Tyrus Shivers breaks down the operator-to-owner mindset shift, capital raising strategies, and the business systems that get founders past $1M, and beyond.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners · Solopreneurs · Founders between $500K and $10M · Leaders building scalable systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear framework for shifting from operator to owner, practical capital raising strategies, and a roadmap for building a business that attracts real investor funding.
Most founders don't have a growth problem. They have a capital problem, and they don't know it yet.
Tyrus Shivers is the founder and CEO of Legacy Wealth Capital Group and creator of the Legacy Business Operating System (LBOS). He spent years mentoring over 2,000 businesses a year through incubators, accelerators, and economic development programs. What he found every time was the same bottleneck, founders thinking like operators when the business needed an owner.
After losing $200,000 during the pandemic while juggling 40 to 50 simultaneous projects, Tyrus didn't fold. He rebuilt with a system. In this episode he walks through exactly what that system looks like — and how any founder can apply it.
What you'll learn:
Key topics covered:
Connect with Tyrus Shivers:
Website: Legacy Wealth Capital Group
Capital Raising Academy: capitalraisingacademy.com
LinkedIn: Tyrus Shivers
YouTube: Legacy Wealth Capital Group
Instagram: legacywealthcapitalgroup
Facebook: legacywealthcapitalgroup
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NEXT STEPS
Bernie (00:18)
What if the thing keeping your business stuck isn't your effort? It's your system. If you're grinding every day, but that business still needs you in every room, you're not alone. That's not a work ethic problem, that's a systems problem. And today's guest has spent years solving exactly that. Tyrus Shivers is the founder and CEO of Legacy Wealth Capital Group. He works with entrepreneurs who are ready to stop running their business on hustle alone.
And start building something that actually scales. His flagship framework, the Legacy Business Operating System, known as LBOS, has helped founders raise more than $300 million in growth capital. Before all this, Tyrus served in the US Air Force. Then he built a seven figure business. Then he watched it take $200,000 hit during the pandemic. He didn't fold. He codified every lesson and built something stronger.
One small thing about Terrace. The man once copied the fastest Morse code on the planet. We're gonna have to ask him about that one. And his mind works fast and it works in systems. Find him at legacywealthcapital group dot com and on LinkedIn at Tyrus Shivers. Tyrus absolute pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Do you have a favorite quote or say?
Tyrus (01:31)
Yeah, you know, my favorite quote is business is not easy, but it's simple. And we often overcomplicate business and that's why a lot of founders stay stuck.
Bernie (01:42)
I'm interested about the Morse code. What what's the scoop on that one? I I mean that that that caught you know, we're gonna get on the main subject, but tell me about the Morse code and fastest gun in the west, so to speak.
Tyrus (01:52)
Yeah, absolutely. So my AFSC, my job in the Air Force was a signals intelligence analyst. And what that is, is a fancy way of saying I'm a person that snatched radio waves out of the air and made them intelligible or understandable for intelligence purposes. And as a part of that training, I learned Morse code. And when I went to Korea, and many, many places, people say Morse code, people still use Morse code.
Every country uses Morse code still to this day. And so when I was stationed in Korea, the Morse code that we were copying was automated. And so automated Morse code is not a manual person, it's a computer generating it. And so I had to learn how to listen and hear and track some of the fastest commute computer generated Morse code on the planet.
Bernie (02:42)
Wow, it's almost like learning a different language except it's beeps and b
Tyrus (02:45)
Dis
and does. Yeah, dis and does.
Bernie (02:47)
Well, that is a pretty attentive point. So you've you've developed a system now, a business system. The pandemic kind of put you through a grinder. what was life before you had that system set up? Like how yeah, you you exited out of the military, you started a business and all of a sudden what was it like and then what happened next?
Tyrus (03:07)
Yeah. So in between the being medically retired from the Air Force, I did go into government contracting. And that was as a systems integration engineer, system administrator. So systems have always been a part of my ecosystem, my life, my job. But I realized in that time I wouldn't get rich working for the government. I made a lot of money, but I wouldn't get wealthy.
