Chris Moore: 0:00

Hey, I'm Chris Moore, your intentional investor, and here on my YouTube channel we talk about surges of income and how to make money above and beyond your monthly income, your paychecks, what you do for a living, whether you own a business or you work for somebody else. How do you make money beyond that? How do you make money that can go directly towards investing and growing your net worth so you can eventually escape being stuck? Essentially, and that's what we're going to talk about today Just watch the documentary called Surviving an Unlivable Wage, where it talks about kind of how we're trending as a society and moving towards.

Chris Moore: 0:30

A lot more people are struggling because of inflation, cost of living increases and the low-skill, low-wage labor market, where people are going to restaurants and retail and working at these local businesses where they're not even able to make enough money with two incomes or working multiple jobs and everything is so expensive nowadays where it's just becoming unbearable. I know people that work for me and some of our companies are having a hard time and it's not that they're making any less money than they made before, but everything is just so much more expensive. So I kind of want to just chat about that a little bit, and I know you had some questions for me, some things that you wrote down as we were watching this, and I've got some thoughts too. This is David, by the way.

David Osborne: 1:09

David, I would like to meet you guys. I'm actually part of the creative team here, but a lot of watching this documentary on kind of living with an unlivable wage struck home to me, and I know a lot of people are struggling with that, so I thought we'd carry that forward a little bit. Chris, being a he's in business acquisition, teaching, business acquisition, the acquiring of businesses how do you get from that? From growing up in a small town in Alabama not having many options serving tables, just seems like a long jump. So I was going to try to close that bridge a little bit and share that information with you guys.

Chris Moore: 1:44

Well, I mean being stuck and kind of looking at it from one angle of this is kind of where I was born into. I live in the small town. There's not a lot of opportunity where I live. That's one way you can look at it. That's where most people look at it, because they're looking at it from their own point of view. But you can also step back and say what would have to be true for me to have more opportunity? What would have to be true for me not to follow and everybody else's footsteps in my town and be able to one day move on to bigger and better things and be able to learn new skills that pay a lot more money? So, instead of saying I'm stuck or because of things I can't control, like where I was born or my family or the star, whatever it is, there's always a way out of it. So I think it's more about just flipping it around and saying what would have to be true for me to be able to do that Right?

Chris Moore: 2:30

So I was talking to somebody yesterday and we were talking about something that was going on in one of our businesses and I said man, how different would it feel right now if, no matter what you put after that. You can suspend people's reality. You can have people think outside the box. I said how different would it feel right now if this wasn't even a concern? Imagine we already had this amount of money coming in every single month and all of our expenses were paid. How different would that feel? And he's like wow, it feels so much different.

Chris Moore: 2:54

I said that should be the compass of what we should be focused on. Rather than focusing all of our energy on feeling stuck and feeling all that negativity. Why don't we figure out what would have to be true for us to not be stuck? That's kind of where I look at it and that's how I started my journey is I realized real quick that I was made for more than this and I realized that the marketplace will pay me big money if I knew certain skills. So I stopped focusing on doing the things that kept me stuck and I started focusing on getting better skills. Just some thoughts.

David Osborne: 3:24

I think a lot of you know, even me, a person's like if you're not making enough money, you work harder, right, Go get a better job. And I think one of Chris's gifts is really being able to take a step back, see the situation holistically and be able to reframe everything to his advantage. Or I think that creates opportunities and open, as awareness is where these few options have grown. A small town, you know, you look at the right way and you are in the perfect spot to pursue greatness. Yes, so I think a lot of it's. You know, opening your perspective, exploring new ideas and then seeing what sticks on the wall.

Chris Moore: 4:00

Let's take a step a couple of thousand years back. Right, let's go back to medieval times, and I thought it was interesting. They didn't just go to school for the sake of going to school. They didn't just go do a job for the sake of doing that. They actually found who they wanted to be when they grew up and they went and impressed themselves on this person and became their apprentice or squire and started learning under the people that they want to be like when they're older, whether they want to be a blacksmith or the farmer or the knight or a warrior, whatever. They kind of paved their path to focus on getting around the people who are already doing what they want to do, doing whatever it takes to get in front of them, work for them, earn what you learn and then be able to step into their shoes.

