Bridging the Gap Between Personal Freedom and Financial Success

Roland Frasier is the Principal Co-founder of EPIC Network, an M&A network for business owners and entrepreneurial investors. As an investor, business strategist, and serial entrepreneur, he has built, acquired, and sold over 1,000 businesses. Roland has been the co-founder and principal of six Inc fastest-growing companies in real estate, food service, e-learning, and SaaS. As the host of the Business Lunch Podcast, he has interviewed business celebrities like Sir Richard Branson, Sara Blakely, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Martha Stuart. Roland is also the co-author of Business Wealth Without Risk.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:29] Roland Frasier's entrepreneurial journey from real estate to leveraged buyouts
[9:59] The role of continuous learning in entrepreneurship
[12:02] How to identify and frame your company’s driving factors
[14:27] Roland shares his approach to mentorship
[19:53] Strategies for overcoming common barriers in the business acquisition space
[24:20] The influence of Roland’s father on his business mindset and approach.
[37:41] EPIC’s spontaneous origin — and how a crisis led to opportunity
[50:56] How owning a sellable business can drastically increase net worth over time

In this episode…

How do some of the most successful entrepreneurs reach both financial stability and personal fulfillment? A combination of strategic thinking, a relentless pursuit of learning, and alternative wealth-building approaches contribute to this sense of freedom. How can you transform your business approach to achieve similar results?

With deep knowledge and expertise in business acquisitions, Roland Frasier advocates for strategic investments and acquisitions to build wealth. Owning and selling investment-worthy businesses at a multiple of their profits can increase your net worth. Before acquiring any business, you must identify your entrepreneurial passions and acquisition criteria to carve a unique and fruitful path. Roland also suggests trading your investments for equity to increase your wealth and business stakes. By making intentional actions, you can shift your financial trajectory and achieve transformative personal and professional freedom.

Tune in to this episode of Destination Business Freedom as Pat Mancuso chats with Roland Frasier, the Principal Co-founder of EPIC Network, about building a pathway toward financial freedom. Roland imparts keen insights on consultative equity, scaling businesses, and unlocking the potential to earn decades’ worth of profits in a singular fiscal year.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments:

"Business is much harder than I ever imagined it would be when I first got started."
"What's truly rare is...the ability for [visionary entrepreneurs and operators] to get connected in a way that allows them to work together efficiently."
"Every year, I feel like I know and learn so much more than I knew or learned the year before."
"I really believe books and primary source material are sources of consolidated knowledge that I regularly draw from."
"Once you build a certain level of wealth...think about wealth preservation over everything else. Don't lose what you made."

Action Steps:

Establish Clear Acquisition Criteria: Define precisely what you seek in a business to acquire, including financial performance and personal interests. Focusing on acquisition criteria increases your chances of finding a business that aligns with your goals.
Pursue Business Acquisitions as an Investor: Aim to acquire companies with existing operational leaders, aiming for investment, not a job. This approach enables you to earn passively, avoiding the exchange of time for income.
Leverage Consulting for Equity: Consider trading consultancy services for equity rather than just fees. It helps in wealth accumulation and aligns personal success with the business's growth trajectory.
Grow Through Acquisitions: Expand your business by acquiring related enterprises to deepen market presence without extending work hours. It's an effective way to grow your business while potentially reducing operational workload.
Plan For an Exit-Ready Business: Build and adjust your business processes with a potential future sale in mind. This step ensures that you can capitalize on business maturity, selling it for a significant multiple of its profit.

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by the Mancuso Consulting Group, a go-to resource for entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners dedicated to personal and business growth.

Our team of experts has coached, consulted, and trained over 15,000 entrepreneurs, C-suite leaders, and business owners in areas of sales, leadership, organizational development, and personal growth. Additionally, Pat Mancuso has launched multiple multimillion-dollar business ventures, giving him a firsthand understanding of entrepreneurs' daily challenges.

At the Mancuso Consulting Group, we are committed to exploring innovative ways to help businesses and leaders grow their people and improve their bottom lines.

To learn how the Mancuso Consulting Group can help you unlock your full potential, visit www.themancusomethod.com, email us at pat@themancusomethod.com, or call 651-503-7355.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to Destination Business Freedom, hosted by Pat Mancuso. Join us as we explore success strategies and hacks from leading entrepreneurs, helping you bridge the gap between financial success and personal freedom. Your journey starts here

Pat Mancuso 0:16

Pat Mancuso here, I am very excited today as the host of the Destination Business Freedom podcast to have an amazing individual with us today. Not only is this someone that I followed for a number of years, this is someone that I'm actually in a business relationship with. He's on my advisory board for my company, and just truly contributing to the things that we're doing. My goal is part of the destination business freedom is to help people close the gap between their finances and their freedom. And so today, I'm gonna introduce our guests in just a second. But before I do, I want to quickly give a sponsorship message for the Mancuso Method that the Mancuso Method is proprietary system that we help small to medium sized companies with where they're at right now to define that destination that address if you may, it might be their exit, it might be a succession plan, it might just simply be how to run their company on a daily basis without them, you can go to www.themancusomethod.com Take a free short assessment. And that will entitle you to schedule a call with Pat Mancuso, and in that call, if he doesn't deliver $10,000 worth of value, he'll write you a check on the spot for $500. That's www.themancusomethod.com. So today I have an amazing individual with you. I get to spend once every other month with this individual who has done some amazing things. I'm going to read his bio in a second, but frankly, his bio doesn't do him justice. His name is Roland Frasier. He's an inventor, mentor and business strategist with over 1000 acquisitions and exits completed for himself and his clients. His current portfolio includes real estate, restaurant business and home services elearning ecommerce franchise SAS businesses, and he has been a principal of six different Inc, fastest growing companies. Roland serves on the Stanford University advisor board of global projects and their family office steering committee. And his work has been featured in Business Insider Fast Company, Forbes, entrepreneur, and Yahoo Finance. Roland has also interviewed Sir Richard Branson, Sara Blakely, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martha Stewart, Magic Johnson and other business celebrities on his award winning Business Launch podcast. He is also the author with Jay Abraham have this amazing book, if you haven't gotten it yet, you need to pick it up Business Wealth Without Risk. Roland. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Pat. Good,

Roland Frasier 2:59

glad to be here.

