35 Years of Business Lessons in 53 Minutes (15+ Companies Sold)

0:00 my guest today is a three time Inc. 500 entrepreneur, has multiple eight and nine figure exits, a degree from Brown and MBA from Wharton.

0:10 bought and sold around 15 companies and has a top 50 Apple Podcast. The David Guttman Podcast

0:16 Dave. Guten welcome to Acquiring Meaning.

0:18 Thank you very much for coming on.

0:20 Thanks for having me.

0:21 like to do a lightning round where I’m going to give you a quick topic. You give me a quick response back, but we’ll run through just a few.

0:29 First being AI agents,

0:33 Waymo and self-driving cars.

0:34 How horses used to be for old people.

0:37 Inflation,

0:39 interest rates

0:42 2027.

0:43 Recession.

0:45 Tariffs.

0:46 Useful as a negotiating tool.

0:48 Europe

0:49 in big trouble.

0:50 The Middle East.

0:53 College.

0:56 Hospitality.

0:58 Debt.

0:59 Useful

1:00 crypto

1:02 peptides.

1:04 Podcasts.

1:05 The best networking tool ever created.

1:07 Awesome, awesome.

1:08 Dave, I’m really excited to speak with you. I think there’s a lot of crossover with what I do in M&A and talking about the roughly 15 exits that you’ve had with businesses ranging across sectors in my research that I’d like to kind of start with your upbringing in being 24.

1:27 There’s a TEDx talk where you talk about how six words change your life, and I’d love to hear the misdiagnosis story,

1:34 and focus on what you were thinking before you realized it was a misdiagnosis, and then how that changed your life and how you viewed success and what you were going to focus on from there on out.

1:44 if you were to ask my mom, she would tell you, if I grew up in a crack house in Harlem and it turned out the same, but I wasn’t very driven, kid. For as long as I can remember, I was a four sport athlete in high school,

1:57 a pretty fair student once I got over some of my dyslexia challenges.

2:01 went to Brown undergrad, I went to an Ivy League school, and I was Division one college wrestler.

2:04 I was a very good wrestler in high school and a very mediocre wrestler in college at Miami. More than I care to think about.

2:10 I’m talking about humbling experience, but I was so driven and so at the time I was 24.

2:16 I just found out I got accepted into Wharton, and I had been told, I was told by three different doctors I’d be dead before I enrolled in the fall.

2:23 remember looking at me and be like, what the hell was all that for? Yeah. All that work for 24 years, and I’m going to be dead.

2:30 They had fairness of it. Really did feel like. You’ve got to be kidding me. And I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I ate like a monk. I worked out six days a week. It was the healthiest person I knew. It felt so unfair. But what I realized. Because if you’d asked me at the time if I was happy, I wouldn’t have understood the question.

2:46 I really wouldn’t have, because I that wasn’t a thing. I was like, no, no, no, I, I my ambition was all that mattered. And

2:52 the part about it that really shifted my thinking. When I went in for a biopsy of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, which at the time was the best cancer hospital on the planet. Like, if you were, like, president of a country and you got cancer, that’s where you went.

3:04 when a top oncologist there says, get your affairs in order, like you believe him. Anyway, I went I was there for my biopsy and they thought, you know, going to be 30 minutes. They said, I’ve got, like, a small incision here in my throat. That’s where they were taking the biopsy. And so as soon as the surgeon gets in there, he realizes we screwed up.

3:21 It’s a giant cyst. It’s not a tumor. It’s not cancer. But he’s, like, already scrubbed in, and I’m on the operating table, so he spends three hours of trying to break it up and drain it as best he can. My parents are freaking out in the waiting room because they think it’s supposed to take 30 minutes.

3:34 And so because I was in the operating table for three hours, the hospital insisted on me staying overnight.

3:38 So I’m in a cancer hospital. Everyone around me has stage four cancer at this time,

3:43 and I know I’m going to be completely fine. It really, you know, talk about survivor’s guilt. Yeah. Like, if you can’t reevaluate your life in a situation like that, there’s something. And again, I wasn’t a bad guy back then, but I was just so

3:55 focused on my

3:57 career progression and success and monetarily and otherwise, that I just wasn’t externally focused at all.

4:05 I, I still remember I was sitting in the hospital bed. The guy kid in the bed next to me was about my age. Just had his leg amputated with cancer. And I said, if by some,

4:15 you know, accident I survived this. I’m going to touch people’s life in a positive way whenever I’m given the chance to do so.

4:22 And I feel like I’ve stayed true to that. And that wasn’t even a concept in my head at the time. And so it wasn’t until that experience, and it changed the entire trajectory of my life.

4:30 I basically decided was I was going to let my success be the side effect instead of the goal. And the part about that that was interesting was one, it was a way happier way to travel through life.

4:38 But the other part that was surprising was I got this success faster than I think I would have otherwise.

4:43 So, yeah, it changed everything for me and I and ended up, other than my daughter, being born. The best thing that ever happened to me was Edna’s diagnosis.

4:50 It’s funny how those experiences can actually lead to the fuel to have that positive impact, that kind of fear and reframing you, seeing other people that are actually dying, you thinking that you were.

5:04 And then you get this second chance at at life.

5:08 you mentioned in our lightning round that college is a waste of time.

5:12 Degrees from Brown and an MBA from Wharton would typically be things that a lot of people would envy and think were very valuable. Why would you say that college MBAs are a waste of time or not valuable?

5:27 So when I was growing up, I mean, you’re quite a bit younger than me. When I was growing up, there was no internet,

5:32 there was no social media. There certainly wasn’t anything close to AI.

5:35 And so the way you would learn is you basically there were three ways you could go to a bookstore by a book. You go to a library into a book, or you could go to a college or university.

5:43 That was it. Yeah. And I guess you could try to find someone to be in a print. You have some kind of apprenticeship, but that was the only way you could learn today between the internet and AI. If you gave me 90 days on any topic, I can be in the top ten of the top 1% of people on the planet about that topic.

6:00 That’s never been true in human history. And so

6:03 it made a little bit of sense. Not that much. A little bit of sense to go to, to go to those schools. Back when I went. Now it doesn’t make any sense. In fact, it was ten months ago I ripped out my Wharton diploma on a podcast. That’s how I think it is.

6:15 People like you taught a copy, right? Like, no. That was. That was the real. And look at the end of the day. Think about it. How archaic is it that we’re teaching people in a classroom the same way we did 250 years ago? Like it’s ridiculous. It’s just not an effective method of learning.

