How Scaling with Tech Made Him Millions (60+ Companies Later) | Michael Byars | EP 67

I like boring, profitable stuff that I know I can scale going into with tech.

In other words, I'm looking for the guys that's got, maybe they've got a 15-year-old website.

Maybe they have no technology.

Maybe they're still running off a regular cash register that you buy at the Sam's Club, right?

That's right.

I'm looking for stuff like that and trying to understand how I can scale it two, three, four exit in the first really 12 to 18 months. Yeah.
What is up, entrepreneur family? What is up? I'm super excited about this guest because we are going to be talking all about how to build, grow, and scale a business, how to acquire the right businesses, how to bring in the right people. My guest today has bought over 60 companies, has sold 20 of them, and is great at growing and scaling.
Michael Byers is here. What is happening? Hey, thanks for having me on today, Justin.
Yeah. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Excited.
So what is some of the secret sauce about, you know, you are kind of the expert at being able to scale businesses. I think people have a hard time knowing even where to start at scaling.
What would be kind of the foundational rock that you would talk to an entrepreneur looking to scale a business? Yeah. So normally I'm just going to start off trying to understand where they're at and see what kind of technology we can bring in to be able to scale.
You know, you got to understand technology, it never lays out. It's grandma never dies three times.

It doesn't show up late.

It doesn't have to leave early.

It doesn't need the weekend off.

I'm looking for stuff like that.

I started a tech company back when I was 19 and, you know, I use it to scale all the

businesses that I buy and all of the, you know, like the consulting clients that I have,

I use it to scale all their stuff. No kidding.
So this is something you started back and you still use it today. Yeah.
Yeah. I still have that company.
That's just probably will never sell it. Right.
It's just a testimonial to the power of tech. For sure.
And so what's your thought since we're leaning into this, like out of the gate, what are your thoughts about all the crazy, you know, growth in the tech space and the AI this, I mean, you're way more advanced than I am, but what are your thoughts on all this? Like how fast is this going to move? But it's, it's moving super fast already, but you know, at the end of the day, people get worried. Oh, well tech's going to take my business.
No tech's not going to take your business. You got to think technology can improve a lot of things in our day-to-day life, right? But technology is never going to go change out your air conditioning unit if it quits.
That's right. Technology is never going to change your tire if you have a flat on the side of the road.
So, you know, technology is going to improve our everyday human experience, right? It's going to help us do things faster, more efficient, streamlined stuff, but it's never going to replace good workers, good employees, or good entrepreneurs. Never.
Zero shot. I just had this conversation with a friend of mine.
So in real estate, since real estate is kind of the vertical I live in day to day, do you ever see tech being able to do some of the people, like signing docs at Tidal, right? Like we're getting it notarized. There's just some things within real estate I don't think it'll ever replicate or be able to come in place of.
Do you? No, I don't think so. And, you know, I'm pretty big in the real estate space as well.
I got about 190 single family homes. There you go.
So commercial buildings and, you know. But I don't think that it will ever replace certain things you know it's never going to go to closing for you it's never going to sign for you it's never going to do your transfers for you that's right right you know yeah and you can't walk like you're not going to have an ai bought walk the i mean i guess anything's possible but like to understand what needs to be done to the property what ti's need to be done to your building, what kind of repairs need to be done to the rental property.
Zero shot that AI can never do that. That's right.
Because they don't understand, you know. So when you're talking to your coaching clients and you really help entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses, that is your expertise.
And so by the way, make sure to follow Michael, acquisition CEO, all over social. It's already on on my social make sure to follow him