Pat Mancuso 3:00

Oh, my gosh, you're just gonna do some amazing contributions today to our audience. And so, you know, first in full transparency, I'm a part of your EPIC group. And I know we're gonna talk a little bit about that, and how that helps businesses grow through acquisition versus startups. But But let's start with you know, I know, you're the, as you say, the recovering attorney, you've used that phrase a number of times, how did you get started in the entrepreneurial world?

Roland Frasier 3:29

I started really what I would say, my business life as a real estate agent when I was 18. I took the exam and got licensed. And I sold real estate realize that I really wanted not to be knocking on doors trying to get listings and and find deals onesie twosie. So where could I find a bunch of at one time, so I started working with real estate developers because they were constantly needing somebody to help them sell the houses that they had and good centers of influence. And then as I learned, kind of how they were running their businesses and where they were getting funding from, a lot of them were raising money through syndications of limited partnerships. And I asked, you know, hey, how do I, how can I help with that? I realized they bought key person insurance. So I got an insurance license to be able to sell them key person insurance for each of the deals that they did and earn a commission that way. And then I asked them how they went about raising money and they said, they talked to investors and I found out I had to get a license to do that. So I at the time, they didn't license it where I lived in Virginia, you had to go up to Washington, DC to get licensed to sell securities and so I went up there. So I did basically real estate license at 1819. I got my insurance license 20 I got my securities license, and then I was in school at that point for an accounting degree. Got my accounting degree, but through my securities license I met I was it was through. I hung it through a firm in New York. I met some people at Prudential securities, and ended up learning all about leveraged buyouts and got involved in doing leveraged buyouts, but then started thinking, what if I could apply the things I learned through real estate where you can just do all this creative financing, to buying businesses, but also applying some of the things I learned from leveraged buyouts. So I started buying and selling businesses and, and just really never looked back. I did that as I was finishing my accounting degree and going to law school. And I just was, it's just been so much fun to get to blend all the things I learned from all of those really early days for me over the last roughly 40 years of doing deals. And so that's that's kind of the journey today. So So you're in

Pat Mancuso 5:58

this journey. Ironically, we've never I don't know that we ever talked about this, maybe a little bit. But my background was real estate started real estate, then have an accounting background, and didn't go through the securities world, but have started up a number of companies. And so it's interesting to see that correlation. And I think we you know, that background, you know, I'm assuming for you has been that rounded background has been really beneficial in not just one industry from acquisition, but many others. I

Roland Frasier 6:30

can't tell you how many times in a week I draw on something from any of those prior lives. It's very, very helpful. Yeah.

Pat Mancuso 6:41

So So let me ask you this. I know you're in business with Ryan Deiss. And we had the opportunity to have Ryan on our podcast here a little while ago. I don't think that episode is out yet, but it is coming in your journey as a business owner. So you've, you know, started launched bought into acquired exited many businesses. What are you personally, what have you experienced has been your biggest challenge in that journey, if you may, finding

Roland Frasier 7:11

the right qualified people to operate the businesses?

Pat Mancuso 7:16

In in when did you discover that?

Roland Frasier 7:20

From the very first business I ever

Pat Mancuso 7:24

I kind of knew that was the answer, but I wanted to pull it out of you. Yeah. In so what that's by the way that's so common in in our consulting business, we actually have a proprietary process organizational development tool, that behavioral assessment tool and every individual I've ever had on any of the podcasts I've done. That is a very common theme. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that's so common for businesses? Well, it's,

Roland Frasier 7:53

I think it's a few things. I think that, number one, I don't think that the pool of accomplished operators is nearly as big as the pool of businesses that need good operators. The second thing is, is I think that there's a lot of accidental entrepreneurs that that are competent at a technical skill at the thing that is being sold by the business, either making it or providing the service that's provided, whether it's, you know, baking pies, or manufacturing a custom automobile, they're good at that. But they're not educated, or skilled or experienced in how to run a business and business operational skills are significantly different and require a pretty wide variety of knowledge and skills to be able to be good at. So I'd say that's part of it. I think, also, that the communications skills of entrepreneurs as visionaries, and operators as more implementers, and that the visionary is more big picture and this is what I want to do and make that happen. And then the operator who is Okay, give me the plan, and I'll implement or execute the plan, that there's a little bit of a gap between translating there that even a good operator can be ruined by a great brilliant founder that just can't communicate the the things that they want to translate into this is how you do. So I think that that what's truly rare, is not necessarily the person that can manage people, or the person that can think of products or services. It's the ability for those two to get connected in a way that allows them to work together to execute efficiently and effectively on the vision that the that the entrepreneur creator has

Pat Mancuso 9:59

And then that makes that makes a lot of sense, right? It's that it's been able to communicate that and then lead others through that it through that journey. So, as a business owner, entrepreneur, what's been the biggest surprise for you and that journey? For you, personally,

Roland Frasier 10:21

the biggest surprise, probably that everything, it's very, very seldom that everything just goes right for any length of time that they're like on all fronts that you may have this wildly successful product. But now you don't have enough money to buy the materials to create the product, or you have the materials and the products and the demand is there. But you're having trouble with shipping or fulfillment, or you can't get the supplies that you need. And it's like, there's, there's just, there's this Hydra of issues and challenges that's ever present in every business brand. And there's just always something that needs attention. So that business is much harder than I ever imagined it would be when I first got started. And and, you know, therein lies the some of the reward and the challenge. But I can tell you, because we're going through that in a couple businesses right now that sometimes you're just like, You know what, I didn't really like it just to be easy. For a minute, you know, just like a normal

Pat Mancuso 11:33

day without any drama with

Roland Frasier 11:36

no surprises, you know, the surprise is how many surprises there are?