That's when I moved into real estate. And I had a really great mentor, and he was all about systems. He was prior Navy. He had he was running three or four businesses. He was the guy to know. And he taught me how to really start a business, which was the property management business that I took from zero to about 1.3 million in 18 months based on a system. Now, I had little shink and kinks in my system, which is why I took a loss. And that loss was the bottleneck.
Even though I had a system, even though we were able to scale rapidly, I was still the bottleneck of the business because I was thinking like an operator instead of an owner. I had been trained as an operator. That's what I did was operate very well. But to scale a business and grow it, you have to move from operation to ownership. And now I have another hat and I'll tell you about that other hat a little bit later.
Bernie (04:22)
Wow. So
Yeah, that you know, when you realize that, you know, the pandemic rolls in, smothers everything, you're the operator. I guess you're you're in the forest, you can't see the forest. You you're you're not having a bird's eye view, you're on the ground, right? So how did you shift? How did you realize listen, I I gotta I gotta get me some altitude. I I'm sorry about these air force punts, you know, the the the flight puns here. But what what what brought about the
Let's let's get some altitude here to get a really good eyes view. And what brought you into that space? Was it was your mentor? Like, you know, what triggered it?
Tyrus (04:57)
Yeah, absolutely. So what triggered it was in that time period, 2019 and 2020, I was running a property management company. I was doing contracting work for other clients, and I was flipping houses. And so I was doing probably 40 to 50 projects in that that span of a year at once, all going at the same time.
And so when you're the operator, I'm paying everybody. I'm checking the work everybody's doing. I'm talking to the clients. My team is fielding a lot of the tenant complaints, tenant issues, things like that, but it still comes up to me to make a decision. So to your point, I didn't have a bird's eye view. Contractor tell me the job is done. I send them a payment. Then when I finally get around to check it, job's not done.
So now I got to repay somebody else to go in. And that's where the losses come in. It wasn't that I was doing a bad job. It was that I wasn't paying enough attention because I didn't have the high-level view. I was only day-to-day view. I got to pay these people. I got to get this done. I got to get it out of the door. And so what triggered me was I'm running out of money. I got to go get a credit card. I got to go get a loan. And I'm racking up debt.
And then project timeline start to slide. So now clients are unhappy. And for me, it was more important for the client to be happy and whole than for me to win. So now I'm taking losses because now I'm saying, okay, you don't have to pay me the full amount due because we ran late. We went over. I'll eat those costs. And as I start eating those costs, 20 grand, 40 grand, 100 grand.
200,000, 200 200,000 plus bad credit, not able to pay off the debt. I said, I need a change. And it's depressing. You start crying at night. You you don't know how do you what the next day is gonna be. And I went to another mentor, a separate guy, and I told him, I said, I'm about two hundred grand in the hole. My credit is shot. And he said, You know.
You you lose about 200 grand. I lost over 4 million in an airline deal. I said, 4 million? What did you do? He said, I put the blinders on and started thinking like an owner instead of just an operator. So it took a third party, a mentor to say, you know what? You lost money, but you ain't lost no real money. Number one. And number two.
You need to elevate yourself because if you continue doing the day-to-day work, you'll never get out of it. So I started looking at business in a different viewpoint on let me be focused on growing the business and not just doing the day-to-day of the work.
Bernie (07:37)
So is that where the legacy business operating system kicks in?
Tyrus (07:40)
The legacy business operating system is a culmination of all of the lessons learned in business that I have over the years, from running my own companies, from serving as a fractional COO in other businesses and consulting them on growth and scale, from mentoring hundreds of businesses. I believe I probably mentor at least 2,000 businesses a year.
Through different incubators, accelerators, counties, economic development programs, and hearing the issues that all these small businesses under $10 million of revenue have, from taking principles from corporate businesses that are doing billions of dollars. And then I learned and I saw that business is real simple, not easy, but the legacy business operating system, I call it LBOS, was birthed out of that.