but your expertise with your clients is scaling the business scaling the operation when it comes to that what type of verticals make sense right now because because as I have a tech play myself in that tech play is actually facilitating a large growth in the service space roofing uh flooring hvac etc right right because they're such an archaic model still and i say that with a lot of love they still do door knocking door knocking just works so it just does but archaic right right and so taking data and taking you know data-driven operations and being able to use that tech to go to the right door to knock, for example. What companies do you think have a lot of scalability in them still today? Most of your service-based companies are going to have that through tech because, you know, a lot of times the service-based industry, they're really good at their trade, but they're not really good at running a business or implementing technology, any of that stuff.
They're good at plumbing or they're good at heating and air, but that's what they're good at. That's right.
You know, and buying certainly these small business and the service-based stuff, there's really a ton of room for improvement and growth there by bringing in tech. Do you just bring in tech? And so when you acquire, and I have a couple friends that also are in the space of like merger and acquisitions, is it always a seller finance, creative finance deal? Do you come to the check sometimes? Do you use tech as a way to talk to me about how you even go about that? Do a lot of different stuff.
You know, no, it's not always, you know, owner finance, creative finance. Sometime I'll write a check for it.
You know, sometimes we work in you know creative stuff sometimes we work in you know owner finance creative finance sometime i'll write a check for it you know sometime we work in you know creative stuff sometime we work in you know getting a piece of equity for bringing in the tech and scaling the company you know there's just a ton of different options yeah there you know to make those plays and those deals but i mean it's it's really um high as 57 model you know there's 57 different varieties to do every deal. That's right.
I love that. I love that analogy.
And so, you know, one of the things, what has the most growth that you're seeing right now? I mean, is it just strictly the service space? Is it tech plays that they don't know how to functionally do what they're trying to do? What are you on your side so a lot of it is i like boring profitable stuff that i know i can scale going into with tech in other words i'm looking for the guys that's got maybe they've got a 15 year old website maybe they have no technology maybe they're still running off a regular cash register that you know you buy at the sam's club right right you know i'm looking for stuff like that and trying to understand how i can scale it two three four exit in the first really 12 to 18 months yeah you know because coming in and doing that i might buy it for three million bucks you know and it might be doing a million bucks a year, buy it at a three X multiple. I know if I can get that to doing four or five million dollars a year EBITDA or net profit, you know, I might get a five or six X multiple out of it.
Plus, I'm going to make that a couple million bucks a year for the next two or three years. So, I mean, it's a really cool, you know, cool thing that I've developed as to how to grow and grow through that technology.
And it allows me to grow super fast. Yeah.
You know, because tech's there. Or either if my development teams have to build it, you know, normally we can build out a whole project in six months, eight months.
And then, you know, that tech, you build it once and it eats forever. That's right.
Right. You know, it doesn't take days off.
It doesn't get tired and want to go do something else. You know, with employees, you train them.
You know, I've got a lot of great employees now, but it's taken me years to build a team I've got. Yeah.
Right. So, you know, during that time, you're training these employees.
You're kind of getting them on the same page. You know, Maybe they pass away.
Maybe they move. Maybe they have some sort of health scare or something like that.
They decide to go on and do something else. I mean, you just lost all that training you just put into these people.
Oh, yeah. With tech, that's no longer the case.
So let's lean into this a little bit for the people that are scaling. You've already said it, but I want us to dive deeper.
You're saying it's not about the people per se. Growing with operational blow of 20 people being paid 60 grand a year is a crushing model.
You can replace a lot of that a lot of times with tech. Let me explain to you my thought pattern on that.
Yeah. So when I buy a company, I'm not implementing tech to get rid of the people.

I'm implementing tech to put those same people that have been there for years to doing revenue generating activities instead of boring mundane stuff that I can replace with tech. That's right.
Now we can grow. I mean, it's like, you know, if I can replace some of their daily tasks with tech, I just got to free two or three employees.
That's right. Because all the BS junk that they were just doing, now they can go do something that generates revenue, that makes money, right? Where does tech usually fit into most of these companies? Is it more on the marketing and sales side? Is it operational? Operational is where I'm seeing it most.
Yeah. You there is some marketing and sales.
Most small businesses or especially service-based small businesses, they don't do any marketing. They run off word of mouth or Chuck in a truck.
We know Chuck over here, he's been doing our plumbing for 30 years, right? But, you know, Chuck can't hand that down to anyone. He can't sell it to anyone because it's him in a truck, right? And in order for him to scale, he's got to do things differently.
Not saying that these small businesses are bad. I mean, they've been doing what they've been doing for 20 and 30 years, feeding their families.
There's just, if you want to get bigger, there's, there's a way to do that. That's right.
You know, should people be reaching out to you right now? If they're like, Hey, I'm interested. Are you looking at acquiring? Are you looking at stuff like that? Yeah.
I mean, if they're looking to sale or they're looking to scale, I'm always, always looking, looking for new solid companies. Yeah.
You know, for me, I'm buying cashflow, right? I don't buy anything that's losing money. I don't buy any turnarounds.
You know, it's got to be cash flowing and they've got to want to scale. Yeah.
In my world, especially in the kind of the real face specific space, scaling a lot of times, I believe they do it wrong. They really try to create, you know, they get the nice A plus office, they get the people.
And I say, yeah, but you're going to create operational blow. And then if you have a rough week, month, maybe a couple months back to back, that could be crushing.
Talk to people about your philosophy, about how to stay away from that. Obviously tech plays a big part, but how do you implement some of the philosophies that you want to, what are you looking how do you implement that as many you know i'm constantly on the move juggling multiple businesses traveling

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You know, I'm taking and 2, 3, 4x these companies that I'm buying with the same amount of employees. I don't have to go hire more employees.
I don't have to go get a better office. I don't have to go get a bigger space.

