INTERVIEW | Make Money Through Business Acquisitions with Saul Cohen

Summary

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INTERVIEW | Make Money Through Business Acquisitions with Saul Cohen

Travis Makes Money with Travis Chappell

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Travis Chappell interviews Saul Cohen, an experienced accountant and acquisitions advisor, known for helping entrepreneurs scale, optimize, and successfully exit their businesses. With a background at PwC and leadership at the Expert Eye, Saul specializes in financial audits, risk analysis, tax planning, and strategic acquisitions, especially for owners of businesses generating £1M+ annually. Saul’s new book, "Finding Gold," focuses on empowering entrepreneurs to build and realize wealth through informed acquisitions and exits—a key focus of this practical, real-world conversation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Saul’s Entrepreneurial Origin Story

• [01:58] Saul recalls his first surprising business moment: selling chewing gum at a markup to classmates.

  "I put that pack in my bag...someone was like, I'll pay you a pound for that...That's like double what they're selling it for in the shop down the road. This is great." – Saul Cohen

• Early realization of leveraging scarcity and being in the right place at the right time.
• Saul attributes his entrepreneurial streak to his father’s immigrant entrepreneurial journey and his own early desire to “jump and build the plane while we're in the air” ([04:14]).

Lessons from Early Ventures and Execution Over Ideas

• Saul started his first business while still at university, scaling a tutoring business both in-person and online ([04:15–05:04]).
• Saul compared his journey to other founders who achieved bigger exits with what he considered inferior products, teaching him that relentless execution outweighs having the best idea.

  "Your ideas are only as valuable as the execution." – Saul Cohen [07:02]
  "It's all in the execution." – Travis Chappell [07:31]

• The value of not getting bogged down by competition, but being true to your unique vision.

  "Even if your competition tried to copy you...they would not do it the way you do it, because they can't, because they're not you." – Saul Cohen [11:21]

The Culture and Opportunity at PwC

• Saul spent over 4 years at PwC, appreciating its high-performance culture and systems but missing the “buzz of entrepreneurship.”
• He loved the impact on clients but ultimately found the scale and indirectness of working for large corporations or private equity funds unfulfilling compared to helping individual founders.

  "If you change the business, you've changed someone's life...the lives of countless people that this business affects." – Saul Cohen [16:41]

Transitioning to Entrepreneurship: Risk & Financial Philosophy

• Saul admits to a cavalier attitude about risk—but credits his wife for insisting on more financial caution as he transitioned out of PwC ([17:20, 18:28]).
• He started his new firm as a side business before leaving full-time employment, with support from his future employer to run it alongside his job.
• Saul leveraged his PwC background for a 30% pay raise in his next job before making the leap.

The Career Math of Staying vs. Leaving Big 4 Firms

• Travis asks Saul to break down possible earnings as a PwC partner in the UK:

  "Average partner take home when I left was around £750,000 a year. I think a good partner at PwC could possibly be earning like, you know, 1.1–1.2. I think the highest partner take home was maybe like 5 million." – Saul Cohen [20:15]

• But emphasizes the multi-decade slog to reach partner—by the time Saul left, it took 16–18 years to reach that level, and even then, "there were more levels above partner than below it." [21:12]

  "Actually putting in 70 hours a week working on somebody else's business and never being to exit that hamster wheel. Sounds like something I prefer not to do." – Travis Chappell [22:16]

Saul’s Current Work: Accountant, Advisor, Author

• Saul now leads his own accounting and advisory firm focused on successful business owners, optimizing tax, advising on acquisitions (in the UK and abroad), and preparing businesses for sale. [22:42]

  "What really makes us different is...the tax planning and the acquisition stuff. Even something as small as saving 4,000 pounds in tax, if you do that every year and invest it...that's an extra million in retirement." – Saul Cohen [23:04]

• He views small financial optimizations and strategic exits as the key to building lasting wealth.
• Motivation for his book, Finding Gold: He noticed most founders don’t understand business valuation or the acquisition game—often struggling with selling or plateauing.

  "Business owners are way more successful in their second business. ...If business owners understood the acquisition process earlier...they would be more comfortable with making acquisitions, scaling their businesses, or even creating more wealth by selling and starting anew." [25:49]

Acquisition Strategies, Plateauing, and the Boomer Sell-Off

• The “acquisition mindset” is growing, but most current M&A deals are driven by baby boomer retirements.
• Modern entrepreneurs can achieve more wealth and satisfaction by seeing business as cycles: start, scale, sell, repeat rather than one long hold.

