In this episode, Sharon Trevaz announces a major leadership transition at acquisition.com: she becomes CEO, Leila moves to executive chair, and Alex leads financial operations. This change is part of their blueprint to build a multi-billion dollar private equity enterprise. Sharon outlines three big decisions and five key initiatives: a $1 billion real estate portfolio, an AI-first business transformation, Leila's upcoming leadership book, a house of brands media company, and a "Category Kings" program to dominate 5-10 markets. She emphasizes that the shift is about specialization, not retirement, and that success came from collaborative visioning using written memos and a 3-1-90 planning framework. The episode includes a behind-the-scenes conversation with Leila, where they discuss how they created conditions for big-picture thinking, the importance of written documents for aligning visions, and the value of adapting plans as new information emerges. Sharon also shares her personal regret of not documenting past billion-dollar builds, which motivated her to create a public "Next Billion" substack to share lessons in real time. The underlying message is that with a larger vision, focused people in their zone of genius are needed, and transparency about decision-making can help others implement similar strategies.
Hey, this is Sharon Trevaz. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And this is probably a masterclass of an episode that you're going to get because we are going to share with you and complete internal blueprint our playbook on how we are thinking about building the next multi-billion dollar private equity enterprise in the world. And I'm going to show you exactly how we're going to do it. I'm going to do this in three parts. Number one, I'm going to give you the three big decisions that we made that you can see that will maybe help you visualize and understand this change. Number two, I'm going to give you the five things that you're working on right now that may be interesting to you. And number three, I'm going to give you the exact behind the scenes interview that Layla and me explaining how all of this works. So let me break down the three big decisions. So as of today, I'm stepping into the CEO role to execute our plan to build a private equity business model of the future. Number two, that means that Layla is stepping into the executive chair role. And with her entire focus being on building a world class media machine that drives our business model. And third, my partner Alex is leading the charge on what I call our money machine by building the operating money models across our entire portfolio. So why are we doing this and how does this kind of impact or be interesting to you? Well, there are five things that we're working on that I think will really be exciting for you because there may be a way for us to maybe do something together. Number one, on the real estate side. We are building a billion dollar real estate portfolio in the next three years. We are already at $300 million worth of assets actively deployed and growing. If you're interested, take a look at the secure real estate website. As we are planning on maybe inviting you and our network to co invest alongside us. So if you're interested in that, definitely check it out. Number two, we have a massive AI first initiative. So instead of focusing on getting more people to use AI in our business, we're going hard to level up every single person in our business and the entire operating function to become AI first. If you by the way have any experience doing this for companies, definitely hit me up. Number three, I'm really excited to tell you about Leila's book. Leila is writing a brilliant book, whichever it parts of on the leadership lessons learned, building the business across businesses. The whole point of the book is to train the leaders inside acquisition.com and our portfolio companies. Of course, you will have it in your hands to build and lead your teams as well. I will tell you that it is going to blow your mind. Number four, we are building a house of brands model. We brought on a chief media officer. You'll hear about him very soon. He's totally badass to help us build the media company of the future. You're going to see some insane approaches to content and show formats from Alex, Leila, and me. Plus, I also have some new surprises. But the most important thing I want to tell you is that we can all agree that the world needs more than carousels and leery, and dancing videos. So we've got something very cool coming for you as well. Number five, this is the important part. I call this the category Kings bucket. And we have made a big commitment to building the next batch of category Kings. What does that mean? We're going to buy, build, or partner to create the dominant company in each market that we enter, which means we obviously can't do that for a hundred of these markets, but we have our eyes on a few already. And we're going to point the entire media and operational infrastructure of ACQ at these five to ten partnerships over the next ten years. And this is part of the long term plan to create this multi billion dollar infrastructure and enterprise value for the business. By the way, if you believe that you are a category king and you want to become one, watch for our next announcement and kind of how to apply for this as we are probably going to do five to ten businesses over the next decade to really focus our efforts and drive all of this forward. And why am I sharing all of this? I say this to you from a personal perspective because you've been on this journey with me. I had a chance to build two billion dollar businesses and I missed documenting or creating this process in public on the along the way. And all these lessons, all these learnings are just in my head. And I will tell you looking back, this was my biggest regret. That's why I started my sub stack called the next billion where I'm sharing all of these ideas. I'm forcing myself to take I'm away from my learnings to saying, hey, this is the lesson that I learned that can be useful for you so that I don't just hold on to it in my head. And then what is the point of me waiting, you know, 20 to 30 years and then writing a book? That makes no sense. No one reads a book anyway. People barely watch seven minutes of a YouTube video. The thing that I want to do is to document them along the way so that you can get the learnings along the way and you don't have to wait 30 years to get a book that no one will read. So I really want you to see this because when you get to watch these day to day decisions and see leadership transitions, you can start to understand. And why we make these decisions. It gives you a window of implementing something like this for your life and for your business. And my big learning and all of this, the bigger the vision that you have, the more you need focused people in their zone of genius to make this come to life. So what I'm going to drop for you right after this is a private conversation that Layla and I had on why we're doing this, why we're making these changes, what how the role changes are actually evolving. And the behind the scenes of how we came up with all of this, this is something that most businesses, CEOs, business owners will never share with you. And we wanted to give you an inside look at our decision making process and our plans for the future. So right below, I'm going to drop for you. This is a YouTube version, but I'm going to make it optimized for audio so that you can listen to my conversation with Layla and I on what is the big idea of these decisions and how we're building the Disney of Business, a future for acquisition.com. Enjoy. Just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology and the exact how to, how to go your business, go to, blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Trevata and welcome to Business School. What's up guys, welcome back to Build and today we have a special episode where I want to tell you some news. I think that most of the time when people think about new leadership and moving into a new role in your company, they think that something went wrong. And I want to change that narrative because it doesn't mean that anything went wrong. It usually means that stuff went really, really right. And so for me, nine months ago we brought in Sharon to acquisition.com as president and managing partner. It really did change everything like for me personally, for the business, things move faster. We made bigger decisions. We built out a leadership team that we didn't have before. We launched ACQ Ventures. We launched ACQRE. We created new operating structures and for the first time in four years for me personally, I felt like I could breathe, which was freaking amazing. So today, I want to tell you guys about one of the biggest shifts that we have made for acquisition.com's history into being the category king, which it is and continues to be, which is that Sharon is stepping in as CEO of acquisition.com. And I am stepping into my new role as executive chairwoman of acquisition.com. And this episode is the story, how we got here, why we made this decision and what we're going to do next. So I thought it would be most helpful is that we just talk through what led us to decision, what does that look like? I think for so many people that are watching, like both of our audiences, they're probably thinking like, well, that's a big move. How do you make that decision? What does it look like? How do you know you're ready for a decision like that? And so I was thinking we could talk through that and we could just share with everybody. Let's do it. So I'm curious for you, in looking at the decision made for acquisition.com, when we started talking about it, what was your first thought around stepping into that role and what it would mean for us as partners? I was unsure because just like any partnership, you're walking in with expectations that it was all going to go well. But my biggest fear was that we'd lose our friendship. And I think in all our conversations with you and Alex, I was like, I don't care about the deal, I don't care about the economics, I just don't want us to, you know, us, our friendship to break. And I think that was a really good base for us to start because it had so many years of building towards that. I also think what a lot of people don't know is that we got a chance to do business stuff during that time. We invested during that time, we worked through active memos between you and I during that time. So we had a taste of working together with each other. But the most important thing that I really thought about was, how do we get a much bigger and better future? Because it's very hard for one person to cast this, cast such a big vision. And I think you get one dimensionality in how you think. But when you get three people, you get to see a much bigger, broader spectrum, especially in today's ever changing world. Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, you know, when people think about the vision of the company and people ask me, they're like, oh, like, before you came in and we were all three partners, it was like, oh, Alex is the vision and you just do the XQ. And I'm like, it doesn't work that way. Like, it actually is like, we all decide on the vision and you coming in. It's like now the three of us are talking about the vision. In fact, that's probably what we talk about more than anything. But I think that when you see people out there, like Jeff Faisal and Elon and all these, and they're talking about the vision of a company, it's like, you think because that person's talking, they're the one that's the only one thinking about it. But it's like, I don't even think that that would make a strong vision. I think that the collective efforts of all three of us is what makes our vision so strong. Right. I would love for you to talk about one thing, which can help a lot of business owners today. And it is just our process for the visioning and bringing it to life where you and I may talk about something and then you will say, hey, let me think about that and come back to you and you'll do something.