6:29 you think about how things were in a

6:31 seven, eight, nine, ten century, there was apprenticeships.

6:34 And you learn by doing. You would work for someone for, you know, 5 to 10 years for room and board, and you would learn to do things and then eventually become a journeyman and then eventually a master.

6:43 I would argue that that’s the way to learn is experientially. And if I, if it were me and I were in charge,

6:48 I would create a college or university that was 100% experiential.

6:52 thinking about maybe the the youth that are listening to this that are 24, 18 making those decisions. Maybe someone who struggled in school doesn’t have a lot of confidence. You’ve talked about having a challenging childhood and struggling with dyslexia. I’d love you to maybe speak about that, but also talk about how that that hardship actually led to you being so driven.

7:19 And I think you’d probably credit some of that to your success today.

7:22 so when I was in seventh grade, I took a standardized test that everyone had to take and center, and I tested at a third grade reading level, which at first they didn’t couldn’t understand because I was getting good grades. And said, like, oh, he must have skipped the space on the form.

7:34 So

7:34 they had me retake it, and I scored just as bad as I did the first time. Like, oh, actually he is screwed up.

7:39 my parents got me some help for it, and I went from a third grade reading level to a ninth grade reading level in three months.

7:44 Wow. And from that point forward,

7:47 I’ve learned how to learn.

7:48 I guess once reading wasn’t quite as challenging for me because I didn’t even realize it. Like, I didn’t realize it didn’t take everyone 10 or 15 minutes to read one page.

7:55 I still remember I had to write a book or it’s funny, the things you remember. I had to write a book report in third grade.

7:59 you could pick any book you wanted to.

8:00 And I literally picked the dumbest book. It was called 100 Pounds of Popcorn. These kids find a 100 pound bag of popcorn kernels and their in their journey. And I remember writing that book report. If someone had said, hey, how about we give you 20 root canals? Was that writing that book report? I’d have chosen a 20 root canals because reading for me was so excruciating.

8:18 never read for pleasure. That wasn’t even a concept for me. Now I read, and I always have, like, there was a period of my life where I was reading, at least in the book a week.

8:25 so I went from never reading to reading voraciously. And,

8:27 you know, because there’s three ways to learn.

8:29 You can learn firsthand. You can learn,

8:32 through someone else’s experience. Or you can learn, you know, in a classroom. And I obviously, I think the experiential is the way to go. But but that that changed things. I will say that the biggest it’s funny how little things can change the trajectory of your life.

8:44 Not something like my misdiagnosis, but the seventh grade English teacher. And he asked me because the way it worked was,

8:51 in seventh grade, you take a test for eighth grade algebra, and if you don’t get into that honors class, you don’t get into any of those classes. That’s just how it works anyway. And so he’s like, you know, Dave, are you going to take the algebra task?

9:01 I’m like, no, I’m not. Because again, I thought of myself was dumb.

9:03 I said, no, he’s like, you know, he really insisted that I do it. And I think I, I think I passed by one point, but because of that, I took all honors and AP courses all the way through high school and ended up going to two schools.

9:16 So once I gained a little bit of confidence in my ability to learn, you know, about a lot easier.

9:22 reason I asked about that is because there’s a parallel in in my life, when I was in fourth grade, my parents had actually taken me out of school before that because I was just Lexis. They didn’t want it to affect my my confidence.

9:35 And by taking me out school, I did homeschool for a year. Meaning I terrorized my mom for a year to not do any schoolwork. And when I came back, I was so far behind that I was actually reading at a kindergarten reading level. And in fourth grade,

9:49 the first day of fourth grade, I actually ran away from school because I was so overwhelmed.

9:53 And I had an amazing teacher, Mr. Greenwald, still still remember him. And over the course of about a six month period, I went from a kindergarten reading level all the way up to a sixth grade reading. Finally clicked for me, but it really did affect my identity. I felt like I was dumb, I didn’t feel like I was, I was smart, I was a dumb kid in the class, and it took some great parenting and a great teacher to help me through that season.

10:19 And I share that for people that maybe are struggling with identity, maybe struggling with dyslexia, that that can actually turn into a strength. If you can learn how to manage it and bring the right people around you. There’s some interesting data. Numbers vary a little bit, but around 30 to 35% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia, and about 20 to 25% of CEOs have dyslexia.

10:43 Big names like Charles Schwab, Amy Diamond have talked about this actually being an advantage for them over the long term. And so I saw a lot of parallels with with your experience in mine and and wanted to share that. It’s funny, I remember I wrote a paper that and I believe it’s still true that the prevailing theory about genius was that all genius was actually a form of organic brain damage, that the brain has some organic damage, and the brain creates alternative synaptic pathways around the damage.

11:14 Which is why someone who’s

11:15 genius, you know, makes connection connections a regular person doesn’t make. I think there’s some truth to that. I think so, too. Talk to me a little bit about where the entrepreneurship spirit came from. And I know you’ve worked in a number of different industries that maybe start with your first company, and then we can get into some of the eight and nine figure exits that you’ve had.

11:38 So my dad started a software company in his late 20s and eventually went public. And he actually way before AI, he created something similar where basically he would design the reports and the and the screens and the workflows, and then the equivalent of clicking the button that would generate the cobalt code behind it. And he was doing fixed price contracts that way.

11:58 So it was before it’s called the fourth generation language. So he wrote the first fourth generation language. That company became knowledge in the public. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’d seen my dad’s journey, but I also saw him get pushed out of his company, you know, prematurely. And I and I, I learned from some of his mistakes about, you know, making sure that you know enough about all areas of business so that you,

12:21 can’t get, you know, be asked about stuff.

12:23 And which is the reason why I decided to go back and get my MBA. The education itself was not much value, but, Wharton was the only top business school that had something called the Small Business Development Center, and it was a great situation. Only the only, except at five 5% of the people that applied. And I was fortunate enough to be able to get selected.

12:41 But so for a year and a half of my two years, two thirds of my tuition was paid tax free in exchange for me providing free consulting services to Philadelphia area businesses.

12:50 with a year and a half, I had 30 clients in 30 different industries. Wow. And I, I had to do a market entry strategy for consumer electronics product.

12:57 Didn’t even know what consumer electronics product was. Another company was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. They were the company called Analytical Graphics. They were the

13:05 world’s premier company in satellite tracking software, and it helped build them a forecasting model to help them raise venture capital. Do you know what a forecasting model was? I certainly had never built one.

