Acquiring a $1.5M Business with Only $10k Out of Pocket

Jay Scott:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast, show 101.

Nigel:
I honestly believe that there’s not a person in this country that can’t be a millionaire within five years. I honestly believe. I believe that any single person can be a millionaire. It doesn’t matter what your background is, I believe anybody can do it.

Jay Scott:
Welcome to a real world MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it. Whether you’re already in business or you’re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business.
How’s it going everybody? I am Jay Scott, your cohost for the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. Here again for, I guess I was going to say our first three-digits show, but I guess it’s our second three-digits show. Yeah. Okay, our second three-digits show and I am here with my lovely co-host who’s been with me, I think 100 out of 101 times, Mrs. Carol Scott. How’s it going today, Carol?

Mrs. Carol Scott:
I’m doing really well. I love you to pieces, but I got to tell you for a guy who’s really good with numbers, that was pretty sloppy. What was that about? Anyway, I’ve got to tell you what, how awesome was spring break? Community get this, we went away on a little adventure for spring break and we were in Texas and everybody was masked up, which was phenomenal, but stuff was open and people were out and about, and businesses were thriving and there was so much light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. And it was so encouraging and so exciting that people are getting back to where they want to be and create new experiences. So just great stuff all around, lots of optimism moving forward.

Jay Scott:
Yeah, it’s really great. It’s nice to see that people are still being careful, and as more people get vaccinated, it’s also nice to see that things are opening up and we are hopefully in the next few months, getting back to normal. Speaking of getting back to normal, we have a getting back to normal show today. We have a return guest. We actually have two guests today, but one of the guests is a return guest. His name is Nigel Geisinger, and he is joined with our second guest today whose name is Sean Aide? Now you might remember Nigel from actually one year ago. His episode, I think was 365 days ago from the release of this episode, he talked all about buying businesses. So Nigel specializes or specialized, I guess he still does, but he’s branched out, but specializes in buying appliance stores.
And he talked all about how he’s bought multiple appliance stores, how he’s negotiated them, how he’s gotten some amazing deals. And he’s been one of our most popular guests, people have absolutely loved his episode. Please go back and check out his episode from last year. But since that episode, he’s been focusing on helping other entrepreneurs pursue their dreams, helping other entrepreneurs by their businesses. I think he told us he’s helped over 300 entrepreneurs at this point. And one of those entrepreneurs again is Sean Aide. And Sean is our second guest today. After Nigel’s episode last year, Shawn reached out to Nigel and together they bought a business. They bought a business called Roosevelt’s Terrariums. Don’t know what a terrarium is. Well, I didn’t know what a terrarium was either. You’ll learn in this episode, but they bought a business called Roosevelt’s Terrariums and they have absolutely been killing it with this business.
In this episode, they talk about buying the business, they talk about an amazing negotiation story. So they bought this business worth $1.5 million for $300,000. And not just that, but they bought it for only $10,000 down. Now, how do you buy a $1.5 million business for $300,000 and only put $10,000 down? Well, I guess you’re going to have to listen and find out, but here’s the important thing. The seller didn’t get taken advantage of. A lot of us worry about when we get a great deal on a business or any investment, the seller is getting taken advantage of. The seller actually made 500% more on the sale of this business than he would’ve made had Nigel and Sean not come along. So just an absolutely amazing negotiating story, you got to listen to it.
Also, make sure you listen to the end. When the guests tell us about how they are taking this $1.5 million store, and throughout COVID they’re actually pivoting to turn it into something much, much bigger than that. So, just a great story and a great example of how reaching out to somebody, building relationships and really just working together can allow people to do amazing things. Anyway, if you want to find out more about Nigel, more about Sean or about Roosevelt’s Terrariums or anything we talk about on this show, check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/bizshow101. Again, that’s biggerpockets.com/bizshow101. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Nigel and Sean to the show.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Nigel, Sean, welcome to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited we are to chat with you. Nigel, you were here with us on our show almost exactly one year ago to the day, and you had an amazingly successful episode with us. So much great feedback and absolutely cannot wait to hear what you have been up to in that time. But before you tell us, I also want to welcome Sean to the show because I know that you, Sean have been an awesome part of all the cool things that Nigel has had going on. So you both have great stories, great updates, information, and expertise. So thank you for being here. And Nigel, what have you been up to for the past 365 days?

Nigel:
Well, thank you very much for having both of us, both Sean and myself on the show. We’re so excited to be here. Wow, I can’t even imagine what, I mean, if you’d have asked me 365 days ago, what was going to happen in the next year I would never have been on for how crazy it’s been amazing. First, in the last 365 days, here’s a couple of things that have happened, here’s small business hub, we have helped out almost 400 people acquire businesses, that specifically working with small businesses throughout the country. About 60 to 70% of that is in minority areas of towns, which has been amazing, especially with everything politically going on right now. We had a passion of helping small business, and I even said a year ago what we need to do if we want to really grow this is to go into that area of town that you’re not used to being in and go support that business and go build that because what we need to do is we need to have person to person interaction and contact, and really relate with other people on a human level.
And what’s been amazing is we’ve been able to save almost 300 businesses in minority on communities that wouldn’t have been around because they were just wrapped up because nobody wanted, or at least that’s what the seller thought. But thanks to this show, those businesses exist today and we get messages almost every single day of, hey, I’m doing great in my business. Thank you so much. It got so big that Chad Corbett and I, we decided not to take a cut of most of the businesses. Initially we were going to take a cut. It got to the point where it was tens, hundreds of millions of dollars of acquisition. We just didn’t feel right in that, we don’t need the money, we both do it very well. And it got to the point where we have to look and say, what’s the greater good for the community and how do we really help out humanities? And so we just underwrote deals.
I mean, if anybody sent me a deal to underwrite, I did it. I didn’t charge him. I just said, “Here, let me lend my expertise because when things go bad, it’s our obligation as people with the education to pass it on.” Just like you guys host the podcast, it’s my job as an investor when somebody comes in and genuinely wants help to say, if you mean it and you’re going to be in the trenches, I’ll be in the trenches with you, let me help you get to where you need to be. I’m not expecting you to blaze the trail, I’m going to stand right with you shoulder-to-shoulder and let’s go knock this thing out because that’s what business people do. And that’s what people who do it right do. And so if not for you too and this podcast, there would be businesses throughout the country right now that would not be owned, and it’s because of you guys. So well done to you guys more than anything. Thank you so much for a year ago because it’s been nuts. That’s how it’s been for the last year. It’s been a roller coaster.
I don’t even live in Oregon anymore. I’m moved to the Midwest so that my kids could go to school. They asked, because of how well we’ve done in business I can live anywhere. My kids said, “Hey, we want to be in school.” Springfield, Missouri was doing school. And we said, “Perfect. We own some real estate there. Let’s move there and let’s do school.” So helping out with businesses, I actually have the appliance business that we talk so much about. I have that under contract right now to my CFO of my business, and she’s going to be buying it. So it will turn from being me-own to a woman owned business, which is like I say, trying to help out some of those demographics that historically aren’t represented in these industries, we are breaking tradition and we are going after it to try and really grow the economy because everybody can do it. There’s nobody who’s listening right now that can’t go on a business and we’re willing to jump in the trenches with you.

