Invest and Scale

Our guest this week is Ryan Tansom, who helped turn around his family's business and sold it for eight figures to a local competitor in 2014. He co-founded Arkona where he created International growth, five principles, and a framework, and hosted the popular life after business podcast with over 200 episodes and 300,000 downloads.

As an entrepreneur, he enjoys helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses and increase their value by changing their mindset from annual income to focusing on long-term growth.

Podcast Highlights:

• Ryan discusses how he became involved in family businesses, what challenges he encountered, and what changes he made when he took control of the business.
• We discuss the differences between the ownership and management roles.
• Ryan talks about how long it took him to sell his business and what it cost.
• Changing the name of his Life After Business podcast to Intentional Growth - How to grow the value of your coming with the end in mind.
• What are some of the challenges faced by first-time founders?
• EOS ®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System.
• An overview of how to choose the best advisors, lawyers, tax professionals, bankers and brokers.

Resources Mentioned:

https://arkona.io/podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intentional-growth/id1132187581

Disclaimer

This recorded conversation is for informational purposes only and it is not legal advice, transmission of the conversation is not intended to create and viewing or listening does not constitute an attorney client relationship, viewers and listeners are advised to seek professional help if they are concerned about a specific legal issue.

In this episode of Acquire and Scale Show, We discuss the buying business process with Sankeetha Selvarajah, an attorney for start-up businesses.

Sankeetha Selvarajah is the Managing Attorney of Selvarajah Law P.C., a civil transactional firm located in Boston, Massachusetts with satellite offices in New York, NY. She is also the CEO of BiztoCo, a business educational platform creating profitable CEOs.

She has also worked with startups as an advisor, strategist, and reluctant therapist and outside general legal counsel to over 150 small businesses.

She is a business lawyer turned into a deal advisor in the Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) world. Her profession as a lawyer equips her to speak practical recommendations on how to acquire and run your business.

Conversation Highlights.

Sankeetha shares her journey in the M&A world.

She explains her expansion as a deal advisor in investing, buying, selling ventures.

Sankeetha’s personal gem is Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) dealings.

1st Question when buying an Online Business: Are you buying it to build or are you buying it to acquire?

Buying to build means having brand cohesion.

2nd Question when buying an Online Business: What is your gut telling you?

For investments, there’s a process that must be undertaken: Asking of Questions, Consultation, Walk Through of buying a company, Sending documents to the lawyer.

Your service provider team is your default advisory board ( your accountant, lawyer, financial adviser, and your banker).

Why, why, and why do you want to buy?

What is the return on buying this investment in the next 3 months?

Sankeetha’s recommendations to buyers

LOI and NDA are legal recommendations.

Sankeetha narrates some acquisition stories that didn’t go well.

Sankeetha mentions some common mistakes when buying a company.

Practical Tip: If you don’t understand the term, go to your service providers.

Recommended resource Founder’s Pocket Guide, Fair Market Value, and Book Value & EBITDA.

Know the different types of valuation.

Protect your asset by creating a company shield.

Corporation gives you more flexibility for future gains.

What is the difference between an asset purchase and stock purchase?

Lawyers are not scary; They are available always.

Remarkable Quotes:

“Everything is negotiable.”

“You should firmly be rooted in open and honest communication. It is a transactional relationship but it is still a human relationship.”

“Make friends with your service providers. Use them as tools.”

In this episode, we welcome guest Matt Currie, co-founder of OutFlow, a Deal Origination Partner agency that assists mergers and acquisition clients in sourcing deals by delivering exclusive, off-market deal opportunities through vetting qualified Buy-Side or Sell-Side deals.

Matt discusses his own experience with exiting a business and provides listeners with advice and tips to do so successfully. He shares helpful insight into what buyers and sellers can do to be prepared and achieve symbiosis throughout the process.

Tune in to discover useful approaches to buying and selling and ensure a smooth acquisition process.

Episode Highlights:

• Matt uncovers the importance of understanding how to secure the inflow of business success, whether it be opportunities, money, deals, etc., through the outflow into the marketplace of who your company is and what it offers.
  
• We discuss the structure and value Outflow provides, and the emphasis the company places on exclusivity via off-market deal opportunities.
  
• Essential advice for business people interested in selling their business to ensure a structured exit and why implementing these practices is crucial.
  
• Recommendations for sellers post-sale, including what preparations should be made for a smooth transition after the acquisition.
  
• Explanation and deeper understanding of who OutFlow’s target market is and the reasoning behind this approach.
  
• Outreach tactics for both buyers and sellers that work best to gain trust, achieve transparency, and deliver a thorough understanding.
  
