Welcome to the Family Office podcast. In this fireside chat, you'll hear how Michael
went from a struggling entrepreneur to a $100 million exit using the same deal
-making and investor -relation strategies he learned right here at Family Office Club.
He's now applying these lessons to buy and scale companies with AI. Let's jump in.
We're welcome Michael here. No, Michael for quite some time now, probably seven to
ten years now. He first came to the club, was raising capital, and had a great
success with buying a business and then scaling it massively over three and a half
years to a nine -figure exit. So we're going to talk about his experiences with
growing multiple businesses, with multiple seven, eight, nine -figure exits across three
different businesses and just insights along the way. He is now a managing partner
of Growth Sync capital partners, and he is aiming at acquiring and investing in baby
boomer businesses and helping enable their growth through AI plus everything he's
learned the last 30 -plus years in business. So Michael, what else would you add
about your background that I missed, maybe? I'd say, you know, my background mostly
falls in two core categories. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've been building businesses
since 23, and then investing. So started out public investing through my wealth
management business, but then that later evolved after meeting Family Office Club to
essentially purely private investing. So it's really the intersection of entrepreneurism
and private investing. Got it. And so if you take us back a bit, what were the
key strategic moves that enabled you to have the $100 million plus exit with
Nature's Remedy? So I think to be able to pull off an exit like that, a couple of
things have to exist. Number one, there has to be a market opportunity, right, where
consumers are wanting to spend their dollars for a service, value product,
etc. So that has to exist. In the case of myself and Nature's Remedy, I saw an
opportunity where we had a very inefficient regulatory landscape, right? How that
particular sector was being regulated throughout the country was not only inefficient,
but it hadn't come to the entire East Coast yet. So I jumped in on the
opportunity. I saw first to market advantage. So number one, the market opportunity
has to really exist where consumers want to deliver their dollars. Number two, that
will attract the investors. So it was pretty compelling and easy for me to submit,
based on the regulatory and the legal changes in Massachusetts. This is going to be
the very first East Coast market of this. And so I saw that first market manage,
and so it was speed and execution. So my co -founder and I said, hey, we see this
opportunity. It's going to require a lot of capital. I raised my hand, and I said,
hey, I think I can fill that, rather foolishly thinking I could do it easily
because I had a wealth management background. And what I quickly found out was
private investing, especially in that particular sector. Not only was it difficult to
begin with, but that sector was easily one of the hardest, which was cannabis
starting out on medical cannabis in the East Coast, that later evolved and became
medical and adult use. How did you have the courage to jump from one industry to
seeing some opportunity that most people just watch go by and they don't grab it
and create a $100 million exit? I mean, why do you think you were able to do
that?
So I've used this term a lot. I say I'm a PhD, which is not the IV school
education PhD, but poor, hungry, and driven. So my background is of a kid that
comes from pretty humble beginnings, and I was very fortunate to have a mom that
was very focused in raising me in the land of opportunity. And so I just saw an
opportunity, and I really tenaciously went after it. In fact, when I vet
entrepreneurs that are pitching me, the thing that I look for is, hey,
if you've got an Ivy League degree, great. If you come from a wealthy family,
great. But my core thing that I'm focused on is walk me through your track record
of success, and then I want to know the trials and tribulation in each one of
those stages, because I'm measuring your emotional intelligence. One of the things
that I'm going to vet for the most is emotional intelligence, which has a direct
connection to tenacity. Those are the people, you can drop off of a helicopter
anywhere in the world, and they don't need to know a single person. They don't need
to have a dollar. That person will build wealth. That person will build value.
That's the person you want to invest in. Here's the challenge. It's less than 1
percent of people out there right yeah challenging um i mean that's that's the type
of insights that people can get at family office club is listening to someone like
you who maybe says some unusual things i think that i had someone texted me this
morning trying to pitch me a deal was explaining how our membership works and like
just how it works organization and he's like no you don't understand like we are
you know all signal we make no mistakes like capital letters no and i was like
well that's kind of like probably not the best fit for us then because if you have
the attitude that you are a god and you make no mistakes, that's kind of like
bottom of the latter emotional intelligence or just awareness of common sense and
business, right? So the opposite end of the spectrum, I think, is what we're getting
from Michael here. Also, a lot of the family offices I deal with is pretty hard to
have kids that are, have PhDs because they're by definition not poor. So,
okay, you need to figure out how to make them hungry and driven some other way or
make them feel poor. Any Any comments on that real quick? So I went through that a
bit. After the exit, you know, I'd had six figure and seven figure exits before,
but going from a seven figure exit to nine, it was a lot. And here's what I'll
tell you. People don't talk enough about the downsides of fast wealth creation.