You need to focus on sales, marketing, product or service delivery, customer success, and financial principles. That's it. That's real simple. It's not easy, but that's it. That's all business is.
Bernie (08:42)
So are you finding though what I've heard in past from past experts when they they say, listen, if you look into scale, one of the things you have to have is a really good SOP standard operating procedures. And is that is that part of that box of things that you gotta have in place? That way, you know, it's not you always washing the dishes, it's it's someone else you know, you can hot swap the rolls out either between yourself
Or even your players that you the people you hire around you.
Tyrus (09:11)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And Michael McAllowicks wrote a book called Fits This Next. And he talked about, and I know he's changed the name since then, but in the beginning was a business hierarchy of needs. And he talked about sales, profit, order, transformation, legacy. Order is where SOPs come in. It's where you start to systematize the business. It's where you start to make efficient what's already effective. However,
Before you get to that third rung in the pyramid, you need to focus on sales and profit. Because without money, it's almost impossible to become efficient. Because you need money to hire people. You need money to put software, AI, automations, expand, all these things. You need money to do that. And so where I like businesses to start in the beginning, when you're just a solo founder, yes. Open up your Word document.
Google document, real low-tech, just step one, step two, step three, step four on how I conduct my day-to-day business. That's your SOP. In the beginning, that is all you need. Too many owners try to get too focused on SOPs, building out these elaborate systems, and then they don't have the capital to implement them, and it never goes anywhere. So, yes, you need SOPs. They're important to business valuation. If you ever want to sell or want someone to acquire you, but in the beginning,
Keep it as simple as possible, literally step one, step two, step three of how I do this specific thing in my business.
Bernie (10:40)
When when people talk about listen, I'm gonna scale my comp scale the company or or start a company and then scale it, et cetera, that usually involves budget. And usually budget means you you figure it out like, yeah, what's gonna happen next? Like what are where you know, where's the revenue coming from? Where are the expenses going? And you know, do you have an investment component, you know, capital expense, which is you know, which is like condo fees for lack of better words, right? Versus actual day-to-day expenses.
All this means then you have kind of a you got a sense of where you want to be next in your one, year two, you so do you is is strategy part of it? Like where do you want to end up? Like are you looking to grow the business, scale it, and then flip it? Are you looking to grow it, scale it, and then you know buy another business to help complement it? How do you how do you how do you map that out?
Tyrus (11:29)
Yeah, 100%. Starts with vision. That's where we start. Before we do anything, before even when I'm mentoring businesses, I ask them, what is the vision? Because what I'm finding is most founders, especially startup founders, I like to call them accidental business landlords. Just like accidental landlords. I moved from my property, I kept it, I moved some tenants in. I had no idea about being a landlord. Now I'm learning the hard way. That's most startups.
They worked a nine to five. They either needed some more money, the extra income, or they felt like, I know how to do this. I'm gonna start my own business. But you didn't know all of the components of being a business owner. You knew operational skills, not business owner. So when I asked, what is the vision for this business? What is the vision for you? A lot of them don't know. They haven't thought that far out. They just wanted to have their own thing. And we do.
start 20 years out, 15 years out to say to your point, what is your exit strategy? Are you keeping this business and it's going to be generation and you're going to pass it down to your kids, which we know a large amount of children aren't taking over family businesses right now. So is that one? Are you going to sell it? Are you going to go public? Or are you going to shut it down? Something's going to happen. There's going to be an exit event, whether you plan it or not. So what is it? Once I know the exit event,
I can help them dial backwards into how to get there and all the functions of the business, the systems, the processes to get there. We know that most businesses don't ever do over a million dollars in revenue.
Even fewer ever hit $10 million. So I like to set the target at $10 million in revenue per year. And we work backwards from there. But that strategic planning, that what is your goal, what is your vision, that starts first. Without that, the rest is moot.
