Private Business Investing

James Kademan [00:00:00]:

You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories, and triumphs and successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the bank of sun prairie. If you would like downloadable audio episodes of the podcast for free, you can go to drawincustomers.com. Today we are welcoming, preparing to learn from Ryan Ogren, the founder of E, to so, Ryan, how is it going today?

Ryne Ogren [00:00:27]:

Yeah, well, so I’m not the founder.

James Kademan [00:00:30]:

Of E two E. I’m sorry. Well, let’s change that. Okay, let me change that.

Ryne Ogren [00:00:35]:

Founder of Rhino LLC.

James Kademan [00:00:40]:

I don’t see that email. How do you spell that?

Ryne Ogren [00:00:43]:

It’s R-H-Y-N-O-L-C. But my real title is I’m a private business investor.

James Kademan [00:00:51]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:00:52]:

Yeah.

James Kademan [00:00:53]:

Private business investor. That’s a cool name.

Ryne Ogren [00:00:55]:

Professional baseball player. Private business investor.

James Kademan [00:00:59]:

All right, got you. Okay. Professional. All right. What is the e? Two e thing?

Ryne Ogren [00:01:17]:

So that’s Sir Darren Jacqueline’s fundraising event. And so I just walked up to him at a random M and a conference. I asked him, I was like, hey, what should I be looking to do here? And lo and behold, he just took me under his wing and looped me in on this cause. So Elevate to Educate is an arm of the Ly Two NK Foundation, which is helping to build schools in Africa. And Elevate to Educate is an arm of that, a fundraising arm of that to raise money through hiking fundraisers.

James Kademan [00:01:51]:

Got you. All right. Got it. Okay, so we can talk about more of that when we get going here.

Ryne Ogren [00:01:56]:

Yes.

James Kademan [00:01:57]:

So let’s just say we have Ryan Ogren, the founder of Rhino LLC, professional baseball player, as well as I love this, the private business investor. So, Ryan, how is it going today?

Ryne Ogren [00:02:11]:

Good, James. Thanks for having me on.

James Kademan [00:02:13]:

Yeah, thanks for being on the show here. This is cool. You have quite the story. It sounds like all kinds of things going on. Professional baseball player into business. You don’t hear about that too often.

Ryne Ogren [00:02:26]:

Yeah, so I’m not a professional baseball player at the moment. I retired.

James Kademan [00:02:29]:

Right. But we’re past tense, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:02:31]:

Yes.

James Kademan [00:02:32]:

Great.

Ryne Ogren [00:02:33]:

That’s interesting. It’s been a fun ride. I’ve had a lot of great mentors along the way and just trying to do my best every day, I guess you could say.

James Kademan [00:02:41]:

Sure. So, Wayne, let’s start with the whole business thing. Well, I guess business versus baseball was the goal, to get into baseball, and then the business thing just happened in your lap or maybe vice versa. I don’t know.

Ryne Ogren [00:02:54]:

Yeah. So my dream growing up was always baseball. If you talk to anybody that was around me coming up, I was baseball all the time. And while when I finally accomplished my dream, I kind of started to think, well, what’s next?

James Kademan [00:03:12]:

Sure.

Ryne Ogren [00:03:13]:

And every offseason baseball, you only play when it’s warm out. So every offseason, you have to find something to do and I started doing some starting some businesses in the offseason. I had a wood shop and then had a drop shipping company during spring trainings. And so it just kind of morphed into this small business. And then as soon as I started getting out of baseball, it turned into investing.

James Kademan [00:03:40]:

All right, and what got you out of baseball? Because I imagine if that’s your dream, you want to keep running with it, or imagine you can also advance within the baseball. I don’t know that world very well at all.

Ryne Ogren [00:03:50]:

Right, okay, well, I’ll try and give you some background. So I played one year with the Seattle Mariners, and then I got traded to the Baltimore Orioles. And so when I got traded, I was a shortstop, and the Orioles converted me into a catcher. And so as I was going through that transition into a new position, the new coaches and everyone trying to get their hands on me, and now I’m learning something completely from scratch, which is just you have to start from square one, and eventually you have to start over. And there’s new guys getting drafted coming in, and it’s very competitive. So I wasn’t even playing my position anymore, and they had new guys coming in, so I just kind of figured, you know what? My business is starting to take off. Let me just focus on that. I’ve already accomplished what I came here to do.

James Kademan [00:04:45]:

All right. I’m just curious about the money thing, because everybody assumes that professional players are making just boku cash, right? Like, they just back up trucks and dump cash. But when you’re first starting out, I don’t think that’s the case, is it?

Ryne Ogren [00:05:00]:

So you have the draft, right? You have the MLB amateurs draft, and so that’s when you make most of your money, and then you go to the minor leagues, and you don’t really have that much money after that. And then if you’re fortunate enough to make it all the way up to the big leagues, then you have those big checks. But even then, they’ll send big leaguers up and down, up and down, up and down, and they won’t even get to collect the full check of minimum.

James Kademan [00:05:29]:

Wow. All right. So there’s a point where you’re just like, you know what I’m beating up my body for. What kind of thing?

Ryne Ogren [00:05:36]:

Yeah, well, I was actually catching guys throwing 100 miles an hour and throwing dirt. And after that, after seeing it was just kind of like, okay. You kind of had a feeling that it wasn’t meant to be at this point. And at that point in time, I was like, all right, let’s spend this time wisely. Let’s use this time to invest in our future. So at that time, I knew I had to make that decision, and it was tough, but made it, and it was the right thing for me.

