The Secret To Why Most Small Business Owners Struggle w/ Chris Younger

How does a business work financially? You really want to develop that muscle. If you don't have that understanding of really how accounting or financials work in a company, it's very easy to run into big problems right, Not understanding kind of how cash flow works. That's a real critical piece to understand. Business is all about the customer and what that customer needs and wants. Having a really deep understanding why that customer is buying what they're buying and why your product or service would be superior or why they would buy yours.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, john Mendez.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Walk to Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do yourself one teeny, tiny little favor and make sure to give us a follow, because I don't want you to miss out on any of the amazing guests I'm bringing on this year Without further ado. Let's get right into this one, chris, for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to get to meet you yet, tell us the elevator pitch. You know who are you and what do you do.

Oh hey, thanks, John, I appreciate you having me on the show. Chris Younger, I'm the CEO for an organization called Class Six Partners, and we're a financial services firm all focused on entrepreneurs, and so we have an investment bank that manages exit transactions and capital raises for them. We have a group called Pathfinder which consults with those businesses before they go to the market. We have a family office that manages money for them on the back end, and then we have a small equity fund that we help some of our Pathfinder clients with in terms of accelerating their growth. And so, like I said, all of our clients are entrepreneurs and we have a ball.

Yeah, amazing Chris. So before you got into where you're at right now, take us back into Time Machine. What was Little Chris like going up? Were you always an entrepreneur? Like where did this story begin?

Well, I did start, mo and Lawns. I was a kid and I knew that was the best place because I was making about four times as much per hour as my buddies working at McDonald's. So that turned out to be a pretty good strategy. And then I ended up actually going to law school and started out as an attorney in Silicon Valley, and while I enjoyed the interface with the clients, I didn't really enjoy the actual work, so I ended up leaving the law firm after a couple years and then went and worked for an investor group out of South Dakota of all places to do a rollup in the communications industry, and so I started out as the deal guy and we did 27 acquisitions over a couple of year periods. So it was pretty intense and pretty active. And then the CEO with that business, a guy by the name of Jim Walker, brought me on to help lead strategy and then ultimately I became the COO and president of that business. We had built it to a little over a billion two in revenues and then we sold that business to Avaya, which is a big communications company, in 2003, tried to retire for a couple of years. That didn't work out too well and then started with my business partner. We started class six back in 2005 and they have kind of grown it since then. We started out just had a couple of folks and then today we have about 45 employees across the different businesses and, like I said, as Warren Buffett says, he gets to tap dance into work, and I feel the same way. I get to work with entrepreneurs every day and there's just nothing better.

Yeah, so let's take it back to the beginning. You said you started off mowing lawns, right, yeah, what year was this? I need to check it like, not years and year, I mean, how old were you at this time?

I must have been 12 or 13, big enough to push a lawnmower. Yeah, big enough to push a lawnmower and ended up just I would just pick up more and more lawns to mow as I got older and that worked out pretty well.

Okay, dope, dope and then going into school. You ended up going the law route, which is very different than what you have going on now, like business and investing and acquisition. Was that something that was like always kind of in the back of your mind, that you were kind of interested in Like where did the interest in that kind of come into play? That's a pretty significant career switch.

Yeah, I was always interested in it. I invested in stocks while I was in college and even in law school, the law firms that I interviewed with and went to work for during my summers, and then the permanent job out in Silicon Valley. I really tried to pick law firms that had a lot of business exposure. So I did a lot of corporate work and the work that I did in Silicon Valley was with a lot of young companies. These were all startups, whether we were doing capital raises for them or general corporate work, and, like I said, I loved working with the entrepreneurs and the businesses. I didn't like the documentation aspect of legal work too much and I don't think I was very good at it.

Yeah, okay. And then from there you got a call from the head over to South Dakota. Right, yeah, To start.

Yeah, it was a buddy of mine from law school and I were gonna do a search fund, which is basically you raise money to pay for your living expenses, to go look for a business to buy over a couple year period, and he and I were gonna do this together and while we were out looking for capital for that, we came across this group that said, well, we're not gonna fund your search fund, but we'd like you guys to come work for us and help us invest our money. And so that's what we did. Did that for I guess, four years, until I joined Exponence, which was the communications company.