Pat Mancuso 11:41

Absolutely. So then let me ask you this as an entrepreneur as a as a business owner, your biggest success? And what do you think contributed to that? Like you didn't, you've had a number of successes, and we're going to delve into those. But what what do you think was is your biggest success so far? And what do you think contributed to that, I

Roland Frasier 12:02

have had a lot of really big successes. So I really, it would be impossible to say there was this one that blew me away. But what I continually believe, is my success is also one of my biggest frustrations, which is every year, I feel like I know and learn so much more than I knew or learned the year before. And I have so many more insights. And it's frustrating, because it's like, why didn't I have those? This is like, I should know, this, you know, but it's not through making a mistake, you know, I make plenty, but it's not like that doesn't come from making a mistake, as much as that I discover these new pockets of experience and knowledge and, and efficiency and effectiveness shortcuts that I didn't know before, and they're all out there. It's kind of like, it's kind of like in the medical world that you can have a condition and go to a doctor and 50 specialists. And unless you happen to hit the one that's aware of the kind of one weird thing that you are dealing with, you're never going to get the right diagnosis or prognosis, right, you're never going to get the, you know, the this is the prescriptive way that we go about fixing that. And so it's frustrating and exciting to see how much I know now that I didn't know even just a year or even six months ago, let alone a decade or two. But, but it's also like, Why can't Why can't I find all that stuff? You know, like, Why? Why don't I know that? You know, it's because I'm not a passive learner. I'm very aggressively trying to, you know, know, all I can and experience all I can but you know, I guess that's just part of the journey of life. So, so the success truly is that I'm not, I'm not working with the knowledge and skills that I had 30 years ago to solve the problems of today, but a lot of businesses are a lot of businesses are I read something that less than 10% of the population reads a book after they graduate from high school. And given all the changes that happen and I don't know how much books are supplanted by videos or you know, or AI or whatever, but to me, you've got to be you don't mean you're going to be the best version of yourself. If you're constantly self educating if you're constantly working with smart people like yourself if you're constantly surrounding yourself with people that are big thinkers and big doers and you are consuming from all of the media types that are out there, not just one because you know books are awesome. Because so much goes into so much thought goes into compressing a vast array of knowledge, like a lifetime in a book that doesn't go into let me create a tic tock video, not to say that I just saw something and learn something cool from tick tock and, and it was, you know, something that somebody just happened to share for a minute or a Twitter post, right, I can learn tremendous amounts from a tweet stream, I guess, as an extreme now, or, you know, or a Twitter video or a YouTube short, you know, or a YouTube long. But, but there's not nearly the thought that goes into that, that goes into a book. So So I still really believe books, and books for like consolidated knowledge, but probably six months to a year old, because that takes that long to go through the process. And then books to really understand and get the minds of great business people in your mind to think like they think, but then also short term media, social media, and then ai i have conversations with AI every morning, almost like a business coach. You know, I was like, I'm asking, I'm asking it, what it thinks about this or that? And, and I learned from that, you know? So that's a very long answer to your question. So I'll stop. But it's the it's surprising to me how much you can learn. And the success I believe is in the evolution of yourself from where you were to where you are. So

Pat Mancuso 16:36

I love by the way that the long winded or otherwise, it was a great answer. And it leads me to a question. And I know the answer is probably going to be a good sized number. But how much time on a daily basis? Do you consider yourself to be in that Learning Mode? I mean, you might say all day, but just like even the AI example, like, yeah, you're focused on learning,

Roland Frasier 17:01

probably two or three hours a day, usually, early morning, especially because I get up really early. So from maybe four to seven 430 to 730, I can get a very, very compressed time period where I can get a tremendous amount done. And then in the late afternoon, same thing I you know that and then late at night, so like I have three kind of periods of alone time where I really get to focus in and do things like that. And let me ask

Pat Mancuso 17:36

you this question. I think I already know the answer, because I get to experience it and benefited a lot of AI learning right now. Are you spending a lot of time in that? That area? Yeah,

Roland Frasier 17:46

I would say it like. So we're about a year and a half in I think at this point from when chat GPT first got released. And so I, I would say that my learning about it is much less now than it was initially because it's not evolving as fast as you'd like, for that first year. It was insane. Right now, chat GPT just this morning, announced, you know, four, zero, not 4.0. But for 440. I don't know what it is, but they just announced that, you know, but that's just that's a kind of an iterative evolutionary thing. It's like, well, it's twice as fast and it costs half as much. Okay, you know, cool. But that's kind of like the next Apple computer like Apple just announced, as we're recording this, their iPads, I think, a day or so ago, and I'm looking at the price of it. And I'm like, $2,800 for an iPad. I think I'll keep my one that was last generation, right? Even though it's, you know, 50% faster and thinner and has a you know, it's like, well, it still does what I needed to do, it just does it maybe faster. I feel like that's a lot of what's happening with AI right now. There are still really cool innovations. There's, you know, three in the last month that we're, you know, that we're really enjoying, but it doesn't take much time to find out about those. And I track a lot of it. But it's just, it's so I'd say that I work with it fairly constantly, right learning new things about it. Is it just doesn't take much to keep up with it at this point. Sure. Okay, so I have one last

