all right my name is Chris ashnelli I get to build buy and sell simple profit businesses every single day and today we're going to be talking about building your investment thesis right so if you are on your own build by sell Journey then one of the places in which you start right everything starts somewhere one of the places in which you'll start is to develop your own investment thesis right so taking taking into account that you already have kind of like a foundational and experiential understanding of what this build by cell world is you know one of the first places you put your foot down or your best foot forward is to get into building and developing your own investment thesis right it's a good healthy activity it's also because it's so submersive in terms of an experience it also is a great process in terms of learning expanding and growing right it also experientially puts you in a in a position in which you can start to have ideas develop ideas and then share those ideas outwardly and get feedback which is a great place to start right so again you know my name is Chris Ash now we do Bill buy and sell simple profitable businesses every single day through bootstrapper Capital so what I'm gonna do in today's video is actually just share with you what I did right so this is this is my journey building an investment thesis it is also kind of like simplified down you know to you know best practices that probably anybody can just pick up and run with right but we do you know buy build sell and repeat so that's the goal here is you want to get into the build Buy sell game you would you want to be able to find acquisition targets you know companies in which you want to acquire or make investments into and then hopefully you know incrementally grow them over time by building wedge Equity right the wedge Equity is the difference of value between what a company's worth the start to the finish the thing in the middle that's the wedge and by buying low building wedge you are positioned to hopefully exit higher than what you acquired for invested in and hopefully that's how you make you know money at the end of the day because that's what this game is in terms of investing right so everything starts somewhere when it comes to building your investment thesis the the first thing that you need to start with is yourself right so you need to inventory your own personal why right and if you can get really close with your why your why matters because your y at the end of the day is what gets you up out of bed that's what gives you the drive that's what gives you the energy that's what gives you the grit to be able to grind right because none of this stuff is easy right first and foremost none of this is easy we already know that life is a very real thing it's not easy onto itself getting into the build by sell game is another level of complexity on top of what is already a complex life right it is not easy but it can be simple right simple is not easy but simple works this investment game can be simple but it's definitely not easy right so you got to know your why right that's why we lead with the why it gives you that purple uh purpose and intent right the intentional purpose to be able to drive things forward and a great place to start is to ask yourself you know so like about me like what are my good you know what are my skills abilities and traits like what's good about me what do I enjoy and appreciate the the best the most right what did I dedicate or put in my 10 000 hours right to sharpen my ex to become the best at right inventory that just like take a take some time like take some intentional time and there's no rush in any of this like that's another part of the the investment game is you know if you do it the right way and and you take you know this investment or's approach to it specifically and especially and you you buy yourself time there are no called strikes in investing meaning like you don't have to you don't have to swing at every pitch you don't have to make every you know make an investment in every deal that comes across your desk right you you you realistically can be very intentional very selective and take your time this is a Time game you know you really just want to make sure you don't lose money right rule number one forget rule number one rule number two just go back to rule number one right there are called No called strikes so take your time take some intentional time inventory or why you'll really reflect on yourself like what are you good at right where are you a subject matter expert because once you get into deals you're going to want to be able to add value to those deals right so are you good at marketing are you good at sales are you good at operations are you good at Finance are you good at human resources are you good at technology and I.T and development are you good at legal right compliance like what are you good at that's also why with investopreneurship we say go get a job get somebody to pay you to get experience take all that experience some of that pay go build an asset on the side or buy one right get your ass to match your income then go level up you need experience right so this is an experiential game you got to understand where you can add incremental value and then you gotta attack that centralize that right not only is it like what you can do really well the other question you got to ask yourself are what are you the most passionate about right like what are you going to be willing to to wake up every day and research like jump on YouTube and go down the rabbit hole for hours like read and digest articles and give feedback and you know participate in communities and dive deep like what juices you what's a tank filler right so you want to know your tank fillers and you also want to inventory your tank emptiers and then you want to list out your tank fillers right so you want to know what you're the most passionate about specifically in terms of like subject matter expertise like you know what types of businesses what types of of areas of Focus right where where does your attention and interest lie right you want to take that list you want to take your skills abilities and trait list and you want to see where they overlap right so that's realistically and I mean foundationally and functionally that's probably you know for most folks enough that's probably good enough to build an investment thesis I probably could end this video here that's how important the why is you know but at the end of the day you know even though it's it's a great place to start there's a little bit more work to do so once you've identified you know this