To the untrained eye, the first SpaceX Raptor engine didn’t look like the future.
It looked like something Dom Toretto welded together in a Fast & Furious garage at 3 am.
A maze of pipes, wires hanging out, duct-tape vibes, scorch marks on the sides.
More street-racer than space program.
But here’s the thing, it works:
Whoops, sorry, that’s the one from Fast and Furious.
Let’s try that again…
It works:
What’s cooler? Today, more than simply working, those same engines have become works of art.
Precise and beautiful, they look less like a garage build and more like a Rolex that happens to produce 600,000 pounds of thrust.
But they didn’t start that way. They started messy. And messy was enough to fly.
The lesson is simple: you don’t need to start perfect. But you do need to start.
Get going first, polish up later.
At this point, you’re probably wondering: “Why the hell are we talking about rockets in a business newsletter?”
Fair question.
It’s because dealmaking is no different.
People with fewer resources, worse connections, and way less experience than you are likely making more progress than you because they took action to learn.
Most people never start, not because they’re lazy, but because they’re scared of looking stupid.
Time and again, what we see is that people are terrified of the language of ownership.
The moment they hear terms like EBITDA, LOI, DSCR, or SDE, their brain short-circuits.
To them, it feels like a secret handshake from business school that they were never taught.
Insiders: “Yeah, we sold at 3x EBITDA with 10% seller financing.”
Outsiders:
But it’s actually not rocket science, and it’s not some secret code.
In fact, once you get your foot in the door, you realize this game is way more accessible than you think…
There are probably a good 50+ terms you’ll hear in almost every Main Street deal.
In time, you’ll understand them all — and many more — at a much deeper level.
But to start a conversation with an owner today, you probably just need a few definitions.
Here are 7 to get you started:
If you’re going to obsess over any number in your biz, it may end up being this one.
It’s the cash left over after you’ve paid all operating expenses and capital expenditures (building improvements, vehicle purchases, etc.)
= Operating Cash Flow − CapEx
It’s the total earnings (profit) calculated after subtracting costs from revenue.
Costs here = COGS, depreciation, interest, taxes, and all other expenses
This is the true profit.
Current assets minus current liabilities.
Current assets = cash + inventory + $$ owed by customers
Current liabilities = accounts payable + wages payable + $$ owed to suppliers
See this as the cash you use to fund daily operations.
The gold standard for talking about true operating profit in deal-making.
Stands for: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.
(It ignores non-cash expenses, financing, and tax decisions)
It’s used to calculate what a biz is worth.
This is often calculated as a multiple of EBITDA or SDE.
Let's say the multiple for auto shops is 3x EBITDA. The biz has an EBITDA of $50k…
Valuation = $50,000 x 3 = $150,000.
It means using mostly borrowed money to buy a business.
Similar to how you pay 20% down and borrow 80% from the bank to buy a house, Private Equity does this, but for businesses.
The assets of the company are often used as collateral to secure the funds.
The seller acts as the bank in a deal.
You pay them over time (at a negotiated interest rate) using the profit from the business you buy from them. A great way to align incentives early on and throughout the transition.
It’s rare but possible to acquire a biz wholly or in part for relatively little $ down using this method.
You right now ^
A weekend well used is a jumpstart.
One of Codie’s wealthiest mentors once told her that, and she took that to heart.
She bought her first business using weekends and the 5-9 outside her 9-5.
If you want to go deeper than a cheat sheet and learn to do that, we’ve got 3 days where we’ll teach you exactly how to play this game.
We spent months orchestrating a virtual 3-day workshop where you’ll leave with a business-buying playbook tailored to YOUR situation.
Here’s the plan:
→ You will learn how to find the right business for you using our Contrarian Deal Clarity Framework
→ You will learn how to find a business that’s ready to sell (using the 7 Ds of business selling)
→ You will learn where to look on-market & off-market to find the right deals for you
→ You will get exposure to our live deal review process so you can start learning to analyze financials
→ You will get an education on deal structuring & negotiation fundamentals
→ You will learn about red flags to watch out for and questions to ask to de-risk deals
→ You will be able to do all of this from the comfort of your home (100% live and virtual)
We’re also bringing in a ton of unique guest speakers:
This event is not really for you if you want to sit back and listen to people read PowerPoint slides.
It’s definitely for you if you’re ready to make initial progress toward buying a business.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably a fit.
Rocket engines only have one job: create thrust.
This event has one job too: get you moving toward ownership.
The whole point of a rocket is to leave the ground. This event will help you do the same.
God, that sounds like a motivational poster…
But you get the point.
📊 Get the only newsletter that makes you a smarter business buyer every time you open it.
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