I'm doing three or four more times the revenue

and within turn the profit

with the same amount of employees or less.

Yeah.

You know, I really believe it's good to,

you know, if you want to have a nice office,

that's cool.

For me, I ran lean for years, man. Probably 15 years.
It's better that way, I believe, right? People want to have this, you know, we just had a, one of our mutual friends, Dan's here and people think bigger and better just because they kind of see it. Right.
It's not always the case. That's not the case.
Usually a lot of times it's just a big PP measuring contest. That's right.
You know, I've got to be better than my neighbor. Keeping up with the Joneses.
You know, at the end of the day, the Joneses aren't going to pay your bills. Right? Ain't that the truth.
Yeah. And then when you start making money, and the reason why I brought it in because we just heard him talk about, you don't go buy two or three of these.
You buy one. Right.
You start making money. You don't need to go outpace everything and get the A plus office space.
You can stay in your C plus B minus office space. You don't need to create more operational bloat for yourself.
So lean into something. If someone came into your world as a client, what are the first couple of things that you're going to audit their business on? Well, look at their numbers, you know, especially a lot of these small businesses.
Maybe they don't turn in all the cash, right? You know, it's that's worked for them for the last 15 or 20 years. But if they're going to sell, it's never going to work because you can't pay for something you can't see.
That's right. And I can't buy something that I can't understand and see.
Right. Yeah.
You know, if they're not putting the money in, we got to we got to get them to put the money in. I'm not going to keep any cash out.
So I can't have them doing that as well, right? We're going to look at that. We're going to look at what their tech is.
Are you implementing technology? Where can you implement more technology? You know, a new employee to do these tasks is going to cost you, let's say at $1,000 a week, it's going to cost you $4,000 a month, right? Can you get tech for $300 a month to do these tasks is going to cost you, let's say at a thousand a week, it's going to cost you 4,000 a month, right? Can you get techs for 300 a month to do the same task? And it never lays out. Same concept we've been talking about, you know, it never takes a break.
You know, we're also going to look at, you know, what are their SOPs or standard operating procedures? If, you know, little Bobby that's running the place, if he gets hit by a bus in the morning, how are we going to replace him? How are we going to train somebody to do his roles and responsibilities? Yeah. Because if you don't know that, you know, he is the company, right? If, if we can't train someone to do his task or to do it like him, man, you're in a bad spot.
You don't have tricky. It's not like you've got anything to sell or buy.
Yeah. Right.
You know, because he is the company. He's the business.
Right. Everything.
Right. That is something that closes.
I don't understand. I mean, it kind of goes both ways.
I'm a firm believer to get to growth. You need to stay in doing the work.
Right. There's too many people.
And I'm sure you see this all the time. Right right the owner fucking they think they're in the owner's box now they think they're jerry jones and can sit back and let the business just run and then you go and look at the p&l and be like you're losing money right that same person should be jumping back in the business and actually making the business work it started with them it needs to continue with them right because they knew what worked that's right right and apparently the culture has gotten away from what they were doing to start with to make it work yeah yeah and so there's that part the scaling the reason why i'm sensitive around scaling see i think too many people hear you or they hear me and they think okay if i can scale my business i don't have to work so hard no that's definitely not that's right talk about that i agree.
I agree 100%. That's definitely not it.
All scaling and technology is going to allow you to do is to be able to buy back some of your time, which is the goal, right? You're doing what you're doing in the hours of the day that you're doing it in, and you're only getting X amount done. What if you could double your hours that you had to focus and concentrate on that business? How much more do you think you could grow at them? Thank you.
Say that louder for people in the back. They think it's like time off.
Like, oh, I get to go sit on the beach. No, no, that's where you have more time to go put it in, right? That's the idea.
That's how you grow and scale by putting in the damn work. That's it.
You know? And so I'm glad you're saying that, man, because I see too many of these entrepreneurs, whether it be in the real estate space, maybe it's in the branding space because I'm more in the branding space now. But they just think it's like this thing that you don't have to invest your energy and time in.
You are the culture creator as the founder of this company. Correct.
And if you remove yourself out of that culture, what's going to happen? It goes away. That's right.
Right. Yeah.
And so we need to lean on that ideology to make sure people understand that scaling isn't this idealistic, like I'm going to go sit on the beach at some point when you're Elon Musk, even him, by the way, it's not a good example. That guy works probably harder than all of us combined.
Now he's in politics for guys. Like now it's not just business.
Now he's a politician, right? So I think people need to really understand that. Give me kind of the second pillar.
Besides technology, what are you kind of helping people re-engineer with this kind of thing, right? Because like I said, I think that it's more dynamic than just being able to say, hey, put some technology in and boom, you're rich.