Chris Moore: 4:41

But nowadays we go a totally different direction. We're going to college and we're doing what the society wants us to do, which is go to college, get a good job, whatever. I know that's changed a little bit recently. But what if people just stopped and said, who do I want to be like when I grow up? And looking out there and finding these amazing positive role models?

Chris Moore: 4:57

Maybe they're affluent, maybe they've just impacted a lot of lives and say what path did they take? How can I get and learn from that person directly, rather than choosing what college they want to go to because of the girls or the sororities or the parties? Or or even I've been told from my guidance counselor that if I go this direction, they make the most money and I don't have to work on Saturday. It's like you know, why are we making decisions based off of that stuff, compared to looking at who's already done what we want to do? Yeah, but I think you're right, though I'm weird and I think differently, but I think we've got to start getting weirder and thinking differently, otherwise we're going to continue to feel stuck.

David Osborne: 5:29

Yeah, I think you knitted on the head. You think for yourself, essentially, where a lot of us, we're all, conditioned to. You know, I was talking to my nine year old daughter about this, about her school system. They teach you what to think and not how to think, and I think you exemplify that perfectly. So where you are at now, when you were serving tables around 20 years old to where you are now, did you see yourself wanting to acquire businesses and kind of be an investor?

Chris Moore: 5:56

Yeah, I did yeah, and I had awareness of where I was in the moment. And how do I use this experience to get me closer to where I want to go? And I think that's the difference is being aware of it. Right, they say alcoholics, when you go to AA, the first thing you've got to do is say I'm aware I'm an alcoholic, otherwise you can't grow. So I think being aware of where you are and how these experiences can lend you, lend towards the next big thing, is huge.

Chris Moore: 6:18

So when I was a restaurant manager I managed 11 restaurants I used to tell my employees, like the younger kids I'd say listen, no offense to anybody here. Do you see Miss Judy over there? How old is she? 56, right, she's still doing this. Do you want to do this at 56? I'd seriously say this to my employees no, no, all right. So what should your focus be right now? Come to work and learn and have fun and get better at it. But what should your focus be? They'd say well, we need to stay in school. We need to. I said yeah.

Chris Moore: 6:43

So when things come up in your life and you look at, this is a way you can make money, I want you to remember that you don't want to end up like Miss Judy or the lady who's the greeter at Walmart or the person who's had to come back at a retirement and they're standing in Home Depot in the aisles and helping people find stuff, like maybe they're doing it because they want to. A lot of people are doing it because they have to. So your decisions today dictate whether you're going to end up like that person right there. And I used to tell my employees that it was probably bad. And when they asked for like time off or spring break, I wasn't looking at, wow, I'm under sketch sketch staffed and no, you can't do that. I told them this is only a speed bump in your life. You can learn from it and learn skills that'll pay dividends in the future. But enjoy your life. So, yeah, go take the vacation, go to spring break, go be a kid, but just don't get stuck in this cycle of loving having cash every day and it's cool, cause everybody parties and like, right, yeah, so going back to being when I was 20 or 19 and 18, waiting tables.

Chris Moore: 7:34

I looked at it and I realized really early, like this is not what I was meant to do, but wow, I'm learning some really cool things. I'm having this positive feedback loop as I'm getting better at it and I'm making more money and that fed me even more realized that I like performance based work compared to work at Walmart for three days and I realized that that was not the right place for me and there's a lot of good people that work at Walmart. But for me, I need to be able to climb my own ladder. I need to be able to be actually compensated based off of how much value I bring, not how much time I bring, you know. So for me, I looked at it as a great thing.

Chris Moore: 8:04

I realized that sales and performance based pay can make me a lot more Cause. My average earnings per hour is probably 25, 30 bucks. I'm 37, so that was 17 years ago. That's a lot of money per hour compared to work in anywhere else. I realized that two bucks an hour plus tips equals like 30 bucks an hour. I'm making a lot more money than everybody else. And when I went into management, I took a big step back and I realized that performance based pay was what I like to do. That's why I've been doubled down in sales and in marketing and learning how to make a lot of money in big surges, surges of income because I can do it without having to have time as my measurement. So that's how I did it. I looked at it, I just experienced it and internalized it different than the average person.

David Osborne: 8:43

Well, you want to reflect, you know, on a daily, weekly basis and kind of you talk like you're always in a third body, experienced looking at yourself, which is hard to do. When you're in the weeds, yeah, when you're in survival mode, when you're looking at paying paycheck to paycheck, it's hard to step back and reasonably look at yourself.

