AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This is a casual, in-depth interview. The host guides the conversation, but the guest is the clear star, telling his personal origin story and sharing hard-won business wisdom.
- The Key Players:
- The Guest: Thomas Smale. He is the founder of FE International, a leading M&A firm that has brokered over a billion dollars in online business sales. He’s famous for starting with nothing—flipping websites from his college dorm—and building a multi-million dollar empire.
- The Host: The host from "Starter Story" acts as an eager student, asking the questions the audience would want to ask.
- The Vibe: Educational and Inspiring. The tone is direct and data-driven, but Thomas’s story of starting with a $100 deal on a credit card makes it feel like a scrappy underdog tale.
🗝️ Key Themes & Topics
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:30) **🎙️ Introduction: Thomas Smale**
- 2 (04:21) **Early Days: Flipping Websites in College**
- 3 (05:47) **Building FE International: From Course to Firm**
- 4 (08:13) **How to Find and Buy Your First Business**
- 5 (11:02) **What Makes a Good Business?**
- 6 (12:44) **Successes and the First Eight-Figure Deal**
- 7 (14:21) **Commissions and Valuation in M&A**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Zero to $1.1B from Flipping Websites
📚 Make Your First $1 (10x Faster) with Case Studies - https://www.starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=thomas&yts=true
📩 Business Ideas Newsletter (free) - https://www.starterstory.com/newsletter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=thomas
In this episode I talked to Thomas Smale in his New York City Office to get his story and some advice on how to buy and sell businesses. He's done over $1B dollars in sales without even knowing how to develop a website, and he shares his advice on how to flip businesses, how to negotiate, and how he would start again if he had $0 dollars. This is a perfect episode for anyone who is hesitant on starting a business, and would rather buy one and build it from there.
0:00 - Intro 0:49 - Getting into M&A 2:50 - Self-taught website flipper 4:17 - How he started an M&A firm 5:40 - Using the Pareto Principle to make more money 6:36 - How to buy a business 8:02 - How to spot good businesses 9:46 - Selling a $10M+ business 10:41 - How he got the 8-figure deal 11:23 - How much profit he makes per deal 11:56 - How to value a business 12:56 - Buying a business VS starting one 14:26 - How to negotiate 16:33 - How to buy a business from scratch
🔎 Find Thomas 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/ThomasSmale 💼 Website - https://feinternational.com
SUBSCRIBE for weekly videos: https://www.youtube.com/ @starterstory
SOCIALS 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/starter_story 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/thepatwalls
Sharing ideas that make money!
Disclaimer: This podcast is published by a viewer using content from Starter Story's YouTube channel with the goal of making his valuable insights more accessible to those who prefer audio formats, helping more people discover and learn from the insights shared in his videos. It is not an official production of Starter Story. For any requests from Starter Story, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
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------------- Keywords: startup journey, startup stories, passive income, startup founder, revenue stories, make money online, business podcast, bootstrap startup
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