Discover why Moran (CEO of Acquisitions.com) claims every business owner should hire an AI employee, how his view that humans are half animal and half divine helps him succeed during crisis, and what tip he shares about selecting good business partners (13 minutes).

CEO BLINDSPOTS® PODCAST GUEST: Moran Pober.

Moran is the CEO of Acquisitions.com. He has founded, acquired, scaled, sold, and played a key role in the exits or acquisitions of over 100 companies. 

In addition, Moran has been seen on USA Today, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and CNBC, and other media outlets. 


For more information about the benefit of hiring an AI Employee; https://lp.acquisitions.com/ai


CEO Blindspots® podcast host: Birgit Kamps.

Birgit's professional experience includes starting and selling an “Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Company” and a “Best Company to Work for in Texas”, and serving as a Board Member with various companies. She is able to help investors and executives quickly discover blind spots holding their organization back, and accelerate leadership effectiveness. 

In addition, Birgit is the host of the CEO Blindspots® Podcast which was recognized by Spotify for having the “biggest listener growth” in the USA by 733%; ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.ceoblindspots.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

To ask questions about this or one of the 200+ other CEO Blindspots® Podcast episodes, send an email to⁠ birgit@ceoblindspots.com⁠

Hello, and welcome to the CEO Blindspot Show, where leaders lead leaders.

I'm your host, Birgit Kamps, and today's guest is Moran Pobere, an investor and entrepreneur who has founded, acquired, scaled, sold, and played an integral role in the business rollups, exits, and acquisitions of over 100 companies.

And today happens to be leading and be the CEO of acquisitions.com, which is a premier company that helps people acquire companies effectively.

Well, I know that you have shared your expertise on CNBC, USA Today, Forge Magazine, many other places, But today I'm grateful you're here willing to contribute to other entrepreneurs.

And as I was trying to do my research on you, I'm wondering your background in the military, did that have anything to do with it?

Or what would you say are 1 or 2 of the reasons why you have managed to succeed so well as a leader?

I think the military definitely contributed to my life as an entrepreneur.

First of all, it brought a lot of discipline to my life.

So it taught me to do things that I need to do, even if I don't feel like doing them.

But then it also taught me on what I definitely don't want to do with my life, which is having too many people telling me what to do every day.

So that pretty much started my journey as an entrepreneur, just seeing what I don't want to have in my life and just fighting for that freedom.

And obviously you figured out the formula.

How did you figure out how to acquire and grow and scale as many companies as you have?

I think it's a combination of luck, mentors, hard work.

Till this day, I still have tons of mentors.

I mean, I probably have more books on, mostly listening to audio books.

I have probably at least more than 1000 titles in my Audible account.

And I probably paid more for other mentors than anyone else that I know.

So yeah, mentors, luck, hard work, and a bit of a dreaming about what might be possible in life, I think.

Well, it sounds to me like you're big into being a lifetime learner.

And so your vision, I know you said that you started as a entrepreneur, not wanting to constantly be told what to do, but now what drives you?

Because you don't have to do anything now and you keep on going.

Now, I think it's a combination of creating impact plus enjoy.

I don't think there's anything else I enjoy more than this.

I mean, I had periods in my life where I traveled all around the world.

I pretty much went to any city or country that I wanted to visit.

And at some point, I mean, for me, I got bored.

I mean, there's only so many pina coladas or whatever you can drink every day.

So the business world is just a place to express yourself, the place that allows you to be creative that I think at least for me, I've never seen anything that comes closer to the place of business where you can express yourself, you can create such an impact and yeah, just build things from nothing.

Well, then of course, I have to ask you, did you ever struggle as a leader or were you like naturally did well from the very beginning?

No, I definitely, I feel like I still struggle every single day.

It's funny, I had a call last week with an entrepreneur and I told him that that's how entrepreneurship feels like.

I think probably 95% of the day is you struggling.