Jay Scott:
I absolutely love that. And just let me say that you had one of our most popular episodes last year. So we appreciate all the amazing advice that you provided to our listeners, to our community. I know even besides all the stuff that you just told us, we knew already that you’ve had a tremendous impact on our community. So thank you for that. And so, well, Nigel, I want to hear more in depth about what you’ve been doing the last year specifically, at least some of it involves our other guests. Sean, welcome to the show. We didn’t mean to ignore you for the first five minutes here. We want to talk about what you and Nigel have been doing together. But before we do that, love to get a little bit more of your backstory, who you were before you started working with Nigel, before you hooked up with Nigel last year. Tell us a little about who you are, what you do, what you’ve done and what kind of got you to the point where you connected with Nigel last year.

Sean:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having us. So I live out here in Portland, Oregon. I moved out here about almost three years ago. June will be three years, moved here from Philadelphia. I was an inside sales rep working for a promotional products company in Philly. And after winning President’s Club as an inside sales rep, they moved me out to be an outside sales rep. So that’s what brought me across the country to Portland. Pretty quickly into coming out here, I started learning about investing in real estate, financial freedom, personal development and got really obsessed with that. So I started going to a lot of networking events and had a lot of, or the first networking event that I went to here in Portland, I met a guy named Neil who was affiliated with GoBundance and he really opened up a lot of doors for me. He helped me buy my first duplex, which was a house hack.
And that first duplex, I bought it in December 31st of 2018. So a couple months after moving out here. And in April, so about four months into owning it, I had a contractor in here replacing a toilet for me and he broke an angle valve and ended up flooding the entire duplex. It was about an hour long of flooding before the emergency water services was as able to come out and turn the water off. So at that time it was in the third story bathroom flooded all the way down into the lower unit where my tenants were actually eating dinner at the time. And it started leaking through the lights and we had to evacuate the building. We had to stay in a temporary home for about 10 months while insurance took care of everything. It ended up being about $130,000 claim and learned a lot from that experience. It was a crazy 10 months, set me back a little bit with investing in real estate but I learned to-

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Sean. Oh my gosh! Don’t mean to interrupt you there, but wait a minute. I want to make sure I’m clear about this. You bought this in December in four months into it, you had $130,000 worth of damage, which basically caused you and all your tenants to have to move out for another eight months?

Sean:
Yeah. It was-

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Oh my gosh! Welcome to real estate investing by fire. Are you kidding me? Oh my gosh.

Jay Scott:
So basically a year ago you were on path to jump on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, but now you took a little detour.

Sean:
Yeah. It’s funny you say that. I’m big on writing in my journal and writing my affirmations. Can’t even tell you how many times I wrote down that was going to be a guest on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, but life happens and here we are on the business podcast.

Jay Scott:
Well, I love it. I love that you got diverted to us. So we get the pleasure of talking to you.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
We get you first. I’ll take that any day of the week, because I have a feeling your real estate investing isn’t going to stop, but in the meantime we have this awesome thing to talk about, so awesome.

Jay Scott:
Yeah. Okay, so let’s catch up. So you’re doing the real estate thing, and then I presume at some point you found out about Nigel and you hooked up with him. Tell us a little bit about that story.

Sean:
Yeah. So when I met this guy, Neil, he was affiliated with GoBundance and I started working with him and he introduced me to someone at the GoBundance team that facilitates the volunteer work and it’s called the go crew. So I volunteered to work as part of the go crew, which allowed me to have access to GoBundance, which I normally wouldn’t be able to be involved with. But because I volunteered to go there, I got to be around people like Nigel and volunteer at these events. So I started helping facilitate the Oregon GoBundance Chapter, which Nigel was a part of at the time. And this was probably very late in 2019, where we started doing this. And then 2020 happens, everything kind of shuts down.
I was actually just getting ready to start investing in real estate again, after the insurance claim was finalized. I was picking up a little bit of momentum with the Oregon GoBundance Chapter. And then the whole world shuts down. I listen to your guys’ podcasts with Nigel. I had already known about him through the Oregon Chapter and through GoBundance. So that’s when I reached out to him, said, “Hey, love everything you’re saying, I really want to buy a business.” And that’s how we ended up starting our relationship and started looking for businesses. So that was probably around April. Yeah. End of March, early April of last year. And we bought our business in September.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Excellent. So Nigel, what did you think when Sean called you, what was your initial reaction? You’re like, “Where do we go from here?” What were you thinking?

Nigel:
Yeah. So one of the things is I want to see more people be successful. I want to see more people be millionaires. I honestly believe that there’s not a person in this country that can’t be a millionaire within five years. I honestly believe that. I believe that any single person can be a millionaire. It doesn’t matter what your background is. I believe anybody can do it, and especially people that have drive. If you’ve got drive, we’d cut that number to three years because it’s possible. It’s just a formula. It’s a very simple formula, if I can do it, you can do it. Like I said, last time I was the guy who’s picked last. I’m not the smartest. I’m short. I’m kind of fat.
I’ve got no redeeming attributes whatsoever. And if I can do it, like Sean can do it, if I can do a Jay and Carol, you guys can do it. Whoever’s listening right now you can do it. Trust me, it’s not that hard. It’s a formula. It’s a very simple formula. And so we just have to get into that mindset just as society that, yeah, we can do this. Sometimes things suck and sometimes they don’t, and when they’re hard we jump in and we go in deep. Sean was all about from day one, “Hey, I want to own my own business. I don’t know what I want to do, but man, I want to do it.” You don’t have to know what it is. When I was talking to you guys last time I said a lot of advice that my grandma used to say, and one of the things she always said is what you do doesn’t matter. I took that initially as, oh gosh, what I do doesn’t matter? There’s no meaning to it.
That’s not what she meant. What she meant is the means and methods by which you achieve your wealth, it doesn’t matter. The what of the deal doesn’t matter, that you do it is what matters, that you go and you have a plan and that you want to have that drive and that you want to do, it doesn’t matter if it’s a plant shop or an appliance store or a construction company or, you name it. It doesn’t matter, a retail store, anything. The vehicle that you use to create that wealth is the same. It’s that you have a game plan and as you have a means and a method and a detached strategy, and that what’s important. And so at the end of the day, Sean had all of that, he just didn’t know what he wanted. And so this is where we came in. In fact, I’ll let Sean get into it, but the first business we looked at wasn’t this business, it was another business.