Yeah, and then from there you were in that for quite some time try to retire. And what was it that made it impossible, or not impossible, made it difficult for you to retire? Was that that entrepreneurial spirit, that kind of just wouldn't die out? You?

know I learned a couple things during that couple year period of time. One is I wanted to stay married and I was organizing my wife's spice drawer and she decided that I needed to go find a hobby. I think it was not in her good graces at that time. The other thing that I learned that I think is true for a lot of entrepreneurs is it was really disconcerting to wake up in the morning and not have something driving you, and that was to me. It didn't feel very good, and that was one of the key lessons that I learned was you know, I need purpose, I need to be serving others in some meaningful way, and the work that that we started doing, uh with class six, just allowed me to scratch those itches and do it in a way that uh benefits, hopefully, a lot of entrepreneurs that you know. The mission of our business is all about helping entrepreneurs, because we not only respect and regard them, but we also uh really appreciate the role that they play in our communities, and I think you know that that entrepreneurial spirit is really what makes this, you know, such a great country to live in is because we've got these opportunities and people willing to take those risks and put it all on the line. And here in Colorado and for most of the country, you know, young businesses are the ones doing the most of the hiring and are responsible for most of the economic growth, and so we really feel it's our responsibility to help them in any way we can and and help them realize a really good return on all the time and sweat and stress that they've invested in their business.

yeah, that's a really big good point because it's I was uh, as I said before we hit record, I just came back from Guatemala the time we were recording this, not too long ago, and it's like the amount of people out there that had the little you know pop-up shopper, little you know tent with a literally just a desk and some like fruits or something like that, and they're all out there, just you know, trying to make ends meet. But opportunity-wise it's nothing like what we have here. Yeah, they'll never have an opportunity to go raise capital out there right, there is none of that stuff or get money or make you know a seven, eight, nine figure exit. There's just trying to sell some fruit for the day. So they have enough money to go home and make their end meet. And it's very different and that's why I love, you know, leaving the country. This is not only my second time, but first time I went to the Dominican Republic. I have family in both parts and it's like. So when I was out there I wasn't like in a hotel cooped up, I was like really out there and with the people and got to experience the culture first hand. And it's very, very different. Just makes you so much more grateful for everything we do have here in the States and it's like, like a lot of people out there are entrepreneurial, they have that spirit, but the opportunities don't match the you know what they have inside and this makes it super difficult and I think this is a great segue to sign it, really start getting into like entrepreneurship because, as I mentioned before, we hit record and like I was really curious over the last you know part of 2023 ish or so about you know why is it that some businesses you know, without ever getting a client, can easily raise you know six, you know six, seven, eight figures and other business owners who you know say, start up their own business and they have to work hard and find themselves trapped in a job or they're their own boss and it's like, I guess, to start there, like what have you seen from? You know the mergers and acquisitions, startup space and like like other more DIY type of entrepreneurs, like what tends to be the main difference you know it's a great question and something I think is important for every would-be entrepreneur to think about.

Part of it, I think, has to do with what the intent of the entrepreneur is. For a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, they're doing it to basically replace a job that they currently have, and they want to do it either because it provides them more flexibility, more autonomy, maybe it's more fun for them. And there's a lot of businesses where I call them lifestyle businesses, where it's basically it provides a really good living for the entrepreneur, but it's not necessarily going to scale or be able to attract capital. And whereas, hey, the Silicon Valley right, we saw this a lot where you might have a couple of entrepreneurs start a business, go out and raise venture capital, and I think it all has to do with, hey, what's the perceived level of opportunity in that business for growth and for a lot of the, for a lot of the businesses that attract capital? You know those are what venture capitalists believe at least have the potential to be it's unlikely that they will be, but at least have the potential to be billion-dollar businesses. And so the venture capitalists make, you know, a lot of investments across hundreds of companies in order to hopefully get the few, the few hits that actually make the fund returns for them work. But I think almost all of it has to do with what's the growth potential of the business. And for a lot of lifestyle businesses, hey, the growth potential of that business, based on the owner's intent, is probably not that significant, whereas for some of these businesses that raise capital, they have, at least in concept, much greater growth prospects.

