#494 The 4-Year Wealth Plan: #1 Ranked Business Broker Ranked Shares His Secrets
How to build wealth, time, and freedom through buying and selling businesses.
They don’t teach this in schools, but Chad Peterson will teach it to you in this episode.
What if the life you’ve always dreamed of (financial freedom, time to enjoy it, and a legacy to leave behind) was just one business deal away?
Sounds too good to be true?
Well, Chad Peterson isn’t here to pitch you wishful thinking— he’s here to prove it’s actually possible.
Chad is a nationally recognized expert in business brokerage and wealth strategy. Known as the #1 rated Business Broker in the US, Chad is the owner of Peterson Acquisitions, a nationwide business brokerage firm specializing in helping entrepreneurs buy and sell businesses.
In this episode of “Success for the Athletic-Minded Man” podcast, we talk about how to escape the burnout of running a business, why selling at the right time can make you a millionaire, and how buying a business with just 10% down could change your life.
Chad also explains his method, Quantum Stack Investing, which teaches you to use liquidity as a wealth-building superpower.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to sell, a regular employee dreaming of escaping the 9-to-5 grind, or someone ready to make the leap into business ownership, this episode is for you. Tune in now!
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire episode or if you hear something that you like but don’t have time to write it down, be sure to grab your free copy of the Action Plan from this episode— as well as get access to action plans from EVERY episode— at JimHarshawJr.com/Action.
Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Chad Peterson
[00:00] Chad Peterson: When you’re doing well is the time to sell. And so I show people that if you just sell a business every four or five years and use that liquidity, you can go from making hundreds of thousands to making millions. And if you really wanted to keep on going, you can get into the billions. It’s how far you ever want to go with it.
[00:21] Chad Peterson: And the sky’s the limit, and that’s what QSI teaches.
[00:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I’m bringing you Chad Peterson. Imagine this, there’s a 10 trillion wealth shift on the horizon and business owners are either unaware of it or they’re unprepared to leverage it.
[00:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Well, today’s guest, Chad Peterson, he’s not just another business broker. He has over 25 years in the industry. He’s got six books and he’s teaching this stuff every day to business owners. And he’s teaching them how to scale their wealth. Chad. Knows what it takes to move from sort of a paycheck lifestyle to true financial independence.
[01:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: In this episode, Chad challenges everything that you think, you know, about owning a business, about buying a business, about selling a business. And he introduces his wealth building concept that he calls quantum stack investing. Yes. It’s a big fancy term, but he breaks it down and makes it really, really simple.
[01:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And it’s actually, once you learn it, you’re like, this has kind of been right under my nose for a long time. It’s pretty, pretty fascinating. And this concept helps entrepreneurs. And those of you who want to be an entrepreneur create not just income, but real actual scalable wealth. So you’ll hear his insights on why it’s crucial to leverage debt, to create value, uh, how to avoid the pitfalls of burning out in business and why staying too long in one business might be your biggest risk, but here’s the kicker, Chad claims he can teach anyone this stuff from seasoned business owners to nine to five employees who are just fed up with the grind and kind of stuck and want to create something different.
[02:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How many feels like he can teach anyone how to make millions through smart acquisitions. And if you think this sounds too good to be true, I kind of did as well. Chad says, it’s just fear talking. And by the end of their conversation, I think you’re going to believe that he’s right. So lock in right now.
[02:19] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Chad’s approach is going to teach you how buying and selling. Businesses could redefine your financial future and be sure as always that you’re subscribed to the podcast here on Spotify, Apple podcast, YouTube, wherever you’re listening to this and share this with one other person, like who’s that one other person, you know, right now, who’s feel stuck at work.
[02:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: They maybe are thinking about starting a side hustle, but they want to get out of what they’re doing and they want to make a lot more money. Who do you know? This might just be the next. Best move. All right, let’s get into it. My interview with fellow former wrestler, Chad Peterson. There are plenty of business brokers in the world.
[03:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How is what you do different?
[03:03] Chad Peterson: Well, I am the difference. You see, there’s a lot of brokers out there. And when we talk about brokers, we talk about somebody who can take you, the who’s self employed and walk you through a transaction to where you can sell your business because you got to move on. And most business brokers out there, they simply just don’t know what they’re doing.
[03:23] Chad Peterson: They simply don’t know how to be a, what’s I tell people I’m a transactionalist. And those business brokers don’t know how to do that. It’s tough. It’s not easy. It takes time. You have to understand finance. You have to understand banking. You have to understand psychology. You have to understand fear within the seller.
[03:46] Chad Peterson: Fear within the buyer. You have to have great banking relationships. You have to negotiate the process. You have to be able to Work on a deal for eight or nine months at a tireless clip and possibly the deal doesn’t close. So you have to have this kind of do or die attitude. And most brokers are not that way.