Bernie (13:20)
So a company starts up and and they're ramping up and they want to scale and you know, there it's almost like there's certain pressure points, right? That you're going, get past this pressure point. You gotta let let go. Don't, you know, hold on to it. What are the flags for companies that you've seen that are there's there's there's momentum there, you know, there there's there there's energy, but they're bottlenecking. Is it is it is it
staffing issues, is it funding issues, is it maybe poor strategy, in which case they they hadn't talked to you yet. But you know, let's say someone walks in halfway through their growth cycle and they're going, Harris, help me, help me.
Tyrus (13:57)
Yeah, so I like to do a diagnostic. I like to ask them, of course, what is their current revenue? Who do they have on their team? What's the vision? But most of the time, all and I've had a couple of back and forths about this with different people. They I always say the issue is capital. It's always money. Because if you need more team members, what do you need to hire them? Money. If you need systems in place, what do you need? Money.
So for me, it always usually dialed back to capital. You hit these plateaus because you run into a capital situation. You either need to hire more people once you start getting around 500K in revenue. I've seen most of my clients meet me at that one million to three million mark, and they have a handful of virtual assistants. Founders still the face of the business.
They don't have a CPA on board. They have a bookkeeper. So they don't have any anybody really going through the financials. And they plateau right there. And so they bring me in. I look at it from an operational standpoint. I'm like, okay, we need to hire more people. We need to bring in a CPA or a very good accountant. And you probably need an attorney. That'll get us to about 8 million. Now we need to start hiring leaders.
Not assistants, not admins, not people you have to tell what to do. You need a leadership team. Once we hire that leadership team, that takes them above that eight to 10 and plus. When you get to around 10 million, you start looking at product service delivery. How do you add more products? How do you increase or become more efficient again? So that requires more systems, more technology, either better operators on the team.
So now that all costs money to do. And so usually I see the benchmarks of getting to that first 500K, getting to about 3 million, 8 to 10 million, and in between 10 and 15 is a plateau. 15 and 25 is a plateau. Same core issues on a different scale.
Bernie (15:52)
questions immediately popped in my head going yeah you need to hire a team and then one thing I've I've learned that in for my corporate backstory there are different CEOs in other words you're not always the face right and so you have someone running the company for you etc and sometimes you need the adventuresome type of soul or a bit of a pirate
Not necessarily a you know total pirate, you know, you know, not nothing criminal here, but you know, the kind of a Jack Sparrow kind of esque moment versus someone who's very if they get any more, how should I say, conservative, and this isn't this isn't politic, it's just conservative as in, you know, they they they're not gonna gamble anything at any point in time. Their risk taking is super low. How do you pick?
The mix. I is is there a kind of a formula that you cover in this space or do you just push it out to an outside consultant to say, listen, this this is this is the recipe, this is who you should be hiring to manage the next phase.
Tyrus (16:46)
Yeah, I love it. Great question. So doc back in the nineteen hundreds, Dr. William Marston was an attorney and a lawyer at Harvard, came up with the premise that all humans have four distinct behavioral characteristics and he gave them letters the D, the I, the S, and the C from the disc. And so that decisive individual who deals with problems, interactive, who deals with people, the S is the person that is deals with pace for stability.
And C is more the compliance, conscientious person. And so on your team, you want a combination of those people. You need a problem solver, a people person, a behind the scenes people person, and that can take care of the people. And you need your compliance person who's going to be skeptical and check everything. So whether or not they are the CEO, COO, CFO.
You need those people in leadership or the characteristics. We all typically have about two that are our primary that we're strong at. And then we have two that are more by limitation. So if you think of strengths and limitation, we usually have two that were strong and two that were limited. You want to make sure when you assess your team, you have balance. You can have a high D, high I. Problem solver, people person out in the front. Bullet points.
They're not looking at any details. Well, you need a high S and a high C to go look at the details to support that person. So as long as you have a team full of those people, and this goes all the way down to the employee base, you have a healthy company.
Bernie (18:17)
So all that all that to say though that you need money. So how do you get the money if the money is not in other words, if I'm selling widgets and I or I make widgets to sell widgets and you know I I need to hire people so I can sell more. And so so the chicken before the egg story coming up here. how how do you sort that out? How do you get that extra money? I guess you call it capital.
