How I Bought a $3.4M Business For $200K

**Shaan Puri** (0:02)
All right, this episode is brought to you by HubSpot. They're doing a big conference. This is their big one they do called Inbound. They have a ton of great speakers that are coming to San Francisco, September 3rd to September 5th, and it's got a pretty incredible lineup. They have comedians like Amy Poehler, they have Dario from Anthropic, Dorcas, Sean Evans from Hot Ones. And if you're somebody who's in marketing or sales or AI, and you just want to know what's going on, what's coming next, it's a great event to go to. And hey, guess what? I'm going to be there. You can go to inbound.com/register to get your ticket to Inbound 2025 Again, September 3rd through 5th in San Francisco. Hope to see you there.
If you've ever thought about buying a business, then this episode is going to be for you, because on the internet, there are a lot of people telling you about how amazing it could be to just go buy a business. That's already working. You just take out a loan. You put very little money down and boom, you're cash flowing and you're working passively. But those are also people that are kind of selling you the dream. Now, my buddy Dan is one of my best friends from college. He just actually did this. A couple of years ago, he bought a business, a very random, unsexy business that he had no experience in. He didn't have a lot of money coming in. He had never bought a business before, but he did it. And it's actually worked out pretty well. And I asked him to come on and tell the real story. So tell us like, what was it like? What did you do the first 100 days? How did you actually find buying the business? How much money did you have to put down? How much money did it make? What are the downsides? What are the traps? All the real stuff. And I love it because Dan was very honest. He was very open about all those things. And then at the end, he actually brainstormed a couple of business ideas that he saw. Because when you buy a business, you look at hundreds of businesses. He actually saw, has a couple of his favorite spaces that he thinks people could go into. And we brainstormed that at the end. So this episode, I think is going to be a lot of value for anyone who's ever thought about buying a business. And then we have a fun brainstorm also at the end for other businesses that people could check out. All right. Enjoy this episode with my buddy, Dan.

**Sam Parr** (1:57)
Let's travel, never looking back.

**Shaan Puri** (1:58)
All right.
This is a special one. My buddy, Dan, from college is here. And me and Dan, we've started a sushi restaurant together. We've owned a pet mouse together. We've tried to bring down the house at a casino together. We have gone through many schemes and dreams. And then Dan called me a couple of years ago. And I convinced him to try to buy a business.
And then he has done it now. He bought the business. And he's here to tell the story of that whole journey of going from a guy who never could thought that he would ever buy a business to now owning one of the most random businesses that you'll ever hear about. And then I got Sam here, who doesn't know Dan. So it's me and my college buddy. And then Sam, you're sort of the third wheel on this date. Are you ready for this?

**Sam Parr** (2:37)
Yes, sign me up. This isn't the first time it's happened. But I'm gonna ask questions that usually what I think is what the audience thinks. So I'll ask some questions.

**Shaan Puri** (2:45)
Yeah, exactly. All right, so Sam, where do you want to start? Just maybe first question is like, who the hell is this guy?

**Sam Parr** (2:50)
Who are you? Yeah, who are you?

**Dan Certner** (2:52)
Certner, Dan Certner. So I was in his roommate in college. I was like the next door neighbor. So for the Seinfeld references, I was like the Kramer. I'd show up from time to time unannounced. Lived with this guy for four years. So I go way back with Sean.

**Shaan Puri** (3:07)
And by the way, Sam, the funniest part of meeting Dan the first day of college, I walk in and Dan, the way he looks now, he looked exactly the same at age 18 And so Dan is standing there and he used to wear a visor because he's like, I don't know, a cool guy from New Jersey. So I thought he was someone's dad. I was like, this guy with a visor, I saw him from the back and he knew everything. He was like, laundry's down there. Yeah, you have to do this. Your meal plan is not going to work until you activate it. You have to go to, he knew everything about the campus and I was totally clueless. I didn't know anything about going to college.