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The Warner Bros Deal: The $7 Million a Day CLock That Forced a Settlement Sep 24, 2026

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The Paramount Warner Bros deal just cleared its biggest obstacle nine days before a $7 million a day ticking fee was set to start. Charles Oglesby and I break down why that timing matters and what it teaches you about buying a business at any size.Paramount beat Netflix for Warner Bros Discovery with $31 a share in cash, a $7 billion regulatory termination fee, and a promise to cover the Netflix breakup fee. Sellers price certainty, not just the headline number. Then 12 state attorneys general sued, and Paramount settled with commitments on film output, worker funds, and a news editorial independence board. The deal is settled, not closed.From there we get into the AI acquisition arms race. China forced Meta to unwind its $2 billion Manus deal after it had already closed. Cohere signed a definitive agreement with Aleph Alpha at a reported $20 billion valuation. SoftBank launched roughly $11 billion in junk rated bonds to fund its next OpenAI check.Then politics. A new sanctions law gives the President tariff power of up to 100 percent on the biggest buyers of Russian oil, and the Supreme Court already reshaped tariff policy earlier this year. We cover what that means for how you underwrite a business with imported inputs.In the last segment Charles and I move the decimal. Every megadeal term has a Main Street twin: termination fees, ticking fees, key person risk, concentration risk, tariff clauses, and the new SBA 7(a) and 504 decoupling.Figures reflect reporting as of September 22, 2026. This is not investment, legal, or tax advice.LINKSTry Deal Flow OS free: https://dealflow-os.comNewsletter: https://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...Instagram: @buybuildexitFree Class: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

The Real Reason Big Tech Is Buying AI Companies: It's Not What You Think Sep 19, 2026

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Six weeks ago Big Tech was buying AI companies. This month it stopped buying companies and started buying control points. In this no-guest reaction episode, Charles and I break down six real deals from the last two weeks and translate every single one into a move you can run on a 1 million to 5 million dollar business.The headlines call this an AI boom. It is a control grab. Every one of these deals is a company deciding it is cheaper to buy the bottleneck than to buy the business, and the deal on the front page is the same deal on your desk. You just move the decimal.What we cover:Nvidia licensing Groq and hiring the founder, and the DOJ probe now testing the reverse acquihire playbook. Salesforce assembling the customer conversation loop with Fin and the reported Listen Labs talks. Meta buying a nine person Swedish team to own the inbox. The agent security gold rush nobody is clicking on. Nvidia buying the open model marketplace with Hugging Face. And the cleanest roll up template on the board, Copart buying ACV.The operator takeaway in one line: buy the bottleneck, own the recurring workflow, buy the adjacency that makes your network worth more, and structure for the value that walks out the door with the seller. Same moves, fewer zeros.CHAPTERS0:00 Cold open, buy the bottleneck3:00 The backdoor acquisition, Nvidia and Groq15:00 The customer conversation wars, Salesforce and Meta28:00 The hidden winners, agent security and infrastructure39:00 Nvidia buys the marketplace, Hugging Face47:00 The boring deal every operator should study, Copart and ACV55:00 Rapid fire59:00 Close, move the decimalLINKSTry Deal Flow OS free: https://dealflow-os.comSubscribe to my newsletter: https://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...Follow me on Instagram: @buybuildexitFree Class: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

SBA Buyers, Wake Up: $85 Billion in Megadeals Just Rewrote Your Playbook Sep 11, 2026

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Six megadeals. One week. One playbook every acquisition entrepreneur needs to run.In this reaction episode, Charles and I break down the biggest week in M and A this year, and we translate every single deal from Wall Street numbers into Main Street mechanics. If you are an SBA buyer, a lower-middle-market operator, a lender, or an owner thinking about your exit, this one is for you.Here is what we cover:Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for roughly thirteen billion dollars. We break down why the buyer wanted the default distribution layer, not the technology, and how that same question applies to a three million dollar plumbing acquisition.NextEra and Dominion shareholders approved a sixty-six point eight billion dollar all-stock combination that would create the largest regulated electric utility in the country. Vertiv agreed to buy UtilityInnovation Group for one point four five billion in cash plus a big earnout. Both deals point to the same Main Street opportunity: boring trades businesses that serve utilities and data centers just became strategic assets.Chime announced it is buying Stride Bank for five hundred ninety million dollars in cash, ending a seven-year sponsor-bank relationship. Charles uses this to walk through the July 4, 2026 SBA policy notice that decoupled the 7(a) and 504 program limits. If you have not updated your capital stack thinking, you are leaving money on the table.Charter closed its thirty-four point five billion dollar combination with Cox, creating a thirty-seven million customer footprint across forty-five states. Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Airtable at a valuation well below its 2021 peak. Bain Capital agreed to buy Gong cha at a reported price of more than six hundred thirty-five million dollars, and Riverview Landscapes just closed its twenty-sixth acquisition since 2022.Same playbook. Different zeros. That is the whole game.We finish with a ten-question rapid fire, one takeaway from each host, and a close on the one lesson every one of these deals is telling you at the same time.If you got value out of this episode, subscribe, drop a comment on which segment landed hardest, and share it with the buyer in your network who needs to hear it.LINKSdealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...IG: @buybuildexitFree Class: Buy Build Exit Academy — https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

