Anyone purchase Buy Then Build's Masterclass bundle?
April 15, 2022
by a searcher from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management in Atlanta, GA, USA
I'm speaking about the online courses and content offered by Buy Then Build. I am curious if anyone has used them and, if so, what your thoughts were on the course? They are currently running a promo.
from Washington University in St. Louis in St. Louis, MO, USA
Let me explain my mission, product line up, and why I built the Masterclass and we'll see if it helps!
The truth is that it took me 14 years and my entire net worth (plus as much PG bank loans I could get) to learn how to acquire businesses successfully. I felt entrepreneurs and MBA grads were missing a very important third option and it became my mission to help change people's minds about what entrepreneurship could be. I spent 4 and a half years writing Buy Then Build which today, has--I say this with immense gratitude to its readers--helped so many.
I built the Masterclass because people wanted it after I wrote the book (it was originally called Six Months to CEO which was never good enough for me, so we did a huge upgrade to build the Masterclass). I was literally cornered in a public bathroom at one point with someone wanting help finding and buying a company! So I built an online class.
However, I built the Acquisition Lab to be the absolute best training and coaching for acquisition entrepreneurship (i.e. private market, lower middle market and main street acquisitions). It's made up of education (beyond the Masterclass), tools and resources, coaching (including on your specific deals), and community.
We are a vetted community. Last year we accepted 25% of applicants, admitting 150 searchers and closed ~35 transactions totaling $60+ million in value (hey, this means I worked on 47 closed transactions last year!). We've also had a few decide to become brokers and got hired immediately for their in-depth knowledge of the private markets.
I'm okay, our team is supernatural, and the membership group is absolutely exceptional. I hope we've built the most impactful program out there. At least, this has always been the goal (and I've wanted to build it for over 10 years).
I spent 235 hours on Zoom last year with the Lab members but it's a far cry from "the Walker Deibel Show." and we have 4 other coaches/instructors in the intensive portion (first 4 weeks), and 4 others in the monthly ongoing sessions, and 1 dedicated to our private Slack channel. Our Managing Director of the Lab, Chelsea Wood, for example, ran biz dev for a company and grew it by $3 billion through acquisition. She has a master's in organizational psychology and spent 5 years in post merger integration and is a certified M and A professional.
Truth be told, the book is probably a must have for any searcher at $17 (along with the Stanford Primer and HBR Guide);
The Masterclass is potentially a little expensive at $1,500-2,000 since it's a solo information exchange--unless you also hang out on Searchfunder or the free Buy Then Build Facebook group. Don't get me wrong, the content is solid, it's the next step in the journey, and it's a very inexpensive MBA-style course (but take my class at the Olin School of Business if you really want an MBA experience--or any other MBA program offering it as it's more weighted towards search fund track). However, I will add that the Masterclass easily cost me a low six-figure investment to build and it's really intended for those that either don't get accepted to the Lab (~75% of applicants), don't yet trust the Acquisition Lab is a transformational experience, or those that know they want the next step without needing to jump in to a with both feet.
The Acquisition Lab is the best deal at $5,000 (we really need to raise the price because it's largely subsidized--by me). I reinvest all of the money into the program and resources for members (spare about $24,000 in###-###-#### and we (hopefully) help our members get results via an "unpacked" do-it-with-you buy side advisory experience.
Saadat is right (although I'm flattered he thinks this is a controversial statement!). I had a potential MBA student ask me why they should take my MBA class if they could just read the book and go do it. I told him if he was going to go do it then he didn't need my class! The Masterclass is for people that want more. The Acquisition Lab is for people that are going to succeed.
Times are so different in this space now. Everything is out there. However, I am so glad I went and got my MBA. The education and cohort changed my life, accelerated my career, and surrounded me in a support network. I hope we bring world-class education, a vetted community of future CEOs, and the guidance and tools to succeed.
One of the first things I found when I started looking to buy a business in 2004 was that this private market is so opaque and fragmented. There are so many subjective opinions, uneducated brokers, sophisticated brokers, hidden value, misuse of information... I hope we can help searchers chip away at these problems in whatever format you like! ; )
You have plenty of options and thanks for considering, Andy! I truly believe they are all compliments to each other. Do the things that will lead to the outcome you desire and you will get there.
The search community is so open and helpful in my experience. I even called Jim Southern, the first entrepreneur of a formal search fund (HBS grad). We had never met and had a delightful conversation about the origins of search funds versus going it alone. I ended up integrating him into my keynote at MIT (I discovered he wasn't the only one in Boston that year transforming entrepreneurship forever).
Hope this helps!
Walker
from Texas Christian University in Dallas, TX, USA