something, right? Memo, right? Could you talk about taking that big vision, bringing it to life, and then the discussion around that becomes that memory? I'd love for you to maybe talk through that process. Yeah, I think that a lot of people want to, they want to facilitate, they want to think about big vision, right? But then they're like, let's put meetings on the calendar and like very structured and get through the vision and do all this stuff. And I think what I've seen over time is that you have to create the conditions that allow people to think about the vision. And that is usually the opposite of what allows people to think about execution in the business. And so I think, you know, it was maybe two months after you came in, we start talking about how do we structure a meeting where we create the conditions to think about the vision? How do we structure time together? So when I think about putting the vision together, I think about what precedes that is getting time to do so, which means you have to have probably nothing on your calendar. You don't have to worry that you're like running into something else. You don't have to feel like there's some tight agenda you have to get through. So I think that's the first piece is like, how do we create the conditions? For myself, when I think about how do I create the conditions for me to think about the vision, I think it's probably two things, which is I have to create the space and I have to create inspiration. And I think the space is the one I just talked about, the second piece, the inspiration, which is like, well, if I'm not constantly learning and I'm not constantly thinking about what's next, what does the future look like for like the economy as a whole, what's happening in tech and people in, you know, sales and marketing, it's like, then I'm, I'm not going to have the best information to create a vision with. And so I think about those two plus, then discussing it with the other people that are building the vision with you. It's like, I feel like those are like the three, at least that's how I think about the three steps. But I'm like, well, you asked me to say it. So I'm like, is something else? I do that you think? No, I think you do it really well. And what I want to bring to life for people is this, nothing great ever happened without it being written down. No, take the, take the constitution, take the magna car to take whatever thing that was great that happened. It started with, with being written down. And that thing didn't get written down one time. It got written down one time and it got viewed, edited, curated, collaborated, viewed, edited, curated, collaborated. And in a lot of ways, it's also very hard to take this ethereal idea of the future that you've spent time thinking about and bringing it to life for your partners or someone else. Because now we have to then mimic your path to getting there. And we can't do that unless you write it down. And then now we get to respond to how it is written down. And we also now are tethered to reality. We're like, well, they love that. You, there is a massive assumption there. Or you didn't think about this. And then now we get to workshop that the single biggest thing that I see you do, which I believe is your superpower is even when you have thought through something in so much detail, you are so open to the assumption or the feedback or the whole that's missing. And which is given Alex and me in a lot of ways a chance to say, oh, to point something out. And vice versa, if I write something up, I've written multiple kind of vision documents and you're like, hey, you're missing this or missing that. Like, oh, that's awesome. Let me go make that better. And I wish more people would do that because this whole role-shifting structure changing has come out of that exercise, which is there's so much opportunity for all of us in the future that one of us can't chase all of it. And I want people to have that really land. I agree with you because I think a lot of people, you know, they look at even when you first joined, we did our first podcast. I mean, what was it? Like, I don't know eight months ago, Jesus. Everyone's like, oh, lay like you're done. You're, you're retiring. And I'm like, what the fuck? We've had so much work to do. What are we talking about? And so I think the same gets assumed with a move like this, which is like, oh, okay, you're going to do less then, right? And it's like, no, we're saying that we have created so much success in the company. We have so much infrastructure that we need to just like we tell the rest of the company to start specializing their roles. We're specializing our roles. And I feel like when you came in, it's like, I think there was so much going on. It's like we started splitting things. And then it's like, okay, we're going to split things in a different way now. That's like really what it is. And I think that's the simplest way to put it. And the funny thing is that we may split things, but we share context on everything. So it's like everything that I'm working on, you know about everything that you're working on. I know about, I mean, to the best of our abilities. Like we can tell each other everything. But like we have complete transparency about it. It kind of makes me think about like when you're building out your leadership team, a lot of people think like, oh, I have a marketing manager, sales manager of this person. And so they're like, oh, they should only have context on this. But for anyone in any part of the company to do their best work, they have to have context on everybody around them and have what they're working on. Like if you don't know what me and Alex are working on, I don't know what you and Alex are working on, how can I do my best work? Right. I can't. Yeah. There's a thinking or planning framework that we use, which I believe is core to the rhythms of acquisition.com. And I love to tell everybody about it because there's different folks have done different versions of this. You can call them like, you know, scaling up or OKRs or what have you. But in essence, any kind of planning framework has a 3190, which is a three year vision, a one year target and a 90 day action. We call it a DSS, which is a desired, superior state, which is a three year vision, the one year target, which is, hey, what are you going to do in three parts? Like this year to achieve that. And then the 90 day action, which is the most important task of the MITs, which is what happens in these 90 days to hit that VFO. I'd love for you to talk, Leila, about how do you, for the last many years, you've built all the DSS's, all the VFOs and all the MITs. It's very easy for people to think that, well, let me plan something like 10 years out. I want to serve 100 million people. And I'm like, bro, it's, well, it is so far out and it's so big. And you've served one, you made a million dollars today. And now you want to go IPO. Like, I appreciate the vision, but there's got to be some road map to that. So when you think about the desired, superior state, the kind of the three year vision, it's not super, it's, it's, it's directionally right. So can you give kind of the business owners watching this gift of grace of saying that, hey, it's OK to have some directional stuff that you can fill in along the way. You know, it's funny because when I, when I first got into business and I was like, OK, I have to have this vision. And like, it needs to be like what's going to happen in five years? So it's basically like, you have to be able to predict the future. I actually think that that means a couple of things if you like really pull the string, which is like, if you're saying one, I have to predict the future. Like, that's just, you just can't know that's what like we pay a lot of people to try and do that across the world. And it's just like, that's very difficult. You can't really do that. You cannot make that as a claim. The