[04:07] Chad Peterson: So when people say, Jad, what’s the difference between you and them? I say, I am the difference because I’m the guy that gets it done. And I’ve been doing this for almost 25 years. And if anybody knows how to take a business owner from owning a business to selling their business and moving on to their next entrepreneurial adventure.
[04:24] Chad Peterson: It’s me, and I’ve been considered the number one business broker in the country by several publications and industry leaders, and I’ve written six books, all of which teach the self employed how to sell their business and then use that liquidity to advance them into wealth, because I have a saying, paychecks lead to poverty, liquidity leads to wealth, because most business owners They make paychecks.
[04:52] Chad Peterson: They’re making an earning. Hell, let’s say they’re making 500, 000 a year. That’s pretty damn good money. Less than 1 percent of the country makes that, and less than 01 percent of the world makes that. But they get burned out, they get bored, they get tired, they lose their passion, and they don’t know what to do.
[05:11] Chad Peterson: And so I teach them. How to move forward and take that burned out passion, sell their business because somebody else is standing in a line who would want that business, they sell that business, they use that liquidity and they go from earning paychecks to now they have a big liquidity event. They can buy a larger asset, meaning a next larger business that pays them more monies, no different than buying a home.
[05:36] Chad Peterson: You know, you’re newly married, you got a, you got a baby, you got one on the oven. And, you know, you live in a starter home and then after 10 years, you build some equity and you move on to the next big home and somehow your payment stays similar. It’s no different. And that’s what I show people how to do.
[05:53] Chad Peterson: You had this concept called quantum stack investing. What is that? Quantum stack investing is a wealth building methodology that I created. I’m the creator of it. And really what it is, Jim, is that. A lot of business owners just don’t know what they’re doing, and I don’t mean that they don’t know what they’re doing with running their business, they certainly know how to do that, but our education system, whether it be K through 12, uh, college, Ivy League schools, they do not teach what I teach, and so business owners largely don’t have the information that I teach, and again, why would they?
[06:31] Chad Peterson: The schools don’t teach it. Your CPA doesn’t know these things. Your attorney doesn’t know these things. The best business schools out there don’t know what I teach. What I teach is, uh, private equity companies know what I know a little bit and banks, they know quite a bit as well. And so what I do is I kind of peel the curtain back and I let the ordinary business owner into the.
[06:53] Chad Peterson: Information that’s seldom seen. So I built quantum stack investing, and that does three things for you. It gives you a quantum leap and income takes a quantum leap into wealth. Really? You could say, and then it stacks the odds of a successful business ownership in your favor, and then it teaches you how to run your business, like an investment.
[07:14] Chad Peterson: And not a job. And so what QSI or quantum stack investing really does is it shows a business owner how to sell and how to move into wealth. It also shows a hopeful business owner, how to buy a business and do the very same thing eventually. And so what I teach in quantum stack investing is don’t buy and hold a business for 25 years.
[07:38] Chad Peterson: You’re going to lose your passion for it. And where there’s no passion, there’s no profit. When you’re doing well is the time to sell. And so I show people that if you just sell a business every four or five years and use that liquidity, you can go from making hundreds of thousands to making millions.
[07:56] Chad Peterson: And if you really wanted to keep on going, you can get into the billions. It’s how far you ever want to go with it. And the sky’s the limit. And that’s what QSI teaches.
[08:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Maybe they own a business. Let’s say for the listener who doesn’t own a business, maybe they want to be an entrepreneur. They want to start a business, maybe buy a business.
[08:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Does this work for them? I mean, can you take somebody who’s a non business owner? They’re an employee right now, right? They’re like, man, this sucks. I’m looking for my next thing. I want more independence, time independence, you know, financial independence. Can you help that person?
[08:29] Chad Peterson: Absolutely. At the core of what I teach is wealth, time, and freedom secrets.
[08:34] Chad Peterson: That’s what I teach. So, if you’re earning a paycheck right now, and you’re an employee somewhere, absolutely, in fact, I teach people. How to become millionaires. I teach ordinary people how to be extraordinary millionaires, people that have nine to five jobs that they look at how the companies ran. And they think, man, I could do this better than the boss.
[08:54] Chad Peterson: Those are the kinds of people that I help. But I also help the current self employed people as well. People that own a business. So yes, you could come to me. You could learn exactly how to buy a business. You don’t have to be a millionaire to buy a business. You only need 10 percent down to the purchase price.
[09:11] Chad Peterson: So investment vehicles like 401ks, IRAs, cash sitting in the bank, equity in your home. Those are all wasted investments. I can show you how to take a quantum leap in income, a quantum leap into wealth. If you wanted to buy a business and a lot of people say, well, what if the business fails? Well, I’ve been doing this for almost 25 years, and I’ve never had a business that I’ve sold fail.