For sure.

You know, it's the right people in the right spots. You know, a lot of the consulting clients I have, you know, they might have one person that does something really well, but they got them over here doing something else.
That's right. And it's about getting the right people in the right positions because, you know, I really encourage all of them to think about what would you do for free if you didn't get paid? Now, who do you have doing that task in the business? Put them put them over there.
Right. If you have someone that enjoys that more than them, switch them up.
Yeah. Right.
Because if you'll do it for free or you would do it on the weekends when you're off work, you know, that's how I got involved in the tech company. You know, I enjoyed it.
I would do it for, you know, I would do it for free. I would do it on the weekends for nothing.
Yeah. I got started by, you know, Hey, there's, I can actually make some money doing this.
Pretty cool. And it just spiraled.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, and that is the fun part is, is when you start to realize the things that you enjoy doing and how easy it is for you to do those. You never work.
You never feel like you're working. Stop working.
But again, that's where a lot of times the founders get caught because they stay in their, their zone of genius. Right.
But then they're not going to ever build a business, right? Because then it's just them. They produce what they can produce.
They don't actually take the time to build out everything else. You know, you got to hire people in those other fields that you either don't like or you don't know as much about.
That's right. That are better at those tasks than you are.
Who's your ideal consulting client? Where would you go and what would you be looking for for your ideal consulting client? I'm looking for small business owners who are looking to grow using technology or grow through acquisitions. Normally they're doing $5 million a year or less, maybe $7 million a year or less.
Okay, and they want to grow. And they want to grow.
And do they want to exit? Possibly. Yeah.
Some of them do. Yeah.
You know, some, I want to grow in order to be able to exit to get their EBITDA up. So they get a higher multiple.
A hundred percent. Um, so with that said, what are the downsides that you see people that don't have you as a consultant? They're not with you and they're trying their best to scale.
What are you seeing them fail at? Where are their potholes that they, they keep stepping in? Man, I've seen a lot of them, you know, a lot of them that come to me looking for help. They've tried to scale on their own and there's just not enough hours in the day.
They can't, them as an owner, they can't work on the business because they're working in the business. They've got no way to, to do anything.
I mean, they're working 80 hours a week and, you know, yes, they've grown, but at the end of the day, they can't go any further because there's not any more hours in the day or the week. That's right.
Yeah. They're still stuck in the business and they don't know how to lever.
And this is where tech comes in, right? Now, specifically, if we're talking about your tech, is that something people can pay you to use or is it only within your companies? I just don't know if it's something that they can go find. I mean, it's nothing that they can go find because every business is going to need something different, right? So we're putting together a lot of off-the-shelf stuff.
Yeah. I've got four development teams across the world that, you know.
Hand-cut me for the right business.

Correct.

But I mean, it's got, you know, the average bill will cost $250,000 to $750,000.

So it's not something where you're making $200,000 a year.