But when I look at my day, I don't feel like I struggle.

My role is to fix things, is to bring things back to balance.

So other people might see it as struggling.

I see it as like, yeah, that's the role that I chose to myself.

Well, And maybe you have a tip for other leaders, specifically when it comes to leading other people.

I don't know if you were always good at selecting the right people or managing them effectively, or if you also had a moment in your career where you're like, Oh, what I'm doing here doesn't work.

Not every day, but I still have a lot of those moments and still always looking for support and for my growth opportunities.

And you asked of the biggest lessons from your tips.

I think that for me, when I remember that I need to put the company or companies first and not me first, I think that at the moment that I realized that I think everything changed for me because I realized it's not about me.

And when I keep that in mind and I forget about my ego and I remember that it's about everyone else, then I can make better decisions.

And when I understand that, I also need to remember that a business is a reflection of the owner.

It's gotta be someone's baby and it's either yours if you're the majority owner or someone else is running the business for you.

So yeah, I'd say those are probably some of the, 2 of the biggest lessons for me.

Yeah, well I appreciate your willingness to share that.

So now when you look to hire an employee or maybe back then, do you use any kind of assessment tools or is it you just have a better feel of who to hire or can you share anything about that?

Yeah, so I can talk about the latest project I'm working on where I brought in 2 partners.

And I can tell you that all the first conversations that I had with them were all about the vision and the values that we want this business to represent.

And of course, they had the right background.

But in the end of the day, if they're not seeing the world as you want to see it, like In my mind, I have a vision for the business and I want my partners at least, or the key executives in my business, to see and understand my vision.

And if they don't understand it, and they don't understand it, to get to that vision, we gotta have values and rules and things that we accept and don't accept, then yeah, I don't believe it's going to work.

We got to have values that we all agree on.

We understand the values are there to help us go to that vision.

And after that, of course, let's look at the profile and their background and make sure that they can actually do the work that we need them to do.

So it sounds to me that you started seeing the importance of clarifying a vision and values to then be able to hire the right people.

I think it's as important as anything else.

So like you said, you seem to love being an entrepreneur and you started yet another company that has to do with something that I think will help a lot of business leaders, which is, you know, you're creating an employee out of an AI avatar.

Are you willing to share a little bit more about why you did that and how that could help other entrepreneurs?

Why are we even doing certain things in life?

I feel like at this point, I feel like I don't have an option.

A thought or a few thoughts came to my mind.

And for some reason I paid attention to those thoughts.

And in the last few weeks working on this, I couldn't think of anything else, literally, other than this.

It's like, I feel like I didn't have the option to even choose if I want to do it or not.

And as far as what we want to do, we want to build an AI that will handle eventually that will handle your business, that will be the forefront of the business, kind of like your contact person, your HR person, your marketing person, the everything person.

Because I believe that 80% of all jobs that are economically valuable, those functions will be capable of being done with AI.

So what we do is we package all those different roles into an asset that looks like your ideal avatar AI.

And yeah, I can explain more on that if you want, but that's kind of like the idea in a nutshell.

Well, you know, 1 of the questions I also like to talk about is how did you make it through crisis?

And what tips do you have about, you know, for other leaders regarding how they can make it through crisis?

And it seems to me like right now, a lot of businesses, if they don't start becoming aware of the impact of AI, they could end up in a business crisis.

And it sounds to me like you're actually maybe ahead of the curve on this 1.

Or how would you recommend that people make it through a crisis or prevent a crisis?

Because right now I think you're helping leaders prevent a crisis.

Yeah, I think it comes down to my view about the world in general.

I feel like my views about the world is that we're like human beings are half animal, half divine.

And so my spiritual side, if I experience a challenge or a struggle, I try to trust as much as I can remember that there's probably a lesson here that will only help me expand as a person.

But then I also remember we're half animals, so we need to do whatever it takes to survive and act right away.