overlap of of skills abilities and traits and then also interest now I want you to go and actually put in the hard work and research the market right I want you to conduct a really thorough research on the industry the market trends right and like what types of investment opportunities are out there for example with bootstrap or Capital right like it's been a significant amount of my time and my wife you know building simple businesses specializing in B2B specializing in B2B SAS I built companies I scaled companies I invested in companies right I worked in organizations I helped optimize organizations especially from like Revenue side throughput side removing of constraints right getting to operational efficiencies ultimately realistically building wedge right but you know when I saw that I knew that that's where my skills abilities and and traits lived I also know you know so building wedge Equity realistically I know where my inch like where my experience is where my interest is B2B SAS Etc um then I then I you know ultimately went to the market and when I was getting you know back into the the bill Buy sell game specifically around bootstrapper Capital there was this Market Trend and the market Trend was like micro sasses like micro companies like microsass very quickly became just like micro business and like micro equity and I was like man there's this thing that's on Trend right I know how to do all this stuff I've done is a large organizations I've done it for myself right for all of these reasons and probably more I could definitely do it for others and build a good business that could you know ultimately bootstrap 100 million dollars portfolio 100 of public I think I could really do this right so that became my kind of thesis and then I started to research it there's these this Advent of all these these micro exchanges like we had listed we launched our own to kind of test and understand the market see what deal flow was like we then designed our deal structure our safer right we went through this very intentional process and a lot of it was below water a lot of it was going out and getting Market feedback and a lot of it was just research right in-depth research both experiential like high level research just like face value high level research on Google on the news uh then also experiential research like doing it right like a lot of my research became taking action and then learning and researching through action and having conversations we LED with you know I recorded like 50 to 100 podcast interviews with potential folks inside the target market before I ever even did anything I never even dropped that content right so like we're talking like really intentional actions to be able to develop the thesis and then once you develop that you know once you do that research you want to develop your thesis right so based on your research you want to develop your clear investment thesis right so for us the go to market thesis was we want to Target micro Equity transactions B2B space right definitely sub 2 million but realistically we're focusing on deals even smaller than that right we wanted to focus on companies that were doing like a couple thousand dollars in monthly recurring Revenue because and and realistically even before that it was a couple a few thousand dollars and then like 30 or so customers so there's proof of concept in market right like I wanted to make sure that there's a product a lot of expense comes into developing and designing and Building Product right that's why it's easier to buy companies too right a lot of cost is in the product development so I wanted there to be a product to Market I wanted there to be customers I wanted to be able to analyze and interpret you know the quality of the product and market and identifying in that process like areas for improvement and the areas of for improvement became the ability to build wedge equity right wedge Equity is the ability to grow the incremental value of a business right so the goal when acquiring a company at all times is to always make it more valuable right after you invest than what it was before buy invest low Buy Low sell high right for the most part that's typically the way that you want it to be so I wanted I had this this thesis a lot of my thesis became like what was the where was the market trend where can we find the best deals create the most value and build the best wedge fastest right and that's why we focused on you know the deal flow that we initially did off of like what was micro acquire now acquire we also integrated our own aggregator in terms of a deal aggregator to be able to integrate and aggregate deals from other you know micro cell listings Buy sell listings and we focused on Virtual remote opportunities right we didn't want to deal with hard assets uh hard liabilities we want to do quick asset-based sales so there's a very clear thesis around it and then as we dove into that thesis and we started to specialize and focus and execute we were able to advance it and move it forward right so it should be very clear and then once it's clear and defined you should be willing to develop it and move it forward you know with Market with Market norms and with experiential learning right so I want you to develop your thesis and realistically that is around like where are you going to invest your money right you can you can make this simple right there are if you go to Google and you you like Google search like template for investment thesis and stuff like that there's like fairly sophisticated templates out there and I think they're overly complicated you could easily make this like a one-pager in terms of like keep it simple right you just want it to be simple you want it to be clear you want to know what you're doing what your strategy is what your goals are you know like where your deal flow is coming from right once you have that the goal is to then share it with others right this is where some folks get caught up they don't take action right all of this game comes down to taking Massive Action you gotta just be willing to take a lot of action you got to go out and just do it right you can't just um paralysis by analysis type of thing this is like a very important part and point because in doing this though by sell game making Investments all this stuff it's kind of scary to a lot of folks it's outside Comfort level and like concept of paralysis by analysis like let me over analy eyes let me over complicate right before I take any action there's a lot of reasons why that could be the case and that could play out just go do it right and one of the the easiest ways to go do is