[09:37] Chad Peterson: And that sounds like a wild claim, but here’s the reality of it. There’s a stat out there that everybody understands that north of 90 percent of businesses fail. And that number keeps getting recycled because, you know, one person said it, another person said it, another person said it, so we all just say it.
[09:57] Chad Peterson: The fact is, and I’m going to say that again, the fact is that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, would not lend out up to 5 million to Americans with a 680 credit score and a PULSE if 90 plus percent of them failed. So here’s the real number. One out of 72 SBA approved loans goes bad. One out of 72.
[10:23] Chad Peterson: Pretty good hit rate. And so what that means Is that if you find the right business, which a good broker like myself can do that for you and you know how to get to the transaction, which a good broker like myself can teach you how to do that and guide you through the process to get that done. And if you get through underwriting through the SBA, so lots of ifs, but if you do, if you do that pretty much secures your position in a profitable business, because only 1 out of 72 of those goes under.
[10:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, so there’s a vetting process, there’s some boxes you gotta check, and assuming you can check those boxes in the business you’re looking to buy. Fits the bill. You can get the money and you can buy a successful business. That’s this pretty high likelihood that it’s going to succeed.
[11:08] Chad Peterson: Yeah. Let me give you a quick story.
[11:10] Chad Peterson: So I have business partners across the country. Okay. We’re a nationwide firm, Peterson acquisitions. And so this gal, lovely gal, her name’s Shay. And I’ll, I’ll forward this whenever you’re done with this episode, I’ll forward this to her, but. She came on board with me. And she said, I really want to, uh, I want to be your business partner.
[11:28] Chad Peterson: So she comes on board with me. She’s in Nevada. She actually lives in Washington, Washington state, but her territory is in Nevada and they read my book. Uh, they didn’t read quantum stack investing. They read the QSI shift, which the QSI shift is a, a, a splinter book off of quantum stack investing. And she read that book, her and her husband.
[11:53] Chad Peterson: Well, he was, uh, you know, doing the nine to five grind, probably the nine to seven grind, really. And they decided to buy a business after they read my teachings. And she’s a CPA. And she read my book and she goes, Chad, I’ve never thought about it like this. So they bought a business. And it was an ordinary business, actually a commercial plumbing or HVAC, I forget which one.
[12:16] Chad Peterson: It might be both. It might be, uh Mechanical or plumbing. I forget, but she’s owned that business for four months and she’s making, they’re making 90, 000 or more a month. He went from being an employee to make a 90, 000 months. So she came on board, became my business partner. They changed their life. She’s selling businesses with me now as my partner, and they literally just became millionaires.
[12:43] Chad Peterson: And so she was, she was very debt averse because she’s a CPA, you know, debts bad. That’s what CPAs are taught. That’s what most people would tell you. Dave Ramsey’s out there telling you that debt is bad. But listen, if you want to be wealthy, you have to leverage healthy debt into wealth. So here’s how it works, because this is very, very interesting.
[13:03] Chad Peterson: Let’s just say you bought a business that was paying you $1 million a year. If you bought that business that’s paying you $1 million a year, you have to pay money to the bank. It’s called debt service. You have a loan on that. So let’s just say you capture 60% of that. So it’s paying you a million, but you got to pay for the loan.
[13:23] Chad Peterson: So now you’re making 600, 000. Well, people say, well, that’s a hell of a lot of money. To pay towards debt service. No, it’s not. That’s built in equity. There’s how you stack your wealth. That’s the second part of my book. That’s how you stack your wealth through quantum stack investing. So Shay, she’s going to make about a million dollars.
[13:42] Chad Peterson: The person who came to me who really wanted to learn, she can make a million dollars, her husband will, but they’re going to capture about 600 of that. Every year, they pay down 400, 000 and debt service in five years. They have 2 million sitting there. They paid down. They sell their business in five years.
[14:02] Chad Peterson: Now in five years, they’ve made 3 2 million in equity in five years. They’re going to liquidate sell for more than what they bought it for. Plus walk away with 5 million liquid. Now here’s the kicker. It only really required them to put down 300 grand. So 300, 000 will turn into 5 million in five years.
[14:29] Chad Peterson: And that’s what I teach. I teach how to buy a business, how to hold cash flow steady, protect cash flow, that’s king, pay down the debt service, be glad you’re paying down debt service because listen, when you pay down debt service, that is all tax deductible. So you’re getting the tax write off for, uh, let’s just say you hold your business for five years, buying and holding beyond five years is.
[14:53] Chad Peterson: dangerous for your business because where there is no passion, there’s no profit in five years. You sell. Now you walked into a transaction with 300, 000. You’re going to walk out with 5 million in five years. And there’s not a single investment in the market that will pay that kind of return that doesn’t exist.
[15:12] Chad Peterson: And so I, I teach that I turn people, ordinary people into extraordinary millionaires. And I’m doing it every day. I do it with people who come to me and say, John, I’m curious about that QSY thing. What is that thing? And they read my book and they go, holy shit, how did I never understand it? Because it’s been right in front of their face the whole time.