13:15 And so the classroom education was worthless. But what I did is I go sit back to the experiential stuff I would have these meetings with, like the CEO of Analytical Graphics, and I’m like, what the hell am I going to say? I don’t know how to do what this guy needs me to do. So I found someone, a classmate of mine who I became friendly with, who had done that kind of stuff before business school, and he taught me how to do it, and then I actually had to do it.

13:37 Same thing with I found a guy who did a lot of marketing before business school, and he taught me some of the marketing stuff, and I learned by doing for all those 30 clients. That’s how I learned to be an entrepreneur.

13:47 had the equivalent of ten years of experience in two years.

13:51 Wow. Wow. And that that experiential experience, I think is really important. You

13:56 learn best by doing right. And a lot of college nowadays you don’t actually get any experience. It’s all theoretical.

14:04 don’t realize because they think, oh, a school like warden, everyone’s independent thinker. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s so much groupthink.

14:12 Everyone goes into consulting or to, you know, investment banking. If you don’t get a job in finance or consulting or a loser, basically everyone’s competing for those jobs. I think I had three consulting job offers, all of which I decided not to pursue, and instead I did what they call a search fund. And the way a search fund works.

14:31 And I think I was the first, Stanford was known for it. They had had a bunch of people do it, but I think I was the first person at Wharton to do it.

14:37 Basically, you raised money from angel investors. They basically pay you a pittance of a salary to search for a company, hence the name

14:44 for you to acquire those same investors that gave you the seed capital, give you the capital to make the acquisition, and then you get a carried interest and you get to run the company.

14:52 So at 29, I was running a four day person call center business, having no

14:57 management experience whatsoever.

14:59 did you find the business?

15:00 So did a few things. So the way it works is you agree with the investors in advance the characteristics of the kinds of companies and the interviews you’re going to pursue.

15:09 And then I just networked with, law firms, accounting firms, brokers that were working in those industries would go to conferences that that serve those industries. In fact, the way I found the management team, because I was self-aware enough to know I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But I knew that. And, you know, we we did a roll up strategy.

15:26 We did all these acquisitions. I never done an acquisition.

15:29 I found this three lady management team at one of the conferences that I went to that I had built a relationship with, and they worked for the largest company in our space. It was called Pro Communications. The CEO was the CEO of Nextel. And can I curse on this?

15:44 Yeah, he was a notorious asshole. And so they had no equity in the company, and he was a jerk. And I said, look, you can stay where you are and can do whatever he says, or you can come here and tell me what to do. And by the way, I’m going to give you a bunch of equity.

15:57 I was able to get them to take like a third of the salary they were making, but I did give them equity.

16:02 And, even though Sharon Grossman, sadly, she passed away, but she was my CEO. She was the manager of this re lady team. Well, technically, she reported to me.

16:11 I worked for her, and my leadership and management style came directly from her.

16:15 And again, I learned by doing. And so by doing all these acquisitions, centralizing on the back office functions, understanding how to negotiate,

16:21 acquisitions, and then eventually, you know, raising capital and never raise capital before. I learned by doing I didn’t know how to do any of it.

16:28 We live in a unique time where I think there’s a generation of baby boomers that are looking to retire and transition their businesses.

16:37 They call it the silver tsunami. And also a unique time where technology and AI can be very disruptive in a lot of industries. So the search fund model independent sponsor. ETA entrepreneurship through acquisition, I think is a wonderful time to create wealth right now by doing that. And sounds like you had a similar start.

17:00 What would your recommendation be to someone in their early 20s wanting to create wealth?

17:07 Is it just do it. Find a mentor? Or what would that blueprint look like?

17:11 my advice is someone probably 17, 18, 19 would be a little different than someone was maybe 23, 24, 25. But that younger group, what I would say is find someone. So let’s say that there were three

17:24 areas you had some personal interest in, and I’ll just make them up.

17:26 I’d say it was sports. Video games and girls. Okay. I would find

17:33 an entrepreneur or several. I probably find at least 3 to 5 entrepreneurs in each of those three area doing something interesting in those three areas.

17:40 And I would go to all of them. I would say, let me buy you coffee.

17:44 an information, what I call an informational interview.

17:46 And then if you when you found someone who you felt like you clicked with often to work for them for free.

17:50 people are like, well, I don’t want to work for free. What do you think College is? College. You’re not one. You’re not picking the person you’re apprenticing with.

17:57 Right. You get whatever the teacher is that fits the time slot you have available. And not only you’re not doing it for free, you’re paying for the privilege to have a crappy, you know, mentor, if you will. It’s a terrible value proposition. Apprenticeship looks a heck of a lot better. And by the way, if you’re even half trying, you’re not going to let you work for free for very long.

18:17 So that’s what I was doing. Said I would find someone who’s doing something, you know, and I would make sure that they’re actually succeeding in this area that I’m interested in and offering to work for them for free. Find someone who’s emotionally invested in your success and do everything you can to be helpful to that person. I love it, I think that’s amazing advice.

18:35 Coming back to the call center acquisition, working with this great management team. Loved that approach there. What did that exit end up looking like?

18:44 was no exit. In fact, the company so ended up happening again. Well, I’ll tell you two really valuable lessons that I learned from that one. We did a bunch of acquisitions in the first, like

18:53 6 or 7 one smoothies glass, which is unusual.

18:56 Yeah. Again, I had a really good management team. The the seventh one we did.

19:00 during due diligence, we could tell the guy was being shady about it.

19:03 And, my three woman management team were telling us not to do the deal.

19:07 And my, my partner and I that I went to business school with. We thought we were so clever.

19:12 So we structured the deal where it was mostly seller finance. And we were thinking, well, if he’s lied during due diligence, we can just have to set the offset. The seller note will be no worse off.

19:20 Technically that’s true. But we ended up in courts and depositions for the next 18 months, and while on paper it ended up not being a bad deal, it was a terrible deal.

19:28 We should have never done the deal. And the lesson I learned that the ladies were trying to tell me and I didn’t listen, was if you wouldn’t do the deal on a handshake, don’t do it with your own handshake. But if you wouldn’t do the deal in a handshake, don’t do the deal.

19:39 The other thing that I learned, so, you know, things were going great.

19:42 We did all these acquisitions. Company was, you know, doing fantastic,

19:46 doing better than plan, which almost never happens again. Great management team.

19:50 was during the boom in our cost of labor, which was 40% of revenue. Was our cost of labor in nine months or cost of labor doubled. So we went from, you know, throwing off a lot of cash to hemorrhaging cash.

20:02 And then we had to raise money under duress. And so I learned you never want to raise money for the rest

20:09 because it’s not going to work out well for you. What ended up happening was everything, myself included, got deluded. Believe it or not, the company still exists.