Those usually more of a tactical decisions that we need to make to protect the business.

So when I combine those 2 things, usually I get out of it alive at least so far.

I appreciate your willingness to talk about this because I know this is literally fresh off the press as they say.

What would be the benefit of an entrepreneur to consider having an AI avatar for their business now versus, you know, in a couple of years?

So My view is that content creation is a must nowadays, especially it's gonna be a must in the next few years.

And putting your face out there isn't for everyone.

I mean, you need to find a time, you need to create scripts, you need to find a videographer or editor.

And if you combine it with the fact that a lot of companies are wasting a lot of money on marketing and advertising, what we created is an opportunity to invest in an asset that you could eventually sell or license to other brands.

So the AI avatar is basically going to replace, call it unreliable employees that don't follow your processes.

Here you have an employee avatar don't sleep 24 7 that looks the way you want him to look.

Sounds the way you want to sound is not emotional is not making mistakes it's always gonna cost you the same versus if you're going to hire an influencer to present your business, their cost can go up if you're successful.

And also think about the downside of hiring an influencer.

There's a story, I think a week or 2 ago that happened with Budweiser, the beer company, that their stock went down like 30% basically because they hired the wrong influencer that just didn't represent their customer profiles.

So What we do is we kind of like help businesses create their own, call it a Kool-Aid man, right?

We create the personality behind him and we take all the content creation plus many other things from the business owner.

A lot of, I think the whole marketing industry is getting disrupted right now.

And if you're an entrepreneur who wants to be known or branded, I can see how that's important.

So I imagine you're doing this for your own businesses too, correct?

And it can be any kind of avatar, it can be a male, a female, I guess whatever people decide is important for their brand.

Well, I know that if people want to learn more on the acquisition side of the business, they can go to acquisitions.com.

But I will also put in the description the link to if they want to better understand how they can gain a competitive edge for their business by looking at this AI avatar product that you are in the process of rolling out.

And I appreciate you again being willing to come on this show, contribute to other leaders, and especially talk about something that is literally in the works right now.


Speaker 0: Hello, and welcome to the CEO Blindspot Show, where leaders lead leaders. I'm your host, Birgit Kamps, and today's guest is Moran Pobere, an investor and entrepreneur who has founded, acquired, scaled, sold, and played an integral role in the business rollups, exits, and acquisitions of over 100 companies. And today happens to be leading and be the CEO of acquisitions.com, which is a premier company that helps people acquire companies effectively. Welcome to the show, Moran.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 0: Yes. Well, I know that you have shared your expertise on CNBC, USA Today, Forge Magazine, many other places, But today I'm grateful you're here willing to contribute to other entrepreneurs. You've had a lot of successes. And as I was trying to do my research on you, I'm wondering your background in the military, did that have anything to do with it? Or what would you say are 1 or 2 of the reasons why you have managed to succeed so well as a leader?

Speaker 1: I think the military definitely contributed to my life as an entrepreneur. First of all, it brought a lot of discipline to my life. So it taught me to do things that I need to do, even if I don't feel like doing them. But then it also taught me on what I definitely don't want to do with my life, which is having too many people telling me what to do every day. So that pretty much started my journey as an entrepreneur, just seeing what I don't want to have in my life and just fighting for that freedom.

Yeah.

Speaker 0: And obviously you figured out the formula. Did you yourself have a mentor? How did you figure out how to acquire and grow and scale as many companies as you have?

Speaker 1: I think it's a combination of luck, mentors, hard work. Till this day, I still have tons of mentors. I mean, I probably have more books on, mostly listening to audio books. I have probably at least more than 1000 titles in my Audible account. Like I'm obsessed with learning.

So every book for me is a new mentor. And I probably paid more for other mentors than anyone else that I know. So yeah, mentors, luck, hard work, and a bit of a dreaming about what might be possible in life, I think.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like you're big into being a lifetime learner.

Speaker 1: A hundred percent. Yep.