[15:31] Chad Peterson: Yeah. It sounds straightforward. As straightforward as it could be, the Small Business Administration has been around since Dwight Eisenhower was in office. Okay, this program’s 80 years old, okay? On top of that, we’ve got 70 trillion of money that’s going to change hands from the older generation to the new generation.
[15:49] Chad Peterson: Now, 10 trillion of that is in the form of small businesses, the baby boomers, built, and they’re retiring and they’re expiring. So, we’ve got a huge problem. Let’s get beyond The fact that a lot of businesses need to change hands. Okay. And, and let’s get beyond that. Oh, it might be hard to buy a business and let’s get beyond, Hey, I don’t have the money for a business.
[16:13] Chad Peterson: Let’s get beyond what if it fails? Let’s get beyond all the fear.
[16:18] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Those are all objections that are in people’s heads.
[16:19] Chad Peterson: You just, you just crush them all. Here’s the reality of it. 10 trillion must change hands in the next 10 years. It’s not a, maybe it’s not a possibility. It’s not if they want to, it’s not, ah, shucks.
[16:34] Chad Peterson: I don’t know. I may, I may not. 10 trillion in businesses must, there’s no other way around it. They’re dying, they’re retiring, they’re out. So, when you drive down the road and you see these trucks and they’re wrapped and it’s a landscaping company or it’s a plumbing company or you, you drive down and you see signage, you see a storefront business, more than likely that business needs to go up for sale within the next 2, 3, 4 years.
[17:01] Chad Peterson: And so if people could get past their fears and get past the fear of failure. Get past the, the, the fear of not knowing because ignorance is a choice anymore. You know, when you and I were young, Jim, we had to go to a library and fill out a goofy card to get the library book checked out. And we had to know where the, we had to know about the book.
[17:23] Chad Peterson: We didn’t have the internet. Listen, if you don’t have the knowledge, that means you’re not paying attention. But knowledge is on Google. A guy like me can show you how to do it. But what I’m trying to say is there’s bigger problems to solve here. How does the newer generation get their hands on those businesses?
[17:36] Chad Peterson: And that’s what we’re trying to solve for the SBA. So everything that we do is straightforward. It’s been around for 80 years. You get a bank loan. You don’t do creative financing. You don’t have to be a financing wizard to do this. You just need. to buy a business and run that business exactly how that business owner was doing it.
[17:56] Chad Peterson: That sold it to you. Don’t try to get cute. Don’t try to get clever. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. The business owner knows how to run that company after a year of running it, then you can make some adjustments if you want to grow it, but don’t grow. At an accelerated rate because scaling could be failing, you could spend money and not get the return and you have to protect cashflow.
[18:21] Chad Peterson: And that’s what I teach. So to answer your question in short, yes, I can take somebody who is an employee right now who doesn’t know anything about this and put them in a self employed position within six months. Or if you’re a current business owner. And you’re running your business and you’re like, man, I’m just not passionate anymore.
[18:38] Chad Peterson: I’m burned out. I’m tired of this set of problems. And you want to get out. I can show you how to do that and move up to the next adventure. And I can make you, you know, if you’re earning paychecks now, I can turn you into a multimillionaire and I can do it this year, not one day, because one day never comes, I can do it this year for you.
[18:54] Chad Peterson: For the listener who’s sitting there and saying,
[18:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: this sounds too good to be true. What do you tell them?
[18:59] Chad Peterson: Well, if a man thinks he can or can’t, he’s right. I’m not saying my religious position, but there’s a saying, you know, Jesus couldn’t convince everybody and neither can I, you know, and here’s the thing, it’s there right in front of you.
[19:12] Chad Peterson: That’s a great quote, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. And the, the small business administration is there now, here’s the trick. If you don’t know how to get your hands on the money, meaning you don’t know how to navigate the SBA process. Yeah, probably too good to be true. Thing is I do, I’ve been doing this for over 20, about 25 years.
[19:32] Chad Peterson: You come to me and I make sure you get your hands on the money. Now the SBA will lend out up to 5 million. They won’t lend you 20 million, but they’ll lend any American. That has a 680 credit score and you have to have a resume, you know, you can’t be fresh out of college with no experience and walk into a 5 million loan, but you could walk right out of college with a degree in a similar industry and you could say, I can, I want to buy that million dollar business.
[20:04] Chad Peterson: They’ll do it for you. And so most people qualify now, even if you don’t qualify right out of college or something like that. We can work with a seller and we can do what’s called a seller carry and we can get most of bank financing and then a little bit of seller carry and then the bank will do it. So we can, we can help about 99 percent of people out there.