James Kademan [00:06:08]:

Nice. Yeah, I imagine that would be a tough that’s your dream, you accomplish it, and then you’re kind of like, I feel like this. You get the ferrari or you get the corvette or whatever super speedy fast car you want. Then you’re like, now what? Speeding tickets from here on out. I imagine my hand is hurting. Just thinking of catching 100 miles an hour fastball.

Ryne Ogren [00:06:31]:

Yeah, no, it definitely gets on you quick.

James Kademan [00:06:35]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:06:35]:

And the scary part is blocking, because they expect you to keep the ball in front of home plate. You are, as a professional catcher, you’re supposed to be able to do that. Guys have been catching their entire lives are able to do that. Someone that’s been catching for two months, that is definitely an interesting spot to be in.

James Kademan [00:06:59]:

All right. Interesting. So, from when we look at it a little bit analytical, like decision making, just like you do in business, when you’re looking at what the coaches are choosing or deciding to do with you, did you understand why they’re making those choices, or did you think, you guys are making a wrong call here?

Ryne Ogren [00:07:16]:

So, on paper, and their thinking was spot on. I wasn’t too fast to stay at shortstop. I had a great arm, and I had great hands and great footwork. So that makes sense to be behind the plate. And plus, to play infield in the big leagues, you have to hit a lot of home runs. That’s just where the game’s going. And unfortunately, I didn’t really have that crazy power. My stats didn’t show it, at least, but even then, I didn’t think I had that crazy power.

James Kademan [00:07:48]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:07:50]:

Catcher just makes it made sense on paper. The timing was really tough on me because they told me at the beginning of spring training and gave me two months to learn it before the season. So I was kind of like, okay, I’m already up against it here, but let’s just give it our best shot, and we’ll see what happens.

James Kademan [00:08:08]:

All right. Interesting. So let’s go with to that shifting. When you’re like, okay, no more baseball. No more professional baseball. You probably play it still for fun kind of thing yeah. With your businesses and stuff like that. Did you just put your businesses on hold while you were playing ball?

Ryne Ogren [00:08:27]:

Well, my very first business was a wood shop that I’d run every offseason. And that wood shop was actually very successful. It was just a nice wood shop. When I say very successful, it was just me, and it worked for me, so I could work whenever I want. And that’s how I made my money to live in the offseason. Didn’t do really any advertising for it besides just instagram referrals, and that’s how I got all the business for it. And that taught me how to run a business. That taught me every process you need to know. And it was very beneficial. But every time I’d leave to go to the season, I would put that on hold, obviously. So I was starting to think, like, how can I still grow something while I’m still playing? And obviously ecommerce comes into play. That’s the first thing that everyone wants to do now. And so I looked into drop shipping from AliExpress. That’s pretty much how I’d source my products. I’d go find them there, and then I create a landing page and advertise for it, and then I just ship straight from AliExpress to the consumer’s doorstep. It’s pretty simple business plan, and it actually worked for me a little bit, and so I was doing that out of my hotel room during spring training.

James Kademan [00:09:45]:

Oh, wow. So tell me, let’s talk about the wood stuff. Were you making furniture, or what were you building?

Ryne Ogren [00:09:51]:

So I made pretty much anything. So if people asked me to make a piece of furniture, I just said yes. I didn’t stop. The way I got my first order was one of my sister’s best friends asked me to make her a shot ski. So it was like a drinking game. You have shot glasses on, like, a ski, and everyone gets in line and takes a shot.

James Kademan [00:10:14]:

Oh, funny.

Ryne Ogren [00:10:15]:

And so she asked if I could be able if I was able to make one, and I just said yeah. And then I just figured it out. And then after that, another person I posted it. Another person wanted another person wanted another person. And it just grew organically from that. So everything but mostly drinking games.

James Kademan [00:10:31]:

Well, everybody’s got their fun. It’s all good, right? And then with the drop shipping stuff, how did you figure out what to even sell?

Ryne Ogren [00:10:41]:

So I would just scroll through each product, and anything that caught my eye, I knew it would catch someone else’s eye. So I started on looking at a brand or soaps, and then, like, shower stuff, and then I was like, okay, I got to keep it in a specific industry. And I picked lamps lighting. All right, there’s, like, these little strawberry silicone lamps that looked really cool. Then there’s these o shaped lamps that look pretty cool. The ring lights. See, you got a lava lamp behind.

James Kademan [00:11:19]:

You can’t go wrong with the lava lamp.

Ryne Ogren [00:11:22]:

Exactly. And I just took the pictures there and put them on my website, and that’s how I picked it.

James Kademan [00:11:28]:

So, AliExpress, this stuff is coming out of China.

Ryne Ogren [00:11:31]:

Yeah.

James Kademan [00:11:32]:

So would it take months or weeks or anything to get that’s why I.

Ryne Ogren [00:11:36]:

Don’T do it anymore.

James Kademan [00:11:38]:

Okay. Because everybody, we want stuff this afternoon, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:11:42]:

Yeah. So it wasn’t a viable business model. You don’t get any repeat customers because you get an order, and then it shows up on their doorstep four months later.

James Kademan [00:11:52]:

Thanks. Forgot I ordered this.

Ryne Ogren [00:11:55]:

Right? Exactly. And it might show up broken, and I would not be able to take returns. I didn’t offer returns. It was just oh, wow.

James Kademan [00:12:03]:

Okay.

Ryne Ogren [00:12:04]:

But the thing that it taught me was Facebook and Instagram ads all right. On those. And that’s exactly the skill that I needed for that specific moment in time.