to just share it with others right so take take your investment thesis share it with some other people and then figure out like is there a market fit like earlier what I did is I had my thesis I went pitched it to my kind of like my personal Network then I started we actually launched a Venture Scout program so I had other people that were kind of interested in this game of like fighting and identifying deals I pitched the thesis to them got them involved I got the the feedback experiential feedback there I then went out and did this podcast circuit where I interviewed like 50 to 100 people and in this process was validating vetting qualifying the the deal the thesis the investment thesis and then we went to the market and we started building deal flow and then I started to qualify the thesis even further narrow it down understand the market experientially right so like we had a really intentional go to market with our thesis to be able to get to where we are today and it took a ton of time right like that took that's like years right like that's like years in the process and this is after like I already built companies I already exit companies right I already ran accelerators like this is like numerous like experiential career shifts later of having like earned it right so first I did out did it for myself and I earned all this stuff and then once I realized that I wanted to get you know into the the buy sell game and do what we're doing with bootstrap capital in the portfolio and Advance It Forward in this way especially specifically to like this community first model building public model right do it in the way in which we're doing it bootstrapping the business by the time that it it landed there we're talking like that process you know took years after all of the other hard work right and that's like doing it without anybody knowing right that's doing it without any accolades that's doing it without you know getting paid to do it that's doing it just again following the why and that's why the why is so important you got to be able to get up and show up every single day you got to be willing to put in the hard work when nobody even knows that you are you got to be able to do it for the right reasons and commit to the process right you know trust the process commit to the journey right so when you're sharing it with others you're thinking about these things you're trying to listen and pay attention you're trying to figure out like where people are throwing Flags specifically ideally around risk right so listen to the market listen to people listen to your peers listen to everybody you don't have to you don't have to do what they say but you have to listen right so that you can pay attention so you can optimize internally this is your accountability right but you need the feedback of others you need to have these feedback loops so like identify where folks eyeballs go and Minds go towards risk and identification or risk humans are like super risk adverse by Nature like survival I guess evolution of survival so like folks typically drift towards risk so it's like let folks crowdsource where the risk is and then come up with a strategy that mitigates that risk right investment game is all about mitigation of risk you want to mitigate as much risk as humanly possible your thesis and what you're doing should truly mitigate a ton of risk I think one of the special things that we do with bootstrapper capital is we have like such a awesome not only deal structure I think our deal structure proprietary deal structure which again was earned right through the hard work not only do we have an amazing deal structure we also have an amazing business system that helps mitigate risk almost everything we've done unintentionally helps mitigate risk and helps prolong the longevity of us doing this right prolonging longevity it's it gets you into the position of maximizing return so mitigate risk maximize return that's what your investment thesis should really be focused around ring fencing around and then you got to be able to say can I Source quality deal flow right can I get can I get the deals that I'm actually looking for right to feed my thesis and then when I do and I convert them can I actually deliver go back to again your skills abilities traits your working infrastructure you're working right factors of production of doing this business of investing in others can I deliver value can I deliver incremental value and it's like if you're only making one investment it's a lot easier to deliver value in one thing than it is like what we're doing which is like hundreds to thousands of deals right so you need a totally different infrastructure for one versus the other so you got to ask yourself can I do this and if not how how do I how do I fix for how do I solve for it or do I accept the fact that I can't and then once you know that you're going to be able to to do and deliver find deliver then you gotta eventually exit so you got to have an exit strategy and a part of your investment thesis should also include your exit strategy meaning like how are you going to get your Capital returned to you or if you're taking on investors are you taking on outside Capital to be able to do this you know how are you going to return their Capital right whether it's debt or Equity right so you got to have an exit strategy I need you to have an exit strategy of like how you're getting to liquidity I mean that's why we promote heavily like always be Capital ready right a lot of you know building the wedge or getting you know Capital ready is around building wedge equity and tied to that is you know higher valuations right uh better you know terms of investment higher multiples all those things because the exit does matter right at the end of the day that's your you know your culmination becomes your thesis you know you write it down you document it you simplify it you put it in a deck right you realistically have to share with other stage this is just should be deck ready form and then you're continually going back and you're just repeating these processes right you're continually developing your thesis you're continually researching the market so like work your way through and then work your way back right you're continually asking yourself is this right for me right am I following my why is there a better path forward is there a clearer path forward because the the stronger that all these things resonate the better your your thesis is going to be the better your thesis is going to be the more actionable your plan will be and then hopefully the better the returns will be for you as you go to market