  "When business owners do that, they actually build more and more success...Because I think often what ends up happening is we set up a business, run it for five years, hit a plateau ... and we just sort of leave it and let it go." – Saul Cohen [28:00]

• The difference between a 3x vs. 5x multiple in valuations is life-changing—a core lesson of the book and his advisory work.

The Book & Where to Find Saul

• Finding Gold is Saul’s upcoming release on business acquisition strategy and maximizing exit value. [29:02]
• Saul encourages listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn and reach out with their business and valuation stories.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On execution:

  "Ideas are only as valuable as the execution." – Saul Cohen [07:02] "The execution is really the only thing that matters." – Travis Chappell [07:32]

• On competition:

  "Even if your competition tried to copy you and your competition were to try and do everything that you did, they would not do it the way you do it, because they can't, because they're not you." – Saul Cohen [11:21]

• On life at PwC and self-awareness:

  "Actually putting in 70 hours a week working on somebody else's business and never being to exit that hamster wheel. Sounds like something I prefer not to do.” – Travis Chappell [22:16]

• On selling and starting over:

  "Lo and behold, that business will scale, by the way, within 18 months it will be at the same size as the business that they'd sold previously." – Saul Cohen [25:49]

• On incremental gains:

  "Even something as small as saving 4,000 pounds in tax, if you do that every year and invest it...that's an extra million pounds in retirement." – Saul Cohen [23:04]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:58: Saul’s first “surprise” business moment—reselling gum at school
• 05:04–07:02: Lessons in execution vs. ideas from early businesses
• 11:21: On competition, staying true to your path
• 14:10–16:48: The difference between corporate work and working with founders
• 17:20–18:28: Saul’s personal financial philosophy in making the leap (and his wife’s role)
• 20:15–21:12: PwC partner earnings and the realities of career paths
• 22:42: Saul’s approach to small-business accounting, acquisition, and exit strategy
• 23:04: The power of incremental gains
• 25:49: Entrepreneurs’ “second act” and why understanding acquisitions earlier matters
• 28:00: The modern business cycle: Start, scale, sell, repeat
• 29:02: Saul’s book launch and ways for listeners to connect

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How to Connect & Learn More

• Book: Finding Gold by Saul Cohen (release date soon)
• Connect: Saul Cohen on LinkedIn

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Summary Note:
This episode offers a real-world, inspiring look at business growth through acquisition, the importance of execution over ideas, and the personal mindset shifts founders must make to build generational wealth. Saul Cohen’s practical, grounded advice is aimed squarely at entrepreneurs ready to scale—and, crucially, to exit on their terms.

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Transcript

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[Travis]

Foreign you're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what is going on, everybody? Welcome back to their episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, Saul Cohen. Saul is an experienced accountant and acquisitions advisor who helps entrepreneurs scale, optimize and exit successfully with. With a background at PwC or PricewaterhouseCoopers and leadership roles at the Expert Eye, he specializes in financial audits, risk analysis, tax planning, and strategic acquisitions. Saul supports small business owners, particularly those generating a million plus pounds annually in increasing valuations, reclaiming time and transitioning from operators to investors. Blending technical expertise with practical strategy, he empowers founders to build wealth, prepare for exits, and achieve long term financial freedom. Plus, he's got a new book on acquiring small businesses coming out here very shortly and that's called Finding Gold, which I'm sure we'll be talking about a little bit today as well. So, Saul, what's up man? Welcome to the show.

[Saul Cohen]

Hey, thanks so much for having me on, Travis.

[Travis]

Yeah, of course, of course. I appreciate you taking the time. I know we have a lot of interesting things to get to, but I want to start back in your, your history here to get a glimpse of how you ended up where you are now. Tell me the first time you ever made a dollar that was shocking to you that you were just surprised that somebody actually paid you money to like do this thing that you did?

[Saul Cohen]

Gosh, the first time I was surprised. I feel like I was quite young. I was, I was actually in school, I think, and it was literally, I just, I'd gone to. Is this gonna sound so stupid? I'd gone to Costco's the other day and I, and that week and I just, I'd come back with some sweets and I was in. I was just, I was, it was literally, it was. For me, I, I just thought it was way Cheaper. I didn't have to go to the sweet shop, whatever. And I just. I put that pack in my bag and someone was. I take it out and obviously in school, no one can get chewing gum. It's just stupid stuff. And. And someone was like, I'll pay you a pound for that. Not in. In my head, I'm like, wow, that's like double what I. What, like, they're selling it for in the shop down the road. This is great. And like, I suppose that was. It did sort of trigger me to make a little bit of cash in the. In the playground. Yeah. But, yeah, that was the first time that I'd made money. I was just like, wow. I guess sometimes being in the right place at the right time.

