What if your business could scale faster—and exit smarter—without giving up control?
In this episode, we dive into an often-overlooked strategy for building real estate-backed wealth: partnering with private equity. Neel Bhargava, managing partner of NB Group, joins Corwyn J. Melette to reveal how business owners can unlock massive growth and create lasting financial legacies by bringing on the right investment partners.
Whether you own a gym, a clinic, or any business tied to physical locations, Neel breaks down how his team helps owners expand intelligently and eventually exit on their terms—without losing what they’ve built. He discusses how they scaled a gym franchise from 10 to 74 locations and helped a medical practice triple its reach, all while making strategic real estate moves along the way.
This episode supports the Exit Strategies Radio Show’s mission: to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education. Neel’s insights are especially powerful for business owners whose long-term wealth is tied to both operations and property.
Key Takeways
- (07:20) Why most business owners don’t plan their exits—and how that hurts them
- (17:53) The N&B Group’s plan to grow from 15 to 45+ locations
- (19:01) How Neel structures flexible deals that protect founders
- (21:18) Case studies: expanding real estate-backed businesses at scale
- (22:48) The cost of trying to grow alone—and the benefit of strategic partnerships
- (24:16) How to think about your exit as early as you think about your entry
💼 If you’re a business owner or real estate investor looking to multiply your impact and secure your legacy, don’t miss this conversation.
Connect with Neel Bhargava:
- Website: nbgroup.us
- Email: neil@nbgroup.us
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neelbhargava/
Connect with Corwyn @:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
Shoutout to our Sponsor: EXIT Realty Lowcountry Group
Do you want something more? More Meaningful Moments opportunities, deeper relationships and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you say YES, a career and real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for guiding people to one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative.
EXIT Realty has a revolutionary compensation model training and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call EXIT Realty Lowcountry group today at 843-619-3005 that is 843-619-3005 or visit https://exitlowcountry.com/joinexit and make your Exit today.
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CORWYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes to any of that, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made. The purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call Exit Realty Lowcountry Group today at 843-619-3005, that’s 843-619-3005 or visit join.exitlowcountry.com and make your exit today.
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies radio show. Hey, I am your host, Corwyn J. Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Low Country Group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, if this is your first time listening to this show, you sir or ma’am are in for a treat because our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education, guys. We’re legacy building. That is what we do here on this show. So I wanted to take a moment, Liberty, give a shout out, you guys who listen to us faithfully. I really appreciate it. Y’all listen to us down from Hollywood, what you know no good, all the way up through Monkey’s Corner. Y’all know my mama live out there, y’all. Y’all are tuning in from Merriam-Mullins, from the PD region. Guys, thank y’all so much for tuning in. Your homeboy is here and we are determined to make a difference and empower all our communities. Guys, today we get to talk about money. That’s something that’s a necessity, but it’s also where opportunity sometimes avails itself. How to leverage it, how to make it grow, how to make it do things. It’s amazing what you can do when you focus and you operate within this realm. And I’m very pleased today to have with us a leader in this space. Sometimes we’re lucky as we throw our hook out there and we, okay, look, in this pond and this vast sea of knowledge and these opportunities, who can we bring, quote unquote, on shore to help us have a better understanding of what goes in and what goes on in these arenas that we are so fascinated by. So today we have none other than Neel Bagava and he is the founder of NB Group. Neel, how are you doing today?
NEEL:
Doing great, Corwyn. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to talking.
CORWYN:
Well, look, I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be here. And a correction, you’re founding partner of NB Group. So if you don’t mind, give our folks like that high level overview of who you are, what you do, and let’s break this thing down today.
NEEL:
Yeah, for sure. So as you mentioned, I’m the founding partner of NB Group. We are a entrepreneurial private investment firm. We invest in what we call small, medium sized businesses in two areas. One is multi-location businesses, so businesses that have multiple locations could continue to grow through that model of expanding geographically. We invest in that across categories and industries, and then we also invest in healthcare. So we look for private companies that are family or founder owned, typically doing fairly well, growing. But there’s an opportunity to work with those families, those founders, to collaborate, to accelerate their growth, to professionalize them, to get them to that next level, to really be like a mid-market enterprise. That’s what we do. We’ve been doing it for about eight years. I started the firm back then and we’ve had some good successes so far.