• What Matt’s vision for the future of OutFlow
  

Tweetable Quote:

“At the end of the day, I believe great businesses are built by great people—it’s not great products. I think a great product is a critical component, but it comes from having great, unbelievable people. When people are emotional—when there is unnecessary strife, and people are stressed—it causes things to go into chaos mode.” – Matt Currie

“There’s no such thing as an acquisition. It’s a merger because you are merging cultures together.” – Matt Currie

Relevant Links:

Deal Flow Article:

LinkedIn: Matt Currie

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Company Website: https://outflow.capital/

In this episode, Doron Wolffberg talks about the salient points in buying and selling websites. His knowledge of SEO and online marketing allows him to buy business websites and grow them into a thousand dollars worth.

Doron highlights the importance of taking action fast once you already know what you want to buy. He also points out that identifying your business model is essential in this industry. Given his experiences in this emerging industry, he would make you realize that investing in buying and growing a website is worth a fortune.

Learn from the sharing of Doron as he talks about the many aspects of buying and selling of websites.

Episode Highlights

• Doron recalls back his work at yellowHEAD as the head of the SEO that serves as his inspiration in jumpstarting to buying and selling websites.
  
• His early days in acquiring websites started in 2017.
  
• How is it to work with brokers in this industry?
  
• The sales process in buying a website is hard.
  
• 1st case study: Amazon affiliate review site, a success
  
• 2nd case study: Music instrument site, a success
  
• 3rd case study: E-commerce furniture site, a big loss
  
• How can you be successful in this industry?
  
• What are the struggles of running an affiliate website at this time of the pandemic?
  
• The top recommended platforms for affiliate websites (ShareASale, Impact Radius,  Commission Junction)
  
• Learn from Doron’s expert tips in buying websites
  
• Red flags before buying content websites.
  
• What’s the one thing that you would do to double your revenue?
  
• The three business models that can help you run your business.
  
• Doron’s recommendations for buying and selling websites
  

Tweetable Quotes:

“You need to know what you want, and when you see it, you have to act fast.”

“To be successful for me now means focusing on one business model that you know.”

“This whole COVID-19 crisis is pushing a lot of brands into the online world, and now they understand the importance of having a solid website.”

Resources Mentioned

LinkedIn: https://il.linkedin.com/in/doron-wolffberg-42ba60120

Case Studies:

https://empireflippers.com/sell-affiliate-website-case-study/

https://empireflippers.com/building-affiliate-website-to-100k-from-scratch/

https://www.rankxl.com/zero-to-4k-in-less-than-10-months/

This episode features Larry and Perry Yu, the founders of High Converting Ads.

Larry Yu

Twin #1. Online Entrepreneur with close to a decade of experience. Bootstrapped dorm room e-commerce startup to over 100K/mo before selling it to a private buyer.

Perry Yu

Twin #2. Digital marketer with a specialization in copywriting and paid ads. Written copy for multiple 6 figure campaigns and launches. Managed over $60K/mo in ad spend profitably on Facebook.

Larry and Perry share their personal experiences on how they hustle in running their business, and at the same time helping various businesses generate more sales. With their expertise in online marketing, they now share to the world the secrets of scaling facebook Ads.

Pay attention to the words of wisdom from the twins as they discuss how high converting Facebook ads can help your business grow.

Episode Highlights

• Reasons why Larry and Perry started High Converting Ads
  
• Who are the people they work with?
  
• The new trends in advertising on Facebook
  
• How To Handle campaigns using the High Converting Ads way
  
• 1st success story: A business selling an 8-week coaching program
  
• 2nd success story: Facebook Messenger ads for  a local business
  
• 3rd success story: E-commerce using video ads and pre-sale pages
  
• Learn how to run Facebook Ads to accelerate the growth of your business.
  
• Plan to sell before you actually sell.
  
• Having continuity in your business can increase your valuation.
  
• Business Operating procedures can attract buyers.
  
• Turn your expenses into profit centers.
  

https://highconvertingads.com/

This episode features Dylan Kelley who is the founder and CEO of Wavebreak, a leading email marketing agency for e-commerce stores. He also hosts the Wavebreak podcast where he talks about ways on how to scale up your e-commerce business into 8-figures.

Dylan shares his expertise in e-commerce marketing that will help you in growing your business, particularly in times of uncertainties. He highlights the importance of email marketing as a powerful tool to scale. Given his experiences in this industry, he now shares his proven steps which he termed as the Wavebreak method.

Tune in to learn from the experiences of an e-commerce marketing expert.