second piece to it is that it's assuming that things aren't going to change. The point time at which you're assuming this is going to want what's going to happen in five years, that means that when you get new information in the five years proceeding that, are you not going to change your plan? And it's funny because I used to, you know, in my first company, I learned this is I would get new information and be like, I'm going to integrate that into the plan. People be like, why are we changing the plan? I thought that was what we're going to do. Why are you being distracted or this? I'm like, I am not being distracted. I'm being smart because now things have changed in the world, the economy, et cetera. So why would I not change my plan? And so what that taught me with that first business, doing that for the, you know, whatever seven years was like, I cannot be so fixated on this like very articulate specific plan. It doesn't make sense. But I think we need to know our direction. I think strategy is knowing what do you say no to? And I think what the purpose of that plan to me is two things, which is I want to excite and motivate people as to how big we want to go and where we want to focus. Like it's not like we're, you know, I don't know, creating soil for the earth or something like that. Like we are, you know, focused on businesses and B to B for the most part. The second thing that it does is it tells us, what are we going to say no to? What doesn't match this over the next five years, no matter what changes, are there things that we're always going to say no to because they just don't line up with that strategy that we've painted the picture for? And so when I think about like painting towards that vision, I think about essentially asking those two things like, which I believe is strategy. It's like, what do you say no to? And then what is the order of the things that you're going to do that you say yes to? And when I think about how I'm going to describe it to people because you people say, what does that mean then? Well, it's like, well, what does that look like? Like qualitative? Like what does your team look like? What is the building look like? What does it look like in the community and the impact? What does it look like with customers? You think of all the different people that touch your business? What would they see if they're looking at your business? And how would they describe it? That's the first piece I think about. And the second piece is, okay, what metrics would have to exist if it were true? What would your NPS look like? What would your CAQ to LTV ratio look like? What would your, you know, all those different things people might say, well, that seems silly. But well, for example, for us, if brand is a huge like we want to have the number one business brand on earth, well, then our CAQ to LTV, our CAQ should be zero zero because we should have such a good brand. It should mean our CAQ is zero. So that's an important metric to trick. So I think you kind of marry those two pieces. And it's like, was it looking to feel like mixed with the metrics? And I've just gone off that. And I think over time, I've realized that I need to give less detail, not more, which you also gave me great feedback on that. At one point, you're like, this is probably too much. I was like, man, this is less than I used to do. And I thought it was good because it's like, yes, I know this is going to change. And I think sometimes like I seek to give so much certainty to people because I want them to feel good about where we're going. And then I'm like, oh, I'm doing that too much when it's like the truth is like there is no certainty. But we are certain that we're a team of winners that's going to figure it out. And I'm rather what the book happens. I have an idea that I'd like to share with folks. If you're a business owner and you're thinking about creating this vision, there is, you can use AI to do this to help you with this process. Right? And three step process, super easy. Step number one, you go into AI and you give it all your dreams, all your goals, all your aspirations, everything that you want to do, everything that you think of three years out, five years out, just dump everything in. And then use the prompt that says, assume that we are five years from now and we have already achieved all of this. Can you give me a day in the life of what this would look like? That's really great. And then it will tell you, you wake up, you did this, this is what your business looks like, et cetera.
And at the end of that, you look at everything and you say, awesome, now, map me a five year plan on what I would need to do to achieve that day in the life. So essentially, you're reverse prompting everything. Because sometimes it's very hard for us to say, oh, this is what I want. And put it into action and say, well, I'm gonna accept this is the vision, but when you see that that is the life you're living, maybe you look at that life and say, wait a minute, that is not the life that I want. Yeah. And now you have a chance to fix that. If not anything else, the first draft Layla, I think it dramatically allows you to have this reverse prompting interview with AI. And then you can say, oh, I've had this thought partner in this process, I don't have to sit on a blank piece of paper and actually write this myself. Yeah. And that's a really good point. 'Cause like the first thing I thought about with acquisition.com is like, what could I do every day that I wouldn't get sick of? And it's like, well, for me, it was more about the people and who were working with those, like I like working with entrepreneurs and business owners. And I like having a really smart team. What is a business that helps business owners that means that I have to have a smart team in order to do it? That's like the two things. So you just said that. You said, what makes you super excited to work on something every day? This softly new structure. Yeah. What your focus is shifting a little bit. How do you think about the focus and where are you focused? It's interesting. I think right now I feel focused on making sure that we complete our transition and like continue context dumping with each other, which actually has been really fun for me. So it's been figuring it out and talking it through. But something I was talking to Alex about last night actually was like, my focus is a lot more on the things that got less of my time but had probably the most leverage. So the first one would be the brand and of acquisition.com. Mine is part of that, but also acquisition.com, getting that off the ground. Because we don't really have acquisition.com barrels brand for myself, Alex, you. It doesn't have like its own standing brand right now that we're putting a lot of effort into. And so I want to be the spokesperson for that that helps see it to life. Which has been saying we've been working with, you know, with the media team and with Gabriel, who's our new CMO. The second piece of that is I've been working on a book. So, you know, going with that. No, it's just like you're telling the world. Yeah, no, it's exciting. Because I'm like, okay, I've gotten 10 years of this out of my brain and so I'm excited to get that because I think that does a lot for acquisition.com Because it borrows our brand, I think that a huge piece that's missing is I have not put a lot of written content out there. And I don't think people really know what I do every day. And I think this book is like, one, this is what I do every day. And two, this is everything I've learned. And here's how it can help you. And so I'm really excited to do that. I'm going to launch a course with it that's going to essentially be free. I'm not going to charge for that. But it'll be the same course that we'll put our team through, which is like how to be a leader at acquisition.com. Now you can have that for your team too, which will be fun. So those