James Kademan [00:12:13]:

Sure. Tell me just let everybody understand timeline of when this is happening. What year is all this happening?

Ryne Ogren [00:12:19]:

Yeah. So this is actually relatively recent. Let’s see. This is 2021.

James Kademan [00:12:25]:

All right. Okay. So in the Pandemic ish, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:12:30]:

Yeah.

James Kademan [00:12:30]:

Pretty much interesting, I imagine. Were you playing ball then?

Ryne Ogren [00:12:35]:

So 2021. We played baseball that season. Okay, then come around to the next season. 2022. About a year ago, I retired.

James Kademan [00:12:48]:

Got you. Okay. All right. So you’re building the website and did you build a website and all the ads and stuff like that, or did you outsource that?

Ryne Ogren [00:12:57]:

No, I built all of it. So I did a shopify store and then I just made the shopify store. Took all the pictures myself. I actually took them from online, so I didn’t use a camera or anything.

James Kademan [00:13:13]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:13:13]:

And then built the store out, bought the URL and then yeah, just linked it to PayPal account.

James Kademan [00:13:22]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:13:22]:

And that type of payments, and that’s how I did it.

James Kademan [00:13:25]:

And how many strawberry lamps or whatever did you end up selling? Was it enough to make a living off of or is enough to learn about business?

Ryne Ogren [00:13:33]:

I could change. Yeah. It wasn’t enough to make a full time living, but I was profitable.

James Kademan [00:13:39]:

Okay. All right. Did you have a bunch of links or web, James? Essentially. So you have Super Awesomelamp.com, the other Super Awesomelamp.com or something like that. Yeah.

Ryne Ogren [00:13:50]:

So I would go and find a bunch of different products, a bunch of different links, and I would put them on, and that was pretty much how I do it.

James Kademan [00:13:59]:

All right, but that’s not something that you’re still doing.

Ryne Ogren [00:14:02]:

No, it’s not.

James Kademan [00:14:05]:

It just feels good. Chalk it up to experience, move on.

Ryne Ogren [00:14:08]:

Yeah. It was a stepping stone. It was great to learn how to run ads.

James Kademan [00:14:14]:

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. The marketing is the name of the game, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:14:17]:

Yes.

James Kademan [00:14:18]:

Do things to be successful in business, innovation, marketing, and a strong argument could be made. I believe that marketing trumps innovation because I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a lot of companies that are successful that I don’t know if they innovate at all.

Ryne Ogren [00:14:34]:

Yeah, certainly do. Market spend the most on the consumer, you win, right?

James Kademan [00:14:38]:

Yeah. That’s the name of the game. That is the name of the game. That’s who’s best it’s. Who’s best at bringing awareness.

Ryne Ogren [00:14:44]:

Exactly. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:14:45]:

So you private business investor. How does that come into play here?

Ryne Ogren [00:14:49]:

Yeah, so once I retired, I knew I didn’t want to do any more strawberry lamps. I knew I wanted to do something bigger, and I knew I already had the stepping stones to start something else. I didn’t know if I wanted to start a business. I was at the point in time where I was thinking, why not just buy a business? And so I started looking around how I do it, and how I came up with all my coaches and teammates. Before you go do something, you have a coach tell you how to do it, someone that’s already done it tell you how to do it. So I started looking around for coaches, mentors, to teach me how to buy a business, what I should be looking for, how to do it. And I found a few. And so what I did was started reaching out to these people and just said, hey, former professional baseball player, I’m looking to buy a business. How do I do it, what should I do, what should I look for? And that’s pretty much how I found all my contacts. And then one of them sent me a link to go to a convention. And I went up to that convention, and that alone, that whole room has just been so beneficial to me. The connections, the network that I’ve got involved with has been unbelievable.

James Kademan [00:16:01]:

All right, so the convention, did it have a bunch of businesses for sale or what did it have?

Ryne Ogren [00:16:06]:

It was just a bunch of M and A investors. So emergence and acquisitions investors, people that are like minded, doing the same thing in small business. And mind you, these are people that are 2030 years ahead of me in the field that are just still kicking it, still having a blast, still doing a lot of great, really cool things and providing a ton of value.

James Kademan [00:16:27]:

All right, so is the idea well, I guess maybe you should just tell me the idea before I guess, I don’t know. With these people, are they buying businesses to keep or buying businesses to flip, or buying businesses to build and flip?

Ryne Ogren [00:16:40]:

Yeah, that’s the beauty of it. You can pick it’s kind of like real estate. There’s so many different aspects to it. M and A, there’s so many different aspects to it. So you have your private equity firms, and they’re looking at buying these businesses, maybe doing a roll up strategy. So they’ll buy up the entire industry. They’ll do a platform company and then do maybe a vertical integration or vertical integration, then horizontal, and they’ll do all kinds of strategic acquisitions. There’s guys like me that are just sole investors looking for a business to buy for themselves. After that, after you accomplish that, you can go in any direction you want. You could make that one more profitable, flip it, you could buy another one. There’s really just a lot of different opportunities out there for you. So there’s the turnaround guys, there’s the growth experts, there’s the exit experts. It’s the same thing. You can go wherever you want.

James Kademan [00:17:36]:

All right, and what have you been successful with?

Ryne Ogren [00:17:39]:

Yeah, so I’ve been trying and JV mostly with the experts that the business needs. So how I’ve been going about it, and this is just how I’ve been doing it. I’m not the most experienced in this field. I just started I’m coming up on a year in it, actually.