CORWYN:
That is awesome. So Neel, if you don’t mind, what was a driver for you guys getting into this space? So basically, what was your reason for doing this?
NEEL:
Yeah. I think the term that most people are familiar with that will correlate with what we do is private equity. So we’re private equity investors. We do have a more entrepreneurial spin on it than a lot of firms and larger firms out there. But I come from private equity in the past, have worked with larger scale private equity investors, investment firms, and have also worked with larger companies in the past, but really was motivated to move into this segment of the market, which is more small, medium sized businesses I mentioned, and build a firm that invests in that size companies where I believe we can really make more of an impact as strategic investors and owners of those businesses. So that was the motivation.
CORWYN:
So for a lay term or a lay explanation, you guys have got middle ground, so to speak, between traditional lenders, banks. So let’s say there’s a business that wants to expand and or there’s an opportunity to create a new business. However, maybe the bank or the banking world, if you will, traditional banks are not buying in. That may be something that your firm may have an appetite to assist with. Does that sound about correct?
NEEL:
Yeah. We are equity investors. So we and lenders focus on debt, but there is companies, operators can face a choice between using debt and using equity. And I think there’s a compare and contrast you can do, pros and cons, but oftentimes where we are involved is when a business is, the owner has a few goals. One is to de-risk a little bit, take some chips off the table, sell for their equity, take some of that capital, do other things with it, just de-risk themselves from what’s often the only source, all their net worth is tied up in their business. So we provide that liquidity and we do it through equity. So that equity goes to the seller of the business. It doesn’t burden the company with having to pay interest and all that. We also will use a component of debt to fund the acquisition, but it’s not all debt. It’s a mix of debt and equity, whereas a lender would only be debt. So the objectives for seller are to de-risk a little bit, to bring on a partner who can help them grow. We have experience working with lots of different companies, lots of different industries and scaling businesses. And then finally, an objective is, could be something specific. So the operator can realize, Oh, we actually want to go and acquire this company. I don’t know how to do it. You can help us. So there’s a few objectives that can lead a seller to want, you know, work with us and take equity.
CORWYN:
That’s interesting. So what type of, like you say, you have experience in a few different genres, industries. I don’t know if I want to put you on the spot and ask you what’s your favorite, but what I will ask is give us a sampling of the places, the industries that you’ve found, great opportunity, better with greater returns and obviously better benefit for the people that you’re partnering with.
NEEL:
Good question. So where we spend a lot of our time and we’ve made most of our investments to date is in what we call multi-location businesses, which I talked about in the beginning, but to give you some examples of where we’ve invested. So we invest, have invested in a gym business, so business that started operating 10 gyms in the Southeast of the country, they now operate 75. We have more recently invested in a healthcare services business that offers primary care and functional medicine through multiple locations in Oregon. What we really like about this business model, multi-location is a few things. One, when you find a concept that works, you’ve got a storefront or a location and it’s offering something, people are resonating with it. You’re selling, you’re making profit. It’s quote, easy to expand that, right? You just open it in a location in another market, another part of the state or city or the country. And the U.S. market is very large, right? We have the biggest market in the world. You can keep expanding and replicating that model. That’s what we really like about it. It’s also very analyzable, which we like as investors. There’s three or four things we look at in every multi-location business, and we can tell pretty quickly, is this a business we like? Does it have the right business model, the right offering? And do we want to invest in it? So we’ve had a lot of success doing that, scaling, opening new markets, whether through acquisitions or just building new greenfield locations.
CORWYN:
So you guys approached this from, as you may mention of Neel, a few different ways. Obviously, we have an analysis process when you’re entertaining or exploring an opportunity. So you set some of those parameters as to what you guys look at and are looking for. My next question, obviously, private equity into a business typically is going to allow someone to grow, expand, scale that business. So eventually at some point in time, what’s the way out? What does that look like for your group and what does that look like for, I guess I’ll frame it as the owner because putting equity in, it doesn’t necessarily make you the owner. So what does that look like for you? Like when you guys are looking to go in, are you, quote unquote, but as a song, I forgot the rap, are you entering into with your exit strategy, pardon the pun, already in mind?