There's a lot out there. I went through a period in my life or it was a bit of
an identity crisis. I went through a period where I was distracted by not just what
wealth brings in terms of options, but all the people that it brings into your room
just because of the wealth. And so there really are downsides of that. And when you
find someone that's done at once, a high percentage of them can't do it again
because of the distractions, believe it or not. So what I'm looking for are people
that have that repeat pattern and they want to keep building and it's not because
of the money it's because they actually really care to provide value to the world
to build their investors net worth to actually make a change in that particular
sector so those are the things i'm looking for they still have to have that purpose
and if they're not dialed into that purpose they're not going to have the drive to
get to that next stage do they still have that tenacity so think of a ufc fighter
there's one in particular, an Irishman that I'm thinking of.
It's like, you talk about what really led and influenced your growth the most. I
mean, is it a thousand things, or can you point to one or two or three things
that really contributed to your ability? Yeah, I mean, there's a handful of things.
So I spoke about tenacity and emotional intelligence. So that is, you know,
a core component that has to exist. You know, outside of just that, when you're
identifying the opportunity, you've got to be tenacious and timing really matters,
right? So, for example, let's look at the cannabis sector. If you're getting in now,
the whole industry is at an 80 to 90 % discount. If you got in, when I got in,
it was the first time the world had an opportunity to invest in cannabis publicly
traded through the Canadian Stock Exchange. I saw the opportunity. I saw that my
state was going to be the first fully legal market in the East Coast. I got in.
And by the way, here's the way the story goes. I was co -founder. I was also the
first investor with a half million dollars of my own money. I went to my wife and
I said, hey, honey, here's what I want to do? She goes, oh my gosh, what if it
goes to zero? I said, here's the good news. We're going to be okay. But I'm going
to do everything in my power to turn that half million dollars into a heck of a
lot more. It ended up being a 42x investment on my return, but that's the end of
the story. This is the beginning. I over, maybe overconfidence,
maybe arrogance. I thought I was going to sink a million in to this opportunity,
and I thought all the big investors were going to follow me. Three months later, my
half million dollars were the lonely dollars in the bank account, quickly burning
down and this expensive, expensive industry to start.
And I called Richard and his tweete team. In fact, it was Andres back there. Called
him up. It started out as this little website chat guy, got him on the phone. I
said, hey, Andres, I've been reading. I've been watching. I'm learning about Richard.
I need to talk to him. I'm interested in signing up, but I need to talk to him.
Two other people said I can't talk to him. He's too busy. But I'm open to signing
up, but I need to be able to talk to him first, and I will sign up right
afterwards. Andres was like, okay, let me help you out. Richard's a very busy guy.
We had one conversation that was around October of that year, 2016.
I became a member pretty shortly after. I was stressed. My half million dollars was
down to 400 ,000, then 300 ,000, then 200 thousand. And I was like, whoa, I'm about
to fail in this new business venture. And then I was watching all of Richard's
videos. I went to all of his conferences. I went to his investor masterminds. And I
found out, I'm doing this all wrong. This is not the same as the public investment
game. And so I started doing the things that Richard teaches and his team teaches.
Next thing you know, raised over million dollars for this business. And then I just
kept going. And I, for the first time in life, I learned if you mix an amazing
entrepreneurial opportunity and then you learn how to scale it with private
investments, holy smokes, that is the simple path to building wealth. And now I'm
doing it again with this investment fund called Growth's and Capital because what's
happening right now is baby boomers, Right now, we're age between 61 and 79.
There's a trillion dollars in the silver tsunami, as they call it, that's
transferring hands. The average baby boomer age is 67. Guess what's the age range in
which they start letting these businesses go? We're talking 20 -year -plus cash -flowing
businesses. $50 million business may be pumping out $10, $15 million in profits
stabilized. These businesses are transferring now, a trillion a year.
The average age in which their willingness to sell is $1 ,000 ,000 ,000.