Speaker 0: And so your vision, I know you said that you started as a entrepreneur, not wanting to constantly be told what to do, but now what drives you? Because you don't have to do anything now and you keep on going.

Speaker 1: Now, I think it's a combination of creating impact plus enjoy. I really enjoy being an entrepreneur. I don't think there's anything else I enjoy more than this. I mean, I had periods in my life where I traveled all around the world. I pretty much went to any city or country that I wanted to visit.

And at some point, I mean, for me, I got bored. I mean, there's only so many pina coladas or whatever you can drink every day. So the business world is just a place to express yourself, the place that allows you to be creative that I think at least for me, I've never seen anything that comes closer to the place of business where you can express yourself, you can create such an impact and yeah, just build things from nothing.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, then of course, I have to ask you, did you ever struggle as a leader or were you like naturally did well from the very beginning?

Speaker 1: No, I definitely, I feel like I still struggle every single day. It's funny, I had a call last week with an entrepreneur and I told him that that's how entrepreneurship feels like. I think probably 95% of the day is you struggling. But when I look at my day, I don't feel like I struggle. I just feel like, yeah, that's my role.

My role is to fix things, is to bring things back to balance. So other people might see it as struggling. I see it as like, yeah, that's the role that I chose to myself.

Speaker 0: Well, And maybe you have a tip for other leaders, specifically when it comes to leading other people. I don't know if you were always good at selecting the right people or managing them effectively, or if you also had a moment in your career where you're like, Oh, what I'm doing here doesn't work. I need to change this.

Speaker 1: I still have those moments. Not every day, but I still have a lot of those moments and still always looking for support and for my growth opportunities. And you asked of the biggest lessons from your tips. I think that for me, when I remember that I need to put the company or companies first and not me first, I think that at the moment that I realized that I think everything changed for me because I realized it's not about me. Business is not about me.

It's about the people we impact. And when I keep that in mind and I forget about my ego and I remember that it's about everyone else, then I can make better decisions. And when I understand that, I also need to remember that a business is a reflection of the owner. I really believe so. It's gotta be someone's baby and it's either yours if you're the majority owner or someone else is running the business for you.

So yeah, I'd say those are probably some of the, 2 of the biggest lessons for me.

Speaker 0: Yeah, well I appreciate your willingness to share that. So now when you look to hire an employee or maybe back then, do you use any kind of assessment tools or is it you just have a better feel of who to hire or can you share anything about that?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so I can talk about the latest project I'm working on where I brought in 2 partners. And I can tell you that all the first conversations that I had with them were all about the vision and the values that we want this business to represent. And of course, they had the right background. Obviously, they got to know their work. They got to know what they need to do.

But in the end of the day, if they're not seeing the world as you want to see it, like In my mind, I have a vision for the business and I want my partners at least, or the key executives in my business, to see and understand my vision. And if they don't understand it, and they don't understand it, to get to that vision, we gotta have values and rules and things that we accept and don't accept, then yeah, I don't believe it's going to work. And I wouldn't enjoy it most likely. So I got to have the vision. They got to be with me on that vision.

We got to have values that we all agree on. We understand the values are there to help us go to that vision. And that is the starting point. And after that, of course, let's look at the profile and their background and make sure that they can actually do the work that we need them to do.

Speaker 0: So it sounds to me that you started seeing the importance of clarifying a vision and values to then be able to hire the right people. Is that correct?

Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%. I think it's as important as anything else.

Speaker 0: Okay, very good. So like you said, you seem to love being an entrepreneur and you started yet another company that has to do with something that I think will help a lot of business leaders, which is, you know, you're creating an employee out of an AI avatar. Are you willing to share a little bit more about why you did that and how that could help other entrepreneurs?

Speaker 1: Why? Why is a very good question. Why are we even doing certain things in life? I feel like at this point, I feel like I don't have an option. It's like, I have to do that.