Chris Moore: 9:04

What would you say about that? So I'm no stranger to that feeling. By the way, I got married at 21,. I had two kids by 23,. Sole income of the household. So you talk about growing up fast and being in charge of something and not making very much money. I've been there, dude. I made 30,000 bucks a year, then 36,000, then 40,000. And I played that game of. The only thing I could do is show up at work, make more money. As long as I perform well, I keep getting raises or I keep getting picked up by bigger companies.

Chris Moore: 9:29

And did I always have the ability to look at something almost like from an omniscient standpoint and seeing it at the 30,000 foot level? No, it's a lot of years of reflecting. You know. A lot of it is understanding in the moment that this is not my future, but also being aware that I can learn from this. That was already there. I was already present in the moment and I was also.

Chris Moore: 9:49

I was born to teach in mentor. I was doing it before I even knew what it was. I just did it because I liked it. I always I've lived in a world where my experiences are something that I feel like we can learn from, rather than something that happened to us. So maybe it's just a mindset, I don't know. It's kind of weird. It's a good question. I don't know if I've always thought like that, but I think Jesus taught in parables and I'm not comparing myself to him whatsoever, but I feel like the experiences we have in life, if we can put them into a story, people can learn from them so much easier. So maybe that's why I do it that way. No, 100%.

David Osborne: 10:20

I think you were one of your gifts that you were just innately given. You've cultivated up to this point, but you're naturally charismatic. You love to talk, you love to share stories.

David Osborne: 10:30

Probably talk too much. Yeah, yeah, not just me, but you know you can tell that it was. This is not a force, you know, just being around you it comes from an innate place which I think was a gift you started with and then guys saw that you used that and gave you a little bit more gifts to work with. But you know, bartending, going to serving tables I imagine you're a charismatic man, you could talk to people, you knew how to kind of sell the dishes, upgrade the drinks, cross all this, and then you went to management, which at that point I thought you would climb the corporate ladder in a sense.

Chris Moore: 11:03

Yeah, I got kind of ripped out of it, though, at 25, which is really a great thing in hindsight.

David Osborne: 11:08

But I was good I liked it.

Chris Moore: 11:10

Tell you an interesting story. So when I was 24, 25, I was waiting tables again. I went back to waiting tables because I didn't want to work full time Cause I can make the same money part time bartending waiting tables as management. And I went back to college and I did really well in college. I had a 4.0. I had two kids at home. It was a very different experience. I looked so young back then. Quick story I looked really, really young. I had a real facial hair. I walked in the UAH and I was a freshman at 24 years old and the woman says well, you have to live on campus. All freshmen's live on campus. I said, well, I don't think I am a part of that she said no, no, you do, sweetie, you have to live on campus.

Chris Moore: 11:48

And I said well, can my wife and my two kids live with me as well? And she just laughed and hand me the application. She didn't believe it because I looked so young, but I went back to college and then I went back to restaurant management again, cause I realized that college was a waste of my time.

David Osborne: 12:00

What did you?

Chris Moore: 12:00

study in college. I was doing computer science at the time. Cause the reason why I wanted to do it is because it paid the highest wage for any just bachelor's degree and but then a year later it didn't. But either way, I dropped out of that, went back into management and I was training at Stake and Shake in Atlanta to be a manager at Stake and Shake in Huntsville. And I get a call from this lady Not gonna say any names, but wonderful lady real estate agent. And they were a part of this Hispanic business alliance of North Alabama, hibana, something like that. It's pretty cool. And there's all these Spanish speaking business owners that are all friends and this one was I think she was originally from Puerto Rico Friends of my mom. She called me and she's like I need you to come home and God told us that you're gonna help my friends and run this restaurant.

Chris Moore: 12:44

And I was like uh, okay, like, I'm like my fourth day in training at Steak and Shake and I listened and I said, okay, I mean, who am I to argue with God, right? So no joke. I left, came home and I went and opened the restaurant with a family in an area in Alabama where they just got hit by a tornado back in 2011. And just the whole like ecosystem stalled out and I went in and learned enough Spanish. We redid the menu. We taught the cooks serve safe. I learned how to speak Spanish to the cooks. There's one English speaking cook. I hired an entire staff and in four days we opened the restaurant and I ran that restaurant for about six or eight months and then I left. Two years later. I came back for three months and took them digital and those have been lifelong friends of ours now and they actually ended up exiting that business and sold it profitably and then went and spent like a month or two in the DR, where she was from, and it was just so cool where that was.

