What kind of resources do you need to learn more about this? And also, how do you think about this as a Bitcoiner? Because obviously, we believe in Bitcoin, we think Bitcoin Why put all this time and effort and money into doing business as well? So we talk with Bobby Shell today to explore this question. Bobby Shell is over at Voltage, and he also is involved with digital marketing, and he also runs a lawn care business. So I think, I thought he would be a great person to talk to on this question. So now onto my chat with Bobby." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "01:21", "start": 81.09, "text": "Bobby, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks Stefan. So, Bobby, we're gonna talk today about something that's maybe not as familiar for a lot of Bitcoiners, but I know this is something you're quite passionate about. It's SMB. So, do you wanna just set the background here? What, what's SMB? Why is it? Interesting to you?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:42", "start": 101.72, "text": "Yeah. So small businesses are the backbone of America, you know, it's majority of the jobs in America, about ninety-nine percent of jobs come from small businesses. And My entire career, before joining Voltage and coming into Bitcoin, I spent, ten plus years doing digital marketing for small businesses, and before I joined Voltage, I started a digital marketing agency, continuing that after, leaving my last agency. And, ever since I was in first grade, I've done local sales. I've owned my own lawn care company for about, seven to ten years between like, middle school, high school, and into college. So it's just deeply a part of the DNA of who- Who I am, and, I'm seeing a lot of parallels between the communities of small business owners and bitcoiners, and I wanna raise awareness about why individuals should consider starting or acquiring a business, and why taking free cash flows and saving in Bitcoin and accepting Bitcoin as payments is, a wise thing and rational thing to do." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "02:45", "start": 165.3, "text": "Great. And so for many people, they will just be instinctively more familiar with the idea of just having a normal job, maybe in the American context, just a W-2 job, that may be more comfortable for them because that's what they know. But from your perspective, why should people think about SMB and why should Bitcoiners consider SMB?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:08", "start": 187.95, "text": "Yeah, yeah. So you have a good point. Like a lot of folks want a W-2 because, you know, they may not have an entrepreneurial spirit yet. they might love having the healthcare or having a 401k or, you know, making a certain income that they know and- You could lightly say it's almost guaranteed, although nothing's guaranteed, but when it comes to small business and entrepreneurship, you know, right now we're seeing some of the, the highest inflation historically, a lot of money printing, and ever since people have been allowed to work from home, they've had a bit more autonomy and folks have been exploring, businesses. There's been a drastic rise in small businesses being started and LLCs created over the last few years, and there's more awareness now on Twitter and X about, SMB Twitter, so the ability to buy and acquire a small business, and I think what's really enticing for people, is the fact that if you get an SBA loan and take advantage of, you know, government incentives, you can acquire a business that's doing over a million dollars in revenue and, you know 75, 80% of businesses fail within a few years and never hit a million in revenue. And once a business is passed around like the five year mark and crosses a million in revenue, it's been de-risked, the, the idea's been validated essentially, it's functioning, it's cash flowing typically, and that makes the risk much lower. The default rate on those loans are, you know, two percent or less. So, you know, someone with no business experience may not acquire a business, but someone who understands sales, marketing, operations, it's- Probably in their wheelhouse to do that. And when you look at who has money in the world, it's typically the entrepreneurs. If you look in your local community, you know, the person with the big house, the person with the boat, with the nice cars, they're typically an entrepreneur, and they, they own their own business. So not only is there upside as far as the money you can make, but there's a lot of tax incentives and different things that are there for entrepreneurs because they are taking the risks. Again, you know, these are ninety-nine percent of jobs in America, where From small businesses. So they, they encourage entrepreneurs to take that risk and that leap." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "05:19", "start": 319.44, "text": "Gotcha. And so as you've said, there's different elements to this. One element may just be that your earning potential is, could just be much, much higher with an SMB. Now of course, there's risks too, like we want to be fair here, like you can, you can lose money on this too. But as you said, there's certain- Techniques and things that you can do lower your risk, as you mentioned, purchasing a business with greater than one million in revenue, and then I think the other component that you were get, you were touching on there is that you can maybe- Have more influence in your local area, because maybe you're the guy who's hiring people in that area. So is that something, can you just elaborate a little bit on that idea that by being an employer in that area, that you can potentially influence things that happen in the local area?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:13", "start": 373.34, "text": "Yes. Yeah, like why being the employer is valuable. And I wanna touch on one thing before I dive into that is the risks. a lot of times with loans, you do have to personally guarantee them, so you might have to put your house up as collateral or savings, There's stories where people have gone, bankrupt, and that's why diligence and doing research and having a, a very specific framework and plan is, is very important. But, we can dive into that a more bit later. But to your point, like we discussed offline, being a business owner, it gives you influence in your area. you know, you get to be a core part of building the culture of your community. when it comes to a small business, if you're profitable and doing well, you can allocate dollars in the local community to- To create the outcomes you want to see, and you can also hire people and create a culture and workplace that's going to not only, when you go to serve people locally or sell products or services, it's gonna leave them delighted and feeling good with the interaction, which in some cases is kind of rare nowadays, you're also able to transform those people's life and give them purpose, and that's where, emotional intelligence really matters and, and leadership really matters. But at the end of the day, you know, I'm not a person who's hard- Or into politics or, lobbying, but one thing is for certain is that if principled and well-moral people don't take a stand, speak up, and invest in the outcome they want to see, corrupt people or people with bad incentives, and that'll create bad outcomes will take that seat. So I think it's important for those who have a heart and mission to serve others should consider entrepreneurship and learn more about this." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "07:56", "start": 475.54, "text": "It also- It seems to me that the common story you see about entrepreneurs is, you know, the, your people are thinking about the Mark Zuckebergs and the people who famously dropped out of university to start some- Mega unicorn startup and things like that. That's kind of the story that plays on news and the big magazine covers. But there's also another story that maybe isn't so, so loudly sung, which is more like there are entrepreneurs who are maybe in their late thirties, early forties, they've had a career in a certain area, and now they wanna strike out on their own and set up a business or maybe they pursue acquisition entrepreneurship. So I'm wondering if there's so-- anything you're seeing on that particular, you know? There's the story of like the, the twenty-one year old university dropout versus, let's say, mid-career person who's kind of going out of the job W-two style into entrepreneurship." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:51", "start": 531.13, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, like, I, I'll kind of speak of my background. Like, I, I, I grew up as a kid having a lawn care company, and then whenever I joined college, I, I got a server job, and I worked at Chick-fil-A and Starbucks during my career, so I learned a lot about customer service. And I kind of simplify it into three buckets. You know, if you're getting your first job, you might have to work hourly minimum wage. if you're lucky, you can get a server job and almost earn like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:21", "start": 560.71, "text": "Like a more specialized skill set, whether it be engineering, enterprise sales, maybe becoming an operational leader, and then there's entrepreneurship where you take those skills and you build a business and build a team. You know, I, I've started cut, trying to create YouTube content to help people, learn about this and educate, and I would love to dive into those more in like separate videos, but, for the entrepreneurs who are considering like which way to go, I think there's a lot of ways to like take leaps and bounds from that young Let's say you're sixteen and you have a job working hourly, you know, building a career there, like getting, working for high quality reviews, learning the ins and outs, you know, every time you get a review, say, \"Hey, what are three things I can improve on?\" Next six month review, \"What are three things you improve on?\" Your manager eventually says, \"There's nothing you can improve on, you're top tier.\" Now you can jump up to the next job or role. And this is something I think young people can tremendously leverage now, and work your way Excuse me, these, LLCs and businesses being started, it's going parabolic. It's actually easier than ever for a young person to start a business. in my background doing digital inbound marketing for small businesses, I've had so many business owners who, they start a pest control company or a pressure washing company or they're a, a plumber who is a contractor and now they just made their business. One of the most important things you could do is build a Google My Business profile and start, you know, doing work for friends and family, gather some reviews, and once you start Ten, twelve, twenty reviews, you start getting inbound calls, and you've got a marketing engine, and that's what's really exciting in the digital space compared to the physical back in the day where there was the yellow pages, is there's far less overhead. You can spin up a digital entity, a website, a social media profile, a review platform, and just work out of your house. So there's very low cost to start a business and low risk because you can leverage your network. But, more importantly too, if you have the capital and you're tired of working at, A high paying job, and you are further along in your career, and you've kind of worked your way up, there's a lot of folks who, you know, they might have, half a million, million in savings, and they say, \"I'm gonna take the next year to two off to hunt down a business and acquire one, \" and then they become the CEO and they take over ownership of that business. So, I'll pause there, that was kind of a long answer, kind of starting from square one, but also addressing some of these higher earners who wanna leave the" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "11:51", "start": 710.75, "text": "As you said, it's almost, it seems like there's two archetypes. I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong there, but it seems like you're kind of spelling out two archetypes. One archetype is maybe that guy who's been, who was, you know, selling Coca-Cola drinks to his schoolmates when he was, you know, and he was kind of a, like a, an early entrepreneur, and he's just always had that entrepreneurial streak. And that sounds like that was you. And then there's the other people who maybe they, they started their career in W2 world At least two main archetypes, and maybe there's kind of like the Mark Zuckerberg sort of tech startup out of university sort of archetype as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:28", "start": 748.27, "text": "Yes. You did bring up the, the Zuck thing. a lot of startups fail. Like, so I work at a startup, obvious, Voltage, for those who don't know, it's a Bitcoin development platform. but when you look at startup data, like I, I know you're in venture as well, Stefan, but one of the things I've learned as I've like done a little venture investing Once you move to like Series A, there's like, whatever it is, like seventy percent Series B, maybe fifty, Series C, like you're, you've, you've clearly had product market fit, and those aren't the exact numbers, but startups tend to fail, and that's exactly why we see the same thing in small business. If you start a business, there's a good chance you might fail, 'cause people who start businesses may not have the business chops, and that's also why acquisition entrepreneurship has become popular, because once you get over a certain amount of revenue and scale, To fail, because there's systems in place, there's sustainable revenue, there's marketing channels. So whether it's like investing in venture capital at Series A, B, C, or you're talking about buying a business that's established, it's kind of, you know, I like to view things in like simple ways just to make it easy for people. A later stage company is always a better investment decision, that's why publicly traded stock markets are what people use for retirement. And venture, the later the stage, the more likely chance of success, also the lo- Lower the return, and then whenever you buy a business that's, doing over a million in revenue, there's a more likely chance it'll be successful. And this is also upstream, like private equity, who, you know, these like syndication groups and just like private equity investors, they're starting to move into buying and acquiring lower in the, in the market. Like we, we used to see people buy apartment complexes, then they went to mobile home parks, now they're going into single family homes, which there's debates in Congress, should they be allowed to do that? The They used to buy businesses that were maybe over ten to fifteen million in revenue, now they're dribbling down into like three to five million in revenue. So this is why it's really important, I think, for the individual, especially the sovereign individuals out there, to consider acquiring a business, because as private equity swallows up everything in the world, it's very important for us, those of us with principles and morals and a vision for the future we wanna see, let's own those businesses and take control of our communities and keep these businesses in our communities versus in these private equity groups that- manage billions of dollars, buying up and gobbling up small businesses and apartments." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "14:55", "start": 895.34, "text": "I see. And to, and to your point as well around the size of those businesses. And to what we were saying earlier, there is a potential for greater earnings power, and I think this is something maybe you could touch on as well, because, yeah. Okay, it tends to be, it's not always the case, but it, it tends to be that when you're in W2 jobs, your earnings are capped To some extent. Whereas when you have a business, it's sort of, it's far less capped. Do you wanna just expand your thoughts on that and your experience in business as well?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:27", "start": 926.89, "text": "Yeah. So I've worked, you know, salary jobs and commission jobs. When it comes to salary, you might make seventy-five, ninety, hundred K, fifty K, two hundred K a year, and you have a cap. a lot of folks that enjoy commission, they go for sales jobs because the cap is your capability to close deals and get work done. Now- When it comes to small business ownership, what's great about that is when you own a business, you're an equity stakeholder in that business, meaning you own a portion of it. And when it comes to owning your business, the more you grow that business, the more you can hire employees. The more you can expand into new markets, something in business is called vertical integration for those who maybe didn't go to business school or are active entrepreneurs. Typically, whenever you're in business, you're buying supplies from different people and you're working with partners. Vertically integrated means versus being like horizontal, you bring those things in house and it's all part of your business and it creates economies of scale where if you're buying cups for fifty cents a piece, if you started buying them direct from manufacturer or made them yourself, you might get them for five cents a piece, therefore you're creating value for So as a business owner, you've got all of these levers you can control and pull, which allow you to control the profitability and therefore the paycheck that you bring" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "16:43", "start": 1003.15, "text": "home. Back to the show in a moment. When it comes to Bitcoin, as we say, it's not your keys, not your coins. And above certain thresholds, it's great to get hardware that we can use to secure our coins. The Coldcard is an example of a hardware wallet or hardware signing device from CoinKite dot com. Now, I use the Coldcard as part of various setups. I think the team do a great job of making Bitcoin easier to secure because they have a certain level of security considerations that they put into a lot of things that they do. The Coldcard is a great device, you can use it easily with desktop wallets such as Sparrow Wallet or Specter Desktop or Electrum. As an example, you can get a USB-C cable and plug that into your Coldcard and plug that into a computer. Or of course, if you're more advanced, you can use the airgapped operations where you can use the SD card on your Coldcard to- To move information back and forth. Also, at, at a cheaper level, there is-- there are other devices such as the TapSigner. 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You can buy Bitcoin on your phone, and you can buy it either in a lump sum or set up a automated recurring purchase plan or a Bitcoin savings plan or an auto DCA, whatever you wanna call it. Now, most people use some combination of those approaches. Maybe they start out with a lump sum to accumulate a little bit Portion, a piece of Bitcoin, and then they set up a regular ongoing purchase plan. Now, of course, with Bitcoin, it's not your keys, not your coins, and Swan wants you to take self custody. Swan makes it free to withdraw your coins, and you can even automate this process so that you can just regularly stack and have those coins on an automated basis. Maybe that's weekly, or maybe once you get above a one million Satoshi threshold, you can withdraw those coins. Swan also makes it really easy to learn about Bitcoin. Swan has a range of free resources So for example, Jan Pritzkir's book Inventing Bitcoin is available for free over at swan dot com slash free book. There are a range of swan podcasts and shows that are also there to provide people with Bitcoin education. So if you're interested, go and sign up, start stacking stats with swan over at swan dot com slash livera, and you'll get ten dollars of Bitcoin dropped into your account when you start stacking with swan. And now back to the show. I see. And so we're, we're not gonna get too in depth about, you know, financial multiples and things like this, but just as an example, as you were touching on this idea of acquisition entrepreneurship, right? So in the, in the case that you're, you're explaining this- Hypothetical hodler Bitcoin person who is looking at ways to, like you said, earn more and potentially, yeah, contribute in their local community in, in some way, they might be looking at businesses and looking at businesses above one million in revenue, and then out of that revenue, maybe there'll be a certain level of EBITDA or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization, and then out of that, y-you know, there's a certain amount of budget that you can play with in terms of how much You are, you know, hiring staff, how much you are using to, you know, pay down loans that you, you know, for your SBA loan, and some of that obviously you have to pay yourself to, you know, feed your family, and then part of that obviously is, you know, you wanna stack Sats too, right? So I guess that's kind of like a high level way that you might be thinking about that, that there's a certain chunk of, you know, cash flow that you've got, and you have to actually allocate that, and that's part of the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:59", "start": 1258.62, "text": "Yeah, exactly. And I'll, I'll kind of share a few other terms so people can go down this rabbit hole on their own. Typically, like smaller, younger businesses doing under a million in revenue, it