A thought or a few thoughts came to my mind. And for some reason I paid attention to those thoughts. And in the last few weeks working on this, I couldn't think of anything else, literally, other than this. It's like, I feel like I didn't have the option to even choose if I want to do it or not. And as far as what we want to do, we want to build an AI that will handle eventually that will handle your business, that will be the forefront of the business, kind of like your contact person, your HR person, your marketing person, the everything person.

Because I believe that 80% of all jobs that are economically valuable, those functions will be capable of being done with AI. So what we do is we package all those different roles into an asset that looks like your ideal avatar AI. And yeah, I can explain more on that if you want, but that's kind of like the idea in a nutshell.

Speaker 0: Well, you know, 1 of the questions I also like to talk about is how did you make it through crisis? And what tips do you have about, you know, for other leaders regarding how they can make it through crisis? And it seems to me like right now, a lot of businesses, if they don't start becoming aware of the impact of AI, they could end up in a business crisis. And it sounds to me like you're actually maybe ahead of the curve on this 1. But what do you think?

Is that a blind spot for entrepreneurs? Have you seen that? Or how would you recommend that people make it through a crisis or prevent a crisis? Because right now I think you're helping leaders prevent a crisis.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it comes down to my view about the world in general. I feel like my views about the world is that we're like human beings are half animal, half divine. And so my spiritual side, if I experience a challenge or a struggle, I try to trust as much as I can remember that there's probably a lesson here that will only help me expand as a person. That's on the spiritual side. But then I also remember we're half animals, so we need to do whatever it takes to survive and act right away.

Those usually more of a tactical decisions that we need to make to protect the business. So when I combine those 2 things, usually I get out of it alive at least so far.

Speaker 0: Wow. I appreciate your willingness to talk about this because I know this is literally fresh off the press as they say. What would be the benefit of an entrepreneur to consider having an AI avatar for their business now versus, you know, in a couple of years?

Speaker 1: Yeah. So My view is that content creation is a must nowadays, especially it's gonna be a must in the next few years. And putting your face out there isn't for everyone. And it's expensive. I mean, you need to find a time, you need to create scripts, you need to find a videographer or editor.

And if you combine it with the fact that a lot of companies are wasting a lot of money on marketing and advertising, what we created is an opportunity to invest in an asset that you could eventually sell or license to other brands. So the AI avatar is basically going to replace, call it unreliable employees that don't follow your processes. Here you have an employee avatar don't sleep 24 7 that looks the way you want him to look. Sounds the way you want to sound is not emotional is not making mistakes it's always gonna cost you the same versus if you're going to hire an influencer to present your business, their cost can go up if you're successful. And also think about the downside of hiring an influencer.

There's a story, I think a week or 2 ago that happened with Budweiser, the beer company, that their stock went down like 30% basically because they hired the wrong influencer that just didn't represent their customer profiles. So What we do is we kind of like help businesses create their own, call it a Kool-Aid man, right? And we bring it to life. We create the personality behind him and we take all the content creation plus many other things from the business owner.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And you're right. A lot of, I think the whole marketing industry is getting disrupted right now. And if you're an entrepreneur who wants to be known or branded, I can see how that's important. So I imagine you're doing this for your own businesses too, correct?

Speaker 1: That's in the working, yeah.

Speaker 0: And it can be any kind of avatar, it can be a male, a female, I guess whatever people decide is important for their brand. So, okay. Well, I know that if people want to learn more on the acquisition side of the business, they can go to acquisitions.com. But I will also put in the description the link to if they want to better understand how they can gain a competitive edge for their business by looking at this AI avatar product that you are in the process of rolling out. And I appreciate you again being willing to come on this show, contribute to other leaders, and especially talk about something that is literally in the works right now.

And thank you so much for being so open.

Speaker 1: You got it. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

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Moran Pober, CEO of Acquisitions.com: "Hire an AI Employee!" (13 min)