Tyrus (18:39)
Yeah, absolutely. So I bootstrap my first four companies. I would never bootstrap another company. I might as well as far as I would never start another company. I just buy one that's already existing. And there are avenues to do that. But there are investor dollars sitting out there in the world looking for great investments. As a small business owner, depending on your country.
And you have different laws in different countries, but in the US, we have exemptions that allow us to raise capital from investors. One such exemption is a regulation CF, which is regulation crowdfunding, which says that I can raise up to five million dollars per year from accredited and non-accredited investors using general solicitation, meaning I can market and I can say I'm raising money. And so
I recommend businesses go and raise the capital from investors because they are funding deals and looking for deals. And you all have a deal. I think this goes into Bernie, the taking off the operator and owner hat and putting on the investor hat and thinking differently about the business. Most of us think of our business as our baby. We love the business. we got to take care of it and nurture it. An investor looks at the business as an asset.
So if I'm looking at my business as an asset, I need to get capital. I need to get ROI. I need to know what's going to give me the return. So capital is out there. Are we having the right conversations to draw the right people with the right vision and the right strategic plan that's so appealing that a person says, you know what? I want to support you.
Bernie (20:15)
slow someone down not to do that what w what would make them hesitant like or or risk adverse because nothing's a hundred percent sure in life right anything anything from winning a lottery ticket you know you got your key employee winning a lottery ticket to the there's a bus and you just met it the hard way right you know it's a series of unfortunate events how do they get past that what like what do you to help them go
This is the time to launch.
Tyrus (20:42)
Yeah, for business owners specifically, thinking differently, failing fast, knowing that if you look at the history of business, most of them fail multiple times, went bankrupt, all these types of things, but then they became great because they kept sticking through it. They kept trying. And so for especially from an investor standpoint, when I tell business to go raise capital, they have all these horror stories of what they've heard.
Not what they've experienced, but what they've heard. And a lot of what they've heard is false. So we spend a lot of time at Lakesville Capital Group educating business owners on capital raising. We have a capital raising academy that just tells you everything you need about raising capital. Really getting a business because the first number one thing I always hear is, well, they're going take over my business. Well, depending on how your paperwork and your governance documents are structured, there's no way they can take over your business.
That Martin Zuckerberg with Facebook has Class V shares where he has 10 to 1 voting rights. They're not taking over his business. Whether he has the economic percentage or not, if you look at Bill Gates and Alibaba's founder, all of them, they own less than 20% of the company, but their voting control is often over the 51%. So you're not taking over their business. It's all about structure.
Of that company. And so that's one of the hesitancies out here. Well, well, if I go out of business and lose the investors' money, the investors know this. This is why they're investors. They're taking a chance. They know they're going to lose some deals. Venture capital, nine out of 10 fail. They just need one to become a unicorn to make all the money up for the others. So they know that it's risky. That's why you have your disclosures.
Your disclosures list all of the risk. When the investor signs, they have an understanding. So there's no real risk of raising capital. It's all about clarity, disclosure, and just having the right knowledge and system to do it properly.
Bernie (22:43)
So the risk one thing I've I've I've seen with the in the lending space, you know, the higher the risk, the higher the percentage of interest. Is there is there a balance in that where, you know there's certain types of companies, this is a multi multi layer question, I guess. Is there certain types of companies, you know, they're gonna be they have a percentage of risk. I think if you think of restaurants, for example.
you know, their their shelf life may not be typically as good as someone that makes toilet paper because every everybody's gonna need or toothpaste, you know. Everybody's gonna need that. So if you're a manufacturer, that is is there kind of a sweet spot? Is if you're looking at a business coming in and they going, you're the restaurant version, and nothing against restaurants, right? Because there are chains out there, they're the franchises, they're functioning.