20:16 Okay. Two of the three ladies have passed away.

20:19 The one remaining lady is the current CEO and president. And the company is actually doing reasonably well. What we ended up doing. The other thing, the

20:27 this taught me was 90% of the time, there is a solution to any business problem. 10% in your Scrooge. Like there is 10% of the time. There’s nothing you can do about it.

20:36 But what we did was

20:38 we had this horrible, you know, increase in labor. So the way we solved the problem was voice over IP was just happening. I think we were the first call center really embraced

20:46 voice over IP technology. We had one giant, we had one big call center where we would train everyone. And then we went to all home based agents.

20:53 Our our turnover dropped to almost zero. Wow. And we were able to bring our cost of labor way down. And we got the company back to profitability.

21:00 so there were a lot of great lessons. It didn’t end up being a financial exit that I wanted, though. But ultimately, that wasn’t why I did it.

21:06 The reason I did it was I knew I didn’t have any experience doing any of these things, and I wanted to learn on someone else’s dime. And I did.

21:12 What about. I think I did some research that you had a forex firm that you ran. You talked a little bit about your leadership philosophy around retention and preventing burnout.

21:26 That employees aren’t employees, that they’re coworkers, and that if they really bought into the mission, they have equity and believe in what you’re doing, that they can work 60, 70 hours and still be fired up about the the mission of the business. Can you talk a bit about that firm and the leadership lessons that you learned there?

21:47 the part about that experience that was so

21:50 cool for me, it was the first time that I basically built everything from scratch. Cool. It was my team almost completely. There were 1 or 2 stragglers from the prior, but but for the most part, it was my team. And I built the culture exactly the

22:04 the way I wanted to.

22:05 And what was really neat about that was, to me, if you want people to act like owners, you have to make them owners. I always say to everyone who I mentor, you want to set aside at least 10% of the non founder equity for your employees. And the part that, people get wrong is

22:22 they think that they’re giving away all of this value.

22:25 The reality is, the one thing I’m certain of

22:27 is that if you give away 10% of your company, I’m not pretty sure. I’m not mostly sure. I am certain you will increase the value of your company by more than 10%.

22:35 so even if you’re just a greedy prick, give away 10% of your company. It will get you a better result.

22:40 But if you’re actually sincere about it, the other things that I did there

22:43 the company before I got there. I never had board meetings and have a board of directors. I insisted on quarterly board meetings. And what I would do is,

22:49 the week after I would have a report on board meeting, I would have an all hands company meeting, and I would give that exact same presentation to all the employees in the company, is that there are shareholders.

22:59 I’m as beholden to them as I am to my board of directors. And that’s the way I think about it as the as a servant leader. My job is to provide the vision and the strategy to remove obstacles and to provide resources, and maybe to be a little bit of a therapist. Yeah. And if you can do those things, people will murder for you.

23:15 After I left that company and people will think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. They got one third of the effort from the team. From my team after I left.

23:26 Because when people feel like they’re just a cog in a machine, even if they’re motivated, you’re not going to get their best. Yeah, you’ll get good enough to not get fired.

23:34 But you’re not going to get their best when they talk about that founder effect, where the founders in the building they’ve built that culture, that team is theirs. They’re behind that leader when they leave. A lot of companies can really fall apart because you lose that vision. And that by in. The other thing is I don’t want people to ever be afraid of me.

23:53 Yeah, I don’t like I feel like, oh, you know, you shouldn’t work with people you’re friends with.

23:56 Every one of my friends is someone I’ve either worked with or am working with any friends that I have one one of those composers and true. And people are like, oh, well, you know, it’s really hard if you don’t get the promotion to someone who’s a friend or you have to fire someone who’s a friend.

24:09 Not my experience.

24:11 What it comes down to is if you certain leadership works incredibly well, but only if you hire well

24:18 and you fire quickly. So when you make a hiring mistake and I don’t care how much I’m not hired and fired, over a thousand people, look how good you are at it. You’re going to make some mistakes.

24:27 again, it comes back to, you know, the two most important qualities that I look for the employee above everything else is humility.

24:34 I think curiosity. Because if they have those two things, I can teach almost everything else.

24:38 And that humility allows you to take in new information when you become emotionally invested in

24:42 in the higher that you made or the strategic direction that you took.

24:46 Now all of a sudden it becomes a lot harder to change directions or to to let that person go who really is is hurting the morale of the team. And so I, I always have strong positions, but they’re loosely held. And I try to teach that to the people that I, that I’m coaching when I’m working with. Yeah.

24:59 I think being coachable so important. I grew up making friends through sports. Now as an adult, I make friends through business. And so a lot of the folks that I work with, I’m close friends with, and there can be challenges with that. But overall,

25:15 you’re gonna work with someone, why don’t you want to work with your friends and actually enjoy spending time with.

25:20 Right.

25:21 I, I’d love maybe a little bit of vice because we work in the M&A space. Mostly SMB, lower middle market businesses helping family founder owned companies think about growth, exit and capital

25:35 around a little bit more information on that, that equity structure for management teams, employees, some of the PE groups that we work with will do a management incentive program, a MIP or phantom equity, and they’ll divvy that up between just the C-suite.

25:51 CEO, CFO, CEO. What are your recommendations on how to manage that and deploy it in a little bit more detail, if you don’t mind.

26:01 Look, you can do it as phantom equity. I think that works fine. And what you do is you make sure that it’s one year cliff vesting.

26:06 Right. And so that way. And look, if you can’t figure out in a year whether someone’s worth it or not, that’s on you.

26:13 Yeah, right. So that gives you so you you’re giving equity. You’re not giving the equity away for a year and a day.

26:18 you have a full year to evaluate that person and see if they’re worth it. Right. And so I just see no downside to it because it’s going to increase the exit value by more than the equity you’re setting aside.

26:27 Because when people think about it this way, if I was on a podcast a few days ago and someone asked me the question, well, if I give away equity, won’t that make doing it acquisition harder? I’m like, no, it makes it easier

26:38 whatever, someone’s going to acquire your business, they’re going to do due diligence.

26:41 People are not stupid. Okay. When someone’s doing due diligence, they’re going to figure that out. And so then people are going to start looking for another job. Well, what’s going to happen after the company’s acquired. But if they’re getting a pay day when the company gets sold, not only are they not helpful and supportive, they’re excited about it.