[Travis]

That's right.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Travis]

Learn, learn the benefit of a starving market. Really, really young when you do that.

[Saul Cohen]

You know what I mean? It's like, yeah.

[Travis]

I mean, you could get it for cheaper down the street, but you can't go down the street because you're in school right now, so you'll be paying my prices.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

That's funny, man. So obviously stuck with that, that business mindset for quite some time. Was that something that was inherent in you? Did you. Were your parents in business? Were they entrepreneurs? They encouraged that at all? How did you end up in that path?

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah, so my dad. My dad ran his own business and he did it, he did pretty successfully. He worked quite hard. He didn't really have any. Any support network at all. So he came from Israel and moved to the uk and when he was growing up, he had like this whole network of people and he'd gone to uni and, and everyone. But then when he moved, he met my mom, he moved to the uk. He knew of his family, but there was no one in business, no one who was really like, you know, like a support network, so to speak, and he had to just sort of work it out as he. As he went along and just, you know, as. As we do and all entrepreneurs do, just sort of. I like to say we. We jump and build the plane while we're in the air.

[Travis]

That's right.

[Saul Cohen]

Because that's. That's often how it feels. And. And so that was always there. I was always someone I just like creating. I was. I was quite, you know, builder, quite creative. And by the time I got to uni, I was just so frustrated with just being in education for so long. I was like, how we not made any money. I started my first business just tutoring just because I thought, oh, Well, I can tutor. Why can't I pay other people to tutor for me? And then we did that and then we thought, well, if we've got other tutors tutoring for us and they're paying us a commission, why can't we do this online and just take this out to the world? And maybe we're a little bit over ambitious for our, for our age, but I mean, that was cool. It was a great learning experience. And then sold that and then went to TWC and thought, okay, let's go learn. That's. Yeah.

[Travis]

So you kind of little bit of a backwards path from what most people do with something like a PwC. Like typically it's like you're going directly to those big four firms directly out of university most of the time. Right. Like you're not, it's not like hiatus, build a business, sell it, then go work for PwC.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah. I mean, the truth is that I didn't take a massive amount of time out because that first business was while I was at Unique. So I took an extra year. Gotcha. Yeah. And, but, and you know what? Initially we set it up, let's just fund our way through uni. And it did that and that was great. So, you know. Yeah. And then when it, when it surpassed that, you know, we sort of, we started toying with this idea of being the next like, you know, Facebook, you know, and we were just, we were going to try and fly off, you know, we could, if they can do it, why can't we? You know, we're at uni, let's go out. We've got this idea to change the world and educate the third world with students. And I'm sure we, we, we can, we, we've got a model that works. But I think in Hindsight, obviously hindsight's 20 20, we were just a little bit naive. One of the really interesting lessons for me at the time, we did. So we, we transitioned to an online tuition company. And there was an older gentleman who I knew he wasn't that old. He was maybe in his 40s, but way more experienced than us. And he'd set up a very similar company at the time. And I genuinely think that on the starting platform, I still today think this, we had a better platform, a better business in almost every way. But he made his business way more successful than ours. He sold his business. You know, actually it was the year I left PwC. He sold his business for £14 million. Wow. And we obviously we sold ours for a fraction of that. We were really Happy, but yeah, I

[Travis]

mean, you're happy to sell anything when you're 22.

[Saul Cohen]

Yes, exactly. But I think that was the first, that was the first message for me in that, in this idea that your ideas are only as valuable as the execution.

[Travis]

That's right.

[Saul Cohen]

I've always, I've always been an ideas person. I just, I love coming up with ideas and being creative and I always thought that those. That was really valuable. But actually the truth is, as this lesson showed me, is that it's all in the execution.

[Travis]

Yeah.

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[Travis]

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[Travis]

Like no real investor is going to sign his damn NDA to look at your pitch deck. They all the idea does not matter at all. It's only in the execution against the idea because it's never like name one company that's still like the exact same mission, vision, purpose, product service that they started with on day one. Like they don't exist. You know what I mean? You have to move and be flexible and pivot and take feedback and iterate and like that's all the work that comes in the execution of the idea which is that nobody's going to get there unless they get started doing the thing 100.

