261: Buying a Business at a Great Price! Over 30 Years of Biz Buying & Selling – Richard Parker of Diomo Corporation.

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Background on Richard Parker of Diomo:

Richard Parker is the founder of Diomo Corporation – The Business Buyer Resource Center and author of the How To Buy A Good Business At A Great Price series. Richard has purchased thirteen of his own businesses and has been an advisor and broker to small business buyers and sellers for over three decades. He has written and been featured in more than 300 articles on the subject of buying businesses in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, The Street.com. He is also a weekly contributor to Forbes Magazine. He was recently nominated for Inc. Magazine’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award.

Born in Canada in 1961, and based in Florida since 1996, Mr. Parker has been a business “junkie” since childhood, owning his first business at 12 and selling it profitably at 13. His fascination with getting others involved in businesses started at this young age when he recruited seven neighborhood children as paper carriers and then successfully approached the local Sunday paper to grant him a master route with the idea of letting them solicit home delivery where there was none previously (sub-contracting the other kids and taking a percentage of their business of course) and so a career was born.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [1:16] Richard Parker, 62 years old from South Florida in Boca Raton, runs a company called Diomo Corporation, which helps people sell their business. However, he does not consider himself a business broker but as an investment banker in the lower market.
  • [3:44] On their publication side of the business, Richard has sold over 100 thousand copies of their main program called How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price. On their Mergers and Acquisition side, he has been doing about 3 to 4 transactions per year.
  • [5:22] DIOMO is an abbreviation for Doing It On My Own. Diomo.com and RichardParker.com is where people can find educational information about buying businesses. Richard gets into more detail about Diomo.
  • [7:06] His other business, Roy Street Advisers, is named after a street in Montreal where he grew up.
  • [7:31] Richard provides an overview of his business, Roy Street Advisers.
  • [8:53] When it comes to his work-life balance, Richard has a very positive outlook.
  • [11:53] Richard offers more advice on work-life balance and working effectively in your later years.
  • [14:26] Growing up in a lower middle-class family with hardworking parents, Richard always had that entrepreneurial spirit within him. He was already making extra money when he was 12 years old.
  • [16:44] After finishing school, Richard joined the renovation business of his father in Saskatchewan, which he fully enjoyed doing.
  • [19:25] In 1984, Richard joined a company in Montreal called Charan Industries, which is in the consumer products business specializing in baby and infant products. He started as a salesperson and eventually became a national sales manager in a span of only 3 years.
  • [24:10] In 1987, after Charan acquired Cooper Sporting Goods, Richard had the opportunity to work with major league baseball teams because of their most sought-after baseball bats.
  • [27:15] Being moved from one division to another within a company, Richard enjoyed the challenge of learning and adapting to a new environment.
  • [36:12] After working with the Cooper division, Richard was transferred to the baby products division.
  • [38:20] In the fall of 1989, Richard invested about $60,000 in the stock market, which turned out to be disastrous and got him into a major financial mess. This incident led him to start his own business.
  • [43:15] In 1990, Richard started his first company using some of his money from the bank, his credit card, and he lived cheaply.
  • [45:30] Richard continues to talk about his first company and the product lines he offered. He named his company Diomo Marketing.
  • [50:22] Austin and Richard use Google Street View to look for the first office location of Diomo Marketing.
  • [52:53] In the early 90s, there were no mobile phones and no laptops or computers in the Diomo office.
  • [54:57] Richard talks about how he conducted his business with the clients and manufacturers in the 90s.
  • [58:20] There was one big problem in the business that Richard had to fix regarding the display of their baby products or toys in the retail stores.
  • [1:02:33] Retail merchandising was Richard’s solution to his problem in the retail stores.
  • [1:05:33] Starting the retail merchandise service, Richard knew he had an advantage over other business competitors.
  • [1:06:22] Richard shares how he got the idea of starting the retail merchandise service.
  • [1:11:03] With the success of the retail merchandise service, Richard bought a company that designs infant products such as bibs and receiving blankets.
  • [1:12:13] Richard shares an interesting story of how he got the product line for Sega for the whole eastern Canada. It was when Sega introduced their Sega Genesis console, which resulted in a huge positive impact for Richard’s business.
  • [1:18:30] After scoring big with Sega, Richard decided to sell his business and move to Florida.
  • [1:19:44] Part 2 of the interview starts with Richard moving to Florida.
  • [1:21:22] It was possible that Richard could have stopped working if he wanted to when he relocated to Florida. However, it was not part of his plan and he wanted to do more.
  • [1:23:50] Richard offers sound advice for anyone who is planning to move or relocate to another place or location.
  • [1:26:38] Before he moved to Florida, Richard had been gaining a reputation in the field of business acquisition.
  • [1:28:02] When he was staying in Florida, he joined a golf company offering state-of-the-art technology in golf video tutorials. However, they had a massive problem with the business because there was no demand for it. He left the company in 1999.
  • [1:35:59] Richard learned an important life lesson when he was sued.
  • [1:39:52] The next step for Richard after the golf business stint was to acquire a business in Florida. There is one business that he almost bought for a million dollars, but he was able to uncover a huge problem and decided to back out of the deal.
  • [1:48:51] Business brokers can be a difficult job due to several reasons, according to Richard.
  • [1:50:46] Richard was always looking for businesses that were potential candidates for acquisition.
  • [1:54:04] Someone was talking to Richard about NFT and it sounded like nonsense to him.
  • [1:56:54] When the lightbulb moment happened for Richard, he did a ton of research on buying a business, but he only found generic information.
  • [1:59:23] Richard decided to put together a course that will teach people how to buy a business. He started this endeavor without any plan or agenda for building a business. He just wanted to memorialize everything that he has done in his career and make it available for everyone.
  • [2:00:28] His wife asked him how many courses he will be able to sell during the launch. Richard answered that his only goal is to help one person buy the right business.
  • [2:11:02] Richard shares the story of how he was able to complete writing and publishing his course.
  • [2:18:53] April 23,2001, Richard launches his course on buying a business. An hour and a half after they launched, someone bought his course, which was an unbelievable experience for Richard at that time.
  • [2:22:04] His course offers a lifetime guarantee, which means if someone is not happy with the course, they can have their money back.
  • [2:25:02] Richard provides another important piece of advice that focuses on starting something and getting into the game.
  • [2:27:47] For the past 20 years, Richard kept expanding the course and he continues to help a lot of people in the field of business acquisition. According to him, he never anticipated that this could turn into a wonderful business.
  • [2:30:12] Richard talks about something more personal regarding his first marriage and why it didn't work out for them.
  • [2:35:16] For people thinking of starting or buying a business, Richard offers another important piece of advice.
  • [2:37:18] The start of Part 3 of the interview of Richard Parker.
  • [2:37:50] Richard bought a company on the West Coast that deals with legal document preparation services for individuals representing themselves in court.
  • [2:41:07] Acquiring the legal document preparation business, Richard had the monumental task of automating its process.
  • [2:46:56] Richard has 5 golden rules of buying a business.
  • [2:49:49] More discussions on how the legal document preparation services became successful when Richard took over.
  • [2:53:26] For people who want to grow their business through acquisition or those running an engineering firm, Richard has a few words of advice.
  • [3:00:09] Richard doesn’t believe in business gurus who tell people that they can buy businesses without any down payment.
  • [3:01:15] For engineering firms, owner financing is much easier.
  • [3:03:02] Richard talks about fake business gurus online that makes his blood boil.
  • [3:05:26] In 2007, Richard helped the family of Ray Dalio.