Chris Moore: 13:30

Like my last job in restaurants was that and that was. It was like a whole nother experience for me and I realized at that moment that the restaurant business wasn't bad and it wasn't. I didn't like it, but I love the people. I love serving people. I love teaching the waitresses how to make more money. I used to have them hold their little book up like this and I taught them to put a picture of their children like this, so that people are staring at a picture of their children as they're waiting tables Instant 25% tip increase. I love helping people realize that their potential is bigger than this restaurant and help them make better decisions. I just loved being around that, but that was my last restaurant job.

Chris Moore: 14:05

It's kind of cool, but I got kind of ripped out of restaurants because I hurt my back and I just couldn't keep doing it and my mom says, ooh, you're going to go to real estate school. So she put me in real estate school and then we blew up. I sold like 100 houses my first year and I tripled her business and then, up until even like earlier this year, I had 25 agents on our real estate team that we owned and it was a big venture for a long time. But it was amazing how that one moment it's almost like you were made for more than restaurants. You've done your mission work here. Now we're going to a new field and I think real estate really opened up my possibilities a lot more. It taught me that I had to be. I didn't know anything about money. My first big year like $180,000, $200,000, I pissed it all away. I bought a moped. I had a moped though Moped was cool, got spinners off.

David Osborne: 14:47

It was from China.

Chris Moore: 14:48

It broke really fast, but I learned. I learned so fast that I know I know how to make a lot more money a lot faster, and I realized that I like making a lot more money and big spurts. But I also realized that I hated selling real estate and that taught me a lot as well. I realized that I was driven by security. Even though you wouldn't think I am, I need to feel security in my money, otherwise I'm not myself. I can't give my best version of me to anybody. So I learned a lot through that. I learned that, wow, I can make 10, 20 grand in one foul swoop, like one swing, and that's so much easier than going and working for somebody else where I could never make that much money like that. So I realized that. And then I also I had these moments of clarity where I lost a lot of money all at one time. That showed me that I need to be very diversified and have lots of different streams of income, not just one, like I learned so much, excuse me, through those three years, the initial three years in real estate. Um, it's pretty, pretty magical, but that's another video from another time. I can give you my life lessons, timeline wise. Uh, probably you guys probably don't know this, but 12 years old, started my first company. I even had like people working for me all the way up, moved from, uh, like central Alabama down to Florida. Then me and my cousin had pressure washing, lawn maintenance. We trimmed a lot of like palm trees, made tons of money. We're always self employed. I didn't work anywhere really. Besides, we worked at some church kitchens with my buddy.

Chris Moore: 16:03

Is your dad or mom an entrepreneur? Mom's an entrepreneur. Dad passed away a while back. He was an entrepreneur and then he went the corporate life for 26 years. Yeah, but definitely very successful mindsets and I got to learn a lot from watching them. Um, but yeah, about 19, I finally went to go work at restaurants and then all the way to 25, I was always in restaurants and then 25 was that cut off where I switched over to real estate full time and that was a big moment in my life. Yeah, for sure. I'll tell you guys all about that one day. Uh, it was. It was pretty interesting. I ended up in the MLM circuit really quickly making money and helping people with huge MLM downlines influence and monetize their downlines and create digital products, and we made millions doing that, but that was all stemming from just being in real estate. It was pretty cool. That's how I got to where I am today.

David Osborne: 16:50

So can I carry on this? So is that kind of your entry into business acquisition is getting into from real estate? You kind of made a company from being able to sell a product.

Chris Moore: 17:01

Yeah, acquisitions came later, way later, like the last couple of years.

Chris Moore: 17:06

We call it doing deals. That came way later. I started starting companies, not buying them. I started companies. My wife makes jokes like every week I would come home and tell her that I started a new company. She won't lie. I was no. Did she tell you that? No, but she's real. Yeah, it's real. I was starting companies all the time.