It's, you know, that won't work, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You got to concentrate on the stuff that's making, you know, netting a couple million bucks bucks a year you can afford to spend that if it'll three or four x of course right as long as you see the trajectory up right and then some of the functionalities that should be used in your opinion instead of hiring where should tech be looked at to take over right because the old school ways is people do it all right there's no now tech has become very progressive we are way faster in a lot of places where would you encourage some of your clients to really start to look at using tech in those areas than anything else i mean we're using it in in the starting of sales okay you know instead of i mean you're familiar with the sales process you know a lot of these high companies, they're going to have an appointment setter, bring it in. Then they're going to have a closer to close the deal out and sell the customer.
I can eliminate all the setter positions. Every one of them and bring more qualified leads to the closer than the humans can.
I love that. It is insane, you know, what you can get the tech to do.
You know, any of the, like, I've got a company that builds a lot of chat bots for a lot of these companies. And it's just general question bots that they put on their website.
Someone comes to the website, you know, just think about your business. If someone asks you a question and you can pick 100 people at random, there's probably 20 questions that everybody asks.
Yeah. If you can answer all of those and that person needs to go and is looking to buy your product, if I can answer all of those at 2 o'clock in the morning while they're sitting on their couch, you know.
I hope they're asleep, but sure. Right, right, right.
But, you know, but if I can answer all those questions at two o'clock in the morning when nobody's at the office to answer them in person, and I can set an appointment with a salesperson or an estimator, or maybe give them an estimate at that time right you know if if you're up in the middle of the night you're looking for a product you're going to call to someone answers or you're going to dig until you find somebody or you know you might take and make a list right right down the top five people and you're going to call them in the morning yep if. If I can get you on my schedule at night while you're shopping, you're like, oh, I got this call with Michael in the morning at eight o'clock.
I can stop if I don't like him, then I'll go to looking. I can stop that whole process.
See what I'm saying? Yeah. I can stop that potential customer from searching.
Yeah. Now, if my product doesn't fit, by all means, they can go find something else.
Yeah. But, man, it's been a real game changer in some of the companies that I've implemented the technology in.
Well, that's why I bring up what I was bringing up about, like, the service space, right? I mean, there's still just, there's so much archaic ways to go drive business for them that this technology, I mean, if you're in any service industry, I would tell you, make sure you're following Michael, acquisition CEO, right? That's all over Instagram and the website, but make sure you understand the tech that we're talking about because it is, again, if you are going to scale, one of the best ways to scale is not necessarily in growth and revenue, but profitability as well. If you can just convert more leads, you already have.
That's it. You already have them.
You're just more profitable. And then someone like yourself would take a look at that P&L and get pretty excited about it.
Right. I mean, for example, I've got a coaching client that I do some stuff for in the business growth sector.
We built out one of the bots for their company. Their appointment setters were sending about a third of the leads coming in to the actual closers.
And the appointment setters, they had a few of them. They didn't like their job.
We implemented the technology, put a bot in there to ask all the questions, qualify the lead. The closer was having an hour session to close a customer.
Now with the technology in place, the closer went down to a 10 minute segment, 10 minute time segment, because they're an order taker. When that customer shows up, they know what the cost is.
They know what the term is. They know everything because just like we just talked about, there's only 15 or 20 questions that the setter was getting asked that's right said don't have a bad day they wouldn't wouldn't get anything moving along the bot is moving over over 70 percent of the leads that come in now i mean guys this is it's crazy crazy dude crazy you know i've been around a long time and you guys should really see the list that his resume resumes.
I didn't even know how to do the intro right because your resume is so great.

And that's just kudos to you.

But it's just funny that you and I have been around long enough to see the trajectory of all this.

I mean, it just wasn't like this.

No.

I remember dial up AOL.

Absolutely, I do.

A hundred percent.

On your computer, it was this big.

Oh, so big.

And how to be so deep because all the machines, like you're like, now laptops are this thin and can run way faster. But I think, for me, I'm pretty passionate about, I don't necessarily take people to the scale side that you do.
I just want people to build and grow because then I can hand them off to people like you. Say, Michael, take care of John.
John's great. He's been able to build it, but now we need some efficiencies.

I think scaling is a base.

To not overly simplify, I think scaling is creating more efficiencies and we're losing the weight.

That's all it is.

You know, you're not getting rid of people or employees.

You're freeing the time up for the people who are employees to go do revenue generating

tasks. That's right.
That's all it is. That's all technology is good for, you know.
That's gracious. So again, where do we, where do we want to have everyone go find you, get to know you? Do you have a, any place you want to send them? I got Facebook under Michael Byers, B-Y-A-R-S for last name and acquisitionceo.com.
Yeah.

Guys, this man is, I mean, like I said, the resume is expansive.

And I'm excited that he's been able to be on here to help you guys grow and scale your business. Um, Michael Byers, acquisition CEO on Instagram, make sure you follow and make sure you rewind this.
Um, what's the best way they can just ask questions. Would it be over Instagram? What would be the best thing for it? Uh, best thing is Facebook thing is facebook facebook yeah they'll shoot me a message on facebook yeah i'd be glad to

ask for anything they got love it well i appreciate you being on thanks for the opportunity right on

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