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For all of you wondering how I make money, this is how:
In early 2022, I met an acquisition entrepreneur who had lost close to $2,000,000 after buying his business.
We’re eating dinner together, and something he said really hit me:
“I think I just financially screwed my family”
I had driven 4 hours to meet him, and had no idea what he was going through before sitting down.
We keep talking and talking about what he was going through,
He bought his company in late 2021, a few months later, interest rates rose.
The builders he was working with cancelled projects, and paid him even slower on jobs he’d already completed, on top of that his SBA loan payments were increasing.
Then, he went through a huge J-curve. He bought a company with almost 100 employees, and there were tons of skeletons in the closet.
Money was being lost in every conceivable way.
Underbidding jobs, then mismanaging overtime, then lackluster AR collections. You name it.
$1.8M gone. All of his working capital. In one year.
Anyways, we’re sitting down in this grungy diner, I’m trying to think of every way I can help him, when I realized he really needs other business owners he can talk to.
1. Just to have people to confide in. People to build camaraderie with through the tough times. A little therapy with people who’ve gone through similar times.
2. To actually get some tactical answers to what the hell he can do in this shit storm.
He had friends to talk to, sure. But they don’t understand or can relate with being a business owner.
For obvious reasons, he can’t talk to employees and managers.
For many entrepreneurs, even sharing all the ups and downs with a spouse isn’t ideal.
So, my now friend was basically facing the most daunting, stressful, challenging period of his life ever.
Alone.
So I offered to help him find other business owners to talk to, other people who want to collaborate and share on their journeys together.
That’s when I learned about “peer groups”
Groups of other experienced business owners, getting together to commiserate losses, celebrate wins, and share tactics, resources, and the realities of SMB ownership.
So I built 2 groups pretty quickly, just to see if they’d be helpful. And they were.
Ran them free for a year, just to help.
Eventually, I realized how fulfilling they were, to the members, and to me, and committed to it full time.
That commitment also led me to host over 30 SMB/ETA events across the U.S. with 1,000+ people in attendance this year (and we're doing more in 2025)
During this time I’ve learned a lot about what business owners actually go through every day, and about what a successful peer group looks like, and what doesn’t work.
I'm extremely optimistic for our community's growth over the next few months
So this is my call to action for you:
If you'd like to attend a local meetup with other small business owners, or you'd like to learn more about the peer groups
Visit the link in the comments section below 🙏
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