Pat Mancuso 19:27

question. And then we're going to transition. So you know, I always ask people who their mentors are. And sometimes people think mentors have to be, you know, face to face relationships, and I don't look at it that way. I look at it. But you know, you mentioned books and, you know, podcasted people could be mentoring through and never even actually met the individual. But who are some of your mentors that have truly had an impact on your growth in your journey? Yeah, I

Roland Frasier 19:54

There are really four categories of it. The first one would be my business partners, the people that I surround myself with and that I do business with, I learned from every single day there. That's why they make good business partners. And they are excellent in areas that I am less excellent in. And so I think that that partner, contract or hire your weaknesses is a really, really good. I think the first time I heard it was from Sara Blakely. And I really, really liked that and believe it so. So my mentors, definitely the first set, because it's so constant would be the people that I work with. The second would be the people who I teach the people who are in our masterminds who are in our programs, because if you really want to master something, go try to teach it to people, because they'll ask you questions from 50 different angles that you never, ever even thought of. And the insights that you get from that, just by listening to yourself respond to the questions kind of as they go, you're always in a state of thoughtfulness about the things that you're doing. So that would be the second category. The third category would be, I would say, would be what I would call the great masters. So everything from from, its from media, from books, or videos or whatever, but being able to watch Steve Jobs. Thoughts on something are Warren Buffett's graduation speed third sir Charlie mongers on video or read all of their books and autobiographies or biographies about them, you know, John, John Rockefeller reading his, his way he thought about things, or Henry Ford, and how he was sourcing multiple types of supply, and how he was thinking about that I love getting that primary, I think that's part of what people miss out on in our culture a lot these days that they accept the news that's regurgitated from them that's that the provider of that news or information got from somebody else who heard from somebody else who read something that was written by somebody that maybe interviewed the person, I want to go all the way back every single time to primary source material. And so my mentors are all of the primary source material that I can find about anything that in any way interests me, or impacts my business. And then the last and fourth would be my father, I really, I got a lot from him in terms of how I think about business, growing up with someone who was a tax attorney, who had an endless stream of entrepreneurs coming in to his business, who were successful enough to have tax trouble, and you know, or need tax planning. And I would just see, like, let me know, really early on, I see these people come in, and, and my father's office, there were all attorneys, and they all had on suits and everything, and these people would come in, and they'd be wearing cowboy boots, and, you know, a leather jacket, or, you know, jeans and you know, a flannel shirt or whatever. And I'm like, Who are these people, and then, you know, I, I meet him through through the social life when I was a kid kid, and then through working at his firm when I was an intern and stuff like that. And I just was like, I want to be, I want to be like those guys. I don't want to have to wear the suit and be in an office with fluorescent lights in a desk. I want to be out in the field doing what I want making stuff happen. And these were real estate developers and you know, software programmers, and you know, people that own retail stores. And so I got to just see that you can kind of make money, doing anything you want out in the world. If you do it well and create value for people and then being able to hear his thoughts about what they were doing and where they were having challenges and then watch him as an investor, watch him lose everything and then deal with that. I really got a tremendous amount from that entire experience that was invaluable. Yeah. Well,

Pat Mancuso 24:20

in you know, that's that's also something that I've experienced is very common is whether it was Dad, Mom, you know, father in law, mother in law, there was always somebody in early in that entrepreneurial journey that had an impact on entrepreneurs today. It's a pretty common, a pretty common thing. So I want to shift gears it because the, the exciting part for me is, you know, I've been following you for I don't know, four or five years. And I get invited to an event, an online event and I join and then I come to San Diego for a live event and I live really go all in. And the reason I went all in rollin was because you struck a chord with me in that, you know, you can grow through building organically. And yet you can grow through acquisitions and build wealth truly through acquisitions. But what struck me was how in your conversation and what you've built, you know, literally is allowed me to negotiate a deal for regional development of franchise that we're going to be building out and in that wouldn't have probably been able to negotiate the deal the way that I did without being a part of your group. And so that so let's talk about EPIC, how did EPIC get started,