Yeah, so let me ask you because, like I know for me personally, when I got into like entrepreneurship, I wasn't your traditional entrepreneur, like with the paper route or mowing lawns, right, I didn't have that in me growing up, but you, it was mainly because my brain wasn't oriented towards business, for whatever reason. I had a lot of those traits playing sports and doing a lot of things I was doing. I just never had the time or the interest to start a business. But then, once I did get into the entrepreneurial space, I realized that I had spent a lot of time building up these traits and these habits that were very entrepreneurial, that just weren't being applied to business at all. And for me, I paid 500 bucks for a course. It was on real estate wholesaling and that's essentially before that. I've enriched that poor dad. But my first investment to starting a business was I paid 500 dollars for that course and I bought my LLC, I got my domain name, my logo on Fiverr, I hired someone to a graphic designer to create the logo and then I was ready to get it going. That was how I started. I never even knew about private equity. I knew it a little bit just because while I was in school, before it dropped out, one of my friends was in finance, so he told me a thing or two, but aside from that, I really had no knowledge about the private equity space in the startup world. It was like a completely foreign language to me. So I just started my business. I paid for the course and I was like all right, let me figure something out. It's like no credit needed, no cash needed, and all you have to do is be 18. I was like, all right, I'm 18. I don't have cash, don't have credit, let's get this party started. And that's like how I got into business. From what you've seen over your time, what are the intentions going into business for a more traditional startup entrepreneur? What's the differences between, as someone like myself, who just got a little spark and was like, all right, I'll just start something up, versus someone who's knowing they want to raise some capital to start a business?

Yeah, it's interesting For a lot of the clients that we work with. These are folks they're not technology businesses that are raising a bunch of capital from outside investors. A lot of our clients are entrepreneurs who've built, whether it's a manufacturing business, it could be a technology business, but almost all of them have been self-funded. They have just grown the business organically. And it's interesting. During COVID I interviewed probably 30 or 35 of our prior clients just to ask them these questions about tell me your story about when you started your business and how did that happen. And what was amazing to me was how many of those stories there wasn't any big master plan. A lot of them, hey, maybe they got fired from a job or maybe they got frustrated working for somebody else, and so it was really their kind of desire just to do something different with their lives. And the other piece that was illuminating, for me at least, was one of the biggest common denominators across all those folks was they all had had numerous near-death experiences with their business, but they all had such persistence, whether it was they couldn't fail. If they failed, that meant they couldn't feed their families, or they couldn't fail because they had taken investment, maybe from friends and family, which is sometimes that's the easiest capital to access, but it's also the toughest capital to have, just because the pressure on you is tenfold what it would be if it were just your own money. And so they just had this I can't fail attitude and as a result of that that led them to really good success, and most of them have. You know they obviously, once they reach our firm, they've had a certain level of success to be able to go exit at some level. But those common traits were the ones that I saw. I wasn't necessarily some big master plan, it was kind of just trying to do things better day by day by day and try to serve customers better over and over and over again.

That's actually really interesting to hear, because it would seem as if they would come in from different like what? A different perspective or different vantage point, like viewpoint. But it seems like they started their business for the same reason that other people start their businesses right to escape the rat race, you know, for a better opportunity, right, because they don't like a job, for example, and they just were able to think it out and then the opportunity presented itself where they could exit. And so let me ask you, before I ask the next question, like what is an exit for anyone? Because, as I said, a lot of people don't know that you could sell a business, like usually your business, you're selling a product or a service, but, like a lot of people don't know that you could actually sell the business itself. It's like what is an exit?

So if you're an entrepreneur and you've built your business up to a certain level you know for to sell your business to institutional investors, you've got to be of a certain size. You know you probably need to be earning profits of $2 or $3 million a year for them to be interested. But at that point you, in order to earn profits at that level, your business likely has pretty good infrastructure. It likely has something that's attractive to customers. I like to say investors are interested in companies for the same reason that customers are. And if you find a customer, that is, if you can identify why the customer likes that business, you will likely identify why an investor would want to own that business. And so that you know, when you think about kind of businesses that are scaled to that level, that are generating those kinds of profits, then it really comes down to how, what are the growth prospects of that business going forward and how risky are those growth prospects? You know, if there's still a lot of growth left in a business and future revenues are highly predictable, then those businesses are going to be worth a lot of money and somebody will buy them.

