If you've ever thought about buying a business, then this episode is going to be for you.

Because on the internet, there are a lot of people telling you about how amazing it could be to just go buy a business. That's already working. You just take out a loan. You put very little money down and boom, you're cash flowing and you're working passively. But those are also people that are kind of selling you the dream. Now, my buddy, Dan, is one of my best friends from college just actually did this. A couple of years ago, he bought a business, a very random,

unsexy business that he had no experience in. He didn't have a lot of money coming in. He had never bought a business before, but he did it. And it's actually worked out pretty well. And I asked him to come on and tell the real story. So tell us, like, what was it like? What did you do the first hundred days? How did you actually buying the business? How much money did you have to put down? How much money did it make? What are the downsides? What are the traps? All the real stuff. And I love it because Dan was very honest. He was very open about all those things. And then at the end, he actually brainstormed a couple of business ideas that he saw. Because when you buy a business, you look at hundreds of businesses. He actually saw it has a couple of his favorite spaces that he thinks people could go into. And we brainstormed that at the end. So this episode, I think, is going to be a lot of value for anyone who's ever thought about buying a business. And then we have a fun brainstorm also at the end for other businesses that people could check out. All right, enjoy this episode with my buddy Dan. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel. Never look at it back. This is a special one. My buddy Dan from college is here. And me and Dan, we've started a sushi restaurant together. We've owned a pet mouse together.

We've tried to bring down the house at a casino together. We have gone through many

schemes and dreams. And then Dan called me a couple of years ago. And I convinced him to try

to buy a business. And then he's done it now. He bought the business. And he's here to tell

the story of that whole journey of going from a guy who never could thought that he would ever buy a business to now owning one of the most random businesses that you'll ever hear about and then i got sam here who doesn't know dan so it's me and my college buddy and then sam you're sort of the third wheel on this date are you ready for this yes sign me up this isn't the first time it's happen, but I'm going to ask questions that usually what I think is what the audience think. So I'll ask some questions. Yeah, exactly. All right. So Sam, what do you want to start with? Just maybe first question is like, who the hell is this guy? Who are you? Yeah, who are you? Sertner, Dan Sertner. So I wasn't his roommate in in college i was like the next door neighbor so for

the Seinfeld references i was like the kramer i'd show up from time to time unannounced live with

this guy for four years so uh i go way back with sean and by the way sam the funniest part of

meeting dan uh the first day at college i walk in and the way he looks now, he looked exactly the same at age 18. And so Dan is standing there. And he used to wear a visor because he's like, I don't know, cool guy from New Jersey. So I thought he was someone's dad. I was like, this guy with a guy. I saw him from the back and he knew everything. He was like, La, laundry's down there. Yeah, you have to do this. You know, your meal plan is not going to work until you activate it. You have to go to, he knew everything about the campus. And I was totally clueless. I didn't know anything about going to college. And so he was, and he had a single. He was like one of the smart guys. He like requested having a single room, didn't have to have a random roommate. So Dan's been ahead of the game for a long time. And, okay, and what business did you end up buying, by the way? So I bought a company called fleet packaging. So it's a packaging. So it's a packaging. So effectively, we work with large retailers in the U.S. who need any sort of packaging.

So if, you know, you go to a mall, you leave with one of those to go bags, we help companies

buy those. And then we help with warehousing distribution. We make it easy to buy bags overseas.

So he is Dan the Bagman now, which is all you really need to remember, Dan the

bagman. But to get there, I think it's a fun kind of journey, right? So we're going to skip the

part about me and Dan in college and then the company we tried to start together. We're going to

skip that for now. We can go back there later. I think, though, the buying a business story

starts where in actually kind of a funny way. So after we, after we kind of

try and fail at our first business, we go off and do different things. I go move to Australia. Dan

moves to San Francisco and he goes and gets a job at Facebook. A few months later, Dan calls me.

And he's like, oh yeah, sorry. I don't know what he said, but he was like, yeah, I was just quickly just fixing a bug. And I was like, fixing a bug. What are you talking about? And he's like, yeah, I'm coding now. He's like, your code. He was like an economics, he was like our finance guy well why is the why is our finance guy

what are you doing in code and basically what he did was i don't know if you know the same but i guess at

facebook they have just like a a coding academy internally at facebook dan is that how you describe it like a

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