are two on the media side. The next piece is thinking about like how do we continue to embed our culture in acquisition.com while integrating in AI. So like in this new world, I think about like my strength up until now has been I think building culture, getting a great team. I think you said that when you first came in, you said everyone on here is like a fucking a player. And we do not have enough systems and things. I'm like, right, 'cause I don't know how to do that. And you're way better at that. And so I think I have to, I think what I realized, like now that I have space, I need to lead that for the team because a lot of people I think hear me when I'm like people are the core and all that. But like I want to win. So we need to mix our strength of people in culture with AI first. And what does that mean to the team? And how do we implement that? And I want to inspire that vision for everybody and I want to make it fun, not scary. And then the last piece is, we have a lot of new things that we're venturing into. We have our hold co-opco structure in place. And so I don't want to give too much about like some of the big deals that we're looking at doing right now. But I would say sitting aside those big deals is ACQRE, which is not a real estate, which I think a lot of people don't really know about, which is big. And they're very big. Yeah, very big. And it requires a lot of attention now. So I'm going to be-- Well, I want to tell people about ACQRE. That's because it has a Layla component that you probably don't want to share. But I'll talk to them. They can't. So for people who don't know, most large companies call it McDonald's that has $40 billion with the real estate. Disney and all its theme parks, etc, has over $60 billion with the real estate. We have a very thoughtful way of investing and deploying capital and real estate. We have our campus that is what it all started with in Las Vegas. But now we have built ACQRE, which is our investment arm. Our goal is to hit a billion dollars with the real estate in three years. We're already a third of the way there. We have $300 million with the real estate already deployed. And they're all deployed under something very special, which is what's my idea, which is the brand, the Layla. And it is luxury multifamily apartments. We're primarily in the southeast right now. And Layla is spending a lot of her time kind of thinking about how to deploy this brand and scale that real estate portion of everything that we're working on. We currently have 14 plus assets over 3,500 units and growing. And so we're super excited about the capital deployment into the real estate vehicle. And for me, especially seeing the Layla brand and seeing your, hey, this is the baseline of how we're going to deploy service and how we're going to build a brand around something that is normally there's no brand around housing. And I think that was a big vision for you. Yeah. And I love that piece. I think when you came to me, let's call it the Layla. I was like, oh, go. Be inside of me, melts, right? But I love the brand that it represents, which is, I have a certain standard. I think it's not a secret to anybody. I like premium stuff. And so it's fun to be able to build that for people. And at a price that's not also ridiculous, you know what I mean? And I think we're doing really right by the tenants. And that feels good to me. That we can not just serve us, I think, a lot of times with real estate. And I mean, this is like I learned meeting you, Sharon, which is like a lot of people-- I learned it before I met you. And then I had learned all these shitty lessons. And then I met you and I was like, wow, somebody can do it well, which is like most people think about just the investors at the expense of the tenants, the community, et cetera. And when we met, the reason why every real estate deal I've done in the last seven years has been with you and with our partners has been because we think about, yes, the investors, yes, the tenants, yes, the community, yes, the brain, everything. We're not sacrificing one for the other. And that's why I feel really excited about this project, because it feels like something I would actually put my name behind, which is why it's called Laila. So that has been fun. I think what everyone to realize, there's a underlying theme there, which is also, it's not just the investment in real estate, but it is running the business. That is the real estate. The reason we are investing in this real estate is because if you invest in a group of single-family homes, you are now susceptible to the market conditions of a single-family home, what a home next to its sold, et cetera. But when you are investing in commercial and multi-family, you are now-- you now have to operate that property well. You have to run the business of that property well. And so it's almost the EBITDA of that property is how the property trades. And we had our partners in our headquarters, and we really remapped the entire business. We took all the business learnings of acquisition.com and deployed it on a secure real estate. And that's what people don't understand. They're like, oh, it's not about just buying real estate and letting it ride. It is our systems, our philosophy, our business tools that are actually operating this. So combining the business of building businesses, I think that's what-- I saw Alex getting really excited about just building out the funnels of getting client acquisition on all our properties. And that's when you know that it's really starting to do well. Yeah, it is interesting, because I remember when-- gosh, eight years ago, looking at real estate. And I read four books. I think you recommended two of them to me on multi-family. And then I was like, oh, it's just a business. Like, what the hell? And I remember, because people were like, oh, my gosh, you should get in real estate and have no employees. I was like, when are you talking about, you do this right? You have a huge team. And we do. We have a big team that's managing all these things. And so, yeah, it's really fun to work on that. And I think that serves as one of the operating companies in acquisition.com that we're doing to expand our portfolio. So more to come in terms of operating companies. But I think this is the one that I'm going to be focused on for the foreseeable future, just helping elevate the brand and expand it and make sure that we build a great team. I want to talk briefly about one thing that you said, which is the new things that are coming. And without giving away the new things, I would love to talk about the philosophy of these new things. Because I think there's probably a business or in the audience that may believe that they are a good fit for this new thing. So let me frame it for everybody. Alex Leyla and I are committed to this one big idea of creating Kingmakers. We want to create category kings over the next 10 years. So our goal is to find a business, launch or find a business in a certain category. And as Alex would say, point the entire debt star of all the media and resources to that partnership to help that partnership become a category king in that partnership. We already have multiple businesses there. So which is our advisory practice, which is growing, is probably the fastest growing advisory consulting practice in the world right now. We have a newly launched business network that is a peer group like to YPO and Vistage, which is probably going to be the fastest growing peer group in the world. And we've done this in the past too. There's a track record for this. Alex had this opportunity when the partnership with school to actually make it a category king. I've had a chance to do this. A lot of people don't know this, but I have had a chance to do this with real to take it from 6,800 agents to 28,000 agents, 200 million to 1.2 billion in valuation in a 30 month period. Then got to ring the NASDAQ closing bell.
