Parallel Economy Poised for Massive Gains
Trump's Win Secures a 4-Year Reprieve
The PE Tribe Must Use Its Time Wisely
To Build, Grow and Thrive
by Joe DiPietro, Publisher & CEO | Conservative Commerce
An Update & Review: After a much-needed break during an extended year-end holiday season, we’re all back to work here at Conservative Commerce. By God’s merciful and underserved kindness and grace, President Trump will be back in office in a few days. Which means that all of us in the Parallel Economy have gained some breathing room to execute our business plans. But the war continues, the Left lives to shut us up and shut us down; they never stop. And the next four years are going to fly by. We must stay vigilant and never forget what the Left has done to us and our businesses over the last several years. On our end, in this war, we’re excited to share that we are making some significant changes in 2025: We have a plan in place to produce excellent content for you and publish weekly. Additionally, we are carving our OPSEC section into its own stand-alone publication – more on this down below. Our hope is that we can help you thrive while you build and grow and continuously improve your business. May God richly bless all of us in 2025!
Entrepreneurship
The team over at Lenny’s have hosted Drew Houston, the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, for what we’re sure will be a very interesting and informative podcast on starting and building a wildly successful company from scratch (this came in right before our content cut-off and we haven’t had time to fully review it). Houston talks about the multiple phases in the Dropbox history – from explosive viral growth, to battling all the tech giants at once, to reinventing the company when opportunities or challenges mandated such. In the podcast he shares about: The challenges he’s faced over the past 18 years, what he learned about himself, the importance of maintaining your learning curve as an entrepreneur, finding purpose beyond metrics and growth, as well as the micro and macro aspects of building companies.
Caveat: We’re certain Drew Houston is in not in our Parallel Economy camp. He’s a mega-star in Big Tech and he joined META’s board as an outside director in the ominous and fateful year of 2020 – and shamefully stayed on through Facebook’s Reign of Terror. That said, we can’t find anything overtly Lefty on his personal feeds; though we only did a cursory search. Maybe he just played the harlot at META, the director fees are probably ginormous. If he ends up in a violent prison with Zuckerberg, we doubt that lucre will have been worth it though. Also, he’ll likely get all “new age” regarding personal-growth psychology – just fast forward over that part.
Lastly, because all wisdom is God’s wisdom, the importance of his entrepreneurship case study (from $0 to $9 Billion valuation) overrides our always-vigilant concern regarding our content for the Parallel Economy tribe. Let the listener go in with eyes wide open and use good discernment. You can watch the podcast here.
Business Strategy
Warning: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s cringy, groveling, bootlicking kiss-up to President Trump took a delightfully fun twist after his please-don’t-put-me-in-prison visit to Mar-a-Lago when he recently fired the army of Fact Checkers he put in place to censor/silence/de-platform/de-person/destroy those on the Conservative Right and boost those on the Satanic Left. To add even more hilarity to his deceptive we’re-all-friends-now antics, he just installed the UFC’s Dana White on to the META board. If you didn’t laugh-snort out your coffee on that one you might need a comedic-irony check-up. We highly doubt he will put up with the leftist hive mind of censorship. But here’s the takeaway: Zuckerberg and at least 100 of his little commie lieutenants should be behind bars in a violent prison for their criminal actions over the last decade. They gleefully destroyed people, careers and businesses. They are not your new friend and they should not be your new business partner. Don’t believe any of this con. Zuckerberg/META will stab us in the back the first chance he gets. He is the enemy. And a dangerously cunning one at that. If your business model mandates you use META/FB/IG/etc., do so with eyes wide open: Build out on other platforms and have a D-Day exit strategy from META. Consult your sector experts to stress-test your strategy and plan. Adapt accordingly. Here’s Jeff Childers take on recent META deceptions.
Dealmaking
Marketing Agency For Sale. The brokers at Plethora Business have advised us that they have a Digital Marketing Agency/Digital Creative Studio business for sale. Disclosed Financials say that the 2024 Projected Revenue was anticipated to be $8.9MM, with Projected EBITDA of $3.39MM (both significantly higher than 2023). It’s our opinion that this is an add-on deal for an existing marketing or related firm (if structured properly), *not* a stand-alone acquisition for an individual buyer. If you need help analyzing or stress-testing this potential acquisition (or any others), please contact joe.dipietro@newportpartnersinc.com – Joe has 30+ years of M&A/dealmaking experience across the U.S.