Jay Scott:
So before we go on, I just kind of want to get an idea of Sean. So you picked up the phone, you called somebody. You had met Nigel before you at least knew of him. But to a large degree, this was a cold call. It was, “Hey, I love the idea that you’re doing this business thing. I’d love to do the business thing too, help me.” Give me some idea of how you have that conversation. Let’s say there’s somebody out there who wants to call Nigel or wants to call up somebody else and just say, “Hey, I’m interested in you helping me be successful.” Do you just say that? I want you help me be successful or how do you have that conversation?

Sean:
Yeah, I mean, I really think a big part of why Nigel was so open to helping me was because I had been involved with GoBundance and working on the go crew. I had done three events so far with them and continued to volunteer my time, not taking any payment for it, just volunteering my time to be around people that are smarter and more experienced than I am, and just consistency. Just continuing to show up, continuing to keep your head down and grind and try to be better every single day. So I think he saw the work ethic. I think he saw that I really did want this. I definitely continue to press that and told them him that, “Hey, look, I’m going to do whatever you tell me to do. You guide me and I’m going to do it. I’m going to keep my head down and working.”
One thing Nigel said to me that really clicked with me when we spoke was, I was still trying to understand why buying reals or buying business was the right thing to do. And he said, “If you could go back to 2010, knowing what you know now, what would you do?” You’d buy every single family home you could get your hands on because we know 2010, ’11, ’12 was a real estate, boom. And that was a result of a real estate crash in 2008. So now fast forward to 2020, we’re in a small business crash. History repeats itself. We should see a small business boom, in 2022, ’23, ’24. So we weren’t in a real estate crash. We were in a small business crash. So the opportunity wasn’t in buying more real estate, it was in buying small business. So as soon as he said that to me, it just clicked. I knew that was the opportunity that I was waiting for, so I just went all in on it.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Very cool. So I’m curious, Sean, I think you mentioned earlier that you had been journaling about this, that you knew this was something you wanted to do. Talk to us about that process. You knew you wanted to have some type of business, how did you even come to terms with what type of business you wanted? Was it a passion project? Was there a specific one where you saw an opportunity? Talk to us more about how that all evolved.

Sean:
Yeah, so it started with what a lot of the guys like Nigel or Coda Sanchez were talking about, go out and buy an HVAC company, a plumbing company and electric company. I knew if I did that, I would’ve hated what I was doing. You couldn’t pay me enough to buy one of those businesses because I would’ve been miserable. It’s no different than working a W2 job. Actually at first, before I even brought anything to Nigel, I was looking at coffee shops and restaurants, because that’s what was closing a ton in Portland and nothing really made sense to look at. It wasn’t until probably two or three months into looking, we’re probably in June or July. My girlfriend was jokingly saying that she wanted to buy a skincare company because she’s really into skincare. So she’s like, “Why don’t you just buy something that I like?” And it was just such an innocent comment that I was like, “You’re right. Why don’t I start looking for something that I like?”
And I’m looking around my house, and over the summer, during the pandemic I had acquired a lot of houseplants. I went from maybe 20 plants to probably upwards of 80 to 90 house plants. I was repotting them and propagating them and cutting them and trading and buying and selling, doing all this. It just occurred to me, I was like, “I love plants. They’re calming. They’re peaceful. Why don’t I start looking for houseplant or a plant store to buy?” So turns out during the pandemic plants were actually booming. Everyone was at home and they wanted to add plants to their house where they didn’t usually spend a lot of time. So plants stores were thriving and not many of them were really actually struggling.
So it turned out to be fairly difficult to find a plant store. So I’m going on BizBuySell, I’m looking online, I’m doing what you’re supposed to do. I only found one garden center that was for sale. Went, saw it, met the owner, spoke with them a little bit, got the numbers and was really excited about it. Called Nigel up, I said, “Nigel, I’ve found a business, let’s do it.” And he looks at this and literally within 30 seconds he goes, “This isn’t a business. You’re not buying this.” He’s like, “There’s no money here. You’re not doing this.” And hangs up the phone. And that was it. And totally burst my bubble. He looked at it literally in 30 seconds and said, “No, move on.” So then I was kind of defeated and I was like, you know what?

Jay Scott:
Sean, can I interrupt for real quick check in because this is the difference between somebody like Nigel, who’s done this a whole bunch and somebody like you who hasn’t. I remember when I first got into real estate and businesses, it was the same thing. I would talk to people who could look at a potential deal. And again, whether it’s a business deal, an investment deal, a real estate deal, and I’m sitting here, I could look at it for the next five hours and have no idea what I’m looking at. Somebody else looks at in 10 seconds says, “Nope, good deal, bad deal.” So Nigel, tell us, you looked at this deal. I don’t know if you remember the specifics, but give me a general idea of what you would look at, really quickly, 30 seconds to determine if something is, obviously it’s a lot easier to rule out a deal than roll in a deal, but what can you look at in 30 seconds to rule out a deal?

Nigel:
So number one, and I do remember some of it in the last year [inaudible 00:23:44] thousands. But I do remember specifically on that deal, when Sean brought it, the income just didn’t hit for what you needed to cover for a legitimate salary. This is a guy who had sold a real estate and it sold large. I mean, done well. And the net number was 25, 35,000 bucks. Now, if you rolled into that job and the owner wasn’t taking a draw, it’s like, “Okay, Sean, do you want to pay yourself $12 an hour and take the liability and take the risk and pay $400,000 for this business?” That’s crazy. That’s not anything. There’s no value there. There is nothing that you’re buying of any value, so it didn’t make any sense to buy it. And what I want to see is I want people to see people win. I want to see everybody win. And if we’d put him into this business from the get-go, Sean will be making 25,000 bucks a year, frustrated working 80 hours a week on what the heck did I do? And that’s not a winning for me.
Now that doesn’t mean that the person who owns that didn’t have a job that they liked or a career that they liked or something else, but the facts are as for the business, for Sean for a first deal, we didn’t want to get on first base. We didn’t want to get the experience of that. We want to win, and in order to win we need to have businesses that win. And so when I looked at the financials it was very clear, very early on that without a lot of growth, and I believe that Sean has the skillset to grow any business that he’s part of. Could we have got it to be profitable? Absolutely. Could we have got it much more profitable than it was? Absolutely. But if that’s the case why aren’t we paying for the business? In this case, it just wasn’t there.