What people don't know is that Alex and you were my advisors on the back end while in that 30 month period, right? And so we've had a chance to do what? Five category kings in a lot of ways and we're looking to do another five to ten over the next 10 years. So the thing that you're going to see is more category kings coming from acquisition.com where our goal is not to invest in 40 to 50 different companies. Our goal is to build five to 10 category kings that are coming up, which is why we need Alex Laylandi to widen the scope of what we're looking at. A thousand percent. And I think the thing that we do that's different than I think what maybe you guys see people doing online. A lot of people like build a brand and they're like, what products can I sell and things like that? And the way that we think about it is we're like, what companies can we build or buy that are aligned with all of our brands that can be number one in that market. And I think that it's just uncompromising standards, which is like, I don't think any of us want to represent or push or promote a company that isn't the absolute best. And because of that, we have to have our tentacles in it. We've been building a couple. I think that we're looking at it. We basically approach each one with does it make more sense to build or buy it? Like that's the way that we approach each of these opportunities. But I think it's going to be really cool for you guys to see because I think especially with some of these upcoming, I mean, ACQRE, like I'm absolutely willing to promote that and I'm going to, you know, we're going to allow people to invest in that. And these other operating companies that we have upcoming, like I'm going to absolutely promote the shit out of it because I believe in them. Right. You know, let me work either clients or we dog food or our own services. We want them to work with us first. Right. The amount of money that we have in ACQRE that's our personal money is like, it's like pretty much all of it goes there. So like, you know, it feels really good because it's taken a while to get to a point where we can actually use our, like all the operating companies that we have, we are the number one customer of all of them and then we want to make it available to the public essentially. Like that's how I think about it. Yeah. Yeah. The first one you talked about, could you talk about the founder brand transition in some way? It's easy for someone to think, Hey, Alex and Leila, when you, when you all started, it was pre brand. Yeah. Right. And then the brand started, the brand build started happening and now we realize we have significantly bigger opportunities. So we're kind of, now we're building this house of brands. There's probably going to be more than just the three of us at this time. We've got the three of us plus ACQ plus we have thinking about other brands as well. How do you think about that story for the future? What is that going to look like for acquisition? I'm specifically with you thinking about media. Yeah. I think it's really interesting because I think we're at this point where the way I'm thinking about media right now is I'm not just thinking about what's worked in the past but what's going to work in the future. And when I think about like our brands, I think that we have three of, I would argue, the strongest brands in business, right? And I think that we have, you know, maybe not on every platform by every, but I'm like, I think if we look at objectively combining all of our brands, I think that I could say that. Okay. When we think about how do we expand that to have more reach so that we have more power behind the death star to point for all these operating companies, I think what we need to help find or create more brands that are the best in business. And so when I think about that, I think, you know, we might all represent a certain subset of business. I think people probably associate Alex with marketing and sales. You probably associate with me with people. You probably shade you with scaling and big companies and finance like, you know, like the money, money. But there's a lot open there. Okay. Is there somebody that we associate with customer success? Is there somebody we associate with? You know, I would say like a different type of sale is that there's a lot of other things that go into business. And so like, I think one philosophy behind all of our brands is like, we don't talk about stuff we don't know. Right. I refuse to make a fucking video on YouTube because it's trending just because it could do well. Like I could fucking be at three, four million right now. So could you, I'm sure if I had no ethics and morals, but like we refuse to do that. And so in order to do that, we have to actually find people who are the best, who we say we would like them to teach more of this because it really will help people and get them, you know, behind the brand. And so I think about there's the old way of doing that, which is like, and I think we'll test this, which is okay, do we want to find and scout for people that we would like to bring in? Right. The second one is do we have people that we know that are experts that we can create a brand around? Right. Because I think that we've done that successfully a few times. And then the last piece is can we create a brand from scratch, which is I think a very interesting one, which is, can we use AI to create a brand from Thin Air? Yeah. And I want to test all three of those when it comes to expanding ACQ's media reach. And I think we can. And that is what we're building towards. As you were sharing that, this is what kind of popped in my mind. Yeah. The world doesn't realize how important business infrastructure is to actually scale a brand. Right. So take live examples. Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, some people may know this story. During the time that they were all introduced, they were fan favorites. They don't exist today. Heck Walt Disney first created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. That was the, and he was a fan favorite. Universal stole the IP to that and tried to make Oswald great, but failed on his way home on the train. Walt Disney sketched Mickey Mouse and then put it on the Disney infrastructure. Because of that, the Disney infrastructure is what made Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse. Right. So this is the, what we're trying to do is what our roles in the structure of this is to ensure the longevity of this house of brands. And Disney then was able to do Mickey, Minnie, Donald, maybe goofy. And then you have, you have the Avengers, you have Star Wars now because they're able to really take this infrastructure for the house of brands, which is why you're, you have so much courage to say, we can either launch one internally. We can buy one if we need to because we have the ability and the capability and the machine to scale the brands. We know it works. Right. And so the structural change with you focusing on capital deployment and media specifically is helping us like, as you would always say, pull the future forward, but someone's got to think it up and someone's got to make it happen. You and I can do both, but one of us has to live in the thinking it up and one of us is live in the making it happen. Otherwise, we both will get frustrated. I think it's like, where does the discretionary effort go? Correct. Right. And for the business owner watching, if they, if you have a personal brand or you have a house of brands in your company, I would really encourage you to think about the infrastructure on which that sits. You know, a lot of people just tell me, oh, you know, I'll never forget this. You said to me, hey, I was mapping my brand and then I remember the time it took off. And I was like, wait, what is that point? And you're like, that's when I hired a great team. We will do everything that it takes to hire a great team for finance, for accounting, you know, for customer service, but we will want to go on Canva and make a post. Not, I'm not saying we should not do that. You and I have both done that. Yeah. I'm just saying that there are people who are way better at that than we are. Yeah. And while we are doing this, there's a team that is essentially designing this opportunity for us, packaging this for us, so that we can get the highest possible reach. And that big shift, which you gave me was super powerful because it was like, hey, if you care about this so much, then put resources behind it. And I think this is our commitment to putting resources behind building the Disney of business where we can house these house of brands and grow them. Oh, a thousand percent. I mean, I think by the time this releases our press release will have gone out, like we're investing tens of millions into media this year. Yeah. And I think that's like that's how confident we are because we've gotten to where we are with like, you know, a very lean infrastructure. And so now we're going to have dedicated space, dedicated team. We brought in a chief media officer like we're doing the whole thing. And one of my main focuses is to help support him to make sure that he can build this to where it needs to be. I think a lot of people too, like if they're watching us and they're thinking like, you know, I'm building my brand, but I also'm like running my business. It's like, you can't have all the support on your business side and none on your brand side. I've never understood that. I mean, I don't have people that fucking run my personal life. Like at some point you have to say, how do I get the most leverage on my time? And I've always had the goal for myself. Like I want to get to the point where I'm just the talent. I just show up and I'm just, you know, does that mean that the content doesn't come from a place of expertise? Absolutely not. We should have formats that prop the expertise to get pulled out of the person. Right. But now that we've figured it out a lot of those things, it's like, okay, we can do that with not just the three of us. And I think it's even been cool to see the growth of your brand even just coming in. And it's like, it was, you know, we had to change a lot. And there was a lot of like, we had no focus in the beginning and all that. It even just has a recently like relaunching your YouTube channel. It's like fucking killing it. It's like people will look at that and they'll be like, okay, well, then I can just, if you haven't done anything, you haven't given anyone a reason to listen to you. Like you have an insane tracker. I have an insane tracker. Alex has an insane tracker. We have done big shit. People want to listen because of credibility. If you've not done those things, I think trying to teach those things, that would, you're not going to have the same result. But there is a lot of people have done things that don't talk about it. Don't teach it and aren't even on the internet. There's probably a question in audience's mind, which I want to bring you back to Q4 2025. And we had just finished the book launch. We realized that hey, we can go after this different kind of track record of being the New York Times bestseller or the Wall Street Journal bestseller or what have you, which a lot of people have found a mechanism to get that based on their book, which is great. We said, what would it take to hit the pinnacle of it? So we had the most audacious goal of beating the Guinness World Record. We sold $106 million in 72 hours. And we were fortunate to beat the Guinness World Record. It's the fastest selling nonfiction book in the history.