Yeah, that's amazing. So to follow up on that, how can someone, for example let's say someone you know just got out of college, they want to start up a business, they paid $500 for a course, right, despite whether or not they wanted to sell a business in the future how could they go about starting their business with the intention to sell, regardless of whether they want to sell or not? Because I think you go at it from a very different perspective. When you're thinking of all right, how do I make this something that's sellable, even if you may not want to sell it? I think you come at it from a different, very different angle. So, like, how would someone start a business with the intention to sell?

I think the biggest difference between entrepreneurs who are going to manage the business as a life style business and entrepreneurs who are going to try to create a scalable, saleable business really comes down to how they view their role. For a lifestyle business, the entrepreneur likely believes they need to do most of the work. They are going to be the ones who are doing most of the selling. They are going to be the ones doing product development. They're the ones that are going to be managing operations. They're not thinking about the business as an investment, as something that needs to exist independently of themselves. Entrepreneurs who are focused on building a saleable business, it's all about hey, how do I build a team and systems and processes such that this business could exist without me having to be present every day? And those entrepreneurs, you just make different decisions. You're likely going to sacrifice short-term profits for long-term equity value creation, and what I mean by that is if you're a business that makes $300,000 or $400,000 a year, in order to scale, you're going to have to hire people. Well, that means instead of having $400,000 in profits, you might have $100,000 in profits, but your opportunity to grow that business long-term is so much greater because you've built that infrastructure, and I think that's probably the biggest difference between entrepreneurs who just want a lifestyle business and entrepreneurs who are interested in building something that's scalable so that they can sell it down the road.

Yeah, that's definitely a great way to put it, because I feel that it's very different between, like, being self-employed and running a business. For sure, even though they're both businesses, how you run it. And for me, so like for me, my big aha moment, and I don't know if you know the book, it's called um the emith revisited. Oh yeah, so I read that book. I think it was like mid 2023 Around. I made like April Mayish time, I forget when I read it, but then I was reading that book and in for anyone who hasn't read it, essentially it talks about this one guy, the narrator, and this lady who has a thing a bakery, if I'm not mistaken and how she started her bakery because she loved baking or something like that. And she started a business. You open up a bakery shop and then, from there, they were doing well, it started growing and then she started hiring, you know, some Employees and then, from there, employees were kind of slacking off, so she started doing the work of the employees and next, you know, she had employees that she was paying for, but she was doing the work for all of them and then the you know, the bakery was started doing bad and next, you know and End of failing. But then the narrator kind of comes in and he kind of shows the pitfalls and explain why the things went south and how she should have fixed it. And reading that book, the big aha for me was an organizational chart. Never seen anything like it before I didn't know what that was. But I was like, oh, I'm doing a bunch of tasks. If I group some of these tasks, those are roles and I'm doing all of these roles for my business. So I don't have one job of running a business. I have 15 jobs that are all kind of umbrella under my quote-unquote business that I'm doing. So I'm not working one job, I'm really working 15, but it's a cover up as one because it's my business. And so from there I was like, oh man, I can't, I can't got to get out of this, I can't keep doing this. And then this past year, I mean my first hire, which was a video editor and it was the best thing I ever did that. But a podcast like this interview right now, already 23 minutes and at this point by the end of it probably like 40, after the intro and outro, 40, 45 minutes or so. And Now I'm posting about three podcast interviews a week. Right on top of that I post a bunch of reels. All that content takes so much time to edit, especially to make it look nice, and it's like, regardless of whether you know you try to triple speed the video or not like You're not getting through a 40 minute podcast interview and you know, in a short amount of time, like it just impossible, so it's like it eats away so much time and doing that it allowed me to become a little bit more of that business owner instead of being so Trapped in the day-to-day, and that's what kind of gave me the aha. So like, what would you explain for people who don't want to give up that control, because a lot of times, especially don't when you don't come from much that you may have, you know, trust issues where you don't want to trust in other people, or you may have a bunch of different little limiting factors or beliefs that are Kind of getting in the way of you being able to really grow in scale. So what advice do you have there?