DealMax 2025 – April 7-9, 2025 | Las Vegas. Far and away the largest and most premier annual middle-market M&A dealmaking event in the US. Bringing together over 3,000 senior level deal professionals, including Private Equity Investors, LPs, Middle-Market Company Operators (Presidents/CFOs/GMs), Industry Operating Partners (PE level), M&A Investment Bankers, Strategic Buyers, Family Offices, and Independent Sponsors. Structured to facilitate dealmaking, essential knowledge, and critical networking. Learn more here.
Done Deal : Management Buyouts are often a very win-win deal for the business owners and the managers. Here’s a recently closed deal that just came in: Granite Creek Capital Partners recently partnered with and supported the current management of Illinois-based Seedbox Solution in the acquisition of the business from the existing majority shareholder. Granite Creek Capital Partners led the investment with co-investors Hidden River Strategic Capital and Everside Capital Partners. In addition to funding the acquisition, the investment groups also provided management with significant growth capital.
Private Equity firm Boyne Capital is seeking both acquisitions and executives in the Commercial Cleaning, Janitorial, and Facility Services sector as they prepare to build out a platform in this space. As a platform, they would prefer potential sellers have EBITDA of $1MM or more. They are also seeking leaders and managers in this space to operate the acquired business. Potential sellers and operators should contact either Roman Krislav at rkrislav@boynecapital.com, or Matt Menker at mmenker@boynecapital.com.
ACG Pittsburgh will be hosting a Wine Tasting “Sip & Connect” event on February 19th. The event will be hosted by ACG Pittsburgh’s Future of Corporate Leaders Board. If you’re seeking to connect with other dealmakers in the Pittsburgh region, this might be both a fun and rewarding evening for you and your dealmaking team. Learn more here.
Leadership & Management
The EntreLeadership Summit will be held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Denver, Colorado this upcoming May 18–21, 2025. The event will feature leadership wisdom, case studies and training from Parallel Economy legends John Maxwell, Jim Collins and Dave Ramsey – along with several other successful leaders. Lead wisely, or get left behind. You can learn more here.
Marketing & Advertising
Conservative Commerce will be offering advertising and sponsorship opportunities here in this publication beginning in February. If you offer services or products that help Parallel Economy businesses thrive and prosper, we want to connect you with them. To Learn more, please email us at publisher@conservativecom.com.
Business Events
Sweets & Snacks Expo – May, 2025. Whether you’re a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer in this space, you’ll want to attend or exhibit at the annual premier event in this sector. Learn More.
Parallel Economy News
Another reason to quit doing business in NYC. As if murders, muggings, rapes, and robberies weren’t enough. NYC entry-toll-tax begins today.
Business Sector News & Reports
2025 is set to be a wild ride, how will your business sector perform? No one offers a crystal ball, but the team at PitchBook have several helpful forward-looking reports on multiple sectors. They’re free. You can view and download several of them here.
IT & INFOR Security
Thinking about using crypto in your business? Beware: Security Week reports that nearly $500 Million in Cryptocurrency was stolen from over 330,000 crypto wallets in 2024 – an 67% increase from 2023 – and growing exponentially. Theft amounts varied significantly, with the largest single theft – an astounding $55.48 million – occurring in August. Learn more.
OPSEC
We have decided to carve out our OPSEC section – which has previously run in this publication – into its own publication. We hope to launch this new publication within the next 60 days. If your business provides any of the following within the civilian defense sector: Firearms, Ammo, Gear, Training, Comms, Sustainment, Apparel, Morale merch, Intelligence Reports, Etc., please contact us at publisher@conservativecom.com to share with our readers how you can equip, train, and outfit them.
We hope you both benefited from — and enjoyed— this issue.
If so, please forward this issue to an associate or friend!
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The Conservative Commerce Team
Joe DiPietro | Publisher & CEO
Joseph Steinmetz | Associate Publisher
Andy Renk | Web Strategy & Execution
David Franklin | Graphic Design
Jason McGinnis | Digital Research
Taylor Danforth | Digital Marketing
Michelle Brille | Database Management
Melissa Frete | IT Support
V.J. Dassim | Network Engineer
Kay Bauer | Board Advisor
Note: Some team members are still situated behind enemy lines and must use a nom de guerre.
© 2025 Conservative Commerce | The Business Journal of the Parallel Economy
Conservative Commerce is a subsidiary company of Newport Partners M&A/A, LLC, Boerne, Texas