26:56 But that’s not the case. If

26:57 just the shareholders and the board is going to and the CEO is going to make money, they’re not so excited anymore. And the same thing, like I, I insist that every single person, every single person, I don’t care if there or my chief operating officer,

27:11 every person needs to know how to read an income statement.

27:13 And when I when I’m doing that, that quarterly all hands meeting, that’s the same presentation I gave to the board of directors. We’re going through the statement, what’s working well, what’s not working? What can we do better? What’s doing better than we thought? What’s worse than we thought? Why? What adjustments can we make? Everyone sleeps better in a bed they make.

27:28 And and so, you know, being, I would argue aggressively transparent almost always get you a better example. So you’re saying you’re completely transparent with the company financials, sharing that with everyone at the business and walking them through kind of specific ratios where the business is doing well, not well, how can we solve this. Just full transparency. Transparency everything.

27:48 Awesome. I love that. I love it. What about maybe an example of a successful exit that you’ve had? Whether you worked with a banker, whether that was direct for some of the other companies that you’ve the most? I would say the thing I’m most proud of professionally is the nine figure eggs we had in the telemedicine space.

28:07 So,

28:08 I had the same CEO from the eight figure eggs. It was was called high beam Research. That was like a LexisNexis or even for consumers. We had 100 million articles or like 3000 different publications at the time. I think we had more content in the and Google’s index than anyone in the world. We had all all 100 million articles in their index at the time.

28:26 That’s how we drove all of our revenue.

28:28 But the same CEO from that company ran the telemedicine company, and I had just wrapped up something that I was doing, and he was struggling. They were maybe I think they were maybe

28:37 8 or 10 months away from running out of capital. And, he was like, hey, Dave, you take a look at it.

28:43 You know, we’re struggling a bit.

28:45 so I went and he was smart because, you know, he tried to get me half pregnant. He just had me come take a look at it. And I said, yeah, I think I could fix it.

28:51 we went from. So tell it was an 800 pound gorilla in our space.

28:55 They had just gone public, so they had a perfect balance sheet. Yeah, we had a terrible balance sheet. Yeah. They had 90% market share. We had like zero zero 1% market share for the next five years. 100% of our clients came from Teladoc. We lost zero clients in five years, and we charged ten times as much as Teladoc did.

29:13 Wow. And so we did that just by I just shifted the business model. So I understood. I spent a little bit of time understanding where the pain point was through the sales channel. And so instead of selling direct to employers, which the employers we were trying to target were self-funded employers. So 250 employees are bigger.

29:30 They always have benefit consultants. And so by going to the employer, you basically were cutting your own throat because you were making the benefit consultant look bad.

29:37 So we have to sell to the benefit consultant. In order to do that, we have to do something that’s going to make them look really good. So I change the business model

29:45 where we would contractually guarantee to any self-funded employer we would generate a $1.25 for every dollar they paid us, and we put 100% of our fees at risk.

29:56 We put none of their fees at risk. We were generating while we charged ten times as much. We generated 25 times higher utilization. And so we were a bargain. And like I said, in five years never lost a customer. So, you know, that one got sold to a private equity firm. And, you know, in fact, the second half of the next will happen here probably in the next 18 months.

30:16 So I look forward to that. I love that. And

30:19 the first part of that exit, did you guys, was that strategic? Did you work with an investment bank? Like what was the managed process like? Yeah. So I had already left the company. Okay. I was before the exit.

30:30 But but yeah, so we worked with the, with an intermediary sold to a private equity firm.

30:34 Nice. And then, you know, one of the the head of client services became CEO. And, you know, since then, you know, it’s funny that the we sold 60%, the 40% remaining will be worth two and a half to three times with the 60% loss. Wow. The private equity firm has done a good job of scaling it since then.

30:51 That’s a great amount I see. I love that, What about advice for

30:55 founders that are contemplating an exit here in the next few years? Seems like culture and really aligning incentives with the staff are really important. But outside of that, understanding their expense ratios, income statement, what tangible advice would you give them to prep a business for an exit?

31:15 it can get dangerous if you’re too focused on the exit. Okay. The way I try to guide people is if you run your business really well, you will maximize your exit opportunities and you’ll maximize the exit value. So I’ll give you an example. One of the guys I mentor, he started,

31:30 an app called Many Fit last August, not even a year ago.

31:33 We’ll have a nine figure exit here in the next 12 months.

31:35 when I’m showing him is that anyone we’re, we’re talking to who’s interested in acquiring us.

31:40 What they need to understand is every month they delay in buying us. The price just went up. And the way you do that is by continuing to have your business do well.

31:48 the other business, in HighBeam research, we were very strategic.

31:52 Once we once we decided we were going to go to market,

31:54 we sold in December of 2008 when the financial crisis was peak. And all the acquisitions that were getting made, they were getting huge haircuts, 30% reduction in purchase price, 50% reduction in purchase price.

32:05 We got exactly dollar for dollar. The purchase price that we had in our life. And the reason we did it was that three months prior to exit were three months, our three best months ever. And that was not by accident.

32:16 So we were thoughtful about the timing of it. But I think when you run a business purely for the purpose of exiting, you get a little shortsighted sometimes.

32:24 And I think that if you focus instead on running the business really well and having all of your KPIs that are the things that are really moving the business, that those are each inching up, your retention rate, your customer acquisition costs, your lifetime value, that you’re really paying attention to those things and you’re just inching them up a little bit at a time.

32:41 Anyone who’s looking at you is going to be like, man, if we didn’t know this six months, the price is just going to go up. So let’s acquire them now.

32:47 about on the the buy side looking at acquisitions. You’ve you’ve done quite a few acquisitions.

32:53 love the tip of if you wouldn’t do the deal on a handshake deal, don’t do it.

32:58 But if that’s not the case, don’t do the deal. What are other things that you look at both from a negotiation standpoint rapport building and due diligence

33:07 People do business with people they like and trust.

33:10 So I would say be likable and travel is really helpful. And that’s why, you know,

33:17 having a long business career, it’s not, you know, it’s not a sprint that’s a marathon.

33:21 And, you know, having a reputation for being a certain way is very helpful. Obviously, one of the things I would say early on when looking to acquire a business, one of the biggest problems you were buying, especially smaller businesses and the businesses we were buying in the call center space, we’re smaller, you know, 1 million, 3 million, 5 million.

33:35 These are not huge businesses.

33:36 Is making sure that the seller has a rational understanding of what their value is, because that’s where you run into problems, where it’s their baby and you’re telling them their baby is really not that cute. That’s a hard conversation. So making sure that the seller has some reasonable understanding of what the real value is.