[20:23] Chad Peterson: So it’s not too good to be true. It’s right in front of you. And that’s what I’m saying is that the school system never taught you this. You were learning about a war in 1700s. You were learning about a war in the 1800s. You’re, you’re learning algebraic equations. But if I asked any of your audience to show me how to find the cash flow button in QuickBooks, they’re gonna say, well, I’ll look for it.
[20:47] Chad Peterson: And the truth is that you can’t find cash flow in QuickBooks. You have to know how to read a profit and loss statement. And even if you went to Harvard, you wouldn’t know what I teach. But it’s right in front of you. The SBA’s there. If you have the knowledge, you can get it done. And it’s not too good to be true.
[21:02] Chad Peterson: We do it all the time.
[21:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So you look at a business, you, someone comes to you and they say, okay, I’m interested, what does a good business look like and what are the things that someone has to look out for? When choosing a business that is maybe you’re, you’re thinking about trends in the economy. You’re thinking about management and leadership that’s currently in place.
[21:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What are the things that you look for in a healthy, strong business?
[21:27] Chad Peterson: The truth of it is that any business that’s going to be for sale on the market by a good broker like myself is going to be a solid business. And I’ll tell you why. If you come to me and you sell, you want to sell your business. Now, if I charged you 50, 60, 80, a hundred grand upfront, great.
[21:43] Chad Peterson: I don’t care if your business is good or not. You want to sell something. Okay. Now, if I was that kind of broker, anyway, I would say, okay, let’s sell your business. I don’t do that. You bring me a business and I literally take it on a contingency or I don’t sell it. In other words, it has to be that good of a business.
[21:57] Chad Peterson: So number one. The broker makes the difference. So first and foremost, the broker is going to make or break the success of your outcome. Guaranteed. Secondly, when you’re looking for a business, you want to have proven historic cashflow. And what I mean is stable earnings for several years prior, because that’s, that leads into the one in 72 failure rate, because a loan through the SBA one out of 72 goes bad.
[22:23] Chad Peterson: Okay, well, a business that has had historic cash flow has a greater chance of survival. Now, if there is industry disruption, for instance, if something is about to be extinct because of AI, well, you’ve got to take that into consideration. And we do too as brokers. Another thing to look for is, how stable has the cash flow been?
[22:44] Chad Peterson: And what’s the reason if it hasn’t been stable? Is it seasonality? You want to look at seasonality. So let’s just say you were doing really well during the Trump administration. And then during, uh, the Biden administration, maybe not so much. Well, that’s easily explainable. We’ve had a hard time getting products, goods on our shelves.
[23:02] Chad Peterson: We’ve had, had supply chain issues. So the political environment plays a role. No doubt. Interest rates play a role in what you should be looking at, because, you know, when Trump was in office and. And, uh, 2020, 2019 interest rates were in the sixes. Now you’re buying a business that’s interest rates from 11 and a half.
[23:25] Chad Peterson: So that’s, that’s something to be looking for. But again, it comes down to the broker. That’s going to tell you whether or not this is a good business or not. And the broker, if he’s good, is going to tell you, Hey man, this is a business for you, or it’s not a business for you. And if he’s a good broker, you should listen to him.
[23:41] Chad Peterson: Because he knows the business inside and out. He’s gotten to know you as the buyer. And then if the bank likes the buyer, then the bank is going to go through an enormous underwriting process. And if failure is to be found, they’ll find it and they’ll prevent the deal from happening. So I would tell you to let the process be the determining factor, if you can sell it or if you can buy it or not, because by the time I look at you and analyze you, by the time I look at the business and analyze it, and by the time the bank does its white glove search on you.
[24:17] Chad Peterson: If it’s a yes, it’s a good fit. A lot of times it’s a no. So let the process be the vetting process.
[24:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. And for the listener, you’ve heard me say this before. Like you got to have a team. Like when, when you’re an athlete, have teams, right? You have a team, you have, uh, coaches. Like when I was wrestling and chat, I know you’re a wrestler as well.
[24:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like there’s coaches in place or strength and conditioning coaches. There’s athletic trainers, there’s sports psychologists, there’s. academic advisors. There’s all, there’s this whole team and you can’t go about something like this by yourself as well. You don’t try this, don’t try and go figure it out.
[24:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s people who are really good at it, like Chad, who, who can walk you through it, right? Who are going to help you, you know, make, make the process easier, help you see your own blind spots, help you see the things that you just, you just don’t even know that are there.
[25:07] Chad Peterson: Absolutely. And with that being said, I also teach people.
[25:10] Chad Peterson: So let’s just say you’re like, well, I’m not ready to buy a business because I need to know more. I teach people. I have a school I have a I have a class. I have a program and You can join that program. I try to make it affordable It’s 97 a month to start and so for 97 a month You can literally just get in there and start learning reading my books.