Jay Scott:
That’s great. That’s a fantastic tip there and something, I guess we all need to keep in mind that a lot of times we think the difficult part is getting the seller to give us actual numbers. We don’t realize that even when we get those actual numbers, we actually have to look at them and it’s not always obvious what we’re looking at. We can look at a business and let’s say this business costs $250,000, and you see at the end of the day that it’s generating $25,000 in net income. And you’re thinking, okay, that’s a 10% return. Maybe not awesome, but not bad. But when you dig in, you realize, oh, this particular seller wasn’t taking a salary. You could look at another business from another seller that had basically the same exact numbers, except maybe one of the line items was $100,000 salary to that particular seller, and so that changes the deal because in one deal you’re getting $125,000 a year, net income. The other one you’re only getting 25,000, do I have that right?

Nigel:
Yeah. And one thing to look at this is, I mean, you got to remember if these sellers own this business with no debt service, you’ve got to make enough money in addition to your own salary to pay the debt service of the acquisition. So on a seven-year schedule, which is what SBA loans are, they’re the seven or 10 years. On a seven or 10 year period on a $400,000 by, you’re spending a couple thousand bucks a month on a mortgage. Well, if you’re only bringing in 25,000 bucks and you got paid $2,000 a month, I mean, congratulations, you just volunteered yourself to work really hard to make a thousand dollars for the year. Go down on the street and pick up bottles, you’re going to make more money. So I don’t want to see anybody get into that situation where their first chance, they’re not set up for success. And so it was really easy to tap that one off from the get-go.
And that’s when you have to look at that P&L and you have to see, okay, what are the costs that I’m going to have? Not just what are the costs that they have, but once I acquire it, I’ve got a mortgage on this and I’m going to pay. Yes, that’s a net worth growth to me, but that’s cashflow that’s going to go up. I need to make sure [inaudible 00:27:26] cashflow from day one, because in order to have a really good winning partnership for both the buyer and the seller, the buyer has to be profitable so he could pay the seller. And if he or she doesn’t make enough money to pay the seller, then nobody wins because you’re going backwards and that’s not good for anybody.

Jay Scott:
So Sean, where’d you go from there? You got this news, and what was your reaction? And what’d you do?

Sean:
Yeah, so I was a little disappointed because I had all these thoughts of what I can do with this. I was really excited about it and he says, no. So I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, I’m like, you know what? I’ve been buying and selling plants on a Facebook group all summer, why don’t I just type in this Facebook group and see if anyone can help me out. So I just typed up this little post and said, “Hey, my name’s Sean, I’m 26 years old. I live in Portland. There’s a lot of businesses closing right now. If anyone knows of a local plant store that’s closing, please let me know. I’d love to reach out to the owner and see if I could help them keep the doors open.”
I mean, immediately people start posting different names in there and someone messages me probably half hour, 45 minutes later and says, “Hey, this business called Roosevelt’s Terrariums just announced today that they’re closing.” So I had never heard about Roosevelt’s before. I had never been there, but just pick up the phone and call the original owner and just said pretty much the same thing. I said, “Hey, I hear you’re closing and just want to know if you’d rather sell me your business then close.” And he said, “Yeah, I’d love to sell you my business, but here’s the thing, I’ve already given notice to the apartment that we’re closing. So you have to figure out a way to buy this in the next two weeks.”
So in my head I’m like, all right, it took me 30 days to buy a house, I wonder how I can buy a business in two weeks. But all I knew what to do at that point was asking for his balance sheet and his P&L and his financials. So I just said, “Hey, send me your numbers, I’d love to take a look at it.” So he sends me his numbers. That’s when I called Nigel. And I said, “Nigel, I got another one. Here are the numbers.” It was the opposite. He looked at it, 30 seconds goes by and he goes, “Not only are you going to buy this, but I’m going to help you do this, and I’m going to partner with you on this.” And that’s when I knew I found something legitimate. I knew I found a real deal when Nigel said he wanted to partner with me on that.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
So cool. So how did you set up the partners? I want to hear more of the mechanics, the nuts and bolts of how the asking price was, what you did to negotiate the price. Just talk to us about all that upfront, negotiation and everything that needed to happen so that you could make this a deal that would work and close in that two week time period.

Sean:
Yeah. So Nigel, he started at three quarters of his 2019 valuation, which was about $1.5 million valuation. He wanted three quarters of that as the purchase price. So it came out to about 700,000. He wanted 90% bank financing and 10% owner financing. Those were the terms that he gave me. So I said, “Let me get Nigel on the phone. Let’s do this together.” And that’s when Nigel stepped in and Nigel, you want to take it from here and explain kind of what happened.

Jay Scott:
So just before Nigel jumps in, so what I’m hearing is his first offer was three quarters of one year’s net income, and it was 90% bank financing, I’m sorry, three quarters of valuation which is, we can talk about how that relates to income. But he had proposed right there, 90% bank financing, 10% owner financing, owner carry, which meant in theory the owner, the seller was suggesting that you come to the deal with no money doubt.

Nigel:
Potentially. So when he said it that way, I knew that now, because I’m good buddies with a guy named Gabriel Hamill who, if you relisten to BiggerPockets at all, or business podcasts or the real estate one, Gab is more of the top guys in sellers. Love Gab, one of my very best friends in the whole wide world. But like the old song, anything you can do I can do better. I love him, so this is not enough, but I want to see what we could do here. So the guy said a couple of things. Sean gets him on the phone and he’s kind of planted the seed with Sean and this is what I’m looking for. What I asked first was, “Okay, you want 75% of the business valuation. Tell me about that.” And I just let him run with it. And he says, “Well, about a year ago I got a valuation from Colliers.
At this point I hadn’t seen his revenue numbers. I’ve seen nothing. I’ve just on the phone with him. And I said, “Okay, so what’s that about?” And he says, “Well, Colliers gave us a five times valuation on our business. And I said, “Wait, five times valuation?” And I said, “And how much was the valuation for it?” He says, “Business valuation for was for $1.5 million.” I said, “So, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me back up to vote here. You’re telling me that you have $300,000 of net on your business?” And he goes, “Yeah, $300,000.” I said, wait, wait, wait, can you send over your P&Ls? So he sends to Sean and I the P&Ls while we’re on the phone. Well, tell me if I’m off on these numbers, were like 586 in gross revenue?