33:52 I always get that out of the way really quick. Otherwise, it’s a time waste for everybody. Yeah. I love that.

33:56 you’ve written a book about life maxing, talking about how AI will transform, who has the ability to kind of scale their their wealth or their life and broadens who has

34:12 access to that. Can you talk to me a little bit more about the book and also your views of AI over the next five years?

34:20 Yeah, so so directionally you’ve got that right. So this book, I’m actually coauthoring it

34:24 an 18 year old that I’m mentoring. Okay. The target audience for this book is 15 to 25 year old men.

34:30 And so who are they listening to now? Hitting himself in the face with a hammer? Andrew Tait, Jordan Peterson, people, you know, not a happy guy.

34:38 honestly, it came from me mentoring Joey. And, you know, he dropped out of high school at 15 and started an AI agent, the company that started doing seven figures. And he’s an exceptional kid.

34:48 so that was where the nexus of it came from, which is, man, there really isn’t a guide out there

34:53 to, to help because, again, the people they’re listening to or jackasses.

34:57 And so I’m like, you know, there really is a need for this. And so what Joey and I did,

35:01 we agreed on the outline.

35:02 We created 4040 chapter outline. And then when we had we’d have an hour, I would say somewhere between a conversation and a debate, more conversation because we see eye to eye on a lot of things, not everything. And we would basically record a one hour dialog about that. And then with AI help, we would we basically created the chapter structures around that.

35:21 it was such an interesting growth experience, both for Joey at 18 and me at 60. And I’m telling you, like, I wish I had this book myself when I was, when I was 15 or 16 years old.

35:32 What are your views on AI? Are you more utopian? Dystopian? Where are we going in five years?

35:38 I feel like the next ten years are going to be really bumpy for, I’ll call it something like 80% of the population.

35:44 I mean, you hear about, you know, these massive companies like Oracle and Facebook and,

35:47 and laying off people in the tens of thousands, not hundreds or thousands. And I think I, I heard read that Spotify claims that not a single line of code in 2026 has been written by a person.

35:57 So that see, change is already happening. The thing that’s interesting, and that part that makes me optimistic, is anyone who’s willing to embrace a really embrace a and go down the rabbit hole because that 80%, like you said, it’s going to be bumpy for the next ten years, but for 20%, it’s going to be like the best time in human history, because anyone can become knowledgeable and experienced and an expert in just about any subject matter area if they leverage AI properly.

36:22 and the part that’s different is that 8020 will usually the people that are in that 20% don’t get to choose being that 20%, they just are or they aren’t. In this case, anyone can. And you don’t need to be that smart. You know, average IQ is all you need. If you’re willing to put in the effort and really go down the rabbit hole in a brace.

36:38 AI because you can become an expert in almost anything.

36:41 Mentioning and kind of talking about how AI can disrupt an area that I’m very interested in is health and longevity. You are running a company called Titan Ark focused on longevity and health. Can you tell me a little bit more about the business?

36:57 I had tried to be semi-retired.

36:59 That lasts for about three months. I had my podcast was the was my co-founder, Doctor Richard Henley.

37:06 was his original brainchild. And, we got to talking about it. And first he just was asking me for some help and guidance and general. And then eventually, like, Dave, please just do this with me. And I wanted it for myself.

37:17 know, my daily visualization that I do is I’m a hundred, which would make my daughter 65, and we’ve just hiked the mountain together and watching the sunset. So that’s my that’s my ambition and all live forever. But the years I do have one of them to be as high quality as I could possibly make it.

37:31 And Richard and I were originally thinking about it.

37:34 We were thinking about it being like, really AI centric up front. And what we came to realize was a, I still super critically important, but we’re using AI on the back end and the really human human component on the front end. Think of it as like Brian Johnson, like a one of one program. So what we do is we go into people’s homes.

37:53 We install a piece of AI exercise equipment company with partnering with called coolest Tech you’ve ever seen.

37:59 takes a 20 minute workout is equivalent to about an hour and a half to two hours of agenda. Wow. We look at what they cook with. We look at what they showered with. We look at what they clean with.

38:08 We look at their sleep hygiene. We look at everything. Unlimited testing, peptides. And if they’re necessary, you name it, totally customized to them. But with the human human component. And the other thing we do is while we look at the all the gazillion biomarkers and genetics and proteomics and all of that, what we do is we only tell them there’s two things you need to focus on your greatest opportunity and your greatest risk.

38:31 So you might have as opposed to you go to a functional medicine doctor

38:34 okay. Of your 512 biomarkers. Here are the 83 that are out of range. And here are the 27 things to do for the 87 things that are out of range. Like no one’s going to do anything. No. Yeah, it’s too much. We’re like,

38:45 your biggest opportunity is to improve your sleep.

38:47 Your greatest risk is cardiovascular. Here are the things to do. Cardiovascular health. Here are the things to improve your sleep hygiene. And we just focus on those two. And once we mitigated those and we’ll work on the next second best opportunity and the second biggest risk. And by doing that our first client actually just hit the four month mark.

39:05 He’s lost 50 pounds. He dropped his resting heart rate from 78 to 58. Wow. His blood pressure I think it was like 145/110 to like 118/75 like crazy results. And, you know, even though we put him on a p one lost zero muscle mass. Wow. Which is hard to do. Very difficult.

39:27 think about it now, even if you go to a great, let’s say cardiologist.

39:32 They’re knowledgeable about cardiology. Maybe they go to two symposiums a year. Maybe they read 2 or 3 research papers a month. And if they’re on top of their game,

39:40 imagine that you had AI that knew everything about you, and it had consumed every piece of knowledge about about the medical field in every domain area, not just cardiology, urology and nephrology, you know, radiology, you name it.

39:58 And you knew everything about you and it had all that domain expertise. It consumed every piece of content in every language up until five minutes ago.

40:06 And you’re asking that Lem the same question you might have asked that cardiologist. Who are you going to get a better answer from our own medical school right now? I’d be very nervous.

40:14 One of the other companies that we partnered with is a company called korva. They’re in Huntington Beach. The two co-founders,

40:20 one is a neurological radiologist and one is a orthopedic radiologist. They spent two years coding their own AI overlay on the best imaging technology, MRI imaging technology. They only opened last summer. It done, I think like 700 scans, zero false positives caught over 30.

40:38 Stage one and stage two cancers completely asymptomatic. They can even catch. Believe it or not, blood cancer. Because apparently the bone marrow looks different on an AI enhanced MRI when done properly. And so AI embraced properly, especially from a health and longevity standpoint. We are not so far away from what they call escape velocity, where you can reverse aging faster than people age.