of mankind, which is very cool. And then I remember this memo that we, Alex and I were talking about, which is, hey, what next can't be what just came before? And you said, I want to put everything on pause until we create capacity. I want to emphasize that because the reason we're here talking about this transition is that capacity that we built. Because people only see the decisions that we made, not the choices that we had. And the choice that we had was we could just continue doing the same thing. They're like, oh, they made some money. Great. We should do another launch. Okay, well, we can do that. But what it did was, I think, it gave us a chance to say, stop and build something different for the future, not linearly but exponentially. And I think one thing that you, outside of everyone else, put your foot down and you're like, we will not be able to create a bigger and better future if we don't create this capacity. And for most people creating capacities, hiring of the eight, which is okay. But we built the largest capacity engine in the history of this business in one quarter. Right? And I'll start this story, but I want you to finish it, which is at that time, in essence, you and I were CEO, CFO, CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, kind of sort of CTO, kind of CPO, CIO, Chief Media Officer. We were all of it. And Alex was CRO, like he was making the money. Like I was like, please Alex, because my money is great. But we had, we had all the seats we just between you and me. And there was no way you and I could have done this four months ago. So can you talk about like that capacity creation? Yeah, I think it's always a chicken or an egg problem, which is like, let me just fix this and then I'll go hire somebody. And I realized, I think probably a year prior when I, it was the last time that I, I'd actually flipped out a leader. And when I flipped that person out, I was like, I'm going to take over the division. And it always had worked for me in the past. I always like killed it and it made it better. I had, you know, handed off somebody. It was the first time that I didn't kill it. Like, I was like, oh, I don't actually have the bandwidth to do this really well. And that was really scary for me. And so I promised myself I said, if this ever happens again, you're not doing that. Like, you cannot do that. Learn this lesson. And so when we looked at, and I see flipping somebody out and expanding is two of the same problem, which is like, you lack resources to do either of this things. You're lacking resources to run the current day or you're lacking resources to bring the present forward. That's right. Yeah. And so when everyone saw the success of the book launch, it's like, oh my God, we need to ride this. We need to hit hard, strike by the iron's hot. And I just, you know, it's like, I, this room, I remember this all the time, which is just like businesses die from indigestion, not starvation. And I'm looking around. I'm seeing how exhausted everybody is. Like, the team was tapped after the book launch. Like, let's be honest. Like, some people had like, they had to take like mental break. Like, it was like, I mean, I get it. And there's a lot of emotions with that. I don't think people realize that it's a team. It's not, it's a huge team effort. And I think there's a lot of feelings after it was all done. Looking at all the things that we could do. It's like, oh, yeah, let's go. We could run this play again, et cetera. And I think, take a step back. It's looking at it and saying, what elements of this were so successful and why? And how can we use that to create something so much bigger for this company? I remember thinking myself, I'm like, the next time that we do a launch like that, we better make a fucking billion dollars. Otherwise, I'm going to jump off a clip. This is ridiculous. You know, and so I'm thinking to myself, I can't believe if we were able to do that, what could we do if we weren't selling a book? And how much more could we help people and help entrepreneurs? Because now we know that they're watching us. We have their attention. And I love, and Alex puts his fucking soul into those books. But I'm like, could we build something that could help their business even more? Right. And that's what I couldn't stop thinking about. And then I looked around and I'm looking at what we're doing. And I'm thinking, there's no way that you and I are going to be able to do that without a lot of help. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. And so I think a lot of times what people think is they say, they think, I'm going to get capacity once I have the opportunity. But you don't even know what the best opportunity is until you create enough capacity that you have the opportunity to think. And I think we've been onboarding a lot of people, because we brought in six executives. And the onboarding is takes a huge effort to do all at once. But at the same time, even in doing that, I'm starting to, you know, you start to see the next rung of where you need to be focused as the as the founding team. And we're looking and I'm like, that was the right move. Like there's no fucking doubt about it. That was already moving. If anything, I'm like, we could probably take one more. Yeah. Yeah. Like we could use one more person. I think a lot of people, you know, they see that we create the advisory practice. They see that we did the book on to see what they don't see is the year prior to that where I hired a lot of people who had excess capacity. And I remember Alex is like, dude, we have a lot of capacity. I said, we're going to capitalize on it with this opportunity. And he was like, this is like, we're this is a lot of payroll. And I was like, we can't fucking, I'm not going to risk the client experience or the employee experience by being understaffed to do take on these opportunities. And I look at it like that now. I'm like, we need to do that. There's seasons for businesses where you reap in you so. And it's like, you know, we need to put some time in to build the infrastructure. You're going to have less margin. You're going to have, you're going to feel like there's excess and waste. It eats me too. I like to save every penny. I'm not a fucking, I'm a cheap person when it comes to certain things. But like, you have to do that to get to the next level. Right. I just think about it like that. It's like, you know, when you want to put on muscle, you have to eat more food. You have to have extra energy to create the muscle. And then that muscle can do so much more for you after you've already created it. Right. It's like, I think about a business the same way, which of course I was from came from fitness. So that's my analogy. But no, I love it. If I'm watching this, I'm thinking you brought on six, assume I have the capital, assume I have that the business to be able to do it, you brought on six high powered, C-suite executives to be able to do this. How in the world do you go find them? And I want to kind of break that down for people very quickly. You can't just say everybody's going to come from inside or outside or network. This is a we take the best town from anywhere approach. So for just for folks to know, we had a couple of great leaders from within that promoted into those roles. We had a couple great folks from network that we had some of us had worked with in the past that we we tapped to come work with us. One of them is like getting out of his business to come work with us in their role. And then we ran a search to actually do this process. So it actually was split three ways, three ways, like straight up. Evenly. Yeah. Two to two. Yeah. Yeah. And but a lot of people are like, oh, you got them now turn them on. Well, there's now the you've got a brand new C-suite team with our roles shifting. So this is a this is a like massive growth year for us. It's a massive growth year. I think what I said the last town hall is like, this is a massive transition. You guys are going to feel a lot of lapses in communication. You're going to be like, who does what? What is Toronto? What is Laila? Do what does this mean? And it's it just sometimes you can say everything you want. I can repeat it as many times I want. You're just going to see. Yeah. You're going to see. And it takes time for people to trust that. It takes time for people to see like I said I'm executive chair and I'm still fucking working all day. Like it's not like this doesn't mean like someone's retired. Like and I think it's because the term gets thrown around. I mean, same for CEO. Some people like, Oh, you're CEO. You do nothing. I'm like, what? You know, yeah. Right. It's crazy. So that's for people who don't take their job seriously. I think we we do and we want to do big shit. And I think the cool thing for us is like, yeah, I think what we talk about a lot is like neither of us have to do this. We could be done and do nothing. But we're like, that would be awful. We don't like that. And like, I think we're both motivated much by like making an impact on the world. And I think that's what's fun. It's like, we want to do big epic shit. So as you think about stepping into this kind