You know, there's a couple of the one, you know, that I can think of right now. They're global, you know, the golden arches, right? That's still thriving. and then you have other other companies on the other side, you know, that you know might have faded or got merged in. All that said, is there is there kind of a sweet spot where when you're looking at a company, say, listen, you're gonna raise money, but you know, you're you're gonna have to return more money back either at a expedited rate or
You know, there's 'cause there's a higher risk with you versus another. Do you have those conversations with companies?
Tyrus (24:03)
Yeah. And I always tell these types of companies to number one, have your CPA attorney really in this mix with you so you can understand it. But to your point, there's different structures. So it might not be an equity investment. It might be pure debt because this is risky and I want my money back in two years at a two X return of what I gave you. And so you can set the interest rate and the payment. It might be Rev share. Well
I want money back every month, every quarter, every six months until I get two times my money back. So there are different ways to structure the return of the money or what the security is backing that investment that a business owner just has to kind of flesh out and put out there. Now, what I also tell business owners is you need to structure this with your team. Because if you go to the investor and let them structure it, they're going to structure it.
for their benefit. That's where you get firms saying, you know what, I'll back you, but I want 20%. I want 30%. Well, that might not be the best route for you, but if you are emotional, if you're stuck or you feel like you're really, really stuck and I really need this money, you might make a bad deal based on that, because now you've given them the power. So you have to structure your deal to where it works for you and then push that out to the world.
with the right exemptions, with the right financial instrument that's been approved and now you're legal. And then the investors that are willing to invest underneath that, underneath those terms will come.
Bernie (25:35)
There's one layer of the business management. We I mean we talked we talked about the CEO, the CFO, you know, you can go from fractional to full time. What about governance? D is a board of governors a key element to this too, if you're hitting certain certain levels, like when do you need a board of governors?
Tyrus (25:55)
Absolutely. So from the very onset with a corporation, a C Corp, you need a board of directors. Most of the time you have your first two, three, depends on if you're a single solo founder, if you have partners, that's the board. Then when you start raising capital, of course, some capital providers will want to seat on the board. But as you start to grow that company, even if you're just an LLC and you are member managed or
My recommendation is always have your board of advisors, whether they're in the corporate governance documents as being a true board, or whether they're just sitting outside the company as advisors. That's where you need your attorney sitting in a seat as a board, as an advisor, your CPA, someone in the industry that you're in that's done what you've done and that's willing to mentor you should sit outside on that seat as well.
So I say from the very beginning, you need a board of advisors. Now corporately, once you see corp, you have to have a board. It's a part of that. But corporately, as you start to get larger and larger, 500,000, a million, two million, you definitely want to start creating positions or seats because one person can't see it all.
Bernie (27:06)
So we've ta we've talked about hi, I'm the business person and you know I'm growing and help me, et cetera. Do you also flip it around and work with investors then to to find the best fit? So because everybody has a certain flavor, like you know, sometimes maybe I like apple pie, right? And the other person likes blueberry, right? More so than the other. Do you also do that kind of match matchmaking?
Tyrus (27:31)
We don't matchmake, but we do provide education around different opportunities of investing. And so we do talk to accredited investors about what does it look like to put your money in a venture capital fund or private equity, private credit, or any of these other private funds? What does that look like? What does investing in a stock market look like? What does investing in small cap companies look like? Or investing in these private companies through broker dealers or
Federal register portals and what does it mean? So we do a lot of educational content around these different investing avenues, the pump, the positives and the negatives, the risk factors, the historical returns. And then we just show them ways you can research and find and create a thesis around okay, what type of investor are you? So for me personally, no advice to anybody else out there. I like small cap companies.
Those are your companies that are underneath that $1 billion mark because they can move a whole lot further. I give you an example. Let's take an Amazon stock and just round numbers. Let's say Amazon is trading at $250 a share. How many shares can an individual person actually buy at $250 a share? Five, ten at a time? And so now.
When Amazon moves from two hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred and sixty dollars and I have ten shares, I'm moving a hundred dollars in what I own.