[Saul Cohen]

I think it's the as it touches on another I think really important point, not a really important lesson that I've always had is that, you know, there's no point getting overly stressed about your competition and competitors. And I'm taking everything than taking competition personally because I think even if everyone tried to copy you and your competition were to try and do everything that you did, they would not do it the way you do it, because they can't, because they're not you and they don't have your reason for being and your passion and, and everything else that makes you you. Yeah. And your business you. And I think that's. It's just such a powerful message to just keep reminding yourself because sometimes it's very easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of, oh, why is everyone copying everything I do? I wouldn't know, you know.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Saul Cohen]

And you know, just don't get wrapped up in that.

[Travis]

But that's where you want to be, you know. Cause like that, that we talked about, sometimes a competition, collaboration on the show, and the more like, the more I'm in this world, the more I start looking at the competition, quote unquote, being competitive with your quote unquote competitors in your space. A lot of that is just BS for a couple of reasons. Because like, first of all, like, if you can be collaborative rather than competitive, then a rising tide raises all ships and like, there's enough like the, the very idea of competition suggests that there's a scarce pool of buyers for the thing that you have.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah.

[Travis]

It's like, well, that's not necessarily true. There's like how many billions of people on the planet, you know, like just that's there. There's, there's a abundance of people out there who could use the product and service that you have. And if you're constantly like, you know, trying to bully other people in your industry in order to fight for the scraps on the table. It's just like, that doesn't make any sense, first of all. So being more collaborative tends to work out better long term anyway. But then secondly, like, the only person that makes to makes sense to compete with is yourself. Because if you are constantly copying what other competitors are doing in order to quote, unquote, stay competitive, you've already lost the game. You know what I'm saying? Like, you, like, you cannot allow other companies and what they're doing to dictate what you're going to do for the next 12 months of your business. Like, you have to take big swings. You have to innovate yourself and like you said, lean on the things that you do really well. And the Things that you. That make you unique versus going like, oh, well, that seems to be working for them. Let's copy that and do it. Do what they're doing. Like, well, you've already lost. You know what I mean? You're playing the wrong game.

[Saul Cohen]

Absolutely.

[Travis]

Saw your experience at PwC, how long were you there for?

[Saul Cohen]

So I think it was about four and a half years. Yeah, so. Or maybe just less. Yeah, so around four, four and a half years.

[Travis]

How did you find that time compared to the time that you were building the business, working for yourself?

[Saul Cohen]

So the truth is I loved it. I loved the work that we did because it was. We got to add real value to our clients. It was stressful, it was tough, they pushed us hard. But the work that we did, the people that I was working with was fantastic. You know, when you're in a room. And I think one of the things I've come to appreciate about PwC since leaving is just how incredible it was at the time at just creating, turning service into a production engine and getting people to think a certain way and have certain values and, you know, just build a real culture and a way of working. And I think actually that is quite unique. I think Covid hampered that a little bit. It made it much harder because a lot of that was osmosis and people working together. But that was. I was, I was there a really a point where that was sort of at its. At its peak and that was. It was a fantastic place to be. I think what I really missed though, was the buzz of entrepreneurship. You know, we did work with startups, big startups, but it's such a different engine at that size and they're just, they're growing for private equity investment and it's just wasn't where I wanted to be. I wanted to be working directly with entrepreneurs.

[Travis]

Yeah, it's sort of like the. It's sort of like the. Maybe I'm saying this incorrectly and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's sort of like the soulless version of what you do.

[Saul Cohen]

So I think so. I mean, if I speak to some of my old colleagues, they might disagree.

[Travis]

And of course, of course you find purpose in your work, but I understand what you're saying, though is just like when you're doing it for like, you know, private equity and massive organizations and, and corporations, you can kind of almost get lost in the sauce a little bit versus, like when you're talking to an individual founder who's like, got all their eggs in this one basket and they're like breathing the ethos of the company and forming the DNA. It's just like a different vibe, you know?

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah. I mean, it's definitely. It's definitely a smaller pond. Right. So it's not the big leagues. Yeah, but. But as you say, I just think there's. It's a different passion and it matters more to people because it. If you change the business, you've changed someone's life.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Saul Cohen]

More than just changing one person's life, you've changed the lives of countless people that this business affects.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Saul Cohen]

So, yeah, I love that part of it.

[Travis]

So what was step one leaving PwC for you? Was that, like. And I want to, if you can, as much as you can, divulge, like, your philosophy on personal finance during this time. Because I think this is a valuable conversation for people who are looking to jump into entrepreneurship and they're not 100% sure, like, do I need to have X number of months worth of Runway in my savings account? Do I need to, like, have a side hustle that's generating X amount of revenue before I leave? Like, did you have any of that in mind at that time?