of new perspective of this role, what would need to be true for you at the end of say a 12 month period for you to feel like it was it was a year spent while. Yeah. A couple of things, which is we would have to be on track with ACQ REs, billion dollar objective. So like to get a third more. And as a center management, the second one would be that from a media perspective. Actually, this is like a kind of encompassing goal I have. But I would love to launch my book into one of the off-codes that we have. So I'd like to use my book to launch so good to announce the opco. Yeah. That would be like covering kind of two bases. Yeah. I don't know if we were able to do that or not, but like it would be my dream to do that. I think kind of going with that is like the book needs to get launched in Q1 of 2020 seven. Like that's my drop dead like need to get an update, which is part of media. The second piece of media is I want when people see our marketing. I want us to be marketing as acquisition.com not as Alex Layla Sharan. Yeah. I have a really good idea of what that looks like in the marketplace. I would say that for our internal teams, this is for everyone like what is that infrastructure to support it. We have to have our whole opco structure very clearly defined. And I think like actually by that time, 12 months now, I feel confident that it actually should start to be feeling divided. Yeah. And I think I'm trying to assist with that with media. I would say another piece of that is I would like us to really embody what AI first means as a company from a cultural perspective. Which I think is something we've talked about a lot. Yeah. It's very top of mind. And then I would say that we would need to launch at least one opco that is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? What would need to be true for me to feel like in 12 months, this was a this was a good good good good next steps. Some of our goals are are integrated, which it should be. I'd say number one is with our new super high powered leadership team getting each of the teams to feel massive wins in these huge projects that they've all taken on. Yeah. So I think my number one job is to support our executive leadership team. So that would be number one to do that. A lot of people just think you can
higher-grade people and just like turn them loose. Yes, they can do that. But you're either doing the job or you're supporting people doing the job. But people don't realize that that's what work is. So the leadership team is my number one focus for the year. My second big thing is we have multiple irons in the fire for the next category king that we're thinking about. And so I would love to turn on a category king this year. That would be a huge win. The third is the integration with ACQRE and getting this next year of a third of closer couple hundred billion million dollars with the real estate added. But the fourth is very similar to your AI first. I would love to find a way to dramatically level up our team, all of them simultaneously. I want to figure out how we can just raise the benchmark of our entire team to be AI first, not just one of our initiatives to be AI first. Because if we actually have, call it, 10% improvement on 150 to 250 people around the world on our teams that can just create more, I think it gets us to our big goals so much faster. And I think a lot of people are not going to be sure how to do that. And if there's a biggest question in my mind, it is how do we get this baseline of our teams higher to utilize new technology? I've become more and more excited over that piece. Oh my gosh. Over the last few weeks, which is really interesting. I'm sure people are wondering how when it comes to this change we've made. What's the difference between CEO and executive chair? What does that mean? And I think it's interesting, because I'll give my perspective. It's useful. I'd love to know what your perspective is. I think titles for one in companies always mean something different. I have learned that. Sometimes you go to someone and you're like, oh, are you the CEO? They're like, no, I'm the CEO. And I'm like, you're running everything. And I'm like, that's interesting. Or sometimes I go somewhere and I'm like, oh, you're the CEO. That's kind of the executive chair. So it's very interesting. And I think that what it means to us is that we have the areas where it's like, OK, I know this is like, if you look at a racing matrix, responsible, accountable, consulted, informed. That's what a racing matrix is. You should use it for organizing your teams. I look at it as like, we are both responsible for all of these. But who at the end of these, like, accountable, the one throat to choke? And that's how we split those things. That's exactly right. Yeah. If you take the-- I think in essence, what we did is we took this kind of CEO role, which we both kind of give the categories of vision, people, and cash. And which of these, not with the size and scope of what we want to build, one person cannot be racing on all three of it. And so there is a shared responsibility and accountability on-- you're living more in the future. So there's a more responsibility on you, a little bit of accountability on me to hold you to that. The people in the cash are probably more to me day to day to hit our kind of one in three-year goals. But I think about it as the CEO in a lot of ways reports to the board. The board job is to hire the CEO to run the business. It just so happens that the board is a three of us. But there's a-- we have managing partner meetings where I report in what I do. And you turn around and say, here's what I'm doing as a chair. I see it as the biggest difference is you get to live in the future and pull the future forward. I get to stay today and move forward as fast as I can. And so that way, you know that, hey, I have this idea. It will still get done. I know that I don't have to spend my cycles thinking, like, clearing my calendar to think about that one thing is just impossible to do. And so we got a chance to divide and conquer, if you will. I also think where the company is right now in terms of size. You have been a leader at companies with more headcount than I have. And I think it also is like there's different inflection points with the team. Whereas I was like, your skill set in this era might be more useful right here for us right now. And I think, I don't know. Maybe that changes into your course. You know what I mean? But I think that was something I recognized too. It's like, I don't have that experience. Sometimes I'll ask you, I'm like, listen, I don't know what you think I'm all about. Because I'm like, listen, I can go off my intuition and go all right, but I'm never going to disregard the experience that you have in doing some of those things. I think a lot of it is just reps. Yeah. You've seen it happen and happened poorly multiple times. I will tell you that for a lot of folks, one big tactical lesson for business owners doing transitions is to transition responsibility and accountability, but not transition visibility. So for example, we use a end-of-week reporting process where all the leadership team does end-of-week reports to me. However, you are copied on all of this. And your key areas of leadership, I'm copied on all of this. So now that's really important. So we have separated out accountability and responsibility, but not visibility. Because otherwise, I would just miss something. Yeah. And so a lot of people are like, well, just draw the line down the middle. So the small lessons that you can learn are the ones that make or break you. And that comes from it having broken in the past, which was like, hey, Leila, I think, you know, why don't we consider doing it this way? And I think if you take anything else, you take away like small things like that. The implementation of these changes is way more important than the structure of these changes. Yeah. It's also interesting. I think something I learned from you is the visibility piece because you send me so much stuff. And I was like, oh, because blesses all Alex, like, would be like, why are you sending me this? And he's like, I don't-- in his role, he needs to stay focused. And that's just who he is as a person. So I'm used to like, oh, I learned not to send stuff. And so then I realized with you, I was like, oh, I need to be sending stuff. So that's like, OK, we forward stuff to Sharan forward it. Look at it. But it's like, that helps us. I love when you send me stuff because I'm like, oh, that gives me good context. So when I'm making decisions over here, I have that in the back of my head. One of the biggest skills in today's world that a leader can have is a large context window. The ability to just take a lot of information and not feel like you have to act on it. Yeah. Oh, 1,000%. You just utilize it whenever it's needed. Right. And to do that, you need capacity. If you or I did not have the capacity, we would not have the context window will instantly shrink. And you're like, do I have too much going on? But now I can give you more. You're also wired for a large context window. I think most leaders that I've seen have very