NEEL:
We usually will have a sense of what our exit strategy is, what we think we can sell to eventually and what we need to achieve in order to get to that outcome where we’re selling for a good, for our target return to that eventual buyer. We do have flexibility, like we’re pretty flexible investors, but we target holding a business, say four to six years. And over that time period, we’ve got very specific objectives we’re working towards primarily around growth of the business. So if we buy a business and say it’s doing 30 million of revenue and $5 million of cashflow, we want to get it to 80, 100 million of revenue and 15 million of cashflow, let’s say. And along the way, we’re working with the founder of the business, the operator to execute our initiatives that can get us there. And our goal is not just to achieve really strong returns for ourselves and our investors, but also for the owner who’s partnering with us. We view it as a partnership and what we tell every business owner that we partner with is the next sale, when we all sell together, should be worth a lot more to you than the money you’re making from this first sale because we’re going to grow the business so substantially.
CORWYN:
Makes perfect sense. So if you don’t mind, Neel, let’s take people back a little bit, defining private equity. But as a firm, do you guys, do you take on additional investors? That’s the question there. And along with that, what’s the real deal as far as why someone with a business or otherwise should really consider tapping into your group?
NEEL:
Yeah. So on your first question, we’re set up different than some other private equity firms. We capitalize each deal independently, meaning we source the capital for each deal from institutions that are specifically investing in that deal. They’re not investing in all of our deals through a fund structure. There’s a number of advantages to that model, which we could go into if it’s of interest, but probably save it for a later point. That’s how we capitalize each deal. We’re always looking for new institutional relationships to work with. We’re not passing the hat around to a bunch of individuals. We’re working with institutions who are writing checks of five to $40 million into our investments and why work with us. So I think we look different than a lot of private equity firms out there, which is one reason we call ourselves entrepreneurial private investment firm. I mean, I started this firm. Me and my partner have built it over the course of the last several years. There’s only two of us as partners. We have a small team. This is who you’re dealing with. It’s me, it’s my partner. It’s not 20 people in a big office somewhere that you may or may not have a relationship before you do a deal. So we’ve built this firm. We’re a small team. We make a small, limited number of investments. We’ve got three holdings right now. That’s probably never going to be more than a handful. Each investment is very important to us, personally, from our investment standpoint, but also just we engage deeply with companies and they really matter to us. We don’t have 25 investments that we’re managing and if one goes poorly, it doesn’t really matter. Each one really matters. I think that’s important to a business owner who’s going to partner with us. And finally, we’re growth oriented. So there’s a lot of negative stories out there about private equity, cutting costs and doing a bunch of financial engineering and whatnot. Of course, we do want to optimize businesses wherever we can and we do use some debt in our acquisitions, but what we’re really aiming to get, generate our returns is by growing a business and we’ve got a good success rate in doing that so far.
CORWYN:
So your team obviously has to have a depth and breadth of knowledge in order to be able to successfully do what you guys do. So I guess as far as scale, and I know how I am, Neel, about my team, I tell people that I have a small office. To me, it’s a small office, but to others, it’s like, oh, you got a lot of people. That’s a big office. That would be considered a larger or medium sized office. But for you guys have a large team, medium team, what does that construct look like? And when you engage with someone, are they, is there an intake process, if you will, like where does the process start? I want to call it an intake. Where does the process start with you guys?
NEEL:
We have a small team. So it’s two of us as partners. I’m one of the two. We’ve got two analysts. And then we have a small group of what we call operating executives who are individuals who have successfully operated, built businesses, kind of day-to-day running them who have expertise in specific industries that we will work with and use as resources as we look at businesses that are in relevant spaces to them. But it’s a small team. Our process is sometimes we get deals come to us. A lot of deals come to us. We review hundreds of deals a year, many of which are brought through brokers, intermediaries, referrals. But we also reach out directly to a lot of companies that are in industries or spaces that we really like and start conversations with them. So usually it’ll be an introductory conversation. Just let me tell you more about what we do. Let me understand a little bit about your business. Could there be a fit in terms of what you’re looking to do and how we do? After that initial conversation, we’ll typically ask for some information on the business. If it seems like there’s mutual interest, give me a few years of your financials. Tell me a little bit about what your employee base looks like, et cetera. Nothing too detailed. And we’ll put a non-disclosure agreement in place for confidentiality. From there, we’ll take a look at the information. We’ll spend some more time on the industry that you operate in if we don’t already know them well, which a lot of industries fairly well at this point. And from there, we’ll tell you if we’re interested or not and what could a valuation of the business look like. And then it goes from there. Those are the initial steps.