Richard Parker Interview is Sponsored By:

  • [29:06] Jon Ostenson, Founder of FranBridge Consulting and Top 1% US Franchise Consultant is here to help you explore the world of non-food franchising opportunities today. Jon and his team are part of the largest brokerage in the US and have vetted the market thoroughly. FranBridge is hands down the premier source of the best opportunities in the non-food franchising world. You can hear more of Jon’s story and how he started FranBridge Consulting on Episode 250 of our podcast. Sign up for a free consultation call with Jon today at millionaire-interviews.com/franbridgeconsulting and receive a FREE copy of his new book Non-Food Franchising.
  • [2:03:51] Franbridge Consulting offers five more non-food franchise opportunities in 2024 that you can explore. FranBridge is hands down the premier source of the best opportunities in the non-food franchising world. You can hear more of Jon’s story and how he started FranBridge Consulting on Episode 250 of our podcast. Sign up for a free consultation call with Jon today at millionaire-interviews.com/franbridgeconsulting and receive a FREE copy of his new book Non-Food Franchising.

The Fabulous 4 Questions:

  1. 📖📚 Favorite Books? Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, From Good to Great by Jim Collins, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, How to Think by Alan Jacobs
  2. 🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com Purchase? Anything that gets delivered overnight
  3. 🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Auto responders
  4. 💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Recruiting talented motivating people who place helping others above all else

Key Point from Our Episode with Richard Parker:

  • “If the business is too hard for you to explain, it’s probably too complicated for you to buy.”

Resources Mentioned:

 

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