would, it would sell on a multiple based on sellers' discretionary earning, SDE, essentially what that owner takes home. You know, they might have one to three employees or something. Once you start getting over a million in revenue, you start looking at EBITDA, like, you were just mentioning, and typically a business might sell at a three to six x multiple. What's That's worth mentioning for folks listening is HVAC companies in particular, some of these home services companies that are absolute staples to how society functions, you know, plumbing. If you have a pipe leak, you don't wait like if your AC goes out, you might not wait a day or two, you fix it now 'cause your whole house will get damaged. Some of these businesses are selling for more than a six x multiple, they might sell for an eight x multiple because they are more sustainable, they are more in demand, and the margins are so high. So, you're, you're spot on Very key things when it comes to analyzing a business and if you're a business owner and you haven't thought about selling your business, we haven't, we should have mentioned this at the beginning, but, one key reason why this is so attractive to people and awareness is being made about it is because there's like ten thousand baby boomers retiring daily. there's about ten, seven to ten trillion dollars worth of value locked up in those businesses, and for those baby boomers to have a place to sell them and exit those businesses so they can sail off in the sunset, there's not enough buyers out there right now So a lot of these businesses, if they don't sell, they just shut down. So there's two roads here. If that business does shut down, good, because young entrepreneurs can start a new business from scratch and fill that gap in the market. Or you can buy and acquire that business as functioning and firing on all cylinders and improve it, and you kind of also have a head start. So, you know, all things equal, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity, and then there's a lot of strategy when it comes to preparing your business to sell and exit. So someone who's maybe in their twenties or thirties, even forties right now, they might say, \"Hey, I wanna buy and acquire one of these businesses, grow it over the next five to seven years, take my expertise and chops, and sell it down the line, appealing to people and why this is growing in such popularity." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "23:20", "start": 1399.83, "text": "One other area that might be interesting, and I know you'll have personal experience on this, is can you compare and contrast for us the, you know, what it's like to be an entrepreneur for a physical home services business versus more of an online business? Obviously, you have a lawn, lawn care business, physical, and digital marketing, obviously, an online kind of focused business. What are some of the key differences you notice there when you're operating those?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:45", "start": 1425.13, "text": "Yeah. There's more, you know, overhead and, and costs potentially in a physical business. you're managing people, you're managing emotions, you've got to handle them well and treat them well and understand them. You also might have cars and equipment that you need to deal with. One thing about digital business, the friend told me, you know, right around the time Google came out and Bitcoin, started coming out, was he's like, \"Bobby, with a digital business, you can literally just make a website in a day and begin selling something. There's very It's easy to start a digital business. I think that's very enticing for young people, specifically who have an affinity for the internet and a skill set. It's also attractive for folks who have a job and they're starting a side hustle. If you look at like TikTok and social media, like side hustles and quick ways to generate cash is really popular, so that's another thing. But one, one thing about a physical business too is there's obviously barriers to entry. You know, not everyone's gonna go out and buy a truck or put their truck on the line and start And buy equipment, so there's, there's a bit of a barrier of entry too. But pros and cons to both. I think learning the chops digitally is really great for someone who maybe doesn't have a lot of cash and they say, \"Hey, I wanna start understanding...\" How to digitally market a business and get my feet wet and learn about, you know, marketing, sales processes and so on. But physical business is really where a lion's share of the current acquisition entrepreneurship money is. But there are, it's also debatable when I say that, 'cause there are websites where you can buy and acquire an e-commerce business or a blog that has display advertising, you're essentially selling digital real estate to advertisers, for instance." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "25:24", "start": 1524.15, "text": "Right. And as I understand, the multiples are typically a little bit different as well, right? So, like, from my understanding, you correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is the online businesses typically go at a higher multiple of their earnings compared to some of the physical businesses. Is that your experience as well?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:45", "start": 1544.87, "text": "That's a great question. it can depend, like, I know like, for instance, like a, a digital marketing agency might sell for like a four x multiple, but if it's a SaaS company, you know, like a, a digital marketing agency might have fifteen to like thirty percent profits, a SaaS company might have like seventy-five to eighty percent profit margins, and that's why like SaaS companies might sell at like a twenty to forty x multiple or whatever. But that being said, multiples for SaaS companies, I believe, are going to come down. There's been a lot of debates and talks about this because it's pretty easy to spin up software now that AI is writing code and it's becoming more efficient. Like we're seeing AI replace developers and not replace manual labor. So that's not to diminish, you know, software developers, 'cause they are valuable, but I think some of these obscene multiples from the last like twelve years of like printing money, zero percent interest rates, I have a feeling that they will come down come down, because like Jeff Booth talks about, who's been on your show, technology is deflationary. It lowers the price of things, it lowers the cost of goods. you know, it, the price of things move to the marginal cost to produce it, and now that people can run these AI models at home, and it's becoming easier to create software solutions, and as the world becomes more open source and interconnected and interoperable together, that's gonna make software more affordable. So that also kind of really begs people People and can makes them want to consider a physical business may be something to explore." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "27:17", "start": 1637.48, "text": "And in some ways, like you said, with the physical businesses, it might also be more like, there's a, there's a more of an inherent moat to that aspect, right? Like, let's say you're an HVAC business, people aren't necessarily gonna call up HVAC businesses in some other state, they're gonna look, okay, who's nearby, right? Who's nearby who can actually come and help me fix my problem now to fix my, you know, my air conditioning, my heating and whatever. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:41", "start": 1661.13, "text": "Yeah, yeah, you're spot on. that's totally true. and I think like for your audience in particular, I know there's a lot of listeners that are broader than Bitcoin, but, I'm, I'm seeing a lot of overlap with small business and Bitcoin. Like one thing that was really interesting, was during COVID, a lot of the businesses that got left open were, you know, liquor stores or big box businesses, which is really weird, you know? This is a time where people are sick and we're giving them poison and we're letting Businesses stay open, but they were giving small businesses the shaft. Like they, they made like gyms shut down, they made other small businesses shut down, which didn't leave a lot of people feeling good. So I know there's, there's folks right now listening who are saying, you know, I don't want that risk. You know, if there's another lockdown, I don't want my business being shut down. Well, that's also why local service businesses, like these contractors, they actually stayed open. They were considered essential. So there is a de-risk of owning an essential Restaurant. So this doesn't mean every local business maybe is worth buying, you know, restaurants have low margins, but home service businesses are. And beyond that, just like, actually, I'll pause right there, but there's, there's other, there's other things I think that are, that are worth mentioning, just as, as it relates to small business and Bitcoin, and we can dive into those, but I'll, I'll pause there for just a moment." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "29:01", "start": 1741.36, "text": "Yeah, sure, sure. so when it comes to acquisition, entrepreneurship, and some of these home service person is going into. Do you have any comments around skill sets that are required? Right, should the potential person acquiring this business, how important is it that this person has an already existing skill set that's applicable for that business? Like, if you're gonna buy a restaurant, do you need prior experience working in a restaurant or, or whatever, whatever, whatever it may be, versus- You know, trying to go into something new because you just have a passion in that area." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:39", "start": 1779.02, "text": "Yeah, so, I'll, I'll start off by sharing this. There's a book, I have on my shelf here from the Harvard Business Review called Buying and Selling Businesses, and this is a playbook they teach in, like Ivy League schools, like how to buy and acquire businesses. Like this playbook's thirty years old, so the-- It's a very competitive market. Like these are typically folks with MBAs, but I think nowadays The information asymmetry is there where you can go on YouTube and learn a lot about running a business, and if you've worked in businesses prior and you've kind of worked your way up and been intentional with career growth, you totally are capable of doing this. So, buying, and buying small businesses by the Harvard Business Review, and there's also a book called Buy Then Build, where one of the gentlemen who kind of played a major role in this playbook and helping normal people do it, his name is Walker DiBelle, he wrote that book, and those are like the two playbooks any- One who pursues this needs to read, they're, they're very key. but to a more pointed answer to your question, like the skill set, understanding finances in the, in the, in the basics is, is pretty important. you know, you're going to be analyzing deals before you buy a business, and you want to make sure financials are good, and whatnot. operations is also meaningful and it matters because you're gonna be now managing people, you're gonna be managing customers. for me- Me, I have some operations experience. I don't necessarily love day-to-day operations. My background has always been in sales and marketing, so my, my partners are typically like the, the integrators and the operators. But sales and marketing skills are tremendously important. There's a lot of these older businesses that use fax machines or don't have automation in place or marketing strategy, and just by doing that and adding that, I've had countless clients who come into our marketing agency and we just do what we do on that front, and they start experiencing, you know, fifty to sixty percent year Over year growth after being stagnant at like, you know, five to ten percent yearly. So it depends on your skill set, but I think key ones that matter is like finance, operations, and sales and marketing are great entry points. And today on the internet, every person in the modern world needs to be a marketer, so I think there's a specific- Slice of users, the marketers who are gonna do well. And I've spoken with, Mark Moss about this just to kind of give him a hat tip, but we were talking about ac-buying and acquiring small businesses, and he was bringing up the fact that, while he loves that and he's friends with Cody Sanchez, who's also a popular person in this kind of, topic and wheelhouse, he said this, the, the blue ocean strategy of creating values-based businesses is also where you can, make- A deep connection with customers. And so, Jeremy's Razors, have you heard of them, Stefan?" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "32:29", "start": 1948.77, "text": "Right, yeah, yeah, I heard of the story. I think, so you go on, tell, tell, tell us this." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:33", "start": 1953.42, "text": "Yeah, it's so fun. so the, what was it, Harry's Razors, they sponsored Ben Shapiro or whatever, and he basically said there were two genders, right, biologically true. And Harry's Razors was like, \"If you don't take that back, we're going to cancel our sponsorship of you.\" And he said" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:54", "start": 1974.35, "text": "company, Jeremy's Razors, and now they're growing tremendously fast, multi-million dollar company, and they're not competing on quality, they're competing on story and standing up for what their customer believes is the truth. And their marketing stick is, don't give money to woke companies that hate you, and they're killing it, and they charge a premium. So these values-based businesses, when it comes to digital, if you create a product or service around standing for your values, there's fifty to sixty percent of people out there that agree with you, and they will- We'll take their money away from a woke corporation and give it to you because, again, if you wanna see the world operate and your community operate in the way that aligns with your values, you need to be an entrepreneur, 'cause clearly people vote with their dollars. You know, we always talk about voting with our feet in Bitcoin, like moving to jurisdictions that respect our values. Same with money, people vote with their money every day where they spend it, and entrepreneurs have a great opportunity to capitalize on that psychology and truth of how con- Consumers think and vote with their money." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "33:57", "start": 2036.91, "text": "Right. And so there's different ways to go about that. Like one way could be, as you said, sort of if there's like, I mean, in that example, if the criticism is that, or the concern is that there's all these kind of left wing, woke companies, and everyone's putting their money to them, make a right wing company. And then I think another approach is sort of just to say, we're just gonna make a company that just does the thing, and we don't care about left wing, right wing, whatever. Like Totally valid, and it's an interesting story, and it seems like that seems to be what, some of the Daily Wire guys are doing. But they're trying to sort of say, \"Oh, look how woke Disney is. We're gonna make the non-woke version of that and have children's cartoons or do a non-woke version of Snow White.\" I mean, just as examples, right? and so, yeah, lots of opportunities, in- The world out there, and it's really about, you know, being a skillful entrepreneur, sort of s-sensing, okay, how can I pull together these different, let's say, ingredients of a recipe to create something that's obviously creating value for, the, the end customers out there, and so I think that's kind of at the end of the day, that's really what the message is, but it's also about being intelligent with how you take risks, because obviously there are downsides too. So could you just spell out maybe? Maybe just to g-give some perspective for listeners, what are some of the challenges you've had to face, you know, being an entrepreneur rather than just being a W two employee?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:26", "start": 2126.25, "text": "Yeah. So, I mean, I have to do say, over the last, you know, twelve years, I am still a W two employee. my last agency, I was, and then started my own company, but also quickly got hired into Voltage, which I'm still a W two employee. But, you know, having my long hair company, I, I definitely faced challenges as a startup entrepreneur Coming in, what do I do? You know, for me, my father taught me this and it's still true today. You'll see, SMB bros write Twitter threads of going door to door, but for every hundred noes, you get one yes. And I would just go door to door to people and I'd say, \"You know, I'm gonna do a hundred doors a day, some days I do more, but by the time I do a thousand doors, I'm gonna have ten customers, and I just let the odds be in my favor.\" But one thing I I had a much higher conversion rate than one percent, and I think people out there that understand these principles will do that. So that's one thing. Now, the next thing is, I think once you have the business, you know, sustaining those relationships and getting systems in place to where you can build referrals, you know, seventy-five percent of people look up a review of a business before they use a business. So obviously, the Google My Business piece I mentioned at the beginning, it's important to get reviews from customers, but also to ask people for business, like a lot of- Folks are like too afraid to ask for something. A lot of people think sales is just getting people to buy something they don't need. I think these people, well, you know, I think they have a kind of a twisted view on the world, and at the end of the day, like, we don't need to let other people's perception of the world and sales Change what we know is true. Like at the end of the day, it's about creating value for others. Those are the companies that are the best, and those are the companies that sustain, and as entrepreneurs, we need to always be seeking to do that because the rest will take care of itself. but yeah, when it comes to entrepreneurship and acquisition entrepreneurship specifically, like, over the last four months, one of the, businesses I have has been going through an acquisition of like rolling up another company under ours, and it's all peachy keen a lot of times until" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:35", "start": 2254.76, "text": "And then there's always stuff that comes up, you know, the, the seller may get a little squirrely because they're making a big career and life shift, so nurturing that relationship's important. But also, things may be revealed in the financials or other things as you go through diligence with a lawyer and whatnot, and that can be incredibly challenging, and I know that can be really discouraging for people. So if you are making the leap, I would definitely, you know, try to connect with the, the big community of people who are doing this and get some insight and just" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "38:05", "start": 2284.82, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Mempool.space is the leading Bitcoin and blockchain visualizer. You can see transactions, you can see the projected timing of particular transactions, of when they are likely to be confirmed into a block. You can do things like target the fee for your transaction. I use mempool.space all the time when I'm about to send an on-chain transaction because it allows me to get a sense of what's the state of mempolls out there in the network, and mempool.space has all these features that you can- You can use to understand what's going on. You can search transaction history, you can search unconfirmed transactions, and you can, paste in the transaction ID and do all kinds of, analysis there. It's really a great tool, and they've got a mempool accelerator which is coming soon. So for those of you who are interested in that, go to mempool dot space slash accelerator, and you can sign up on the waitlist, and you can be one of the first people to know when the mempool dot space transaction accelerator is out live. So go and find out more over Base slash accelerator. And now back to the show. Right. And so as you said, you may need a lawyer, you may need, an accountant, you may need some kind of quality of earnings. There's all kinds of aspects that go into diligence to make sure that, you're not buying a lemon, let's say, that you're buying a, you know, a proper business, and that there's certain risks that have been de-risked. So as an example, concentration risk, or maybe it's, it's like the founder is like a one-man band," }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "39:34", "start": 2374.34, "text": "About, let's bring it back to one other area for, obviously we're talking for a Bitcoiner audience, and a lot of Bitcoiners might be thinking, well, how do I do this in terms of making sure I'm still earning Bitcoin on net as opposed to, you know, because for them, rightly or wrongly, maybe they, they sense that, hey, it's more safe for me to just have my W-2 job or some kind of, way that they're earning, just, you know, fiat mining and then just buying Bitcoin. coin, whereas, you know, taking the leap into entrepreneurship, it's sort of high risk, high reward, and so there's maybe some potential that you could lose money, and, you know, obviously as a Bitcoiner, you're trying to stack stats and not go, not go the other way, so do you have any comment there for, you know, speaking to, specifically to the Bitcoiner audience?