CORWYN:
So someone who, let’s say, is considering, like you said, you like mom and pops or small multi-location is one of the things that you guys gravitate towards. Somebody has finally reached there. You know what? I’m done with this. I own these locations or what have you. In that particular scenario, if you guys have an appetite for it, if they own the real estate, would they have to sell? Would the real estate go with as well or would they be able to retain the real estate and then essentially sell you the business and while maintaining a lease back for you folks?
NEEL:
Either one is an option. So most often we are not acquiring the real estate. And often the businesses that we are acquiring, partnering with the founder of that does own some of the real estate. So we’ll buy the operating business. We’ll put in place market term lease with the property company managed by the founder. And we’re totally comfortable with that. If there’s a scenario where the owner really does want to just let me get it done and let’s sell everything, we can consider that and take on the real estate. Oftentimes we may not end up holding that for the long term. We’ll do the sale lease back at some point. But there’s flexibility. I know oftentimes owners do want to maintain that real estate as their sort of long term passive income and that’s totally fine.
CORWYN:
So essentially you guys will purchase the intellectual property versus the real property separate if the deal, quote unquote, makes sense.
NEEL:
Yeah. I mean, you could just use an example. Say it’s a owner has, they own 15 Burger Kings. They own the real estate underlying them as well. What we are more interested in is buying those 15 Burger King locations, the operating revenue and profit that’s generated from selling burgers and fries to all the customers. And the owner can keep that real estate. We’ll put in place market terms. I’m just using Burger King as an example, but it is in the realm of the multi-location businesses.
CORWYN:
Does that make sense? It does. It makes perfect sense. So typically in that situation, and so for our listeners, guys, some of you guys may think about this as like, this may not be the right one for this particular scenario. But my golden parachute, basically I built this business, I’ve climbed myself up here, but now it’s time for me to get out and I don’t necessarily want to take a climb down. I want to come down easily. So I’m going to jump and open my parachute and just sail my way, if you will, out of the business, quote unquote, off into the sunset, so to speak. Now in that situation, do you normally keep people on as a consultant to help you all in the transition?
NEEL:
Yeah. Our ideal situation is the owner stays on and keeps running the business, has an appetite to grow it. They think this can be bigger. It can go from 15 to 45 locations, and we can do that by making acquisitions, just building new ones. That’s our ideal situation. It doesn’t always work like that. Oftentimes owners do want to retire or they have some other, and we can facilitate that path as well. Either there likely does need to be some transition period, which could be six months, it could be two years depending on what the situation is, but we could facilitate both. Our ideal path would be someone who wants to stay, but it doesn’t need to be that way.
CORWYN:
Okay. All right. Well, that’s interesting to know because that definitely makes a difference. Somebody essentially doesn’t want, I’ve had conversation, owning a business, which is challenging and it’s all right. You have your rewards and there’s a reason why you do it. But to start looking at your path out, if you will, exiting the business, what does that look like? And the opportunity to essentially bring in a partner financially to take over aspects of it. That’s a no brainer to an extent, create your pathway to retirement, especially if you’ve invested a significant amount of time, resources obviously, and money into building what you built. You don’t want to just, if you will, just walk away from it. So that is very interesting there, Neel. So if you don’t mind, let’s make sure we get at this junction. Let’s make sure that we get your information out. Where can people find you all at and otherwise connect? If maybe we have somebody who’s listening to the show that, Hey, look, you’re thinking, you know what, what does this look like? Can I just start to essentially lock arms with a group to help me get this business further down the road as I look the same way off at some point in time in the future? So Neel, where can people reach you guys at getting contact?