[25:34] Chad Peterson: I have a there’s a login code You can get in there. You can go through my videos. I start teaching it from A to Z. So even if, you know, this is too daunting of a task for some people that want to buy a business or even if you want to sell your business. And that seems daunting as well, because a lot of business owners say, what the hell am I going to do afterwards?
[25:51] Chad Peterson: Because they’re so, oh, uh, institutionalized by their business. They can’t see the next step. But truly, after you’ve ran a business, you’ve done okay with it. You’ve made some money. The next step is to create a liquidity event. And I can literally 15 X your income, 15 X. So if you’re, if you’re making 200 grand a year right now, I can help you make 15 times that, and I can do it quick because liquidity leads to wealth.
[26:23] Chad Peterson: And I can’t teach that on this podcast, but I teach how that works in my courses. Love
[26:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: it. Love it. Where do we find your courses? Of course, we’ll have all that in the action plan for listener, but where, where do we go for that?
[26:34] Chad Peterson: The first thing you need to do is, uh, the audience needs to check out chadpeterson.
[26:38] Chad Peterson: com and then you need to go to petersonacquisitions. com as well, get in contact with us. And then I have my staff across the country. They know what to do to, to send you to the right program, the right course and get you in that. You just have to contact
[26:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: us. We’ll have all that in the action plan for listener as always.
[26:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So.
[26:59] Chad Peterson: Chad, how’d you get into this? The older I get, the more it means to me, I guess, because I’m a father, and I have a 21 year old son, and I see him trying to find his place in this world, and I feel so bad for him, because, you know, it’s not the same world that you and I grew up in, and, you know, college isn’t what it was meant to be, and the cat’s out of the bag on that.
[27:21] Chad Peterson: You know, what do you do now to go out there and carve something out for yourself? And so the answer is that when I was a real young kid, I come from a very tumultuous childhood. My mother’s crazy. I mean, you know, she’s still alive, but just crazy, unstable, always has been still is. And I don’t say that to be a dick.
[27:41] Chad Peterson: I’m just saying that that’s just the fact. I mean, concrete’s hard, water’s wet and the sun is hot and she’s nuts. That’s just matter of fact, as she was married. It’s seven times before I was 15 years old. So I lived in a house that was, it was just crazy. You know, it was crazy making and what would break many other people built me.
[28:04] Chad Peterson: That’s the best way I can say it. And I remember. Money being tight. There was always scarcity in my house. I mean, my, my mom had such a scarcity mindset and says a young kid. I thought, you know, man, if I, it was pretty much, if it was meant to be, it was up to me, and so even as a young kid, man, I would, I would do the most.
[28:24] Chad Peterson: Enormous heavy lifting tasks just to go make 30 bucks. I mean, I would knock on a neighbor’s door and say, Hey, can I mow your grass? And this, this yard would be an acre and a half. And I would, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but man, 30 bucks seems like a lot of money to me. So I learned that way and I.
[28:43] Chad Peterson: I would pick up dog shit. I would, I would pick limbs out of yards. I would pick up crab apples that had fallen out of trees. I would walk dogs. I would go to garage sales. I would buy. I would flip. I had it at a young age. And, uh, my mom’s not all bad. But it was pretty rough, you know. But one day she comes into my room and she sees this board game.
[29:06] Chad Peterson: And I don’t remember what it was, but it had a real tall box. It was a, it was a Some sort of kid board game. And I had amassed all this money and I built this whole box was full of quarters and dollars and fives and tens and twenties. And she said, CT, I went by CT by my family and friends, my middle name, Thomas CT, CT, you need a bank account.
[29:29] Chad Peterson: And I said, what’s a bank account? I mean, I was that young, but I had built up maybe, you know, five, 600 bucks. And she says, you need a bank account. And so little successes and big failures and, uh, biting off more than what I could chew, you know, working until dark, leaving my lawnmower in the guy’s lawn.
[29:48] Chad Peterson: The guy laughing at me or feeling bad for me, one or the other, that I had to come back the next day because I wasn’t even strong enough to push the lawnmower. My friends laughing at me because I was mowing grass and I was dirty after school while they were playing. Envy, jealousy. I got into my teenager years and I was.
[30:05] Chad Peterson: Mowing grass, but I had a lawn landscaping company, but I was making more than my teachers. I was making 50, 000 a year in high school. You know, I had a trailer, truck, lawnmowers, all the equipment. I had one, uh, I had one guy to help me, uh, an employee to help me part time. I had my. My classmates thinking, who’s this guy think he is?
[30:25] Chad Peterson: What’s he doing? Pulling up to school with all this equipment. Who’s it’s like, man, I’m just here to get that degree or that, that diploma rather from high school that doesn’t do you shit. And I’m out and you know, I was there to wrestle, get my college diploma and I, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was working.
[30:43] Chad Peterson: And so to the, the answer to your question is this, I would, whether it be, call it God, if you want to. Call it spirit, call it serendipity. I don’t know. I’m sitting there and I just got done working on this, this lawn. And a guy that I know, he owned a big lawn landscaping company. He said, Chad, what are you going to do?