Chris Moore: 17:22

Buying businesses, acquiring businesses that already have cash flow, is a better way of doing it in 99% of the time, and now that's what we're working on. Now that's what I'm doing the last couple of years. But, no, I was starting businesses or joining businesses that are already going to take them to the next level, and being a partner which consulting for equity. Then what makes me good at acquiring business is the fact that I'm good at business. That's the key. I know, understand how to grow businesses. I know and understand demand. I know how to channel demand. I know how to sell and how to market. I know how to create customers and leads on demand for almost any industry, and I also understand business development. That's what makes me good at it. But it's a compilation of all these experiences together. It's not just the one.

David Osborne: 18:06

Warren Buffett. I heard a quote. This might just be someone managing a social, but he won't invest into a company unless they've had five failures of starting businesses. Is there any prerequisites that you kind of look for when you're looking for a candidate that's looking to get into business acquisition?

Chris Moore: 18:24

I guess I don't understand when I'm looking for someone, oh, someone that we're teaching how to acquire businesses, yeah, or?

David Osborne: 18:29

a lot of them.

Chris Moore: 18:30

I don't think you have to look at it like where someone has to have failed. I think what he's saying is, if he's going to invest in a person, that he's looking for them to have already gone through a set of failures. Otherwise, they don't have the right perspective and they don't have the right stick-to-itiveness to be successful in the long run. And they also, if you don't know what doesn't work, you can't avoid it in the future. So I guess that makes sense.

Chris Moore: 18:50

I think on Shark Tank, a lot of times you hear them say that they're investing in the person, not the business, and I think that's what they're looking for. Is this person going to be all in and focused? Otherwise, there's not someone driving the business constantly. It's not going to go anywhere. So I can get that. When it comes to someone who wants to get into business acquisitions, the best people are usually people who have some perspective. If you don't have perspective, if you haven't tried lots of things, you haven't considered going in a lot of different directions, you haven't studied and learned a lot about what you could do besides business acquisitions, maybe you're not the best fit for it, but I don't know when it comes to being an entrepreneur or investing your money in something that can pay a return. There's very few things that can beat business acquisitions, my opinion, because you can tap into already profitable businesses and you can buy them with almost nothing down, and it's the stability you're looking for.

Chris Moore: 19:41

Yeah, but it also depends on your background, right? So you got to stay in your lane. If you are someone who's got a great background in a very specific field and then you try to go buy a business in a completely different industry, it may not translate really well. So I think more about when business acquisitions comes to the forefront of your mind. It starts usually with a moment of tired of making other people money. I'm growing this business, I'm the one who makes the magic happen in this company, but I'm not the owner. You can never climb higher than the owner in a business.

Chris Moore: 20:09

So I think a lot of times people decide to buy a business or get into business for themselves. When they have that moment, they're like man, I'm tired of making somebody else's money. I'm tired of waking up every day and building somebody else's castle and their dreams and their future, and I'm putting money in their kids trust fund instead of my kids trust fund, right? So I think that's the moment and buying a business is just a conduit. I think it's the best kept secret in investing, for sure.

David Osborne: 20:30

No, I think so too, and you're hearing it from the legend here.

Chris Moore: 20:32

No, and I'm not the legend in business acquisitions Not yet. And what I do I'm world-class 100%. And I'm partnered with the best person there is in business acquisition, which is Carl Allen, and he's been teaching me. But then other partnerships I've had in the past with my marketing companies and Clayton and all these other people. We've all learned together. We all grew together Our experiences, and teaching each other and kind of polishing each other up like diamonds is kind of how we all became world-class at our own thing, right? Think about like a football team If everyone was a quarterback, you guys would lose every game, Right? So I don't have to be the quarterback, but I'm the best running back, right? So for me, I'm not the best at business acquisitions in the world. I'm not. Carl is, but he's my partner and what I am able to bring to his world makes him even better. So I think it's just a team effort, Absolutely.

David Osborne: 21:20

But y'all share a singular vision, singular mindset that keep y'all on the same team.

Chris Moore: 21:24

Yeah, we've got lots of businesses together. So, david, good talking with you, and I like these reaction videos because I think it stems really good conversations the man behind the camera, laurie. We've had some good conversations too, just from different conversations that we've had, and videos we've filmed have just gone into these spiraling debates. But I think it's cool that we're able to reflect on this and it went in a totally different direction. But thanks for being here with me this bump, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this video.