Not a whole lot of money. But if I get in a small cap company who is at eight dollars a share and they do something great and they move to fifty dollars a share.
That growth is much more lucrative than if I had a handful of Amazon. Now, doesn't mean I'm telling people not to go invest in the stock market large cap companies. What it means is most people who make real money from large cap stocks are people who can drop a million dollars in the market. They can drop $2 million in the market. That, and you see it because that's the growth that they can see. For those of us who
or just spending the five thousand, ten thousand here and there, small cap markets, private companies getting ready with an idea to go public, those are your companies that I like to look at.
Bernie (29:44)
things popped in as you're describing it so stock market would you recommend a company get themselves listed on a stock market at a certain point of size or because there are other companies I know that are really super successful out of the US one that's I believe it's privately held and it's called Epic. They they do the health health and this isn't a plug for Epic just I I just know the backstory because it anyhow
th there there's a s there's a a cross connection but they're they're held privately. does that make sense? Does it make sense to be private? Does it make sense to be public? And if you know is it like I'm going to divest myself or Apple's obviously public, right? And so is Amazon, right? So what what what guides you in that path?
Tyrus (30:27)
So that's a another great question. And I think going back to the beginning, it all is based on the vision of the company. What is your vision for that company? Now, that being said, my partners in Legacy Capital Group took a company public 20 years ago. And we're planning on taking our company public in about five to seven years. And one of our missions is to help 10,000 companies go public by sharing the information.
We do believe that real wealth, generational wealth, is created in the public markets when you first take that company public. Because of course, you have your shares in the beginning, they're privately held. All your early investors are private, they're privately holding shares. But when you go from and think about it, let's just say I think it's Nvidia. Nvidia stock private or shares private were, I believe, nine cents.
When the first investors got in. Now, can you imagine opening up at $100, $50? And the the market that's buying at when you IPO, they're buying at the IPO price. They feel great about it, but the shares they're buying are the shares from those early investors. So if I bought in my shares at nine cents and I opened up in the public market at $20, I'm dropping my shares in the market to these people that are paying.
So those are your overnight millionaires. That's why your Martin Zuckerberg of the world become billionaires when they go public. Because they own so many shares. Those shares are now valued in the public market. So we believe that there's a pathway for every company to go public and that they should. Now it's a lot of governance. You're in the public scrutiny. It's a lot of compliance, rules, regulations, money that it costs to go public. But
There's a pathway to do it. You don't have to go straight to the New York Stock Exchange. You could go to OD OTC markets over the counter and then step your way up lists from OTC to NASDAQ to New York if you want to go to New York. You can do direct listing. So I did a training on the six ways to go public. So that's a part of, I think every business can think about that. But if you really want to create wealth and you have a great idea, great product, great service.
It's a pathway for you.
Bernie (32:40)
You mentioned something earlier and it's I I think it's I've heard it expressed before and I I I think it's really kinda cool to hear it c come back again 'cause it it provides merit. Buy a company instead of create one. Why?
Tyrus (32:54)
It's just so much easier. It's just so it's so much easier. let's think about it. When you start a company from scratch, you have to one, make sure your product or service has market fit, test that product or service, build it, put all the money in for marketing. You're really sweating, blood, sweat, and tears to grow it, doing everything you can. Now, why don't I go look at a company?
That's already existing, that's already doing good revenue, already have product market fit, and make an offer. And oftentimes, especially here, you can do an SBA loan, 7A and 10% down. So if a company's selling for $2 million, I can get into that business at $200K. Well, I don't have $200K. Well, you can bring in an equity partner.
And they can take partial ownership for a number of years and you can buy them out five years later, and they can bring the equity part to that table. So you can get into a business with no money down, has to be structured properly. But it's possible. That's simpler. It's actually just it makes more sense. And I think again, it goes back to that mindset of owner, operator, and investor.
Most of us start that business as an operator, halfway owner for something that we love. I was at a conference with Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson, and people were talking about, well, what kind of business should I buy? Buy the one that makes money. It's simple. We get too much involved in buying a business that we love and that we're passionate about. Buy the one that makes money. And if you want to do a passion project, do that on the side.