[31:04] Chad Peterson: And I was 18 years old. I said, Chad, what are you going to do? I said, I don’t know, man. All I know is I want to fly planes. That’s all I want to be a pilot. And he said, well, how are you going to do that? I said, I have no idea. He said, let me talk to you about your business. Maybe I want to buy it. No, like buy my business.
[31:21] Chad Peterson: What the hell? Why would you want what the hell? I hate this thing. And that’s when it hit me. I was 18 years old. I said, man, why would you want to buy this company for me? And he said, well, Chad, you’ve already built the company. I don’t have to do that. You’ve got the customer base. All I have to do is buy it from you and maintain the customers.
[31:38] Chad Peterson: He bought that business from me for 130, 000. I was 18 years old. So what, what did I learn? I learned that I could get passionate for whatever reason. I got passionate to go mow grass, by the way, I’m allergic to grass and I hate working outside in the sun and I’m, my allergies are out of the, out of control, but I was passionate because it was the only damn thing I knew how to do at that time at that age in my life.
[32:04] Chad Peterson: So I was passionate about the money. I didn’t give a damn what I had to go do. And I was, I was so sick of it. That I was praying the grass wouldn’t grow. That’s how sick of it. I was, you know, like, Oh my God, it’s raining. The grass is going to grow my God. What have I gotten myself into? And then I get paid 130, 000 to say goodbye to it.
[32:25] Chad Peterson: I would rather have bought a stick of dynamite and blown the business up to somebody else, it was worth something. And that’s what most business owners don’t understand. They’re making three, 400 grand a year. And you would think, well, you must be happy then bullshit. You know, if Robin Williams can kill himself, he had what, what Ron, Ron Williams were 300 million.
[32:48] Chad Peterson: Kate Spade killed herself. She just sold her, her bag company to, to a huge bag manufacturer. She killed herself. Anthony Bourdain. I mean, money doesn’t, money doesn’t make you happy. So you could be making three or 400, 000 a year, be completely miserable. And yet somebody else will want to buy that business from you.
[33:10] Chad Peterson: And so at 18 years old, I went on to fly planes, I was flying planes on 9 11. I was piloting a plane, I was a commercial pilot, flying in on the Gulf of, uh, Gulf Coast of Florida, flying to Orlando International. That’s where George W. Bush was in Air Force One. The plane had hit the towers. The plane had just hit the Pentagon.
[33:34] Chad Peterson: They diverted me to Orlando Executive. We landed the plane. I was sweating my ass off. It was the most dangerous landing I’ve ever had because they were trying to clear the skies around the president. My career was over. Didn’t know it. I had a baby on the way. Some months later, I lost my career in the airlines.
[33:51] Chad Peterson: Had a baby on the way. All my money was gone. I was dead broke. And so, what did I do? I went back to doing the same thing I did when I was young. I said, well, I guess I’ll go build a business and sell it. So that’s what I did. I went and built a business that paid me 150, 000, which isn’t a lot of money. But you can build a business, make 150, 000 a year pretty damn easily if you know how to do it.
[34:14] Chad Peterson: And now, if you know what I know, somebody else, you know, one man’s trash, another man’s treasure. That 150, 000 in income is now worth 400, 000. So I sold the business for 400, 000 to a guy who said, I don’t have to build it, all I have to do is run it. So he went to the bank, borrowed 400, 000, paid it to me.
[34:36] Chad Peterson: And now he’s making 150, 000 a year minus debt service, who is making about 90 grand a year. And he didn’t have to go build the company. He just had to build it further from there. So I would create a liquidity event every three years, every four years. And then I started doing it for other people. People said, Chad, how are you making all this money?
[34:55] Chad Peterson: I said this way. And so I started writing books about it and teaching people how to do it. And the rest is history. Now I’ve got the, I’ve been, I’ve been ranked the number one business broker in the country. And I’ve got six books written about it on how to walk your money to wealth, how liquidity leads to wealth, how paychecks lead to poverty, how to pull out investments that are bullshit investments that are backed by Wall Street, 401ks, IRAs, cash sitting in your bank, equity in your house.
[35:25] Chad Peterson: That’s all bullshit. Just get rid of it. Put it into a business that’s going to pay you three, 400, 000 a year, sell it in four years and become a millionaire. And that’s what I teach people how to do.
[35:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. That’s fascinating. Chad, fascinating process, fascinating story for the listener who wants to take action on this, they like what they’re hearing, what’s an action item they can take in the next, let’s say 24 to 48 hours to start following up on what you taught here today.