James Kademan [00:17:57]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:17:58]:

When I talk to a business owner, it’d be naive for me to say, I know what you’re doing wrong. I can see it. But they’ve been doing it for 40 years. So what I do is I go find the person that does know that, and generally they’re an investor too. And so I loop them in, and then we work on a deal together as far as if they’re looking to exit, if they’re looking to grow, we just try and solve their problem with a deal. And that’s how we go. That’s how we do it.

James Kademan [00:18:27]:

All right? So it’s interesting to compare the real estate with the business, because real estate, you’re like, hey, that’s a house. I can physically tangibly see it, right? I can see if there’s termites. I can see how many bedrooms, bathrooms, all that jazz, where it’s located with a business. And I like to think or believe that my business is pretty well run, and I like to believe that I have all my documents in order, but I know from teaching business planning classes and stuff like that, most of those small businesses don’t even know what they’re doing wrong as far as having stuff in order, right? I can look at a house and I can say, like, okay, this is the value of that house as is. And if we fix it up, this is where we can expect it to be with a business. How do you figure out the value of a business when a lot of times, you’re either taking the business owner or the owner’s word for it, or you’re looking at their accounting. Maybe you’re taking the accountant’s word for it. How do you figure out the value and even more so, the potential value of that business, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:19:35]:

And so business valuation, this comes from one of my mentors, but business valuation is sort of a dark art. You can argue day and night based off of the 300 million different ways to value a business. There’s so many different ways. You can go off revenue, you can go off profits, you can go off EBITDA multiples. You can go off whatever you want, really. But at the end of the day, it comes down to what the owner wants to sell the business for. And so I don’t try and get hung up on the valuation. If I’m really trying to get a deal done, I just focus on what they want, what the number is. And oftentimes they don’t know. They really don’t know what they want. And you start to help them figure out, hey, this is what the future looks like. This is what I want to exit for. This will take care of me for the rest of my life. I need this, I need that. And then that’s how you value the business that is taking care of their owner, of the owner. But some of the smaller businesses, if you take the owner out, they are the business. I’ve had a few deals fall through where the owners I had to put some of the money on the other side of the deal so they would be invested in teaching me how to run the business versus just giving them all the cash up front and telling, hey, see you, because good luck. I’d be stuck with it. I wouldn’t know what to do and my investment would not be protected then. So there is a fine line. If you can’t replace yourself in the business, they will ask you to stick around and do an earn out payment.

James Kademan [00:21:06]:

Got you fair? Yeah. I’ve interviewed quite a few business exit help people and I’ve sold a business. I’ve helped some people buy and sell businesses. And it’s so interesting because I feel like every transaction that I’ve either learned about or been a part of, there’s always been some interesting twist or some due diligence that went awry either direction or I guess the most fun I’ve seen the most exciting thing I’ve seen is some people put these little things in the agreement for I guess the one that I’m thinking of is the seller put something in the agreement. She had had the business for so long that people were constantly coming to her and she was smart enough to know that people are going to come to her. That would be mean new business for the buyer. So she set up a little commission so that when she sends a new customer to the new owner that she gets a little nut. I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s genius. Yeah. Which is just little stuff like that where I mean, when you compare that to a real estate transaction, what are you going to say? Anytime somebody walks in front of the house, I get a commission or something?

Ryne Ogren [00:22:19]:

That’s the thing. It’s so deep, it goes so much deeper. You can get very creative with this. It’s truly an art form. It really is.

James Kademan [00:22:30]:

That’s cool. Are there certain industries that you aim for?

Ryne Ogren [00:22:34]:

Like I said, it’s stuff that I can understand. I’m not crazy about software. I’m not in that industry y combinator. They really stick behind startup guys that have industry experience. So me not having me having baseball is my experience. I have to rely on a team and most of my contacts are not in software. So it’s generally blue collar businesses. Stuff that I can understand. If you can describe it in a sentence, that’s probably something I’m interested in. But more size. So I go after businesses that are doing 1 million in revenue to 10 million in revenue. And generally that size is a management team in place. So I rely pretty heavily on the employees to get me around the ins and outs of the industry, and yeah, that’s what I look at.

James Kademan [00:23:26]:

All right. Have you had any success stories already?

Ryne Ogren [00:23:29]:

Yeah, so I’ve done one deal that’s a percentage of revenue. I’m in Philadelphia, so it’s over here in Philadelphia.

James Kademan [00:23:38]:

Okay.

Ryne Ogren [00:23:40]:

Yeah. And that one’s pretty interesting. That’s how I’ve been having some solid income so far. We’ll see what happens. There’s a good shake up in the industry these past few days, so it’s relatively interesting.

James Kademan [00:23:56]:

Not a bank or anything, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:23:57]:

No. Yeah, it’s not a bank, but I look at everything. I’m trying to move down to Florida, so I’m looking at everything down in Florida. The idea is to get out of the cold weather.

James Kademan [00:24:09]:

You’re a smart man. Yeah, I’m in Wisconsin, and I’ve been trying to get out of the cold weather my entire life.

Ryne Ogren [00:24:15]:

Yeah.

James Kademan [00:24:16]:

My wife is not a fan of moving, so I got to keep tap dancing there, try to talk her into that. So when you see this deal, let’s just say this Philadelphia deal, was that a deal that you found or that your mentor said, hey, we got to check this thing out?

Ryne Ogren [00:24:35]:

The very first skill you need is to be able to find deals so you can go to those biz buy, sell websites, you can go to brokers. But this one I actually just reached out to directly, and the owner told me no like, three times.