[Saul Cohen]

So the truth is, personally, I'm a little bit cavalier and I probably would have just handed in my notice and I was just like, I'm done. Right.

[Travis]

That's it.

[Saul Cohen]

So good, so good, so good.

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[Saul Cohen]

But I am. I am married. And I was married at the time. Yeah. And my wife was much less cavalier. And so, yeah, I initially applied to PwC to set up my firm while I was still there.

[Travis]

Okay.

[Saul Cohen]

And they said no. And so what I did was I found another job. And at that, in that interview, I told them I've started a New business. I just want you to know that I'm running this business on the side.

[Travis]

Got it.

[Saul Cohen]

Won't get involved in my, in my current business, in my day to day job or my performance. But I want you to be aware of this. And they were really cool with it in the second job and that was fine. So it meant that actually my income went up because when I left PwC, I got a pay rise actually quite significant. It was like 30% pay rise. It was, it was great. Wow.

[Travis]

Do you think that was because you had worked at PwC?

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah, absolutely. And I went to work somewhere where it was much less of an intense environment. Yeah. I think also when you're at a place like PwC, you're. You take a pay cut because of the fact that you're going to have progression.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Saul Cohen]

And there is a route to partner and, and that's what you're working towards. And I didn't mind this because I knew I was starting my own business. But when I moved out, I was getting a pay rise because that progression had evaporated.

[Travis]

Real quick, before we talk more about your business and what you're focusing on right now, Saul, what type of, what type of money can somebody make in a career? Like if you just were like, hey, I'm going to grind this out at PwC for the rest of my career and I'm going to make this my core goal. What type of money would you hope to be making in a decade?

[Saul Cohen]

Two decades, three decades in PwC, they're making pretty good money. I think average partner take home when I Left was around £750,000 a year.

[Travis]

Okay.

[Saul Cohen]

Now obviously, like they're very restricted on how they take that money. It comes out of partnership and it gets paid to you and whatever. So if a business owner, you don't necessarily need to extract the income. You can leave it in the company and put it into different corporate structures and leave it. If you don't need to spend the money. Yeah. And you're investing it, you can invest it differently. So I think that's a material difference. I think a good partner at PwC could possibly be earning like, you know, 1.1.2. Okay. I think the highest partner take home was maybe like 5 million.

[Travis]

Sure, sure.

[Saul Cohen]

They've got a whole long. I think one of the things, one of the, one of the points where I realized I wanted to leave was when I realized that there were more levels above partner than below it.

[Travis]

More levels above partner than below it.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah.

[Travis]

How long would it take to get to Partner.

[Saul Cohen]

So I think partner. That was the other, the other point was that. So when we started, the new partners had been at PwC for between 13 to 15 years. At the point where I left, the new partners had been there between 16 and 18 years. So yes, the length of time to get to partner was also, was also increasing.

[Travis]

And then realizing that it was like, that's like step one, basically. There's like an infinite layers above that to go after that.

[Saul Cohen]

I think in fairness it's changing now because there's a retiring generation and I didn't quite realize that it was like sort of the peak and so it came back down again.

[Travis]

Okay.

[Saul Cohen]

But yeah, I think that that was, that was the fact that there were more levels above partner and that it just never changed. You're always like looking for the next thing and the next thing and I just, that was too much for me. I was just like, yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

Well, like you said, it's just a self, self awareness to recognize what you want out of life. You know, it's just like actually putting in 70 hours a week working on somebody else's business and never being to exit that hamster wheel. Sounds like something I prefer not to do. And I think I'd rather own my own, my own time and schedule, which is now obviously what you do now. So tell me a little bit more about what you got going on now. Tell me a little bit about the book and what you're helping founders do these days.

[Saul Cohen]