Bernie (34:26)
Strategic partnerships.
There was a presentation I was listening to, and what it was was a a company that made coffee makers and they partnered up with a company that sold coffee. so the same audience. they paired up and they did a little bit of cross promo. the hardware, obviously, you know, you you're not looking to buy one every week like a coffee maker, and but the coffee you're looking to buy on a frequent basis, right? So consumable.
Do you recommend working partnerships? Do you recommend like, you know, you yeah kind of a joint venture? Do you recommend you know, a one time almost like a marketing stint? And not not not a stunt, but a stint. You know. do you take that approach too?
Tyrus (35:08)
Yes. So out of the six companies that I own, I have a partner in five of them. Some have more than one partner. I believe in joint ventures and partnerships to scale. Because again, you need more than one head, more than one set of eyes, and everybody brings something specific to the table. Now, if you look at big business, billion dollar companies.
They don't make all of their Apple isn't making all of its money from just selling phones and computers. They acquire businesses. And then those businesses that they acquire become a part of the ecosystem. And so when you're talking about vertical integration and really growing a billion-dollar company, that the only way you do it is through acquisitions, partners, mergers, joint ventures to bring pieces in. And it helps, like you said, cross-promotion. I might not want to go.
Build this audience or it's try I think a lot of times business owners try to go take the audience. I'm gonna go steal, I'm gonna go grab that person's audience. Why do a partnership and bring something to the table that both of you can feed off of from that audience? If they have the audience, go and partner with them. Now everybody's not open to it. I think that's because of limited mindset, scarcity mindset. They don't see
And they don't do enough research on big business to understand that's how big business works. We're so small business-minded. But once you get to a certain level of business, you realize why would I ever go try to start something from scratch? But I can partner with somebody, buy another business, and grow that way and continue buying businesses. Like we're building an ecosystem right now. And part of that ecosystem are different components of what it takes to scale a business.
Consulting company, capital, MA firm, video and podcast production, marketing agency. I'm gonna own all of parts of all of those because they're in the ecosystem. I don't have to start them all from scratch, but let me invest and buy into it.
Bernie (37:02)
I like that. I like that. It's almost it almost sounds like there's a bit of a real estate component to that too. So you mentioned earlier about there's a yeah you provide information you know to help people understand what they're about to walk into. what's it called and how do they find it?
Tyrus (37:19)
Yeah, so we have different tiers of programs. Of course, the Legacy Business Operating System is a program. The Capital Raising Academy is a program. They can find all of this on Legacy Wealth Capital Group dot com or Capital Raising Academy.com. And so those are the two entry points into our ecosystem. Because what I want them to do is go to those sites, watch the videos, get on the newsletter, get to know a little bit about us, and then work their way through.
the other components of where they land. Not every business is ready to raise capital. They may need to go to the Capital Raising Academy to learn about raising capital first. Not every business has entered into the LBOS stage, but when they enter that, then they're really ready to scale because they have foundational knowledge. Of course, not every business is ready to go public. So when we start having the advisory calls on going public, what that means, how to get into position,
Then they can get there. But the two places to go, Capital Raising Academy dot com, Legacy of Capital Group.com.
Bernie (38:22)
Tyrus wow, this is really it's informative and some stuff I knew,
I want to say thank you so much. You've threaded other podcast sessions in and brought it in kind of a nice focused space to you, the audience. You know what? Head over to legacywealth capitalgroup.com, take a look at what Tyrus has built out. if you're starting a business, you need ideas how to go where to go next, what to do next.
do you go public? do you get a fractional management or full-time management? All that it all wraps in. Getting yourself ready to get capital money. that's one of the bigger things. And if it's something that's new to you, then you know what? Terrace is there to help you out with that. for us, check out our website at knack4business.com. That's the word knack, like knock, except with an A, the number four, business.com.
to reach us there's a chat bottom there you can search out other podcasts