Sean:
Yeah, exactly.

Nigel:
And $120,000 of direct cost, meaning plants, rent, utilities, all that. There are $100,000 of salary to a second person or $60,000 to sell it to another person who’s taken a $100,000. So yeah. $300,000 of net including a salary to himself. That was clear in $350,000 a year on a terrarium store. Now here’s the kicker. I’m with a bunch of my buddies in Wisconsin and part of my go pot, cousin Gilbane is breaking into groups of five and we’re just up in a cabin just hanging out. I get this phone call and I’m sitting there and I go, “You guys are not going to believe this.
There’s this business and this is what it’s going to hit.” And they said, “Well, what is it?” And I said, “It’s a terrarium store. And this is the honest to goodness thing.” They go, “What’s a terrarium store?” I said, “I don’t know what a terrarium store is.” I said, “I’m not going to ask him right now. I’ll ask him after we got off the phone, like what’s a terrarium, sir?”

Mrs. Carol Scott:
It doesn’t matter. That’s irrelevant.

Nigel:
So then we took a guess, okay, what’s a terrarium store? One guy’s like, “I think it’s what you put reptiles.” And another guy goes, “Oh no, a terrarium store, that’s lighting.” And another guy goes, “I think that’s the name of the new strip club downtown.” I’m like, “I don’t think any views are right.” Self-continuated biospheres that are plants in jars. It’s plants in jars. This is what it is. This is what I know about the business. And this is why you can say with confidence, I would have bet any one of those, probably not the strip club name, but any one of those other ones I would have said, “Yeah, that’s a terrarium.” I didn’t know. I still knew the business sound fundamentals on this. The facts are this was a phenomenally profitable business. There are businesses that are so profitable and we look at them and go, “Wait, is that real?” And then you look at the financials and then sort of supporting documentation you’re like, “Holy cow, this is just like something, this is something.”
So we look at it and the guy says, “Yeah, so I want $700,000.” I think it was 685 exactly. And he says, “If you guys get 90% bank financing, I’d be willing to carry up to 10%.” Now he’s planted the seed that he’s willing to carry. Now I said to him, “No, you said we had a way to get out of this thing in two weeks, right?” Yeah. He said, “We want to help you, tell me what the most important thing is in this deal.” He says, “well, I’ve already given notice, we’re out in 14 days.” I said, “Oh.” I said, “You do know that the SBA process takes up to six months, right?”. And it was quiet on the other end. And I said, “We’re still in, but we’re going to have to find a way to creatively do this. And he goes, “Okay, let’s figure it out.”
I said, “Now we’re also in a pandemic and we’re on, I mean, this business is located in the Hawthorne District, which in Portland that’s like, I mean, if there’s going to be an area that’s going to lock down, the Hawthorne is going to be the very first. And if it’s going to reopen, it’s going to be the very last to open. It’s in that type of area.” And so we look at this and say, “Okay, we can do something, but it’s going to be a little bit different than what you want. Can you send me what your assets are? What do you have? How much do you have in plants, in vehicles and furniture, fixtures, equipment, everything. What’s it worth?” And he pulls it up and he goes, “Yeah, there’s $300,000 of assets there. And there was. There was $300,000 of assets there.
And I said, “I don’t want to be a stickler and I don’t want to try and drive a sword through with what you built, because you built a successful business. But unfortunately, by telling everybody that you’re out, you just flush $1.5 million, man.” So here’s what I can do. I can’t get a loan that fast on that amount, but I’m sure with your assets I could go down to the bank and get a line of credit to go buy $300,000. And he goes, “Well, let me talk to my business broker.” I said, “Okay.” So then we come back and we talked a couple of different times over the next 24 hours.
I said, “Here’s what the bank says that they’re going to get me for a rate. The only way I can make this worth more money to you is if you act as the bank, and I know you wanted a bunch, but you don’t owe anything and you were planning on wrapping this up and you’re going to fire and sell this stuff for 10 cents on the dollar. Why don’t we give you all 300,000 and in good faith we’ll put $10,000 down and you carry the 290 on a seven-year deal, and we’ll put a three or four year balloon payment and we’ll pay the same off then? But I don’t know anything about terrarium stores so we’re going to need you to be willing to take phone calls when you coach Sean through this and coach us through this, I understand that you’re fearful of coronavirus and with everything going on, we don’t want you to be in classes.” Because it was an older gentleman who an amazing man. I can’t speak highly enough of him.
I think he ran a phenomenal business. He’s a little bit older in age and his bride is a little bit older in age, and they wanted to mitigate what they saw as a risk. I’ve got to respect that. But we asked him, “Okay, what if when we shut down shop, if you can come in and teach us how to do this, if you could do a couple of Zoom calls so that we could teach some of these classes, what are some of the growth opportunities?” And he says, “Yeah, I’d be willing to do that.” And so within 14 days, we closed on his business. He carried 290 of the 300,000. The only caveat to that was I requested that we get a copy of the official Collier’s report for the valuation of the $1.5 million to be handed over and conveyed to us at sale.
We anticipate with the reopening of Oregon once that happens, that within 12 months of that happening, we’ll be back to the gross revenue numbers that he had beforehand. And if that’s the case, then we’d be back to that $1.5 million evaluation. And to go back to what I’d said, where I think I can make anybody a millionaire, that’s going to be 18 months to 24 months from the time that we bought the shop, we’ll have a 1.5 valuation at that time based on the debt service will all about 230, which means we’ll have 1.2, 1.3, well, plus the cashflow of 1.4, $1.5 million worth of net worth growth. Sean and I on this think 50, 50. So Sean will have made $750,000 in a two year period on a $5,000 investment.
That’s pretty easy to do. It’s something that anybody could do. I anticipate actually seeing higher revenue as we reopen, because we’re now doing online classes and we’re doing kits that we sell to people. So if anybody’s ever want to build their own terrarium, we can ship your kit and teach you how to do that. That’s something that the business does, and Sean’s amazing at that. And so this is one of those things where it was literally, find a penny on the street and pick it up. This is find a $1.5 billion business and pick it up because this guy had this time, the first time I walked into the store, the guy had a sign that says, going out of business last day, this date.

