Brandon Dawson

There's 11 breakpoints from startup to a billion dollars.

We identified seven from zero to 125 million and just reverse engineered based on the businesses approved, they could become a platform.

Exactly what's involved with doing it.

And I built basically 10 elements, 76 sub elements and 240 things.

You got to master to get to 125 million and then it multiplies that to get to a billion.

I built it all off the research with the idea that when I sold my business, I was going to start a new company.

which is Cardo Mentors now.

One of my mentors told me in 2013, you can't just go start a whole bunch of new companies if you don't prove this concept to work where you're using a shared equity model with your clients versus a crammed down acquiring model.

You got to prove the cycle.

So what I did is I looked at all the highest valuations paid for businesses with the same research company.

And I said, why did some of these businesses sell for 30, 40, 50, 100x EBITDA?

What did they have?

And I took that, put it on top of the other model I created, and I had an idea in 2013.

If I position my organization like the highest valued companies that sold, and I sold it the way they sold, I could command one of the highest values for me and my partners.

And I went, and in 2015, I did a roadshow, eight specific targeted potential buyers,

And these are sophisticated, like EQT out of Europe, the $56 billion PE group, Siemens Medical.

These are not small companies.

And I pitched them.

And my pitch was, I'm Brandon Dawson.

I have a $35 million company.