Cool. So yeah, so now we are an accounting firm. We specialize in helping basically successful business owners throughout their journey. So it's specialized tax planning and then acquisitions and then preparing for exit. So if you think about customer journey, we've got our classic client comes in, they're making really good money, good profits, but they're paying loads of tax. So they think, how can I pay less tax? So we come in, we do a tax structure for them, help optimize their tax environment, and then we support them with acquisitions. What ended up happening was we got really good at acquisitions. So now we're actually supporting on acquisitions even outside of the uk. So that's become just quite interesting. And then once, once a successful business owner makes a number of acquisitions themselves, they're probably looking at exiting a business or their own business, depending on how they've structured things. And then we support them with the exit. So that's, we are an accounting firm, so we do sort of your standard, you know, five year end filings and all of that stuff. But what really makes us different is the fact that we can do this. So the, either tax planning and the, and, and the invest and sort of the acquisition stuff. And the reason why that to me made such a big difference is because I think actually small changes can really accumulate over your, Your lifestyle, your, your, your business life. And you know, even something as small as saving 4,000 pounds in tax, if you do that every year and invest it for the period of, you know, let's say you're 40 years of working life, that's an extra million pounds in retirement. Yeah, right. And so small incremental gains can make such a big difference to someone's, to someone's lifestyle when they finish this game. That's really what I wanted to do. I wanted, I wanted to make a firm that allows people to exit the game in a better position to create real change in their lifestyle, so. In their lifestyles. Yeah. And that was one of the reasons I wrote the book actually, because I just thought, do you know what? I want to get this message out to as many people as possible. You know, I want people to understand valuations. And one of the best, I think it's funny because it's almost backwards. I think it's a prob. People don't understand the valuation on their business. And so when they come to sell their businesses, they often struggle and it causes a whole host of problems in terms of planning and understanding that, what their retirement looks like, etc. And one of the things that I found is that business owners are way more successful in their second business. And quite often business owners, they think they want to retire, but they really want, there's a break. And I often get a call two years after someone sold a business and they say, oh yeah, by the way, I've started a new business. I got a bit bored and I'm

[Travis]

bored and, or depressed now.

[Saul Cohen]

Yeah, exactly. And lo and behold, that business will scale, by the way, within 18 months it will be at the same size as the business that they'd sold previously. And it really, it just got me thinking. I was like, you know what? Actually, if business owners understood the acquisition process earlier in the game, yeah. They would be more comfortable with, with acquisitions, making acquisitions. They would be able to scale their businesses because often their businesses plateau. So they would be able to get beyond that plateau, which would be great in of itself. They would be able to get, create more capital events in their life because they would be able that they would have the confidence to sell a business when it plateaus and buy a new one because now they understand the game of acquisitions. And that would create more wealth for them. And even if they do none of that and they make an acquisition that flops on its face when they sell their business, they are that much more aware of what acquisitions look like and how to generate wealth and how to increase valuation. Because often, you know, valuations, they're all done on a multiple and there's a multiple range. But you know what, there's a really big difference between, you know, I say it's going to be between a three and a four times multiple or three and a five times multiple. That's a really big number. That difference is material to people's lives. And I think being able to do anything that moves the needle on that number is massive. And that was what prompted me to write this book.

[Travis]

Do you see much activity in the online acquisition space? Like, is that, are there as many, you know, M&A's happening to grow digital companies as there are to grow, you know, physical brick and mortars or home services type companies?

[Saul Cohen]

It's interesting you say that actually, because if you'd asked me this two months ago, I would have said no, absolutely not. But in the last couple of months, I have seen a little bit of an uptick. I don't think it will be the same, quite simply because I think the biggest driver right now of, of acquisitions in the world, as everyone's talking about it, you know, this, this baby boomer revolution, you know, they're retiring and they're selling up. And I think most businesses being bought right now are the, the boomers businesses. Yeah. But I do think that there is the message is getting out there that, you know, entrepreneurs don't set up a business and stick with it for 40 years. They set up a business, they run it for five years, they sell it, and then they set up another one and they do it again. And I think when business owners do that, they actually build more and more success, they learn more. Because I think often what ends up happening is we set up a business, run it for five years, hit a plateau, don't have the energy or drive to want to get beyond that plateau, don't know who to turn to for help, maybe get burnt a few times, and we just sort of leave it and let it go. And so I think, you know, just going through that cycle a few times just helps relieve that.

[Travis]

Sure, yeah. The new book, Finding Gold. If you're listening right now and you're interested in the acquisition strategy and maybe setting up your business for a healthier acquisition in the future, then you owe it to yourself to go pick up a copy of Finding Gold, which is Saul Cohen's new book. Saul, where else can people go to get more from you?

[Saul Cohen]

Absolutely. LinkedIn is the best place. I'm posting on there regularly. People can always reach out to me. Let me know how you're, you know, if you find out about valuation your business or, you know, you, you've said, oh, yeah, look, that really resonated. Let me know. I always love hearing people's stories and stuff, so just reach out.

[Travis]

So go check out Saul Cohen over on LinkedIn and then his book Finding Gold coming out very shortly. Saul, appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. I don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problem solving. But it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.