Jay Scott:
See, this is what I love. And this is as much a negotiating story, what you just told us, buying a business story. There’s so many little nuggets there that we could unpack, but just to kind of summarize, basically he had a business that was worth $1.5 million that he had decided literally he was going to walk away from with, like you said, if he sold the plants at 10, 20 cents on the dollar, he was going to make 30 or $50,000. So basically there was 1.4, some million dollars on the table for you guys to play with. And for him getting anything more than 30, 40, $50,000 was a huge win. And for you getting anything less than, I don’t know, 1.5 million was a win because you’ve got built in equity. And so if assuming you land somewhere between 50,000 and 1.5 million, it’s a win-win.
So going in on day one, it was clear that it was going to be a win-win. It was just a question of you’re going to win more. He was going to win more, and you both did. And you went in with a good faith negotiation. I’m going to go to a bank, I’m going to get a loan on this. I’m going to get an SBA loan. We’re going to pay you 700 and some thousand dollars, but you couldn’t do it. And so that wasn’t a negotiating tactic, that wasn’t, we’re going to try and screw him out of this money and get them for less. It was, you tried to do it. You couldn’t do it, let’s come up with a plan B, and plan B involved him taking less money. But again, still taking a lot more than he was going to get.
And then you couldn’t get a bank loan, but then you offered him the interest instead of the bank, the interest. And so it really was, it’s an amazing story. And it just proves that in a negotiation like this for a business, both sides can make a whole lot more money. You’re going to make 1.2 million more than that business than what you paid for that business. He made about $300,000 more than that business was worth or than he was going to make. It was a huge win-win. And so I’m belaboring this point, but it’s just a good reminder for our community out there, that there are some amazing opportunities and for you to get an amazing deal on a business or any investment doesn’t mean that the other person has to take a haircut. Doesn’t mean the other person has to lose. Both sides can win.

Nigel:
Yeah. We gave him 500% of what he expected to get the day before we saw him, he fully expected to liquidate his inventory. He fully expected to walk out, and that COVID crush his business, that he was fully anticipating that. I spoke about this last time, you said, “What was the piece of advice last time when I spoke.” You said, “What’s the piece of advice you’d give?” And I said, “Go into a store and find a business and go ask for owners, are they willing to sell? And then if they all say no, go and find four more and then four more and four more, because somebody will do it.” You know what happened? Sean did that. He found somebody who said, “You know what? I’m tired. I was already going to hang this up. I’m going to get nothing. I’m already crushed.”
Sean got to come in and win for this guy. He got 500% more than he expected. I mean, imagine if somebody walked to your house today and said, “Hey, Jay, I know your house is worth $400,000. Here’s $2 million for it.” You’d be like, “Oh yeah, I won.” I mean, you’d be jacked.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Absolutely. Totally.

Nigel:
That’s what Sean just did to this guy. We didn’t take $1.2 million. We made him 300,000 that he wasn’t expecting to have. And that’s where we have to, as investors and as people listening have that mind shift of going, there is so much money that is just leaving due to attrition. People just walking out, and Sean was just smart enough to pick it up. And if he can do it and I can do it, anybody can do it.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
I love this. And so here, Sean, not only is this just amazing financial opportunity, but it’s an opportunity doing something you absolutely love. You had your 30 plants, your 40 plants that became 80 plants and now you’re the owner of Roosevelt’s Terrariums. So what you talked to us about the transition, you talked a bit about the original owner transitioning it over to you. So what were some of those first steps you did when you took over the business, especially during COVID, during the pandemic to ensure that it got off on that trajectory it needed to?

Sean:
Yeah. So the first thing we did is, like Nigel had mentioned, we wanted him to train me. So part of the contract was for the first month, we are going to spend 20 hours a week for four weeks just doing one-on-one training. So, the previous owner and I would come in before the store opened up from about 8:00 to 12:00 everyday. And we would just sit there and plant terrariums and rebuild them and just do it hundreds and hundreds of times. So I learned everything. He knew, I got to pick his brain as much as I could in those four weeks. He introduced me to all his suppliers, connected me with everyone that he was getting his glass and his plants and his materials from, and taught me how to teach the terrarium building classes, which is really the most important thing of our business. So that’s how we started. That was the month of September.
In Oregon at the time was also when the fires were going on in September. So we had nobody coming in my first couple of weeks. I mean, we had literally no one coming in, because everyone was evacuating. So it actually in hindsight worked out really well because I just got to sit there and practice and practice and practice. Then around October I started shipping kits because I knew people weren’t coming in, we were still really shut down in Oregon. So I knew the big opportunity was in the DIY, do it at home, bring the experience to your house. So I didn’t have a website that was built for eCommerce. Our 100% of his sales were in store. He never sold anything virtually, he never shipped anything. So we knew that was the opportunity, was to go virtual.
So to start, I just started shipping some of my friends and my parents kits just to see if it would make it there safe and sound. And it turns out I can’t ship planted terrariums, but I can definitely ship you the materials and the glass for you to build it. So then I started just taking pictures on our Instagram account saying, “Who wants to buy a kit?” And it turns out we had a lot of attraction. There was a lot of people who wanted to buy kits from us. So after a few months of just kind of doing a makeshift style, eCommerce on our Instagram, I saved up a little bit of money and invested in upgrading the website to be a full eCommerce website where you can now buy and sell, or we can now ship you kits all over the country. We had a little bit of a learning curve because each state, department of agriculture has their own guidelines of what you can ship in and what you can’t.
So had a little bit of a hiccup shipping plants into California because they’re very restricted on shipping plants and soil in, so had to learn different departments of agriculture, which was a cool learning curve. And then what was a really good opportunity that I wasn’t even thinking of was around the holiday season. People started reaching out to me about doing team or corporate events. They could no longer do holiday parties or end-of-the-year parties because everything was shut down, so they needed a virtual opportunity. So people started reaching out to me saying, “Hey, can you ship us 10 kits for my employees? And can we do this as a corporate event?”
I think that’s kind of our biggest opportunity that we have is in these large corporate events, where instead of shipping one kit to one household we’re now shipping 60 kits or 70 kits to a company. And that went really well for us over the holiday season. I was shipping out kits all over the country. We would hop on Zoom. I’d be at my shop, I’d teach how to build a terrarium on the screen and everyone would be at their own house building their own terrarium at home. So that was really kind of the future for our store, was going eCommerce, was going virtual and shipping a lot of these DIY kits while we’re still locked in here in Oregon.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
I love it. So I’m curious too, you mentioned that, first of all, I’m fascinated. This is just, it’s so amazing in so many different ways. It’s like, of course, we overheard that term so much last year, pivot, pivot, pivot. But oh my gosh, you acquired this business and pivoted the whole entire business model right from day one. So I would love to hear more about how you knew those particular pivots. Those, I guess low-hanging fruit now in retrospect were the right things to do. I think it’s awesome that you talked about, for example, people were reaching out to you on Instagram. So did you do other research? Were you simply listening to customer requests? How did you figure out what the right things to do were?