James Kademan [00:24:51]:

Oh, wow.

Ryne Ogren [00:24:53]:

We pivoted from 100% buyout to me trying to help him grow the business via marketing. And he said no to that, to me, trying to help him acquire his competitors. He was like, I don’t know about that. And we settled on a percentage of revenue onto the specifics of the deal just because NDAs and stuff, and it just shows you, like, no starts the negotiation. And I think that’s so important. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned up to this point. It’s like, no means sometimes it means no. But don’t get me wrong. Don’t but it starts everything because that really gets the root cause of what’s actually happening.

James Kademan [00:25:36]:

Yeah, I don’t know of any business owner that if you well, I guess what I mean to say is there’s no business owner that I can think of that if they were given a bag of money of a certain volume, that they would say, nah. Now some business owners, that bag of money has to be bigger, smaller, whatever. Right. Everyone’s got their price as far as that goes. But I think I believe that most business owners aren’t assuming that they’re going to work the same business until they die. I would hope that that’s the case, that they know that they have to exit at some time.

Ryne Ogren [00:26:13]:

Yeah, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve covered a lot of ground, and the business owners that don’t want to exit are actually the businesses that are the ones that they should exit. They are the ones that everything’s going really well, but once things are finally going well, business is tough. When things are finally going well, that’s when they’re like, well, no way this thing’s spitting out cash now. And so it’s kind of a paradigm. Every reason you don’t sell is actually every reason you don’t want to sell is the reason you should sell. And I was on the phone yesterday with a gentleman. He didn’t want to sell his it was a screen door company, and he didn’t want to sell it because it’s spitting out cash. And I said, that’s the reason you should multiple on that. But I agree. I’ve come across a ton of businesses, and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t got it.

James Kademan [00:27:05]:

Interesting. Yeah. Everybody, I think, should have an exit plan if they don’t, but it shows.

Ryne Ogren [00:27:11]:

You that it’s more emotional than anything.

James Kademan [00:27:13]:

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, totally. I mean, you could argue that with just about any purchase. Right. We’ll buy emotionally and justify logically with just about anything. But I feel like with business owners, you’re dealing with some ego there. In order to start your own business, you got to have a little bit of an ego. I mean, to a point. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s necessary.

Ryne Ogren [00:27:33]:

That is yeah. Especially to get through the dog days of starting it.

James Kademan [00:27:37]:

Starting one, yeah, totally. So then you’re dealing with someone that’s pretty strong willed, and I suppose you’ll run into someone that they said no, so they feel like they should be stubborn about that. No. Even though maybe it’s not even in their best interest to say no.

Ryne Ogren [00:27:53]:

Yeah, that’s that one interesting.

James Kademan [00:27:56]:

So you spend a lot of your time, it sounds like, reaching out to business owners and just trying to get a feel for pursuing the conversation.

Ryne Ogren [00:28:04]:

Yeah, pursuing the conversation. But I’ve also realized you’re not die hard pursuing it. It’s not like you’re chasing everyone down to buy their business. It’s like off the back foot type thing, because it is a sensitive thing. You want to cater to that. A lot of business owners, they’ve been spending their entire lives in each business, so you want to respect that. And you don’t want to just send them a million solicitations cold emails, cold calls. You got to respect their boundaries a little bit and approach it in a respectful way. I generally spend most of my time on the phone meeting with people that have responded to me.

James Kademan [00:28:48]:

All right, cool. I want to almost go through the yellow pages. Are you going through the Web searches or something like that? Or who are you figuring out who to call or how are you figuring out who to call?

Ryne Ogren [00:29:00]:

Yeah. Million different ways to approach it. You can get really creative here. I like to go on the Facebook groups. That’s a good one. If you go on to public library databases, so you can access these pretty nice databases via the public library. So you just go online. They put them all online. So you just get a library card you get through, and those give you solid lists.

James Kademan [00:29:31]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:29:31]:

You might have to clean them up a little bit, but sure, you can do all kinds of stuff. There’s Apollo IO, that’s good for cold email.

James Kademan [00:29:38]:

All right, everything very cool. And the blue collar stuff that you’re going after now is this blue collar service like electricians plumbers type thing, or is it blue collar manufacturing?

Ryne Ogren [00:29:50]:

Yes, I’ve talked with all three that you just mentioned. I’ve talked with manufacturing businesses, talked with printing companies, I’ve talked to plumbers, talked to plumbing supply businesses, talked with HVAC, talked with cabinets, I’ve talked with marketing agencies. I’ve talked with telecoms. So it’s not just blue collar, but it is mostly in that space. B, two B services are also pretty big as well.

James Kademan [00:30:19]:

Got you. So let’s just say you call up Joe the plumber, and Joe answers, and you’re like, Joe, what’s up? I want to buy your business, or whatever. I’m sure the script is a little smooth in that.

Ryne Ogren [00:30:31]:

Yeah.

James Kademan [00:30:32]:

And Joe’s like, sure, come on over, check out the documents and all that jazz. And you go there, and he’s got shoeboxes full of receipts, and he’s like, this is what I think I’m making. Whatever. How do you figure out the value just of the business itself when Joe may be a good plumber, and I’m sure he’s got some employees or something like that, he’s probably making a decent living, but you don’t really know exactly how decent of a living is making for what you’re buying.