called artificial intelligence that will be the biggest game changer since the
exception of mankind. And I will submit to you the single biggest wealth creation,
the biggest opportunity for private investors to ever build wealth, is amongst us
right now with AI. Awesome. So Sam Albin had a video where he said that basically,
if you notice, there's huge waves of startups that always grouped together, like when
there's a dot -com era or sports betting startups or crypto or AI or robotics or
cannabis, et cetera, right? And so one wave that you're seeing is basically the baby
boomer business sale wave, but combining that with AI wave to basically get an edge,
right? And, you know, Michael is talking about some people come to our events and,
you know, you could come for five years and not meet like a massive investor. It'd
be pretty surprising if you didn't meet some investors you could close deals with
but it could be that you do that and the worst case is you come out the other
side learning from hundreds of people like michael and now you structure deals better
your strategy's better you can talk the family office lingo navigate the industry
better and every meeting you go to you're more effective because you're one -liner
your deal structures and everything get to a better close rate and you just navigate
more rapidly the space right or maybe you know like tyler's first event they had a
great experience but um a lot of that is up to potentially chance and and how
developed your offering is right now when it
And then there's the ones that are creating that unfair advantage. If we go back in
time, there were the businesses that said, I'm not going to touch this new thing
called electricity. It's scary. People get shocked and they die. And then there was
the other business that said, wow, I'm going to adopt that. We know how that story
plays out. Same story today, only exponentially greater. So here are to answer your
question, all of the businesses that I have an ownership interest right now, and I
do two things. I mentor the entrepreneurs. I'm in the team meetings, right? That's
how I can assess what's going on from a level five leadership perspective. The
mandate that I put out to any business I'm part of, I don't care your industry. I
truly don't. But you have to be a leader in your industry in the integration of
AI. You have to be. And here are some places you can do it. Sales. It used to
be, we had to do the sales. So let's apply this to that silver tsunami business.
It's doing $10 million a year. That business, guess who's the sales guy that that
owns that business at 70 years old? It's him. Guess how much a week in sales and
time in sales he's actually spending? Maybe two hours, calling up his buddies, right?
We equipped that business with a sales bot on all social media channels on the
website, on text messages, and we actually allow the process of new revenue coming
in. And then from lead nurture, from A, all the way to booking the appointment or
to a trial close, the chatbot can handle all of that. In the next couple months,
we'll have it available by way of voice, too. And I know what you're thinking, for
you sales guys in the room. It can't be that good. I thought the exact same thing.
And then I saw this chat bot one Saturday morning. My partner texted me and called
me like crazy and said, you're not going to believe this. This chat bot is
pretending to be me. The only thing is it's way better at sales than me. I got
on. I watched it. My jaw dropped. It was friendly. It was persuasive.
It was timely. And it even made stuff up in the data that we hadn't fed it that
they didn't know. So it's not always accurate. You got to train it properly. But
here's
businesses, especially the baby more business, they don't know why their revenue
leaves them. They really don't. You can arm a chatbot by way of email and text
messaging, and most people are responsive by way of text. And you can design that
chatbot to legally interact with people without every text saying I'm an AI chatbot.
It can be baked into the legales when you onboard those clients. But when that
revenue leaves you, that AI chatbot can actually find the real reasons why. You can
create a real dashboard, a real -life dashboard that shows all of your KPIs, your
analytics, and your business. And you can actually show, hey, here's the weak points
in your business. The AI will do this. It'll aggregate the data. It'll show you in
the way of dashboard. And then it'll go a level further. Richard, we recommend you
fine -tune this aspect because you're losing 20 % of your revenue because they're not
showing from that sales funnel from set to scene. Let's just add this confirmation
process, and guess what? You're going to see a 20 % bump in sales. So those are
just a handful. I could talk about this for hours, actually. Yeah, it makes sense.
One of the most useful cases we've found our team has used over 800 times now is
we have an AI co -pilot training on over 500 phone call transcripts, and then all
of our website and all of our AI tools, etc. So when my team's on a call, They
can say, Sarah just called in raising capital for medical practice. How could we
help her most? And it goes through all of our recorded videos in the portal, all
of our offerings, all of our AI tools. And while the salesperson is thinking what
to say, the AI tool scripts out what they could say. And then that way, it's still
a human, but they have the second brain kind of rattling down all the little facts
of minutiae you might not be able to remember in real time. But beyond AI, But if
you had to bet on the next big mega theme in private investing, what would it be?
So, so a lot of times when I say AI, people think about investing right in Nvidia
or Tesla or these big, big conglomerates.
Okay, yes, you know, think about open AI, right? Investing in open AI, et cetera.
That was like the boulder that dropped in the water, and that ripple effect, right,
if the whole world is the body water, it's now going in every industry around the
world. So for those of you in the room, I don't care if you're in real estate. I
don't care if you're in fitness, gym, whatever it may be, my advice to you is
follow that ripple in your industry and be a leader in it.
Simple, Right? If your business is mobile home parks, great. Let me find a way to
integrate AI and be the leader in mobile home parks and AI. If it's whatever your
industry is, every one of my businesses, that's the mandate. Now, what you're going
to find is there's a ton of different ways to invest in your own businesses or
invest in the AI solutions that are popping up in all these industries. It's a race
in every single one of your industries. And it's going to be the biggest wealth
creation in your, to date, since you've lived. Awesome.