Roland Frasier 25:47

EPIC got started it like the, my experience working with the, the companies that I mentioned, like the folks at Prudential and the real estate, and kind of having that as my first view into that you can acquire businesses and use the assets and income of the business to pay for itself, that leveraged buyout strategy that that was being run in the late 1980s. That would be the seed for it, I would say. And then the, the thought that I don't really know, when it came to me, you know, it was in the late 80s, but about applying the creative financing strategies from real estate to business and marrying those. So I did that for years, and helped people do that, as an attorney, when I was practicing doing it for my own account as well. And, and I called it equity deals, you know, I would talk to people about that, and people would come to me with their legal or business challenges. And I would say, you know, I'd love to, I can help you with that you can pay me a fee. But what I'd really rather do is, you know, let me help you with it and take a piece of the deal. And so I just lived that life for years. And about 11 years or 12, about 12 years ago, I guess. I was not yet business partners with Ryan Deiss. But I was kind of in in his world, I joined his mastermind called the War Room. And, and I decided that I wanted to kind of share that with folks. And so we ran a program called the EI n, which was the I think was the entrepreneur investor network or something like that. And I kind of like created a program and we released it, and used it to generate some deal flow and stuff. But got busy with the deals and kind of working behind the scenes, and didn't really pursue it much after that. Then about, Gosh, about 2017 I, I was like, you know, what I had been very behind the scenes in lots of businesses for a long period of time. And I was like, I want to share what I know. And I also feel like I need to develop a personal brand. Because that I saw the value of that I saw the value of the business partners, I had that, you know, commanding a list. And having followers and people that you can, you know you can share information with is a good thing, the ability to get your ideas out is a good thing. And the ability to not be dependent on the brands or the personal brands of the other people you're with. Because I was with I was with a two partners at the time. Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss. And both of them had big personal brands. And I had invested in their company and I remember having a meeting at my house in San Diego. And they were kind of having a disagreement because occasionally they would butt heads. And they were both saying and I had just come in, you know with a seven figure investment and not out of pocket of course, and the as a partner with them. And they were having this you know, argument and then basically each of them said You know, I'll just take my brand and I'll go and I'll do my own thing and I'm thinking well thanks guys I you know so I put my money in and you know I I'm kind of screwed because yeah, you can leave this these companies and go do your own thing because you've got portable brands, personal portable brands. And that was like you know Ding ding ding I better you know if I'm going to be smart and not be you know at the whims of all the people that I'm in business with and I say that not in this respect because they those brilliant dependent

Pat Mancuso 29:48

you're dependent upon something else did you know control 100%

Roland Frasier 29:51

So I was like, Okay, I gotta do this. So I I made it a point I had bought for Couple of years about it. But I was like, I gotta do a podcast to do this, but I never could I buy all the podcast stuff, and it would sit in the corner, and then it'd be out of date, and I'd give it away. And then I'd do it again. You know, I was like, I'm going to do a podcast, and I'm going to do an event. And I've got to create content also. So these three things I was going to do. So I was like, okay, I can talk to all the people I know, and ask him if I can interview them. And I'm just gonna launch this podcast. And so I talked to Ryan and Perry and Frank Kern, and I think Brendon Burchard. And Dean Gracia is just people that I knew to get 10 of these in the can. And I was like, now I'm going to do it. And it's, I've got to once a week, I'm going to have to do it. And I think we're in the four hundreds now right of episodes. And, and, and whatever happens, even if I just have to talk, I'm going to do that. And then for my content content, like I was like, I'm gonna do a, Facebook was the first channel I wanted to focus on, I want to do Facebook, I want to get a million people following me on Facebook. So I just started recording content with my iPhone at lunch, because I pretty much always am talking to business people at lunch. And my wife was like, well, you should call your podcast business lunch, you're always having lunch at business was like, That's a great idea. So I did that. And then for the content, part of like Facebook and stuff, I just, you know, if you and I have lunch, and we talk about a couple of cool things, I just say at the end of it, I'd be taking notes about the two or three cool things we talked about and say, Hey, Pat, do you mind you know, I'm doing this crazy content thing. If I just give you the phone you pointed at me I make an introduction, I'll grab it, turn it around pointed to you and ask you to go over these three things we talked about. And people were like, Yeah, so I started posting that. It took me about eight months. And I think I spent about it was either 20 or between 20 and $40,000, to get a million people on Facebook by ad targeting spending $10 a day on each video that I would do for I think five or 10 days. So it's 50 to $100 a video. And that got me enough people to then do a post saying, Okay, I'm going to do an event. And I did it in Las Vegas. And it was the weekend that are the week that the guy climbed up in the tower and shot a bunch of people out of his window at a thing. So I fly into Vegas, I don't know if anybody's gonna show up. My post was like, there was no paid advertising for that it was just a video on my facebook group page. And obviously my Facebook page. And I said, I'm going to do this event in Las Vegas. It's limited to 15 or 18 people, I forget how many was. And I ended up being 18. But it's limited to 15 people, let's say and it's I wanted to price it. I wanted people to pay to come not to do it for free. So they saw the value. So I googled masterminds, like what were the most successful masterminds in history, because I wanted to tie it to a year, but I wanted to the year to be close to 2000 like I wanted to be $2,000. And it turned out in 18, I think was 1862 Andrew Carnegie started the steel mill masterminds and so I was like, okay, 18 $1,862 that's what I'm gonna charge. And I did it. I sold it out in like, you know, an hour and then did for more like scheduled immediately for more of them. So I could help everybody that wanted to come and bought I got a room that I rented at the end, it was the Mandarin Oriental. I got a board room that cost me $2,000 For the boardroom that sat the 18 people, and I all but one showed up to that first meeting. And then I had no interest from Ryan or Perry in that until I did it. And then I'm like, Okay, I'm going to Vegas. And then both of them are like, Oh, well, I'll come and which I was like, that's really cool. Because it makes it makes it better for me. And for my content. I just took all of the presentations that I had done at any events over the five years prior, and took the best things that people came up after the event really oh my god, you This was great. You know, I was like, I just want it to be all the best, best best stuff. And I created that two day event. And then Ryan did some presentations, and Perry did some presentations. And then we're at dinner. And I told I told them I was like, I want to sell something because you know, we have people here and they've you know they've invested and you know, what's the next? Where's the next place to take them to help them. And Brian, we went through a bunch of different ideas. And then Ryan finally said we'll sell them. But we already have Warren we already have this mastermind and it's you know, I don't remember what it was at the time. It may I think it was 40,000 And so I said that's that's perfect because we don't have to do anything new. So I offered the second day I said you know hey, if you got oh and then we had a $100,000 thing where people could, you know, we would help them with their business basically. And, and we got, I think 3% of their business. So I offered it. And we sold four of the $40,000 masterminds, and we sold four of the $100,000 things. And I was like, This is crazy to 18 people. This is crazy, pretty good percentages. Yeah. And I'm like, Yeah, but that's not going to happen again. And then it did happen pretty much exactly like that in different combinations at the next three. So I was like, Okay, this is the thing, I want to continue doing these events. I want to continue doing the contents, and I want to continue doing the podcast. So in 2019, was it 2019? It was, maybe it was 2020. But right when the pandemic happened, so I was doing these events in different places. I did them in London, I'd wanted I've always wanted to do events overseas, I'd like I want to presence in London. So I did two in London, Same Same, same thing happened, right? Great. So I did, I'm going to say I maybe did 50 or 60 of those events, like that little small events. And, and then the pandemic hit, and I had to actually send the people home, they had flown into San Diego to do one. And I had to I was like, I felt really bad. But the hotel was closed and the governor closed everything. He was like, You got to get it. You can't do it. So I was like, Okay, well, I'll do a zoom of it. And I was putting the stuff together for the zoom. And and I had I had just come back from Las Vegas, it was the last thing that I did before the world shut down. And another friend of mine, Pete Vargas told me he said, Listen, you're in Vegas, I'm in Vegas, and I've got this guy I want you to meet I've been doing stuff with his name is Pedro de Oh, he's he and I've been doing these challenges. We won Tony Robbins is big. Number one affiliate thing for like a $40 million launch, he did. And we doing all this other stuff with challenges, I'm going to come and show you this, let you meet him. He wants to join war room and also do challenges. Well, when I travel, usually I rent a room that has, that's a suite that has another like a conference table. And all when I check in and even if there's no plan for it, I'll get a whiteboard sent up to the room with the ability to assist just in case, you know, there's a chance to do something in strategy or even if I think of something I'd like I like the tactility of that. So