Sean:
Honestly, I think it started with my mom being like, “You need to send me a terrarium.” I think that was probably the easiest thing. So she had shipped me plants a lot and literally would just wrap it in the paper towel in a Ziploc bag and ship it to me. So I knew we could ship plants successfully, but she was like, “I want a terrarium.” So I shipped a kit out to her and it got there safe and sound. The glass didn’t break, the plants were alive and I’m in Portland, she’s in Raleigh, North Carolina. So it’s pretty far trips. I figured if I could get out to Raleigh with the plants being alive, I can probably ship in the Pacific Northwest. So that’s where we really focused our energy at first, was up in Seattle and California. I literally would just get on my phone, take a picture of a terrarium and would post on Instagram saying, “Who wants a kit?” And people would just message me back and they’d say, “How do I pay? Can I Venmo you? Can I send you a PayPal?”
There was no organization at first behind this, but I was collecting PayPal and Venmos and invoices from Square and I was just doing everything on Instagram, and figuring out my systems and figuring out what’s the best way to pack these so they don’t break? What’s the best way to get plants there, safe and sound and alive? And it grew very organically. I really didn’t know what I was going to be doing. I just knew I had to continue to take one step at a time and continue to show up everyday. And these opportunities kind of presented themselves and over time, saving a little bit of money, we reinvested into the website and now it’s really starting to take off and people are really starting to see us.

Jay Scott:
I love that. It’s very cool to think that you have this business, that due to COVID, I assume you haven’t gotten your foot traffic back yet and you haven’t gotten your income from that foot traffic back yet. But if you give it another six or 12 months, and as Nigel said earlier, you’re probably going to see all the revenue, if not more that you saw before COVID, plus you’ve now have a year of working to build these additional income streams. So the business is going to be worth even more once COVID is over. So again, a great opportunity and a win-win. So talk to us a little bit about what the structure of the company is. Are you doing this 100% on your own? Is Nigel just a consultant, financial backer? Although, I guess it was just $10,000 or is Nigel working in the business? Do you have employees or other people that help you out? What’s the structure of the physical business look like today?

Sean:
Yeah, so at first it was really just me with a lot of volunteer help, we can call it, from my girlfriend who had come in on the weekends to help me out. And then around October, I got my first part-time employee to come in and work about 10 hours a week, just really helping, building terrariums. He had expressed an interest in just planting. He had shown me a few of his own terrariums. I knew he could plant and I knew I needed some help there. So I brought him in, in October just for a couple hours a week, literally just to plant terrariums and let me focus on the customer service stuff. And then for about the first five to six months, I was working 90 hours a week, seven days a week, and there every single day, just trying to keep the business alive.
And Nigel had told me back in August when we bought it, that this was going to be at least six months of me working seven days a week before we could even get to the point of talking about hiring a full-time employee. But right around the end of February, beginning of March, I had enough in my savings where I knew, hey, I could pay an employee for three months and be fine. And if we hire the right employee in three months, they’re going to pay for themselves. So all I needed was really a three month runway. So in end of February, beginning of March, we hired our first full-time employee. She came from the floral industry so she had a lot of creativity and design background, and she was looking for a job that gave her creativity. So building terrariums where every single one is unique and different. This was exactly what she was looking for.
She had already had experienced teaching classes. She already had experience with plants and with flowers so she fit perfectly. So we hired her and did four weeks of just one-on-one training. I was with her every single day, just getting her fully up to speed. I learned a lot during that four weeks about how to hire and train and a lot of conversations with Nigel about, “Hey, I don’t think she’s getting this. How can I be better here? How can I teach her how to do this?” Nigel, I probably talked to him six or seven times a week. I mean, we talk every single day, just questions. Even though he’s not in the business, he knows everything about it because I’m always calling him saying, “Hey, you got a tax question, what do I do here? I got employee question, what do I do here?”
So we’re talking all the time. So he’s been a huge help for me. But after the four weeks of training with our first employee, she really took off. And now I’m at the point where I don’t have to be in seven days a week. I don’t have to be working 90 hours a week. And I’m just focusing on teaching the classes and she’s focusing on running the day-to-day. I mean, it was a great first hire and it took a lot of weight off my shoulders, and it’s going to allow me to continue to scale the business from here.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
This is so cool. And for anybody who is not watching this video and is simply listening, I am literally grinning from ear to ear listening to not only the story, but I’m sitting here thinking I totally want to own Roosevelt’s Terrariums. Now I’m sitting here thinking about your new hire who you just brought on board. I would suspect she is about the happiest person on the planet right now. So talk, we were talking about win-wins earlier, talk about a win, win, win, win, win all the way around. So it’s just what you’ve set up in this business just sounds absolutely amazing and right up my alley, it’s so much fun in so many regards. So what is next with the business? What are you going to do with everything you’ve done so far and continue growing it? Oh my gosh, growing was an unintended fun. Huh! I’m so proud of myself there.

Sean:
Yeah. So Nigel and I have been talking a lot about that. I mean, there’s a lot of things just within Portland that I want to do. I really want to get connected with a lot of wedding planners, event planners, hotels, just get terrariums everywhere in Portland. So anytime someone comes to see Portland, if you’re staying at a hotel, you’re going to see one of our terrariums. If you’re having a wedding, instead of spending thousands of dollars on flowers that are going to die in a week, why not get a terrarium that you can have four years without having to do anything. So there’s a lot of things that I want to do proactively in Portland where I can grow. But then Nigel and I have been talking to some other ideas. Nigel, I’ll let you kind of share some of the thoughts that we have as well.