That's a John you. Those are great observations. Those are Exactly. I think the emith is a great recommendation for folks to read. We always encourage business owners to make a list of everything that they're doing and then track that time that they're spending on each one of those tasks over two or three weeks. Yeah, it's kind of a. It's kind of a pain in the butt. Yeah it gives you some insight often Into or exactly how are you spending your time. And then look at those activities. There are going to be certain activities that you hate doing. They're going to be certain activities that are not adding a ton of value to your business and they're going to be certain activities that you're not very good at. What we always advise clients is to look at if, if the business, if the activity that you're you know that's taking up time, is not adding any value to your business, you shouldn't be doing that right. So those are easy to eliminate for the activities that you don't like but that's still add value, or the activities that You're not very good at but add value, you absolutely will benefit from finding someone who loves those, loves doing those things and is much better at it than you, because it's highly likely that in a, in a business that's successful, that business is successful because that entrepreneur is doing something really really well. Mm-hmm and what you're trying to identify is based on the activities that you're doing really, really well. Can you figure out ways to do more of that? Well, the only way you can do more of that, just like you did, is to eliminate some of those activities that, hey, maybe you're not as good at or don't enjoy as much. If you can eliminate those activities, that frees up space to do those things that are adding the most value to the business. When we see entrepreneurs do that analysis and bring in resources, just like you did, it actually helps the business grow a lot faster and, more importantly than that, it makes the entrepreneur a lot happier because they're spending less time on stuff that they don't like or that they're not very good at. No one likes spending time on stuff that they're not very good at, so it's a good exercise, just like you did is to, hey, of those 15 jobs, there are likely jobs that you don't like doing or you're not very good at, and somebody else is likely going to be better at. Great, let's find somebody to go do that, and so that's the. I mean just doing exactly what you just did, I think is a really good lesson for your listeners on how do you build a scalable business?

So I kind of want to ask you on the same like topic, because one of the things I always heard growing up like if you want something done, right, get it done yourself, I do it yourself. What's your thoughts on that quote? I feel like that's one that's like very common that holds a lot of people back.

I, if you're going to try to grow a scalable business, that's you'll never get it done with that philosophy. You have to build a team, you've got to build a strategy, you've got to trust in that team to execute the strategy, find the best people you can and it and I've watched this in our own business and I've watched this in countless clients businesses when you build that team of really capable people, they're going to do so much more and they're going to be able to grow that business so much faster than you would be able to do it on your own. Are they going to do it differently than you would? Absolutely, and that's one of the reasons why you hire Is because they're going to be creative. They're going to come up with new and innovative ways to do it. When we bring on a new team member on our firm, I usually sit down with them on the first day, the first week, the first month, in the first quarter, and all I'm doing is quizzing them on what have you seen in our business that doesn't make sense? What are you seeing in our business that you would do differently? Because you benefit from getting that new experience and fresh perspective, and most entrepreneurs a lot of entrepreneurs have have their challenge with that, whether, hey, they don't trust somebody else or whether they believe they're the only ones that can do it. The ones that have figured out that other people can do things better are the ones with the most successful businesses.

That's definitely a great insight and I want to touch on a part where you said how bringing in another fresh set of eyes have really helps. I really like that idea. Sometimes, like for them, my girlfriend show asked me I should tell me about like a couple ideas that she thinks I should be doing with the podcast. I should try doing, and it's a very different cause one she doesn't really listen to podcasts that much very often, so it's like, but she's on social media very often and she sees other people's podcast on social media but doesn't actually listen to them. She sees what other people are doing with their marketing and one of those things is like she thinks of a lot of stuff that I wouldn't even consider and sometimes it would be a little resistant, but I'm finding myself like the less resistant I am, I was like all right, let me see where she's coming from and some ideas I try, some ideas I don't, but it's like the ones I do try. It's like oh OK, like this is a pretty good idea and I never thought of it that way because because I actually listen to podcasts, I see things a bit different, I see the world a bit differently and having that other type perspective really does help. So you mentioned to also that the businesses that figure out that other people do things better than them earlier on tend to have more success long term. What else are you seeing and like what's the big differentiator that gets people to the point where they are investable? Like a lot of people can grow a business. You know 50, 60, 70 K, right, that's like regular salary right there, and some people are right now you're like touching 100 to 200 K. It's like all right now your business, like you're making really good money from there. And then a lot of businesses don't really scale past that. Like my dad is in that range right now with his landscaping company and he's been at that range for about a year now but doesn't really have plans to like grow further. So it's like what? What helps people start? You know scaling to those higher numbers and those bigger numbers.