Roland Frasier 37:41

they came by and Ryan Deiss was with me where we were meeting with Infusionsoft and Ryan Ryan was there. And I had just hired another gentleman to help me with the business of doing those events. And Pedro came in and broke down his challenge thing. And I was like, I wasn't really paying attention. I was sitting on the couch because I told Ryan, that I was like you, you should probably do this for digital marketer. And then I'm just kind of doing my thing, and I'm but I'm kind of listening. And I'm like, that doesn't sound that hard. You know, it's like, it's pretty simple to do. So the guy that I had hired, I had hired as a marketing director, and I said, I said, look, let's, I want to do a challenge. And he said, Okay, you know, what do you want to do it with this, I want to do with all this stuff, because I've just put it all together, basically do a challenge that teaches what I taught in the events, and then leads to, you know, come come to the more full version of it. I didn't have anything built, by the way. And he said, Okay, when do you want to do it? And I said, How about Thursday? And he's like Thursday? And I said yeah, is why he's that's what we're supposed to start the ads. Let's start the ads the next Thursday that comes and and do it the following Thursday, because you're supposed to do it for a week. And then you do the challenge. I didn't have anything built for it. Nothing, nothing nothing. And he and I were brainstorming. And we came up with because there was the pandemic ethical profits in crisis. I wanted something that talked about ethical because I want people to know that you're not trying to take advantage of anybody and that you really want to be doing the right thing. It's very core value for me. Profits, I want people to make money. And at the time in crisis, I think now we'd probably change it to in commerce, but so EPIC was, was that and that's how it came about. And then from that same process of you know, well what are we going to sell? Let's let's sell a mastermind where we help people do this, like coaching mastermind kind of thing. And we sold the we sold programs before we sold the mastermind so we actually did we sold? I talked to Ryan Deiss about it. I said what should we price this at and he's like, you know, $500 That's not enough. I don't like that. I don't like those key things like well, I'm always underpriced underpricing. But then you could sell a lot of value, but I can't I don't think I could sell four times as many at 500 as I could sell 2000 So I ended up doing it. I think I did 2030 500. And then I price tested up to I think we ended up at 5070 900, like 4940 979. And we did that. And it was a paid challenge, it cost $55 to take for for a few years, until the market kind of changed. And then we moved to a free model, because everybody kept telling me that they were doing free challenges. And we were able to get a lot more people in. And ultimately, even though you you have to go out of pocket on the ad costs on the front end, you still end up making more because you get more people. But that's really how EPIC came about and just evolved into adding the mastermind and coaching program and, and then other programs on how to raise capital and how to consult for equity and how to exit your business and things like that. Enough things that there are way more things that we have product wise than we have marketing people to be able to sell. So we have a lot of things that are just kind of sitting on the shelf that nobody really knows about, because we don't have the team to do it back to the whole operator challenge.

Pat Mancuso 41:11

Well, you know, so So it's funny that you say that it because you've got so much content. I mean, there's so many things, and there's so many different pieces that people can, you know, can take away and apply for wherever they're at in that process. That's been my experience. Yep, you know, I've got a pretty broad background. So I might start at a different point than others have, you know, I've started from ground up, I've exited, success, failures, you name it, the whole journey. And yet, you know, what I love about the program is that I can, you know, plug and play it at any time, you know, everything's recorded, everything is there. Everybody is accessible. You know, when we come to the live events, it's a, you know, it's a sharing environment. It's a transparent environment. And, and yet, every time I come, I learned something, I take something away from it. So So let me ask you this in terms of business acquisitions, I mean, you said, you know, you might change it to crisis, and I actually think you should keep it as your to commerce, I actually think he's a keep it as crisis because I think crisis is coming for a lot of businesses for a number of reasons. Are they in the in the acquisition space? What are the kind of the big mindset things people have to overcome around that? I think one of them is probably capital, like, you know, somebody wants 2 million for their business, I don't have 2 million. But what are the top two or three strategies that you see that you can open up people's minds to look at that acquisition differently?