41:02 I think we’re, you know, they depending on who you ask, David Sinclair might tell you five years. Some people might tell you 10 or 15 years. The very few people think it’s more than 20. And so, you know, I’m right on that customer when I’ll be around long enough. But I’m going to take my best swing at it.

41:15 I think health care is probably one of the biggest opportunities with AI. Most of our health care is focused on sick care, not wellness care. And I think with the advancement of both things, like peptides and AI that can really help with preventative catching, cancers at stage one will be transformative for the health care space and also lead to more affordability.

41:38 If you have an LM doctor that can see a vast number of patients at one time. Really broadens the access and drops the, the cost of of it. And I hope we’re going to see that over the next 15 years. I think there’s a lot of regulatory and incentive programs with the current insurance companies that we’ll have to fight against, but companies like Titan, Arc, I think are helping, and that’s invite only right now.

42:03 Is there a plan to extend that in the future? Is it just kind of based on your network? Bentley, Rolls-Royce. And then we’ll probably come down market over time. Yep. And have it be more AI. But for the short term, it’s for the ultra high net worth. First, because it really is a Brian Johnson.

42:20 One of one thing that we’re doing.

42:21 The other place I think that people are surprised is I don’t know if you’ve ever done this yourself, but I do. You know, both my wife and I both both do talk therapy with AI. I’ll use a therapist, I don’t know. Yeah. And it’s way better. It’s not even close to how much better AI is at doing talk therapy than a therapist.

42:39 Even a good therapist.

42:40 Which model are you using, if you don’t mind me asking? I mostly use Gen Spark. Okay. To, The nice thing about when people think about it. Because, you know, there’s the there’s a couple of edge cases where, you know, someone was told by, hey, I ought to go kill themselves or something like that one.

42:54 You never know what’s true, but two, the reality is, you know, if you’re really in a, in a difficult place, if someone’s suicidal, I might not start with AI, right? But for normal people that are just having their day to day stuff.

43:07 the thing about it that’s interesting. And I’ve gotten to be on and off throughout my life, and I’ve had some good therapists, but let’s say that I give up a some context to my regular human therapist, and they give me a piece of advice about that situation.

43:20 And I realize from their advice I didn’t give them enough context. I said, well, John, I understand that advice, but here’s some additional context. Their egos are already invested in the advice they already give me. I’m going to have to persuade them. This might take me 15 or 20 minutes to persuade them that. No, no, no. Here’s some of the context that it is terrible advice with this additional context with AI.

43:40 I’m just like, no, no, no. Here’s the additional context. AI is to me like, oh, well, now that you’ve give me that context, Dave, here’s my advice. Oh thank you. Yeah. There’s no ego in place for dream interpretation. It’s unbelievable. Really unbelievably good. I have not that’s something I still need to check out. I mean, it’s like you, you’re like, you have this dream that’s so bizarre.

43:59 You’re like, this can’t possibly make any sense. You feed it to AI and you’re like, oh, that’s all it makes sense.

44:03 You’ve developed and reached a point in life where I think a lot of people would pursue from a financial freedom standpoint,

44:10 what has financial freedom changed and what has it not?

44:14 I have two people that are somewhere between friends and acquaintances. One had a dollar exit and then six months of their eggs.

44:23 Both of them were suicidal. Yeah. It’s very much more common. Same thing people have in the Golden Gold Medal syndrome. Yeah. You know, like, all was forced as I’ve been in a pool since I was three. Yeah. Their identities wrapped in the company. Now they don’t own the company. What do I do? Is a double edged sword.

44:39 People underestimate that.

44:40 But the way I think about it is, to me, freedom is I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. So

44:46 I don’t like someone I’m in business with, I can get out of business with them, even if I. Maybe the deal caves and I lose some equity or whatever, or lose a little bit of money.

44:53 There’s little bit of money. So be it. Yeah. I don’t I don’t have to do anything. It really just comes down to that. I feel like people that, you know, money is a force is a is just a magnifying glass. If you’re a miserable human being, one is going to make it more miserable if you know how to be happy.

45:09 Money doesn’t hurt. Amplifies. Was there anything that, from your perspective of what success was that changed significantly after you became a father?

45:19 That’s a really good question. You know, the thing that really struck me was, and I think I said earlier, if you’d asked me if I was happy, I went to quiet, understood the question when my daughter was born and she was looking up at me

45:32 and, you know, expecting me to guide her.

45:36 That’s when I decided I had to figure out how to be happy so that I could guide her.

45:42 And so, yeah, absolutely shifted my perspective enormously. Like I said, the two greatest things that ever happened to me was my misdiagnosis and my daughter. And as harsh of a critic as she is of me. The journey with her has been unbelievable.

45:56 And, and it’s it’s it’s it. She, without realizing it, taught me how to be happy. I love that. Well, getting to having children, you first have to find someone to have children with. I’m single. Probably have not had the best dating experience. You’ve been on a thousand first dates within five years. You’re now happily married with someone that sounds like you’re very in love with, and who’s very in love with you.

46:21 What advice would you give someone who’s maybe in their 20s 30s 40s, who hasn’t found the right person yet? Maybe it’s fairly career driven, focused on work to create that margin and what to look for.

46:34 So, should I go on a thousand dates? No, don’t. That in hindsight, don’t get me wrong. Like,

46:42 it’s fun to see your roads and all that.

46:44 But, you know, there’s definitely too much of a good thing. With that being said, to answer your question, people get when you think about dating, it’s completely backwards.

46:52 what do most people do on a date? One how do they find the date in the first place? Well, they’ve got, you know, they’re swiping right hinged tinder, whatever it might be.

47:00 so they’ve already put forth an image of what they think the other person might be looking for. Let me meet that person. And what most people do, they’re going to hide as many of their bad qualities for as long as humanly possible, and expose their good qualities as many of their good qualities as quickly as possible.

47:13 And both people are doing that, right? Guess how that’s going to turn? So people say on a first date, don’t talk about politics. They’ll talk about religion, they’ll talk about that. I talk about all of that. In fact, one of the first things, one of the things I would always say on a first date,

47:27 was I would say I am the easiest guy to get rid of, like, you know, because my number one criteria in a partner is you have to really want to be with me.

47:36 I think the biggest challenge is people need to reframe dating.

47:39 you’re a tall, good looking guy. Thank you. If you put 100 women in a room and you said, you know,

47:47 just a glance, which of these, how many of these women do you want to even get to know? You? Probably 15 max. And then if you spent time with those 15, it probably when it went down to 3 to 5, if you’re lucky,

47:58 flip it around, put you in a room at 99.