It it really comes. I do think it comes down to risk tolerance for an entrepreneur, because growth is risky, it takes investment, it takes commitment. You are going to make bad hires, you're going to bring people on who don't work out and that's part of the game, right? You have to expect that that's going to be the case 30, 40, 50 percent of the time. But the ones that persist through that and are willing to take that risk and are willing to to make the investment in training and development of people, in implementing processes that help people do the right things, they're going to build scalable businesses. The ones that, again, where they're doing most of the work, those are, they're not really saleable because it's just the person, it's just that entrepreneur and they're so critical to that business. But you have to. In order to get to those higher levels, you are going to have to take on additional risk, you're going to have to hire people, you're going to have to make investments and you're going to have to come up with a way to make that business more, allow it to grow faster, and the only way to do that is with people and processes and systems in place.

Yeah. So I want to try out this a little exercise. Right, let's say you're starting a business in an industry that you're not too familiar with. Let's say. Let's say you want to open up a candy shop. You want to get a million of revenue. What would be your strategy, before you even started the business, to get that idea off the ground leading up to it?

That's a good question. I think part of it is just understanding the market. Yeah, hey, if I'm, if I'm trying to sell a million dollars worth of candy, I'm going to have to compete with a whole bunch of other companies that are selling candy. Yeah, so what's different about mine that would attract customers? Am I doing something unique? Is it valuable to a customer? What could I sell my candy for? How much margin could I generate? Those are the I would be looking at the fundamentals of the business first before I would ever start one. I think the other piece to understand is what does it take to actually have a company that's selling a million dollars worth of candy? You're gonna need to have equipment, you're gonna need to have people, you're gonna need to have a space. All right, well, if that's the vision, three or four years down the road, what does that mean I have to be doing today to get to that level, and what types of investments am I gonna have to make? So those are the things that I'd be looking at. I think those are the things that most investors would look at is what's the market potential? Why do you think you're gonna have an edge in the market? And then, what does it take to actually get to that edge?

So let me ask you a question, because I see a lot of times people get into business and it's like, especially now, like the, you know the movement of people who have like this abundant mindset. It's like you know there is no competition, you know whatever is meant for me will flow towards me. And yes, it's true to an extent. But it's also like some of these things like what, why are people gonna buy it from you? Oh, because you know I'm me. They're gonna be drawn towards me and the energy I put out into the world or whatever. But it's not really a strategy, right? It's like, why does knowing you know, knowing what other competitors are doing, right? Cause a lot of people say, you know, it doesn't matter what the competitors are doing, staying in your own lane? But it's like, why is looking at the competitors important when starting a business?

I mean, ultimately you're competing for a customer's dollars, right? A customer's only gonna buy so much candy in our example. So the question becomes why are they gonna buy your candy versus a Snickers bar or candy from Enstroms or another candy shop? And that has to be part of the analysis. Because if there's nothing differentiating yours as a young company, your cost structure is gonna be radically different than an established company. Your costs are gonna be much higher on a per unit basis. You know, for every piece of candy that you sell, your costs are gonna be a lot higher than established competitors. Which means, if you don't have something that's different about your candy, you're not likely to succeed because, again, you can't you're not gonna be able to compete with those established competitors.

Yeah, and then you mentioned another key point there too, or a little earlier, about the fundamentals. So, like for anyone who doesn't, you know, is new to business A, or needs a refresher, or C, is looking to start a business soon, like what would you say are the fundamentals of businesses that one should know prior to getting into it, regardless of what the business is?

I think there's a lot, right, you know, getting a kind of a core understanding of accounting. Hey, how does a business work financially? Yeah, you really wanna develop that muscle, because if you don't have that understanding of really how accounting or financials work in a company, it's very easy to run into big problems, right, not understanding kind of how cash flow works. That's a real critical piece to understand. And I think the second piece is I do think I mean, business is all about the customer. It's all about the customer and what that customer needs and wants, and so having a really deep understanding of why that customer is buying what they're buying and why your product would or service would be superior, why they would buy yours, I think, is also you've gotta have that understanding. I think if you don't, you're likely to spin your wheels or, worse, run out of money, and so those are the two things that I would focus on first. There's a whole bunch of other stuff in business, right, in terms of, hey, how do you build a scalable team? How do you think about your cost structure? How do you think about marketing? How do you think about sales. All of those things are important, but those two fundamentals I would start with, just because that'll at least help you stay out of trouble.