[35:54] Chad Peterson: The best thing to do, quite honestly, is to get into one of my programs. Don’t try to get clever and go out there and start hunting for a business. Try to find financing on your own and all that. Get into my program. I do it at 97 a month and that’s just enough to cover my costs. And there’s a reason I do that is because whenever you come to me, I don’t want an uneducated buyer or an uneducated seller.
[36:19] Chad Peterson: It’s an absolute nightmare. It’s like if you were a professional dancer and you’re going out to do a dancing competition and it’s somebody’s first night dancing and that’s your dancing partner. It’s impossible, and so I would say, get into my programs, give it two or three months of learning, get some knowledge under your belt, and then come to me and say, Chad, I’m ready.
[36:47] Chad Peterson: So I would say, go to Peterson Acquisitions, contact us, let us know you want to learn. We’ll get you into a program, we’ll get you the books, we’ll get you the, the teachings, we’ll get you the videos. You can do it part time, as you wish, on your time, and learn for two, three, four months, even up to a year.
[37:05] Chad Peterson: You know, it’s a very small investment to learn these things that have been right in front of your face the entire time and nobody knew them. You know, the SBA has been there for 80 years. They want to give you money and there’s businesses right now that must. Change hands. They have to. And so if you know how to get your hands on those monies, then you’re in good shape.
[37:26] Chad Peterson: If you don’t, then you’re not going to win. And so, really all it is, and you know this from wrestling, and with as good of a wrestler as you were, you had many tricks up your sleeve. You had probably 20 things that you had down pat. And I was more of a basic wrestler. There was four or five things that I was so good at, and I just kept repeating them, and you could predict me as a wrestler.
[37:51] Chad Peterson: That’s how my coach taught me. He said, Chad, you need to be good at four or five things. That’s what you need to do. So that’s what I did. Here’s the deal, same thing here. You’re only three or four pieces of knowledge away from being able to do this. This isn’t something that’s going to take you five years to learn.
[38:06] Chad Peterson: You don’t need to be a finance wizard. You don’t need to be a CPA. You don’t need to know all the legal. You don’t have to be an attorney. You don’t have to have an MBA. You don’t have to have a business degree of any sort. You don’t have to know QuickBooks. You don’t have to know any of that. It’s the responsibility of the business owner to train the new buyer.
[38:29] Chad Peterson: And if you’re a business seller, listen, if you’re fearful about the future, I get it. Get into one of my programs. I’ll show you how the future is really where you want to go, because you’re going to have liquidity, you’re going to move into wealth, you’re going to get out of the business owning you, you’re going to get into true wealth, time, and freedom, and that’s what, that’s what I promote with my books, is wealth, time, and freedom, because money Money alone is not worth anything.
[38:56] Chad Peterson: If you have money, but you’re not wealthy, that means you’re getting by. If you have money and you don’t have time, that means your life sucks. If you have money and you don’t have freedom to do the things that you want to do, that means that the money is controlling you and you have to be at your job too much.
[39:17] Chad Peterson: So you don’t want money. You want wealth, time, and freedom. And so that’s what I teach. So again, you’re only two, three, four things away from knowing how to do it. It’s not going to take you years to learn it, and I’ll teach it to you. And then you become an educated buyer, an educated seller, and now why you and I.
[39:35] Chad Peterson: We can be good dancing partners to get it done together. But if you come to me and you don’t know anything, we’re starting from scratch and you’re never going to get it. So I would tell your audience to learn my programs. Get in my programs, start learning, and then within 2025, you can make a major change in your life.
[39:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You guys know what to do. For listeners, you gotta take action on this stuff. Chad, remind us your websites and how we can find you, follow you, buy your books, etc.
[40:03] Chad Peterson: petersonacquisitions. com, chadpeterson. com, instagram at realchad. Peterson. And listen, hey, for those listeners, this, this might sound crazy because who wants spam calls, right?
[40:18] Chad Peterson: Listen, I am so committed to getting you into a program. Here’s my cell phone number. 913 207 5895. That is my cell phone number. Text me. Don’t call me because my spam filter will probably grab it. But text me and say, Chad, I’m interested in your program. I was on Jim’s show. What do I do? That is my personal cell phone number.
[40:43] Chad Peterson: Can you now to your audience, can you guys keep texting me on that? No, but I can, if you want to text me to know where to go, you can do that. I’ll get you to the right program. I’ll send you a link. And then after that, you got to stay with my company. So my cell phone isn’t blown up, but listen, I want everybody to learn this stuff.
[41:00] Chad Peterson: There’s a lot that has to happen over the next 10 years. 70 trillion of money, 10 trillion of that in businesses. It must change hands. Baby boomers have to give those businesses to the younger generations. Business owners are burned out. They’re bored where there’s no passion. There’s no profit when you’re doing well as the time to sell one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
[41:23] Chad Peterson: The bank wants to give you the money to buy it. You just need the knowledge. And that’s what I’m here to do. Fascinating. Chad, thanks so much for making time to come on the show. Thank you so much.
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