47:59 Other guys, you might make the top 15 for, you know, percentage of those people went after they got to know you similar kind of thing. So now you’re looking for the overlap between your 3% and their 3%. That means most people are not going to be the right match. Yeah. And that’s the frame you need to look at it through.

48:15 The other thing I would say is everyone has their checklist of qualities that they’re looking for, right? I mean, this I mean this and any of that.

48:23 I do think it’s important to have things that are nonstarter for you. I think that’s important. I think checklists are dangerous. So when I met my wife, my second and final wife,

48:33 she was 23 and I was 50.

48:35 She’d never been in a she never had really a boyfriend. She didn’t hook up, so she never had a boyfriend. She’s Afghan. So, you know, you don’t take someone. I was the first person ever met her family. She’d never taken a guy home to meet her family.

48:47 if I had a checklist, she would have met very.

48:49 Other than the attractiveness part, she would have met none of them. And I probably wouldn’t have met hers either.

48:54 you have to evolve together. And so to me, what I looked for with the raw materials that would make someone lifelong partner, someone who’s open minded, someone who’s curious, someone who’s intelligent.

49:05 Because if there’s too big of a gap in intelligence between you and the partnership doesn’t work, if you have a growth mindset and they don’t, yeah, doesn’t really work. And the other thing is communication that we’ve been together ten years now. Never said an unkind word to each other. Wow. Disagreements. But we never say something mean. And by the way, the other thing we both do is we always assume positive intentions.

49:25 So if she said something like,

49:27 not my proudest moment, but, you know, we were talking about something and I said, because she never now she’s an amazing shape works out all the time. But when we met she never seen me inside of a gym, and I. I didn’t say it to be mean, but I said, oh, well, you’re skinny fat.

49:40 And I didn’t say it to be mean. Of course, all she heard was fat. She didn’t hear the skinny part. Yeah. But, you know, then she started working out and eating really healthy, and, and, you know, now, you know, she had some minor health problems, all of which disappeared. And so she would not have been a great long term match for me if you just had a list of a checklist.

49:58 I think that when you find someone that has the raw materials and you have to decide for yourself what those raw materials are, for me it was communication, open mindedness, intellect and sort of just being a fair minded person. So she had all those characteristics in spades. And then the rest of it, I let it all. I think when you go to a pure checklist, you’re going to you’re going to have some false positives and some false negatives.

Chapter 12: Spirituality, Meaning, and Legacy

50:19 I think that’s amazing advice. I’d like to wrap up and just talk a little bit about the show. It’s called acquiring meaning what meaning means to you. And if there’s any aspect of that that is more broad than just business family as far as spirituality or faith.

50:35 So I grew up, Roman Catholic, Italian on my mom’s side and German, Russian Jew and my dad’s side.

50:41 I went to synagogue. I actually, I made the economic decision, ironically, to get a bar mitzvah when I was 11.5 because I had a I had one Jewish friend at the time that was explaining to me how when you get bar mitzvah, they throw you a huge party and everyone gives you money. I’m like, really like, mom, dad, I want to get in touch with my Jewish roots.

51:00 So I started Hebrew school 11.5, but. So I was exposed to both. I consider myself agnostic, but I’m extremely spiritual.

51:07 people talk about legacy, and, you know, I don’t get me wrong. Do I allow for the possibility that there could be an afterlife? I love what a possibility. Thank you. Simulations? Probably more likely.

51:17 But I love for all possibilities. But I feel like organized religion is not the best.

51:23 Moral structure. I feel like to me, you know, again, and this does exist, obviously, in Christianity. I, I just I just live by the golden rule. I treat people the way I want to be treated. I don’t lie, cheat and steal.

51:34 It’s not like when people lie, cheat and steal on me.

51:37 and people talk about legacy. I ask people this question. Do you know the first name of your great grandfather? I’ve never met anyone. No, no, it’s the first name of their eight great grandparents. These are the people you were directly descended from by a few generations.

51:49 You know, even know their first name. So to think that a hundred years from now or a thousand years from now, no matter that we lived, I don’t think that it will. Some people find that unsettling. I don’t. The way I think about it is I don’t believe life has intrinsic meaning, but what that means to me is I get to decide

52:05 it means to me.

52:06 And so for me, I decided to touch as many people in as positive ways. I can tell I’m not here anymore. And it turns out how it turns out. And that’s enough for me.

52:15 Dave, I, I know you’re a mentorship for for ready for me and I hope to continue in your your footsteps for this, this next generation.

52:25 And I thank you for coming on and and just sharing the insights, everything from from business to dating to to meaning. If someone’s interested in learning more about what you do or has some questions, how could they get connected with you online? So on all socials I’m at real Dave Guttman YouTube. That’s where my podcasts are. You can check out my Ted talk if you’d like to just type in.

52:47 They’ve got Ted talk and you’ll you’ll find it. And I look I, I respond to everything myself. So I’m always happy to again that promise I made to myself in the hospital bed when I was 24. If I can help someone, I will. And so, you know, anyone reach out, reaches out. I’ll be happy to be helpful.

53:03 I love it. Thank you so much, Dave. Really appreciate it. Enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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35 Years of Business Lessons in 53 Minutes (15+ Companies Sold)

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More Acquiring Meaning

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35 Years of Business Lessons in 53 Minutes (15+ Companies Sold)

Episode Overview

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Featured Guest

Dave Guttman

Episode Transcript

Chapter 1: Introduction and Lightning Round

Chapter 2: The Misdiagnosis That Changed His Life

Chapter 3: Why College May No Longer Be Worth It

Chapter 4: Dyslexia, Learning, and Building Confidence

Chapter 5: Entrepreneurship and Lessons from Business

Chapter 6: Creating Wealth and Choosing the Right Opportunities

Chapter 7: Business Challenges, Raising Capital, and Exits

Chapter 8: Selling Companies and Preparing for an Exit

Chapter 9: Writing with His Son and the Future of AI

Chapter 10: AI, Longevity, and the Future of Healthcare

Chapter 11: Financial Freedom, Happiness, and Relationships

More Acquiring Meaning

Silicon Valley Laughed at His Business Idea: Now He’s in 4 Million Stores (Here’s how)

She Became a Millionaire by 25 But Still Wasn’t Happy (Here’s What She Learned)

He Made Millions in Real Estate But Something Was Still Missing (Here’s Why)

Ready to Explore Your Strategic Alternatives?