Yeah, no, 100%. So, chris, you dropped a lot of nuggets today from the difference between companies that grow on scale versus other that don't, lifestyle businesses versus scalable businesses, the fundamentals. You dropped a lot of nuggets today. Man, where can we connect with you, where can we find you at to learn more about what you guys have going on over at Class 6 and keep up with you.

Sure, yeah, you can find us on their website. Wwwclass6classvi is the roman numeral six partners comm.

So wwwclass6partnerscom and I'm at chris chras at class six partners comm, if if you want to email and Quick question, just so that the customer, the listeners, can get some, some hope, some aspiration, some motivation. What is the minimum Like in terms of profit per year number that you're looking for any companies and that you partner with and invest in?

Yeah, for us, really, a company needs to be earning two to three million dollars in profits Before we would, you know, be appropriate. So that's really what we're looking for, and and all the attributes that we just talked about businesses that are scalable and that are well Run and have good systems and people and processes.

And I want listeners to take one thing away how easily he said two to three million dollars, it's not because it's a unicorn number. There's businesses out there that are making that per year. Oh yeah, that they're messing and it's like you got to find those businesses and learn what they're doing so that we can get there, and that's where I I'm aspiring to be as well in the upcoming years. So super excited to stay in touch with you, chris. But now it's time for the famous five questions. Question number one what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life?

Most impactful. I do think it's. There's a book by Agmandino called the greatest salesman in the world, and one of his tenants is if you persist, you will win. And Well, sometimes persistence can get you further into trouble. I do think that most people give up right before they're going to be successful, and so you know as bad as things can be in business and look, business is tough. That whole notion of just persisting, I think, is a real critical one, and one that I think everybody would benefit from.

Now, this may or may not be the answer to the next question, but the second question is what is the most admirable trait a person can have?

I you know integrity, which is pretty clear. I mean, it's Charlie Munger who just passed away. He was one of the business partner. You know he used to say, yeah, don't do business with turkeys. And I think there's a lot of truth to that right. You want to deal with people who are Straightforward and direct and good people. It was make, it'll make your life just a lot better.

Yeah, so what does he mean by Turkey?

Yeah, people of low integrity, dishonest, unscrupulous etc.

Okay, alright, question number three if you had to change someone's life, but you only had one book, which book would you recommend?

It's actually Charlie Munger there's. There's a book called poor Charlie's almanac and I've given it to all my kids, I give it to our team members. It's really, it's a collection of talks that Charlie Munger has given and he has some just unbelievable life advice.

What is the legacy that you're working on leaving behind?

You know, other than family and good kids, the. The other one that I'm really working on with class six is we're trying to build a large community of entrepreneurs, both entrepreneurs who've been successful and exited their companies and now have lots of money, but entrepreneurs who are just starting out, and Our goal is to provide and build a community of high quality entrepreneurs that are there for each other and and that's that comes from just this understanding of how important entrepreneurs are to the, to the community and to the success of our country, and so our goal is how can we help more and more of those entrepreneur entrepreneurs over time?

Amazing. And final question is for anyone that wants to embark on the walk 12 today what would you recommend? The first step?

Really assess what's important to you, identify hey, I'm a big believer that the goal of getting money Is it won't sustain you in the long term. You have to ask what that money is going to make possible. That's not possible today. That will help you sustain. And so, being just really clear on what you're trying to accomplish and why, and make sure that you can reduce that to things that are gonna continue to motivate you when things are really really challenging, which they will be amazing.

Chris, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for dropping the nuggas that you did and just come out on the show and having this conversation with me.

You bet, john, thanks for doing what you're doing.

You've now finished taking the first step. Now let us help you take the next one. Subscribe to our newsletter at walk to wealth comm. That's walk the number to wealth comm, so we can keep you moving on your journey. We'll see you on the next episode of walk to wealth with John Mendez.