Roland Frasier 42:50

Great question. I think that the first one is, I think the first one is just an awareness that it's possible, that, that they didn't think the person who has worked for somebody for you know, three 510 20 years as an employee doesn't think that they can be a business owner. And there are lots of reasons for that, like, they don't think they're qualified, they don't think they have the capital, they don't, you know, they don't even know that it's possible. So I think that creating an awareness of a problem of your do your trading dollars for hours, and you're not able to build transferable wealth, when you're an employee, you have an expiration date on your ability to be productive and make income if you are tied to the labor of your mind or your body. And so So I think, an awareness that that's, that that is a problem, like even thinking about that that's a problem is, is something people need to come to grips with, then let's say that they become problem aware. Now they're not solution aware, well, what do I do about it? I need to flip real estate or I need to, you know, trade stocks or buy Forex, or you know, what, get six jobs, I don't know, you know, what do I do? For me, then it just becomes what do you enjoy? Because you should be if you don't do something you'll enjoy you'll find reasons to sabotage consciously or SunCom subconsciously what you're doing if you are like, I need to flip houses or become a landlord, and you hate that like I do, then you're not even if you're doing well at it, you're gonna blow it up somehow. So I think that that like, scanning the universe of potential options of what can I do to escape dollars for hours, and I'm going to talk about a few things. So bear with me, I'll do it. That's that's the first place is well Okay, so now what what are my options? Now, let's say that I look at all of those and many of those are fine. I just believe that acquiring positive cash flow streams that already exist is way easier because it can be passive. Most of those other things aren't even rental real estate flipping is a business you're it's a job route. Forex trading is a job day trading is a job stock investing is a job if that's what you're doing to trade your way to a living. And certainly operating a business is a job too. So then I'm going to look at all those options and say, are any of those or could any of those be truly passive, while receiving dividends from the stocks that you bought, and hold on to all i Warren Buffett and get the capital gains, that's not a full time job that that works is passive, you know, investing in bonds, or you know, something where I'm going to get paid interest. And I'm going to do it again, long term, I do it once. And then I don't have to really worry about it, that that's passive real estate, buying something, not fixing it up and flipping it, but buying something, owning it, and then creating a real estate portfolio that someone else manages for you. Also passive, and then owning a business, as a business owner, I think, is passive too, when you're not the operator. So now we're down to really like maybe four or five possible things. And then I think you pick, pick the thing that you like, have those, but be focused that it's passive, not not a job, right? Now, let's assume that the one that you picked is business. Now you're either in business, or you're deciding that you want to acquire a business so that you can be in business, if you're in business, you can grow your business by expanding it rather than working harder in your business, acquire other businesses that are related to your business and help prop it up and increase its value in some way. without increasing the hours you have to work. That's a viable strategy and acquire your first business because you don't yet have one and you want to move from dollars per hours to something but acquire it as an investor in the business meaning find a business that already has an operator, or that you can put an operator in so that you are truly the investor receiving the dividends and distributions, not an owner operator self employed person who's basically bought yourself a job. That's, so that's like, the first kind of set of things I think to deal with, then it's going to be okay, well, what do I buy? You know, why do you have to know what you want, in order to find the right business and know what to say no to. So that comes down to creating your acquisition criteria, your acquisition criteria are usually something along the lines of, I like doing this kind of stuff, or I think I'd like owning a business that does this kind of stuff. And I need it to generate this much profit. And I want it to be in this particular location is usually like, if you have those three things. That's a good starting set of acquisition criteria, you can get more specific as you learn more about how many people do you want to be employed? Or how long do you want it to be in business and stuff like that. But that that's kind of the the next challenge set that people look at. And then if you get both of those things in place, the next thing is usually, well, how do I pay for it? Because they want you know, I love this in our business, and you hear it all the time to, you know, well, the seller wants cash. Of course, they do me too, you know, but we don't always get what we want, you know, so, um, so the sellers that want cash that have someone that will give it to them are not generally the market that I like to go after, because I am very risk averse. I think that once you build a certain level of wealth, you find that pretty much everybody, every family office, every major successful investor thinks about wealth preservation over everything else, don't lose what you made, because it takes so much to get it back. You know, be risk aware, you know, so I am risk aware. And I'm risk averse. Because I find that there are deals that are out there that I don't have to put capital in. Now you can put capital into deals, you can go and say I've got savings of this match or an IRA or whatever, I'm gonna tap this or I'm gonna get my friends and family or a home equity loan or whatever, and I'm gonna buy this million dollar business that's making $300,000 a year. And I have to put down, you know, 100,010% and I'll get the SBA to finance the balance of it, let's say right, so that's a very traditional deal. You've got equity, you've got, you know, a governmentally guaranteed bank loan, especially effectively if you're in the United States to cover the difference and And maybe the the $900,000 loan that you got cost you, you know, 90 I gotta say cost you $100,000 a year, right? I think that's roughly 12% interest. So, so cool. Now you're paying $120,000 a year for businesses making $330,000. You know, you're doing okay, you're making $210,000 a year profit on your 100,000 that you took out on your house, you pay that back one year later, you still got 100 and some 1000 in your pocket. And after that, it's even more, right. And maybe you grow that. And you know, God forbid, you sell it at some point, that's really not that hard. But what if you don't have or don't want to risk that 100k? Or you don't want to get that loan out on your house or whatever? Then Are there other strategies? Yes, there's several 100 of them to find that deal. So what are those? Right? And then it's, well, I don't know how to be sure I don't get taken advantage of that's easy. Hire an attorney and accountant. I don't know how to operate and grow the business that's have the operator and how to buy a business that's already growing, not a startup, one that's proven one that's got a track record of several years of profit, and somebody that's running it, and you should be good to go.