large context windows. If you have a large context window menu, you can take a lot of information and don't feel like you have to act on it. Gives you the ability to deploy empathy as you need to. Deploy intellectual capacity as you need to. But the folks that are like, hey, don't tell me this thing. They're really good at one or two things. So those are specialist individual contributors. That's cool. But a larger context window gives you the ability to be warm, be kind, be sharp, be bold, have courage. So the context window allows you to have enough information. And so if there's anything that you, most leaders can develop, it is this ability to take in new information and not have to viscerally react to it. Yeah. It's like you just choose to respond. Or let, I thought it was really cool. You sent me the recording earlier of a meeting. And I loved how it started because it's something I say a lot, which is like, there's always stuff on fire. Trashcan on fire, curtain on fire, living room on fire. We know. But like, you've got to choose which fire you're going to put out. And I think we're good at like, OK, this is actually something we need to address. First is like, those things are just going to happen. And like, business is not perfect. If anyone makes you feel that way, they're lying and trying to sell you some shit. And probably don't have a good business themselves because business is messy as fuck. Do you want to bring this home by sharing one thing, which I think you did very, very well, which is people who don't realize that this was not a two-minute conversation. We talked about it for a few months. And then you laid out a plan. And the plan was really good, right? And the plan was good. I mean, we pushed each other on it. Yeah. But the plan had a couple of components. It was like, your plan after, my plan after, and then the transition and how you communicate. I'd love for you to maybe talk through-- you played point on this while I was in it. So I'd love for you to maybe talk through that. It would give people a sense of understanding, hey, when you have complex things, how to actually plan for it. I think that where most people go wrong when they make a change like this, is they do not understand change management. And they expect other people to do it. They think they're too good above the work. They think, oh, people should just-- they should know-- they just make up all these excuses. And I think instead, it's like, now I'm going to make sure it goes as I want to go. I want to make sure it's a good change in the company. It's perceived as something positive because anytime that you're stepping into a new role, especially for me, if I've been CEO for indefinitely, since day one, people are like, wow, that could feel scary. It could feel bad. And I want us to say this to preface this, when we got off the call of the town hall where we told everybody, I walked into the kitchen, and I got high fives, hugs, people saying, how fucking excited they were for the company, how stoked they are for the growth, how awesome you are, how it's such an amazing move, by people who I wondered if they were going to be concerned or cautious. I think that's because of the plan we put in place, which was like, OK, first off is like, what's the change? When does it need to happen? What does reporting structure look like? What's my job description, your job description? How do we split VFOs, MIT's, DSS? How are we going to communicate this to the executive team, to the greater team, to the greater public? What is the exact scripting? Like, I literally sent you my scripts. I said, hey, here's my script for I'm going to tell the whole team, like, what do you think? Here's the slide deck that we've put together. Here's the press releases we're going to put together. And so it's like every piece of the plan all in one document. And I do think I worked a little too hard because I was nervous. No, it was. But it was really helpful because then I wanted to make sure that the whole thing felt good to you and to me. And it helped us say, are we on the same page with everything? Because people are going to ask-- and I even put like an FAQ together. These are the questions I anticipate people are going to ask about this. Let's answer them ahead of time. Let's make sure that you and I have talked through all of them. And I think that was incredibly helpful to think of when you make a transition. That might have been one of the more helpful things. What's the team going to ask?
And then making sure that you and I are aligned with the things that we're going to answer. Right. I don't think people realize that complex things need time and need thinking because I need a lot of preparation because how you prepare shows just how much you care. Right. And so the thought process with one of the things that I love about you is you like to write and I'm just glad that I do too. So like we I read a lot. I think the most memos that anyone sends each other is like you and me. It's constant. It's constant. Like writing Layla and memo. Right. But my thinking process around this is if I write it to the point where if something happened and I was not there to deliver it and only my written artifacts were to deliver this message, how good would that be? Yeah. So it's a really it's a good frame to have where you can say, hey, if I just hand this to the world, will they know my intentions? And that goes to the preparation. I think what you know, kudos to you. I think you took that to the most professional level where you're like, I'm going to think through everything so that we do write kudos to you. Well, you made it easy. And honestly, it feels like a very easy transition for us. Like I feel like this works fine so far. So like it's funny. You make these big things happen and it's like, I don't I actually think it's going to go great. This is going to be great for the company and this is going to like really take us to the next level. Yeah, it's cool. Hey, this is Sean. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I've got a chance to build two billion dollar companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It's on my substack called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three-peat and build the next billion. So everything's free at MyNextBillion.com. Please check it out. MyNextBillion.com.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Sharon Trevaz is stepping into the CEO role of acquisition.com to build a multi-billion dollar private equity enterprise.
Leila is moving to executive chair, focusing on building a world-class media machine.
Alex is leading the "money machine" by developing operating models across the portfolio.
Key initiatives include
The leadership shift is a specialization of roles, not a retirement, and was driven by a collaborative visioning process using written memos and a 3-1-90 planning framework.
The goal is to document the journey publicly to share learnings, avoiding the regret of not doing so in previous billion-dollar ventures.
Summary:
com: she becomes CEO, Leila moves to executive chair, and Alex leads financial operations. This change is part of their blueprint to build a multi-billion dollar private equity enterprise. Sharon outlines three big decisions and five key initiatives: a $1 billion real estate portfolio, an AI-first business transformation, Leila's upcoming leadership book, a house of brands media company, and a "Category Kings" program to dominate 5-10 markets.
She emphasizes that the shift is about specialization, not retirement, and that success came from collaborative visioning using written memos and a 3-1-90 planning framework. The episode includes a behind-the-scenes conversation with Leila, where they discuss how they created conditions for big-picture thinking, the importance of written documents for aligning visions, and the value of adapting plans as new information emerges. Sharon also shares her personal regret of not documenting past billion-dollar builds, which motivated her to create a public "Next Billion" substack to share lessons in real time.
The underlying message is that with a larger vision, focused people in their zone of genius are needed, and transparency about decision-making can help others implement similar strategies.
FAQs
Sharon stepped into the CEO role, Layla moved to executive chair to focus on media, and partner Alex leads the money machine by building operating models across the portfolio.
They aim to reach a billion dollars in three years, currently at $300 million in assets, and may invite co-investors via the secure real estate website.
Instead of just using AI, they are leveling up every employee to become AI-first across the entire operating function.
It involves buying, building, or partnering to create the dominant company in each market entered, focusing on 5-10 partnerships over ten years.
To document lessons learned while building billion-dollar businesses, sharing them publicly instead of waiting decades to write a book.
It stands for Desired Superior State (3-year vision), one-year target, and 90-day action (MITs), providing a directional roadmap.
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