Nigel:
Yeah. So one of the things, I want to step back just really quick. When I said to Sean it’s going to take six months or you’re going to have to go in deep, we had the [inaudible 00:55:38] for three, but Sean didn’t have to work that much. But what we did was we intentionally built a path so that no matter what, we knew that we were fiscally responsible to the point that we could continue that business when we brought somebody on. So that work, you keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going. And why you see that big pad and you go, “Oh man, I could lay off.” You go for another few months to really make sure that everything solidified and then you bring in your team. And that allows you to then take a big step back, because right now the actual physical store it’s at the same point that it was when the previous owner [inaudible 00:56:22]. We’ve got that ability to let somebody else operate this business.
So that opportunity exists for anybody in any business. You need to work your tail off through the first bit and a little bit longer than what you think, just so that way you can solidify everything up. So in talking about, for Sean, we have the ability to pad that account to make sure everything’s good. That allowed us to bring on Jordan, who she’s now doing amazing. And like Sean said, it allows him to be back in and then really to grow that online presence. So our next aspect for this business is not just how do we serve Portland? Every town has a need for a business like this. And we’ve been asked, hey, I wish that there was a Roosevelt in Salt Lake City. I wish there was one in San Francisco. I really wish that there was one in Sarasota, Florida.
I mean, it could literally be anywhere. And so we are in the process right now of setting up the franchise model that people can come in and that we can do the exact same thing, give a few months of training so that we can teach you how to run it, show you how to hire, how to fire, what the logistics are, what the online payment systems are, the entire process so that, that way you can have your own terrarium store. And so we’re starting that process. So if anybody’s interested in owning their own terrarium store, send us a message through Roosevelt’s Terrarium, you can send through Instagram, you can send it through email, whatever your preferences. But we are looking to grow, not just ourselves, we want to help more people own businesses.
This is the vehicle that we’re doing that for. And so if you’re passionate about plants, if you’re not passionate about plants, if you’re passionate about owning your own business and you’re willing to learn about plants, we want to talk with you. We do believe that we can help people become billionaires. We aren’t going to guarantee any earnings by any means, but on a business like this it’s possible make some serious coin and we want to help more people do it. We could do it all by herself. We could just pop shops open in 30 different cities, but to be bluntly honest we don’t need a bunch more money. We’re both doing well.
I mean, you’re talking to a guy who’s doing well enough. And with Sean, like we talked about, our goal is to make somebody a millionaire every year, over a five-year period. And we honestly believe we can do that. And so we want to see more people be successful and we want to help out as many people as humanly possible, if it’s in this business or something else. So if you’re looking to own terrarium store and you don’t know how to do it, give us a call because the margins are amazing. The stress level is significantly lower than most businesses because plants don’t yell at you. And for the most part, it’s something that someone with a creative streak can really dive into. So it’s businesses like this, like a terrarium store.
And like I said before August of last year, I didn’t know what a terrarium store was. I mean, it’s very possible, but the business aspect of how it works and how it operates, we know how to do that. And so we want to help facilitate people in business. We want to help bring the economy back. And like I said before, my expectation for everything is I want to see zero businesses close. And so that hasn’t happened, so what do we need to do? It means that we need to build a bunch of businesses. If people are going to close down, you need to walk in and go find out what businesses they are and offer to buy them. And if you don’t know what it is and your town needs a terrarium store, I mean, we’re here to help you.

Jay Scott:
Love it.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
I love it. Jay, I just have to put this in there. So Sean, do you even realize what you have done and how insanely proud Mr. Roosevelt is going to be with what everything you’ve already done and thinking about the fact that you’re going to take this to all these new levels. And again, it goes back to that, win, win, win using your creativity, your passion, your expertise in the operations of this store. I think it’s the coolest thing ever. I would like to know what advice do you have for other people out there who might have a passion that they really want to turn into a meaningful business and leave a lasting legacy?

Sean:
I mean, I think the biggest thing for me was being able to have someone like Nigel on my side. So I think it’s getting comfortable with partnering with people, not thinking you have to do everything on your own. If I didn’t have Nigel, I don’t think I would have made it six months. I just don’t think I would’ve been able to figure it out. I know the price would have been way more than I could have afforded. So, find someone that’s doing what you want to do and copy what they’re doing and partner with them if you can, but at least have them as a mentor and use them as guidance because they’re going to really expedite your path to success. And you’re going to miss out on a lot of mistakes, like flooding a duplex. If you have someone that’s been through the ringer before and can guide you through and kind of show you the light. Getting crystal clear on what you want and then finding that mentor to help you along the way.

Jay Scott:
I love that.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Love it.

Jay Scott:
Okay. So we are getting towards the end of the show, but I would love to give both of you an opportunity to tell our community where they can find out more about you, where they can find out more about Roosevelt’s Terrariums, where they can get in touch with you or anything else you would like to tell. Sean, would you like to go first?

Sean:
Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram or Facebook. It’s just Sean Aide on both accounts, Instagram and Facebook. And then Roosevelt’s Terrariums, you can find us at Roosevelt’s PDX which is the Instagram page. Or you can just search Roosevelt’s Terrariums online and we’ll be the first one to pop right up. So message us either @seanaide or Roosevelt’s PDX. I’m happy to talk to anyone that wants to reach out about this.

Jay Scott:
Love it. Thank you, Nigel.

Nigel:
I’m still @nigelgeisinger on Instagram. That’s the easiest way. I did respond back to every single person who sent me a message request, except for if you were trying to sell me Bitcoin. If you’re trying to sell me Bitcoin, but everybody else I responded back to you. So I have hundreds and hundreds of messages back and forth with people just wondering about business. And my stance is still the same as it was a year ago. You hit me up on Instagram. That’s the preferred method because I can track it a lot better that way. But Instagram @nigelgeisinger, you’re going to see things about different businesses and I’m also rehabbing some apartment complex, so don’t be surprised when you see a bunch of stuff on that because I’m working on that as I work on businesses as well.

Jay Scott:
Awesome. You probably should have responded to one or two of those Bitcoin emails too, given where we are. Anyway.

Nigel:
This lets you know that I am as good as everybody else in that aspect. I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. Yeah, if I had a year ago, I should have bought a bunch of Bitcoin.

Jay Scott:
Awesome. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Nigel, thank you for coming back, literally one year to the day since our last episode and maybe we’ll have you back in another year and see what you’ve been up to. Sean, congratulations. And we wish you guys the best of luck.

Sean:
Thank you guys.

Jay Scott:
Thanks.

Mrs. Carol Scott:
Thank you so much. We’ll see you soon.