Pat Mancuso 51:12

Yep. Yeah. You know, in you introduced me to the concept of taking my world of consulting, and adding just a phrase for equity. And so I know we're, we're, this has been amazing time. But I do want to just have you talk about that just for a couple of minutes. Because I really don't think a lot of people understand that that is a strategy for wealth acquisition and wealth creation.

Roland Frasier 51:37

Yeah, so one of the coolest things that you can do to instantly transform the dollars for hours dilemma that anybody has, who is trading their knowledge, or their labor, for money. That includes everyone who's a consultant, but also everyone who's an operator, right? Rather than being paid a fee for doing that. And these come in many different types they come in, I'm gonna pay you this much cash, they come in, I'll pay you a bonus of this much if you achieve these results, which is a performance based thing. And it can even be a revenue share or profit share where they say, when you implement this thing in my business, I'll pay you X percent of the revenue or profits from that as long as I'm using that thing, right. But none of that builds lasting wealth. So rather than trading away your very valuable stuff to increase the value of the business, that you are providing it to, instead of letting your genius become somebody else's retirement, you know, or your labor becomes somebody else's entitlement retirement, trade that for equity. And so the concept is really simple. The details, you know, are a bit more than that. But like that's the idea is, and I, I don't know why I thought of it years and years and years ago to do business that way. But I, you know, about now, 40 years, I've been doing deals like that. And it's just been critical to helping me build the life that I wanted. And so I decided I wanted to share that with everybody. And it is also one of the several 100 ways that you can pay for a business, right? So it ties together with that business acquisition strategy.

Pat Mancuso 53:32

So rolling, oh, my gosh, we could go on for hours. And I use it again, you've just got such amazing knowledge and your ability to communicate it and the impact that you're having. It's just, it's just amazing. So I want to get you teed up for a final thought, however, before I do, how to somebody. Best way to get into the circle of rollin what would you say would be the best way for somebody to begin that journey?

Roland Frasier 54:01

So it depends on what they want to do if they're looking for content. I'm on all the socials, I put out content on YouTube and Tiktok and Instagram, and we have a podcast called business lunch. If it's to get involved in actively doing the things we're talking about doing, I would go to Epicnetwork.com Which kind of talks was where all of our programs and things are we do a challenge that's free every month that we talked a little bit about the five day challenge that teaches people how to acquire businesses with little or no money out of pocket. That's called the EPIC challenge. We also do one on consulting for equity called the paid for life challenge. And those are no cost. Those are great ways to get involved. I also have books on both of those topics that are available at Epicnetwork.com. So I'd say that's the that's the easiest way to do it. And you know, follow me on the social and we talk about stuff like this all the time. Yeah,

Pat Mancuso 54:57

absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so So, What haven't we asked you? Or What haven't you shared yet that you think would be impactful for entrepreneurs want to be business owners, business owners who maybe want to exit? What

Roland Frasier 55:13

would be your final thought? The other concept that I don't think a lot of people think about, in terms of what business will do for you, is the exponential way that owning businesses that are sellable, and increase your net worth. And the thing that to me is absolutely amazing about it is that if you own a business, that is sellable, that's exit ready, we like to say, if you own a business that is exit ready, then you typically are going to be able to sell it relatively quickly, for several years have the profit that it makes every year. So if a business is making $500,000 a year, and you decide you want to sell it, the day that you get paid, you're very likely, let's be conservative, you're very likely to get 1,000,005, which would be a three times the $500,000 profit to 2.5 million, which would be a 5.5. Usually, we're able to get 10 plus, and there are strategies to get you there that we talked about. But the simple thought that what if you owned a few businesses? And what if you were selling one business a year at a multiple of only five, that means that every year, you're getting five times the profit that you would have gotten in a single year just because you're selling the business? And so it adds up pretty quickly, right, you know, 10 years, you've got 50 years of profits, without even considering compounding that you would not have had had you just own that business during that 10 year period. So you know, so like, I like to think in terms of hundreds of years, as like, how many hundreds of years of profits can I earn this year, that's kind of crazy, like 100, it's a century long, the fact that you could earn 100, you could be 100 years ahead of where you are right now. 10 years from now. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. And so I'll leave that to percolate. But that That, to me is something we didn't talk about that I think is really cool,

Pat Mancuso 57:36

as well. And that it just, you know, when you start thinking about that a little bit, that gives you the ability to impact others way beyond you, when you start thinking about at that level. So I appreciate you sharing that final thought. We're rolling again, thank you so much for your time, I feel blessed to be a part of the group and the mentoring that you're doing with me and the impact it's having on our organization and you know, the world that you're opening, not just myself but everybody in the group up to because that's what it is being a part of EPIC. And I just, I'm just truly blessed to have you here today because I know how valuable your time is. So thank you, thank

Roland Frasier 58:16

you, I we are blessed to have you as part of our group and to be able to be on your advisory board and thank you for having me and anything that we can do to help and anytime just let me know. Thanks so much,

Pat Mancuso 58:26

everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Destination Business Freedom podcast. We appreciate your support, please share our episodes on your favorite podcast channel and we look forward to talking with you soon. Take care.

Outro 58:40

Thank you for joining Destination Business Freedom with Pat Mancuso the insights and strategies shared guide you towards financial prosperity and personal freedom. Continue to navigate boldly. Until next time, keep transforming challenges into achievements. Farewell and stay the course

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