M&A Is Back: The $111 Billion Megadeal and the Main Street Deals Nobody Is Bidding On Aug 19, 2026

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Ten thousand boomers a day are aging toward an exit, and four hundred miles up the coast a 111 billion dollar media merger is bleeding money because it cannot get out of its own way. Same week, same country, same question underneath both. In this one Charles and I skip the guest chair and just read the tape on what is actually hot in M&A right now.We break down the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery megadeal as a bellwether, not gossip, because whatever regulators allow at the top sets the tone all the way down to your desk. Then we make the turn that matters for our audience, the lower middle market, where deal volume just hit a record and the boomer wave keeps feeding supply. We cover the timing mismatch that breaks even a great deal on paper, the disclosure discipline that scales from a corner store to a 111 billion dollar merger, the real math behind SBA change of ownership financing, and the honest two sided debate on private equity roll ups on Main Street.My whole thesis in one line: the deal on the front page and the deal on your desk are the same deal. Just move the decimal.What we get into:The megadeal returns and why the guardrails here matter to youThe timing mismatch hiding in a Hollywood storyFees, conflicts, and related party optics you have to priceWhy record dry powder is not the same thing as demandThe SBA numbers first time buyers get wrongRoll ups, are they saving Main Street or strip mining itIf this makes you rethink one deal on your desk, we did our job.Deal Flow OS: https://dealflow-os.comSubstack: https://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...Instagram: @buybuildexitFree Class, Buy Build Exit Academy: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

Buying a Business in 2026: Richard Parker on Seller Financing vs SBA Debt Jul 29, 2026

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In this episode I sit down with Richard Parker, founder of Diomo Corporation and author of How To Buy A Good Business At A Great Price. Richard has personally bought 14 businesses over more than 35 years, he was hired by the Dalio family to mentor one of Ray Dalio's sons on buying small businesses, and he has built one of the most widely read buyer education resources in the world.This one is a real debate. Richard is a buy-side skeptic who leans hard on seller financing, and most of you watching make your living on SBA and bank debt. So we put him in the room and let him make his case. We get into why he tells buyers to fall in love with the profit and not the product, how he actually values a business, why he says most listings are overpriced and carry hidden problems, and what separates the small group of people who close from the ones who look for years and never buy.Charles and I also walk through what has changed in the market this year, from larger SBA borrowing capacity to the shift toward cash flow underwriting, and we pressure test whether cheaper and bigger capital makes buyers better or just makes it more expensive to be wrong. The figures Richard shares are his own numbers from his own track record, so take them as his experience, not a promise about your deal.If you are trying to buy your first business or your next one, this is the honest conversation about risk, discipline and financing that I wish more people were having.Chapters0:00 Cold open1:30 Welcome and guest intro4:00 Origin story and buy vs build philosophy12:00 Why now: the boomer wave and the bigger SBA checkbook20:00 Valuation and the Diomo method30:00 The financing fault line: seller financing vs SBA40:00 Due diligence, quality of earnings and the landmines48:00 Buyer psychology: why most never close54:00 Rapid fire58:00 CloseTry it free - https://dealflow-os.comSubscribe to my newsletter - https://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...Follow me on Instagram - @buybuildexitFree Class - https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

The E-Myth Author Michael Gerber on Why SBA Lenders Fund Failing Businesses Jul 26, 2026

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Michael E. Gerber wrote The E-Myth Revisited forty years ago and it has sold millions of copies since. Inc. Magazine calls him the world's number one small business guru. In this episode I sit down with Michael alongside my co-host Charles Oglesby to ask the question every lender should be asking: why do most of the businesses we finance fail, and what separates a bankable business from a well-paid job with overhead?We cover the entrepreneurial seizure and why the technician who makes the pies should almost never own the pie shop. We dig into why documented systems are not just an operations idea but an underwriting standard, and how the SBA's move away from credit scores toward cash-flow fundamentals lines up with what Michael has been saying for four decades. With SBA loan limits expanding dramatically, we ask whether more capital for Main Street is a blessing or a loaded gun, and what has to change inside a business before it can responsibly carry serious debt.We also get into the acquisition wave, what a buyer actually owns when all the systems live in the seller's head, the due-diligence version of the E-Myth, whether AI finally solves the systems problem or just automates the seizure, and Michael's unfinished mission to transform small business worldwide.If you lend to, advise, buy, or run a small business, this one is required listening.Deal Flow OS: dealflow-os.comNewsletter: https://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...Instagram: @buybuildexitFree Class, Buy Build Exit Academy: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

SBA Loans Just Doubled to $10M and Half These Deals Are Hiding Something Jul 26, 2026