Ryne Ogren [00:31:00]:

How do you figure that out? This is where it’s taken me a little bit to understand that there’s still an opportunity there. So you just outlined the business isn’t ready for a sale. And I haven’t done this just quite yet, but I’ve seen people are doing this at a wholesale level. They just go into these businesses, and when they come across something like this, they would say, hey, obviously there’s a lot of work to be done to get this ready for a sale. Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done to get you the value that you really believe is in the business. And so let me help you get the business ready for a sale. And there’s a ton of guys now that are doing that, and they go into the business, they run through the receipts, they get the shoe boxes out of the way, and they help prep and get the business ready for a sale.

James Kademan [00:31:46]:

Interesting. Then do they end up taking a percentage of the sale, or how do they get paid?

Ryne Ogren [00:31:50]:

Yeah, so they’ll take it through an exit. At that point, they’ll either help take it through an exit by helping find a buyer, because they’re obviously investors as well. They have a good network, so they just loop in. They’ll probably do like a retainer and equity just to make sure they get a percentage of the exit or buy the business from them then.

James Kademan [00:32:10]:

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, they’ve gone through all the shoeboxes and figured out like, wait a second, this is actually cool.

Ryne Ogren [00:32:16]:

Yeah. And so if you like what you see, there’s a path there, and that way you have that trust already being built, too.

James Kademan [00:32:24]:

Got you. Very cool. You mentioned the e. Two e things. Let’s shift into that.

Ryne Ogren [00:32:30]:

Yeah. So like I said, at one of my first MNA seminar conventions I went up to at one of the breaks, sir Aaron Jacqueline, he’s actually doing acquisitions in the accounting space. He’s also on a board member of EXP Realty.

James Kademan [00:32:50]:

Oh, sure, okay.

Ryne Ogren [00:32:51]:

Yeah. He’s high up and very accomplished individual, very enthusiastic. He was speaking on stage and he was falling off the stage because he was so excited talking. And he gave such a great presentation that afterwards he was in the lobby and everyone’s grabbing coffee and no one’s talking to him because he’s off to the side. So I just walked up to him like, hey, this is where I’m at. My name is Ryan. This is what I’m trying to do. How do I get there? And immediately he’s like, well, I commend you for coming up to me and this is what we’re going to do. And so he put me in contact with a few people, got me in the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia, and met David Meltzer up there. And he just immediately boosted my network. And then as I went, he reached out again and he said, hey, we got this thing going on. We’re putting a superstar team together. We’d love for you to be a part of it. And I didn’t know what it was, but lo and behold, it was elevate to Educate. And so what elevate to Educate is it’s the hiking fundraising arm of the Ly Two NK Foundation. And so the whole premise is to do hiking fundraisers to raise money for Ly two NK.

James Kademan [00:34:08]:

All right, tell me, what is Lyn two K?

Ryne Ogren [00:34:13]:

So that is Sir Darren jacqueline. It’s a bigger organization that has already done extensive work in Africa, so they built a school over there. And so Darren Jacqueline’s wife, I believe Tatiana, she runs that and she’s been doing a fabulous job.

James Kademan [00:34:32]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:34:32]:

E two E is pretty much just funding that so they can continue to do their work.

James Kademan [00:34:37]:

Got you. So E two E is a fundraiser or tell me exactly what E two E does.

Ryne Ogren [00:34:43]:

So Elevate to Educate is the hiking fundraiser arm. So what elevates educate is what we’re aiming to do is put hiking fundraisers up across the United States, and I think we’re going to have one in Canada soon. So we’re going to just put fundraisers together, raise money through those events, have bands come out. It’s going to be a hike and then a festival at the end. And so we’ll just have a bunch of awareness there and then raise money that way.

James Kademan [00:35:09]:

Got it. When you said a hiking fundraiser, I’m just going through my brain like, what is a hiking fundraiser? But it’s literally hiking and it’s a fundraiser, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:35:18]:

It’s hiking and fundraising. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:35:21]:

Got it. So you guys go to parks and stuff like that or what kind of hike are we talking about here?

Ryne Ogren [00:35:26]:

Yeah, so we had one scheduled and we just recently pushed it back. It was going to be on Mother’s Day in May and we pushed it back to this year. I think we’re going to try and get it done in September. I think it is going to be in Denver, Colorado. And it’s just going to be like a flat trail. They have a bunch of trails out there. It’s probably just going to be a flat trail. And then at the very end have a band perform and have vendors, local vendors set up shops and everything and go through it like that.

James Kademan [00:35:55]:

Got you. So when you guys put these hiking fundraisers up, how much money are you hoping to gain? And then what do you end up doing with that money?

Ryne Ogren [00:36:05]:

Yeah, so I don’t actually know that yet.

James Kademan [00:36:08]:

Find out.

Ryne Ogren [00:36:10]:

Yeah, I’ll find out though. I’ll figure that out. But yeah, they’re looking to go pretty big. I think they’re throwing around some big band names that everyone knows.

James Kademan [00:36:21]:

Got you. Okay, so to the point where people are maybe flying or traveling in to go to this fundraiser so they can do the hike fundraise, see a band kind of thing, or see this special band, whatever. Okay, so you’re not talking hundreds of dollars, you’re talking the thousands of dollars of fundraising.

Ryne Ogren [00:36:36]:

Yes.

James Kademan [00:36:37]:

All right, very cool. And then once you get that money that goes to the place in Africa or what happens with the cash then?

Ryne Ogren [00:36:45]:

So I believe they’re looking to either build another school or begin to build out servicing that one school. So a big problem over there right now in Africa is the plumbing. If you don’t have accurate and good clean plumbing, then having all these schools built, it really doesn’t do too much. Trying to build on the infrastructure that’s already there. And then also by doing that and having a community there, you start to eliminate some of the other problems that are surrounding the school.