One of my mentors, Evan Pagan, taught me that sometimes you might feel like and
know that you're a level eight or level 10 entrepreneur, but you're stuck inside of
a level six business or a level two business. Like, it's just not the right
opportunity or business for you. Maybe this is a way to kind of give it an edge,
do something unique. Watching these waves of change, Warren Buffett says the tide
matters more than the swimmer sometimes, right? Like, you can be this average
swimmer, but if you're on the right tide and the right spot of the right time, you
know, it took a conscious effort and risk on your part, right? And so that's super
interesting to think through. So I just have two more questions here. What advice
would you give sent to millionaires, family offices, deck of millionaires here today
who want to back entrepreneurs like you, what should they look for in the operator,
not just the business that you haven't mentioned yet? I mean, if I had to boil
down to two to three things, one would be integrity.
My goodness, I've been pitched by so many people and found so many things not to
be true. So number one, when you find that integrity, that's absolutely key. And
then number two, kind of the intersection of emotional intelligence and tenacity,
right? That's key. And then the third thing is a consistent and repeatable track
record of success. Is this the person that we could drop in a helicopter anywhere
in the world, and they're just going to find a way to do two things, provide value
to the world and make money? That's the person you want to invest it. Awesome.
Yeah, one thing that I've heard you say, and now Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank,
who you met here at one of our events, ended up joining your board and investing
with you, et cetera, often repeats and quotes you on, is just the high -velocity
entrepreneur aspect, which goes along with everything you just said, track record and
emotional IQ, et cetera. Absolutely. And I got to, I know it at time, so I'm just
going to say one quick thing about Richard and Family Office Club. I promise he did
not pay me to say this, but this is really, really true. I already like it. If
you're looking to build wealth, if you're looking to raise capital,
if you're looking to build a business, I did all of those things and I learned how
to do it right here. Never in my wildest dreams. I think it would have turned into
building and selling and capitalizing a business that was an idea and then it was
sold for 104 million in 3 .5 years. And then along that journey, because of Richard
and the team, me learning those skills, I became partners with one of the sharks
from Shark Tank. And now the opportunities I get across my desk are very, very
different. So for those of you that are where I was, five, six, seven, eight years
ago, I joined at the beginning of 2017, late 2016. Keep going.
Be tenacious. Stay focused, implement the learnings, and surround yourself with the
right people, and you're going to be just fine. Awesome. I appreciate that. I
started the business in Boston, and I had less money in my bank account than I had
due for rent that month. I had no investors, no backers. And everything I've built
up is from just learning from people like you. So I definitely appreciate you
spending your time here today. For those of you have been to Boston a lot, I
started, you know, the business and my sweatpants in a Beloko burrito shop with a
free Wi -Fi and it would smell like burritos by the end of the day. And it worked
out from learning from people just like you. So last question here real quick is
that if we fast forward at a decade, what would people be saying about entrepreneurs
and investors who embraced AI early versus those who resisted and said, oh, this
isn't real. It's not worth it. None of this stuff works. So, I mean, you said a
decade is a bold comment. Entrepreneurism and capitalism could be dead in 10 to 15
years. That's a real thing that's going on right now. Listen to the Silicon Valley
experts, and what I'll tell you is the next 10 to 15 years may be the last major
wealth grab, so go the heck after it now. The world will look so different in 15
years from now. I cannot stress that point enough. If you're focused and you do the
right thing. You can build the wealth that will last you and your family a lifetime
and multiple generations now. And it's never been easier. But after that time,
it'll be done. We're going to have two wealth classes, right? Those two wealth
classes are going to be the ultra wealthy for the most part and universal basic
income. Not a political statement. It's just going to come out of necessity. I'm not
sure if I answer that question but yeah all of the AI nerds I follow they either
do not have an answer pretend not to predict or say there has to be universal
income because so many people are going to be replaced by AI they won't need to
work they'll be doing arts and video games and virtual reality and and who knows
what but you know in physics they say action is perception like by taking action on
a new niche like you did you learn in real time and then the path unfolds and
Elon says that speed is the ultimate weapon. And so, like, moving quick is more
valuable now than it used to be, and being confident and having the courage to move
on your business plans by talking to peers and learning from people like Michael, I
think, really helps. So we're a little bit over on time. Was any of the last
comment you wanted to make before we break? I was just going to comment on what
Elon said, who's my favorite billionaire, by the way.
And you just said that the speed. Say that again, Richard? Speed is the ultimate
weapon in business. So if speed is the ultimate weapon, which I agree, and would.
Thanks for listening. I hope this conversation reminding you that speed, tenacity, and
integrity still win in business. As Michael said, AI is the rocket thruster behind
those who move fast and think long term. Next, we're kicking off a brand new five
-episode series on hot investor trends, recorded live with active investors sharing
what they're funding right now and why. Stay tuned. You won't want to miss what's
coming next.