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:23", "start": 2423.39, "text": "Yeah. I think the big thing at the end of the day is you have to have free cash flow. You know, you, you're gonna pay yourself to take care of your family and live your life, but that additional money, you know, you can either use it to invest back into the company, whether it be marketing or hiring new people. Or, you know, just, just reinvesting into growing the company, which there's, you know, tax benefits for that, you're kind of deferring, you know, it's low time preference. I'm deferring having this money now to spend on what I want to reinvest in the company. The other thing too is if you're at a point where it's like, there's so much money I have that I don't necessarily find, I don't see a way to reinvest it into the business, then it's, hey, let's maybe acquire Bitcoin and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:14", "start": 2473.96, "text": "And that will give me the ability to go through maybe a merger and acquisition position. And why that's enticing is as businesses scale and they get into like larger, amounts of revenue, the multiple may go from three to four x to six to eight x to ten to twelve x, and that's where economies of scale, again, if you can grow a business, let's say a hundred million in revenue, it's gonna sell for a much higher multiple because these capital allocators that say, \"Hey, we only cut fifty million or more dollar checks or a hundred million more dollar checks,\" They're gonna pay more for that business 'cause it's very sustainable, there's systems in place, the likeliness of it going under is very low. So I think there's benefits for entrepreneurs who do have a business or are acquiring one to consider, what do I wanna do with my excess capital that I don't see will generate a return and growing the business now? And that's where saving in Bitcoin to grow your business or simply holding for, you know, a rainy day when you might need it is very important." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "42:09", "start": 2528.62, "text": "Yeah, great answer. And I think that the other really challenging point, sort of related to what you were saying, is now none of us have a crystal ball. We don't know exactly what Bitcoin is gonna do over the next five or ten years. But if you look back at history, Bitcoin has probably done fifty percent Kager, maybe a little bit less or more, depending on where you're, where we are in the cycle, right? In the bull time of the cycle, maybe it's like a hundred percent, but maybe in the bear cycle, it's maybe more like forty percent or so. As you, and I, and any listener, they're probably thinking, \"Oh man, if I put this money into the business, if I just otherwise had it in Bitcoin, I might be getting, let's take a guess, forty, fifty percent per year.\" you know, a, a, a very high-growth business could grow faster than that, though, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:56", "start": 2576.33, "text": "Yeah, I mean, the thing about, the business, and this is where I think a lot of folks, kinda get stuck in a pickle is, you could put your money directly into Bitcoin and just wait on Bitcoin to go up, or what you could do is create a, a business and an engine that actually grows faster, and that's where I think businesses like Zapright are really important, which, you know, John, I believe, founder of that, and they just brought on Will and Parker. Will and" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "43:27", "start": 2606.87, "text": "Parker, yeah. I had Will on recently as well. But go on." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:29", "start": 2609.47, "text": "Nice. Yeah. So like Parker wrote like the Pay Me in Bitcoin theory, how it starts with individuals making the decision and then they get their business to accept it because they're the individual who likes it, they understand the value, and then businesses accept it. It's not gonna be like, \"We gotta sell all the businesses to accept Bitcoin.\" Like if they're not Bitcoiners, they really don't care. So I think, that's a very important decision for a business owner Move that over to dollars. You know, you could just let it sit in Bitcoin and grow. the other decision would be sign up on something like, you know, River, Swan, whatever, and just, take some of your free cash flows at the end of month and just sweep it into Bitcoin and keep it on the side. But, yeah, so I don't know if that directly answered the question, but that's where my mind went." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "44:14", "start": 2653.66, "text": "Yeah, yeah. And I, I think it's, it's just a difficult thing, but at the end of the day, you still" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "44:26", "start": 2665.69, "text": "Bear cycles, and so you need something to, you know, be able to, pay your bills during the bear cycle, and you'd rather not spend down your stack during the bear cycle. So obviously having income, from that perspective is, important. But I guess for a person who's, you know, who believes Bitcoin is gonna be the future of the world, future of money, it's, it's just a very tough consideration between how much capital do I allocate to the business versus how much do I just hodl because hodling is gonna go, you know, Bitcoin. that's where having" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:58", "start": 2697.51, "text": "friends who understand finance and spreadsheets are really important, 'cause someone debating that maybe hasn't run the numbers where it's like, hey, if you can grow your business twenty percent year over year, and as you're growing it, you're investing into the business, but you're also saving in Bitcoin. If you can take your business- From, let's say, selling at a three to four x multiple, where it then sells at an eight or ten x multiple, you just need to personally do the math. Is it worth, you know, investing an extra twenty k a year into my business to achieve that multiple, which is gonna yield you four times more money, or do you believe that little bit of Bitcoin is gonna be worth more than that? And that's, that's the thing about businesses that I think's really unique is, sure you can save in Bitcoin, but why not do both and build an enterprise that, because you hit these Line in the sand, and you create these efficiencies, you now go from a four x multiple to a six x, an eight x. That's a massive return, and all the way up, you're buying it on your personal balance sheet, you're buying it on the business balance sheet, and you control the destiny. So it's, it's definitely a personal decision, but you can, you can run the numbers on it and, you know, do your own estimates in a spreadsheet." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "46:06", "start": 2765.51, "text": "Right. And I think longer term, the goal is that, you know, for a Bitcoin standard, you wanna make Bitcoin terms, right? But obviously we're not there yet, so, you know, that's a different, maybe that's a longer term consideration, but it's just something that you, you know, people have to just consider even today, you know, at a rough level at least, even if they're not sort of doing every cost in Bitcoin terms. okay, so, yeah, I mean, we've spoken a bit about, you know, small businesses, are there any other kind of key points that you want to hit in terms of why people should do small business or why should" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:43", "start": 2803.36, "text": "Bitcoiners, you know, I think we're at a phase right now where a lot of bitcoiners wanna work at bitcoin companies. Down the line, every company will become a bitcoin company in some way, shape, or form, according to us, right? 'Cause we believe it's gonna be the future of money. So why not build a small business where you're likely going to make more money? You'll be able to give people incentives to spend Bitcoin. You can become a, a core player to your local community. And all things considered, you're just kind of giving yourself an opportunity a lot of people don't get. And I think the big question for Bitcoiners to think about is, if you've been stacking for a long time and your stack's getting pretty big, and you're like, \"Okay, I wanna go out on a leap and like take some of this and buy a business,\" like, do your research, you know? Just holding Bitcoin forever, like, are you just About it or are you holding it to improve your life? And I think the big thing about entrepreneurship, being your own boss and owning a company, is you have freedom, you have autonomy, you have sovereignty in a way because you're not bending to the will of maybe a leader you don't enjoy working under. And W2 employees, they are literally like the crux of the world, like they are the most important people in the world, and I saw a headline the other day where the Panera CEO said something like, \"Employees don't care about shareholder value. Value, and it's kind of like, \"Well, no shit, bro. Like, they're trying to pay their bills, and they wanna, you know, work with purpose. Like, they don't care about shareholders.\" And I think businesses, like enterprises, corporations, they're gonna have to shift their mindset and be emotionally intelligent and have EI, and care about people, and again, build these cultures within their company that lead people feeling excited to come to work, they have purpose, you know, they're delivering value for For those they interact with. And I think from a small business perspective, we have the ability to do that, not only to transform people's lives and give them purpose, but for you as an entrepreneur, you can, you know, kind of help craft and guide your community in the way you see fit, and you get to make a lot of money along the way, which gives you the ability to bless people in need and, you know, just spend more time with your wife, kids, partner, whatever, you know? So I think there's a lot of compelling reasons, you know, it's not And there's a lot of risk, but, you know, what is life without risk? You know, I think, you look at- Yeah, it's like the saying, \"What's in a" }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "49:10", "start": 2950.1, "text": "ship is safest in harbor, \" but that's not what ships are designed for, right? It's like that saying. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. All right. So while we've got you here, let's talk a little bit about Voltage. So, you know, what's, what's some of the latest stuff going on at Voltage, just for people who are" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:23", "start": 2962.89, "text": "interested" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:32", "start": 2972.43, "text": "You need to integrate Bitcoin into your platform, you can also source liquidity and the be- the ability to, you know, send and receive payments. And then there's data analytics tools that give customer support, the accounting team, C-level executives, just the insights and information they need so the full stack platform you would need to like build and use Bitcoin, but for us, one thing that's really exciting is we're working on a, a complete rebuild of our platform, just unifying it under one experience and adding a lot of new, just, features and like benefits that people have So that's really exciting. And, we're just gearing up for a big twenty twenty-four. one thing that anyone who's in Bitcoin and, and Lightning for a while has seen is when price goes up, businesses become interested, and, you know, we see the ETF on the peak of approval, just on the peak of being approved, and there's a lot of corporate just adoption and talk and just growth across the board. And I think that's gonna de-risk Bitcoin a lot for people. So it's just really exciting to see some of these businesses enter the pipeline, people exploring Bitcoin We're getting this new and improved platform like fully in the hands of people, and I think most importantly for developers, if you're listening to this, we're just really excited to continue to be the leader who gives businesses and developers the most access to Bitcoin and Lightning. A lot of these custodial solutions and wallets, they're coming under flack by the government because now they're money transmitters and all these things, you know, with the fight to control money. We're making everything accessible in a non-custodial way where businesses don't have to hold, you know, users' Like a bank for them, like users have their own, ability to run a node, and it just creates a less risk for businesses and also gives people full access to LND, the implementation of Lightning Network and Bitcoin. Like our, our service is fully interoperable with, and integratable with any open source software, and that's really exciting. It's the hard way, but it's the right way to build it. It gives users, it gives businesses the most flexibility and autonomy to use Bitcoin the way they want to. Need, and it's just really cool to see that our founder had this idea and is just kind of leading the industry in that way. So I'm really excited for Voltage, and I'm proud to be able to work with Graham and see all this come to fruition." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "51:43", "start": 3102.96, "text": "Well, yeah, that's excellent. I think, really great, and important messages for listeners, that we've gone through in this podcast around small business, why you should think about it, what are some of the benefits of that, that you could potentially earn more, the, you know, the, the way that you can, impact and have some kind of impact on your local area. of course, there are some risks that have to be considered, but, you know, you have to, you have to, you have to take, you have bobbyshell dot com, guys, check out the links in the show notes. And Bobby, thank you for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:18", "start": 3138.17, "text": "I appreciate it, Stefan. Thank you." }, { "speaker": "bobby_shell_of_voltage", "time": "52:20", "start": 3140.49, "text": "I hope you found the show interesting. Give us a thumbs up if you liked it, leave a comment below, and I will see you in the citadels." } ] }