James Kademan [00:37:24]:

Got you. It’s funny you mentioned that because I was just talking to someone today. Different podcast actually about we’re talking about perfection, striving for perfection, unachievable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it came down to still be your goal. And then we talked about how a lot of people these are some students that I had in a business planning class that I did years ago. This woman came to me and she’s like, I can’t do my homework or I didn’t do my homework. And her homework was essentially just putting together her business plan. We assigned them little chunks of the business plan. It was an eight week thing. So one 8th of her business plan was essentially her homework. She comes back and she’s like, I didn’t have Internet. I’m like, what do you mean you didn’t have Internet? Right. We got library, we got coffee shops, all this kind of stuff. And it’s interesting, you think, like, that was her little excuse. Plumbing wasn’t an issue for her. Weather, comfort in the house, shelter wasn’t the problem. So it’s interesting when you think about people in different parts of the world and what they consider challenges versus what a lot of people in the States here consider challenges. We still may be saying, hey, it can’t happen, but I understand, like, hey, it can’t happen because I’m sick, because I don’t have clean water is a way different story than, I’m too lazy to go to the library.

Ryne Ogren [00:38:46]:

Yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs know that feeling too, though. If you don’t have Internet connection, you just figure it out.

James Kademan [00:38:59]:

That’s it right there. Yeah, just figure it out. Figure it out.

Ryne Ogren [00:39:02]:

It is. Just having your feet held to the fire, that really helps you figure it out.

James Kademan [00:39:08]:

Yeah, it was funny because I was prodding her a little bit and I had to be careful because I didn’t want to make her too mad. Was one of those like, if this is what’s stopping you now, imagine what happens when you actually have your business and a real problem shows up. A problem that you are going to have a harder time solving than just walking to the library.

Ryne Ogren [00:39:27]:

Right?

James Kademan [00:39:28]:

Like, what are you going to do then? Because you are always going to have problems. It’s just fact of life. Problems are sign of life, so to say, like, I don’t have Internet.

Ryne Ogren [00:39:38]:

Right?

James Kademan [00:39:38]:

Like what? That’s interesting. But then going back to the Africa thing, solvent, water supply, that is a huge undertaking. Holy cow.

Ryne Ogren [00:39:48]:

Yeah. So obviously I think Sir Darren will be able to give you a lot more accurate info. This is just based off of my short spin of a few months involved with them.

James Kademan [00:40:01]:

Yeah, got it. So I guess over the course of the year, what are some of the things that you’ve learned that you didn’t even know? Were things.

Ryne Ogren [00:40:11]:

Working off the back foot, not being too incredibly eager in negotiations, if you go in and you’re too needy, it shows. So I call it working off the back foot, but just not showing. Neediness to get a deal done.

James Kademan [00:40:26]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:40:27]:

Also, the time horizons, things take a long time, especially great things. So if you’re doing something that you want to do for the rest of your life, then you shouldn’t worry about how long it takes. And I believe that to be true as well. With business, if you extend it over a long enough time horizon, you will eventually get there. And I think you won’t learn unless you’re forcing yourself to learn. So actually spending the money on marketing, spending the money on yourself, investing in yourself, taking courses, finding mentors, that’s the only way to do it. I don’t think you can really just learn by not putting stuff, investing stuff into it there. It be sweat equity or cash. So that was a double jointed thing. Invest in your marketing just to figure it out. Just throw money at it, and you’ll force yourself to learn. Second thing, find mentors that have done it before you to get there faster. Just ask them for help. Chances are if you’re hungry, they’ll help you.

James Kademan [00:41:36]:

Fair. Totally fair. So tell me about finding mentors. How did you find or choose the mentors that you have?

Ryne Ogren [00:41:44]:

So I knew if I could find good enough deals, that those mentors would have no problem working with me.

James Kademan [00:41:52]:

Smart.

Ryne Ogren [00:41:53]:

And so my value that I bring is I’m good at finding good deals. So it didn’t start this way, and I’m still working on finding better deals. But the deals that I do bring to the table, I reach out to the best of the best that I can get my hands on the people that I can reach out to. And I say, hey, I’m, you know, pretty I’m not pretty. Inexperienced. You got to choose your wording, right? But, hey, I’m working on this. I could really use your experience. I think the business owner could use your experience here. Would you do a joint venture with me? And then we hop on a call. They see I’m not just some sleeve bag or something like that. And then that’s how I get these mentors. Another thing, I talked with a CEO of a private equity fund. I just offered to say, hey, how much for an hour of your time? So I offered to pay for his time, and he said, like $400. And so that might sound like a lot, but I just paid him the $400, and he told me how they do all of their debt financing for each deal. He showed me everything for that whole hour. I have the spreadsheets, I have the formulas, I have the percentages, I have the contacts.

James Kademan [00:43:01]:

Nice.

Ryne Ogren [00:43:01]:

I’m actually working on a few deals with them as well. So I think if you just reach out and you ask, hey, how much for your time? And make sure they’re the right person and you pay them, they’re going to give you everything because they now feel they have to deliver to you.

James Kademan [00:43:17]:

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting you say that, because when it comes down to value in this year, you’re probably thinking $400. But you probably got $40,000 worth of value right there.

Ryne Ogren [00:43:27]:

Exactly. And that $400 might make me a lot more money. And also he’s in his head like, wow, I didn’t expect this guy to actually pay.

James Kademan [00:43:39]:

Who is this guy?