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Half the businesses being bought right now have a problem the buyer cannot see. That is not my number. It is what my guest, Elliott Holland, says his firm finds when they open up the books on deals that are already teed up with SBA financing.Elliott is the founder of Guardian Due Diligence and the man the search community calls the King of QoE. He is a Harvard MBA and a former private equity investor who has bought companies with his own money, so he has sat on the buyer side of the table with real dollars on the line. In this episode Charles and I put him in front of the audience almost nobody else does. We do not just ask him buyer questions. We ask him underwriting questions.Here is what we get into. Why the buyer is the only person at the closing table who has never done this before, and what that experience gap costs. What a Quality of Earnings report actually is and why it is different from the tax returns and financials a lender already collects. The gap between the DSCR on the application and the DSCR in reality, now that small SBA loans underwrite on seller provided numbers. The most creative add-backs he has ever seen someone try. Who in the ecosystem is actually paid to catch a problem before closing, and who is paid to look away. And the honest profile of the person who should keep their W-2 and not buy a business at all.With SBA limits climbing and the biggest ownership transfer in Main Street history underway, this is the conversation every lender and every first-time buyer needs before they wire the money, not after.If you found this useful, subscribe and share it with your credit team.Chapters are in the timestamps below.Try Deal Flow OS freedealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...@buybuildexithttps://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

SBA Loan Rules Just Changed: What Every Business Buyer Needs to Know in 2025 Jul 08, 2026

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On this episode of Buy Build Exit, Charles and I sit down with Nimi Natan, President and CEO of Gulf Coast Small Business Lending, the national SBA arm of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust. Nimi has spent more than 30 years in finance, but his path is anything but ordinary. He started in commercial photography at Polaroid, grew up around small businesses, ran a burger operation himself, and built an SBA lending platform from scratch in Dallas before selling it to Gulf Coast in 2016.We get into the biggest rewrite of the small business lending rulebook in years. The new SOP 50 10 8 took effect June 1, 2025 and brought back stricter underwriting, a 10 percent equity injection on startups and change of ownership deals, lower collateral thresholds, higher minimum credit scores, and a major change to how seller notes count toward a buyer's equity. If you are buying or selling a business, these changes hit your deal directly.We also cover why defaults climbed, what Nimi means when he talks about the industry coming off a sugar high, and how the health of the 7(a) program actually affects real borrowers. Then we get into the story everyone in our world is talking about, the Silver Tsunami of retiring owners and the record wave of acquisition lending, plus the uncomfortable truth about how many of those businesses are actually salable.Nimi calls this his fifth rodeo across five decades of crises, and his core belief is that small business backed by the SBA comes out of every cycle stronger. This one is packed with real talk for anyone buying, selling, or funding a business right now.Some figures and rules discussed are time sensitive, so always confirm the current standard with a qualified lender or advisor before you act on a deal.dealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...IG: @buybuildexitFree Class — Buy Build Exit Academy: https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

Buying A Business In 2026: Does AI Eat It Or Feed It? Jul 03, 2026

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Wall Street just announced a 170 billion dollar media merger, private equity is on track to do 5.3 trillion in deals this year, and the biggest buy side firms on earth just admitted they are not sure the businesses they are buying will be worth anything in five years because of AI. In this episode Charles and I go topic to topic on what is actually moving in M and A and small business right now, and what every piece of it means for the person trying to buy a two million dollar business.I break down the one question I think you have to ask before you buy anything in 2026: does AI eat this business, or does AI feed it. We get into the barbell market that is squeezing the middle, why the run it from the beach dream got called dead this year, the searcher glut that has more buyers chasing fewer quality deals, and why the first 90 days after close destroy more deals than bad financials ever will.If you are actively looking to buy a business, this is the map for where value is moving and where the knife fights are.Chapters00:00 Cold open00:30 Intro and how we are running the show today02:30 AI is eating the buy side: does AI eat your business or feed it14:30 Wall Street spent 170 billion while you fought over a 2M deal24:30 The Tulum dream is officially dead34:30 Too many buyers not enough deals: the searcher glut42:30 The first 90 days kill more deals than bad financials50:30 The pattern behind all of it: quick hits56:30 One move for the week and where to go nextLinksdealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...@buybuildexithttps://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

How to Buy a Business in 2026 (300 Million Dollar Lender Explains) Jun 24, 2026

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Most first business deals do not die because the business was bad. They die because nobody understood the money. On March 1st, 2026 the SBA quietly rewrote who is even allowed to get one of these loans, and most buyers have no idea it happened.In this episode Charles and I sit down with Alan Peterson, Senior SBA Business Development Officer at First Internet Bank and one of the top SBA lenders in the country. Alan has personally funded more than 300 million dollars in SBA loans across his career, including over 70 million last year alone. He lives at the exact point where most first time acquisitions fall apart, the financing.We get into the new citizenship eligibility rules, the truth about 10 percent down and the standby note structure, why good deals quietly die at the closing table, the idea of the SBA as a golden handcuff once you cross 5 million dollars, and exactly what to do this week if you have an LOI in hand. We close with a rapid fire round packed with quotable answers for first time buyers.If you have been thinking about buying a business this year, this is the financing playbook you have been missing.Timestamps are below. Drop your questions in the comments and I will answer as many as I can in the first hour.dealflow-os.comhttps://buybuildexitwithroyredd.subst...@buybuildexitBuy Build Exit Academy - https://www.skool.com/buy-build-exit-...

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