NEEL:
Yeah. So you can learn more about us on our website, which is nbgroup.us, nbgroup.us. You can reach out to me directly, my first name at nbgroup.us. So Neel, with two E’s at nbgroup.us (neel@nbgroup.us). Also find me on LinkedIn, but those are, please reach out, be one to welcome conversations.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Awesome. For our listeners, guys, look, I’ve been on the website, get an idea of where the appetite is. I like that you guys invest in gyms and look at those types of opportunities as well. So that’s quite interesting. So Neel, first of all, I don’t think we got this out, but how long have you all been operating this private equity firm?
NEEL:
Since 2017. So going on eight, nine years now.
CORWYN:
Okay. Awesomeness. Awesomeness. So as you guys have done this and just, I’ll frame it as that perfect scenario. Give us that perfect scenario, the deal that you all did that essentially worked out marvelously for your partner as you guys came in, but also worked out tremendously well for you all included.
NEEL:
Yeah. I can give you a couple of examples. So you mentioned we invest in gyms. That’s been a very successful investment for us. And the situation there was we found an operator actually of a, it was a franchisee of a gym brand in the Southeast US, seasoned veterans in the industry, three, four owners of that business. And they had a really good thing going, but they wanted to de-risk, take some chips off the table and work with a group that could help them continue to grow both with access to capital, just strategic resources. So putting that de-risking and strategic support together, we invested in them when they had 10 locations and they’ve now gotten to 74. We’ve sold most of our stake in that business. The owners have done extremely successful. We’ve been extremely successful and it’s worked out as this partnership approach. We’ve also, one of their instances are investment in a company called One Peak Medical. We partnered with a founder. She had built a really interesting, innovative medical practice group with five locations. And we’ve been working with her to facilitate a transition from founder, CEO, to more just like strategic involvement. We’ve brought in a new CEO, made that transition happen, and we’ve grown the business from five locations to they’ll be opening their 16th next month. And that’s in a matter of a few years. So we’re on that trajectory of reaching the objective that I mentioned we always have of getting that founder a transition path if they want and making that next bite of the apple for them. That next sale will be worth a lot more than we originally gave. I think we’re on that track. We haven’t finished it yet, but we’re on that track.
CORWYN:
That is awesome. That is awesome. So Neel, I thank you for sharing that. Sometimes we’ll ask, you know, what I refer to as that might drop questions to hindsight question and my imagination says that along this journey has been, obviously it’s been rewarding because you wouldn’t still be doing it if it hasn’t been, but if you could take it into account where you are now, if you could turn around and quote unquote, go back to the beginning and start over again, what, if anything, would you have done differently?
NEEL:
That’s a thoughtful question. Well, I started this on my own and I realized about several months in that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Build, do this on my own and not have anyone to work, collaborate, partner with, and along the way brought on a partner. And that’s been the right thing for sure for me. So, you know, maybe could have considered doing that from the outset would be one thing, but I, it’s worked out. It’s worked out great regardless. And I think that’s one thing I’d point to, it has certainly been a journey and building this business, which we are a financial business, but it’s still a business that needs to be built. There’s been a lot of learnings along the way. We’ve developed quite a bit, both in terms of our internal process, how we find an investment opportunities, how we evaluate them and that whole aspect, building our team. There’s been learnings along the way, but I think you have to go through that process when you start any business. There’s no way to avoid it. You just, you build it over time.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Awesome. So Neel, again, thank you. Thank you for being on with us today. Thank you for being a part of Asia Strategy’s radio show. Family, I appreciate you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here with us today.
NEEL:
Thanks, Corwyn. Great to speak with you today.
CORWYN:
Awesome. It’s awesome. So for our listeners, guys, look, you just got your whole week just not back, right? You just took in a lot of information. Want you to catalog it, but most importantly, seek to where you can apply it. Meaning if you are that business owner who’s thinking about next level, about next steps and the plan out, because oftentimes we plan, if you will, and envision our way in. But we do not envision and strategize our way out. So please make sure that you look at this. Please make sure that you consider where the options are. And most importantly, reach out to Neel and his team, his partner, so you can get some insight into how this type of relationship may be beneficial to you. So for our listeners, one more time. Y’all know how I feel. You know what I say? Always put the two of those things together. I give it to you this way, which is to tell you that I love you. I love you. And we want to see you guys out there in those streets.