Ryne Ogren [00:43:40]:

What’s the $400 worth? Like, this is what I’m doing. This is how to do it.

James Kademan [00:43:45]:

Go get her. I love it.

Ryne Ogren [00:43:47]:

Yeah. And so you get to say and my favorite question when I do this is say, okay, this is where I’m at. How would you do this?

James Kademan [00:43:55]:

All right.

Ryne Ogren [00:43:56]:

And then they just walk you through everything that they would be doing. Imagine how valuable this is. Someone that’s a step above you, where you want to go, telling you exactly how they’re going to navigate, where you are right now.

James Kademan [00:44:07]:

That’s awesome.

Ryne Ogren [00:44:08]:

So it’s a hack. Yeah, I think it’s a hack.

James Kademan [00:44:11]:

Yeah. That’s super cool. So what is some advice that you’ve learned that you would like to share with some people that were thinking about going off on their own and whatever entrepreneurial journey they’re starting?

Ryne Ogren [00:44:22]:

Yeah, I think you might just have to send it, but sometimes you don’t know what you want to do. And I think that comes from you not knowing what you’re good at. If you’re really good at something, you might be a little bit more inclined to do that thing. I wasn’t really good at catching in baseball, so I didn’t like too much. I love shortstop. I was a good short. So my advice would be to just invest in yourself. I think that’s the hot trend on social media right now with the entrepreneurship world. But read books on stuff. Don’t just sit there. And it’s another thing. Break it down into each step and each skill you need to learn to get it accomplished. And then read books on the step. Go on podcasts, figure out who’s done that step and pay for their time. You’ll find out soon that that won’t be your bottleneck anymore. It shifts to something else. And if you do it for a long enough time, you’ll have success.

James Kademan [00:45:24]:

Got you. Very cool. So where do you see this business going then, for your world? Let’s say three, five years down the road.

Ryne Ogren [00:45:33]:

Yeah, three to five years down the road. I’m hoping to have a few acquisitions done and potentially a few exits done right now. I think I would be foolish not to focus on distressed acquisitions, too, so hopefully have a few turnarounds to help some business owners out. Yeah, I think that would be wise, based up based on the times, based on what we’re seeing.

James Kademan [00:46:01]:

Right.

Ryne Ogren [00:46:02]:

But, yeah, I think the three to five year plan is to do a good job at what I’m doing right now, master today, and let the chips fall where they might.

James Kademan [00:46:11]:

Yeah. Fair. Totally fair. It’s interesting talking to people that are a little bit younger that didn’t necessarily experience the 2008 stuff, because it’s kind of like, what are we going through? And I’m like, oh, this is nothing.

Ryne Ogren [00:46:24]:

I’m hoping I always look to the entrepreneurs that made it through the 2008 and COVID you can tell who’s who, really, because they don’t really bat an eye.

James Kademan [00:46:45]:

It’s just one of those, from my perspective, big issues, challenges, world changing type stuff. Happens roughly every eight to ten years. Roughly. And it’s one of those things where sometimes you got to weed out the junk. Yeah, sometimes when you’re weeding, you catch some good stuff too, accidentally, but plus it kind of keeps it interesting. For better or worse, right. I always say nobody gets excited on a flat roller coaster. They call those trains, right?

Ryne Ogren [00:47:19]:

Yeah, I guess that’s one of those.

James Kademan [00:47:20]:

That it just gives you something to enjoy. At least maybe after the fact, you can look back and say, See what? I survived. The same old thing.

Ryne Ogren [00:47:29]:

Yeah. Made it through survive.

James Kademan [00:47:30]:

Fair. So, Ryan, I don’t know if it’s going to be too forward or not, but if someone is listening to this and they’re interested in exiting their business, can they reach out to you?

Ryne Ogren [00:47:40]:

Yeah, reach on out. Go on my website, www.ryanogra.com. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Connect me on LinkedIn. Yeah. And my email. I have an online form on my website to fill that out. We’ll have a phone call. If I can’t help you exit, I’ll put you in contact with someone that will. So, like I said, I have a good network now. It’s been growing nice. Let’s have a chat and we’ll see what happens.

James Kademan [00:48:11]:

Yeah, I mean, worst case, it’s not a good fit. Best case, money is exchanged, people are happy, right? Win win on both sides. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. It’s impressive that after just a year, which realistically is not that long, that you come so far even to have a deal under your belt is impressive.

Ryne Ogren [00:48:29]:

Yeah. And I think I really believe that the hack of trying to find someone ahead of you and paying for their time to have them tell you, I think that’s what’s been doing.

James Kademan [00:48:39]:

It nice. Very cool. That’s impressive. Well, I wish you great luck in the future. This is super cool.

Ryne Ogren [00:48:46]:

Thanks, James, I appreciate it.

James Kademan [00:48:48]:

This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. We’re locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie. If you are listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor to let the algorithms know that we’re cool or that we share some information that you can use. Right. Thumbs up, subscribe and of course, comment below. Let us know about the acquisitions that you’ve had, maybe the sales that you’ve had. Or just let Ryan know that you’re interested in getting a bag of money from them. I don’t know, whatever works, right? My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web, at callsoncall.com, and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guests. Ryan Ogrand. We got the founder of Rhino LLC, professional or past professional baseball player, as well as this is the important one, private business investor. So, Ryan, can you tell us your website one more time?

Ryne Ogren [00:49:51]:

Yes. Www.ryanogren.com. Just my name and then just connect me on LinkedIn.

James Kademan [00:50:00]:

I love it. Past episodes can be found morning noon tonight. Podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.