Episode Highlights

• Dylan shares his journey on how he started with  Wavebreak.
  
• Email marketing is one of the secrets in the e-commerce industry.
  
• How to double your business in two ways?
  
• What are the three metrics to increase your business?
  
• The Wave Break Method that suggests 4 steps: foundation, acceleration, on-going management, and optimization.
  
• Email as the communication aspect of your business.
  
• How to evaluate an e-commerce brand before buying it?
  
• How to scale up your business?
  
• Dylan shares a client success story.
  
• The big mistakes in e-commerce and email marketing
  
• The impact of messaging in times of uncertainty.
  
• The importance of hiring a coach and investing in various programs
  
• Dylan’s favorite business book is the Ultimate Sales Machine.
  

Tweetable Quotes:

“Just get consistent with your email. That’s gonna be huge. It’s like two to three times a week. If you’ll do that, you’ll gonna be set on the backend and you’ll literally scale up your business so much.” ---Dylan Kelley

“Nowadays, with all the uncertainties in the world, you need control in your business, and you need to get back in the driver seat.”--Dylan Kelley

Resources Mentioned

Website:https://wavebreak.co/about

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankelley

Twitter:https://twitter.com/dylanmkelley?lang=en

Podcast: https://www.wavebreakpodcast.com/

In this episode, we interview Nehal Kazim the founder of AdPros. Their focus is working with the fastest-growing direct to consumer GTC brands online.

Listen in to learn the emerging trends in online business buying and selling due to the Coronavirus crisis.

Episode Highlights:

• Nehal discusses the commonalities and differences in subscription services that focus on customer acquisition and doing it to scale.
  
• He explains that even though a lot of their clients are young (two years or younger) they grow really quickly. Adpros helps them grow their value of revenue which is a different strategy than other advertisement companies.
  
• Nehal elaborates on why mindset is so important to scale a company.
  
• Why it's crucial to be adaptive in this industry with a 24 to 48-hour turn around so clients don't lose money on ROAS.
  
• He gives advice for businesses that are successful without Facebook ads and for those who already have traffic but aren’t receiving the desired turnaround.
  
• The three types of metrics, Adpros looks at when they are building services for their clients.
  
• Ad Scorecard,Offer,Avatar,Funnel,Nurturing,The Ad,The Ad Optimization, Tracking and Decision Making
  
• The silent killer in the industry of Facebook ads.
  
• How he keeps his mindset sharp and what he plans to do during the quarantine.
  

Tweetable Quote:

“High degree with lack of patience when it comes to implementation of Facebook ad campaigns is bad because it’s a rush to be very profitable and the phases to get to profitability aren’t from zero to profit but zero to break even. It’s actually zero to more loss before you even break even and then you start making money.”

Relevant Links:

Website: https://adpros.com/

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/nehalkazim

Thinking time and Productized Services Tyler Gillespie

In this episode, we interview Tyler Gillespie, a content marketing business owner as he shares his passion for content marketing &  freedom that led him to focus on online businesses.

Listen in to learn what productizing means and what Nahel’s company does to help business with it.

Episode Highlight:

• Why did Tyler start an online business?
  
• How  a 12-week accelerator program in Santiago de Chile which was pivotal to his journey
  
• Learn where you can find programs for entrepreneurs
  
• The philosophy behind calling himself the thinking time officer at the Applause lab.
  
• Productized Services and a 3000 members community
  
• How he has mastered the art of having more dynamic frames and rules in place when running his business over the traditional SOPs.
  

Quotes:

“The more people in a mastermind that are doing what you’re doing- are ten steps ahead, that’s going to be the most valuable place for you to learn.”- Tyler Gillespie

“Three-solutions. Anyone you hire no matter where they’re in the spectrum of your organization before they come to you with a problem, they have to bring 3 solutions of their own.”- Tyler Gillespie

Relevant Links:

Applause Lab https://applauselab.com/

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerdgillespie

Program’s website: https://www.f6s.com/

Chris Yates is the founder of Rhodium Weekend and Owner of Centurica. Rhodium Weekend is an event for online Entrepreneurs who own 6- to 8-figure businesses, and for buyers, sellers, and investors of those businesses. Using both structured and unstructured time so each person can learn, network, and share in the way that works best for them. All attendees are curated through an application process to ensure the community is filled with smart, driven members who are willing to pay-it-forward with their own expertise.

Episode Highlights:

What is it about smaller, more intimate events that's working well?

Money hacks versus real business

Why is scaling challenging when you get involved in running the business?

Insights about productized service businesses

A good portfolio and filters work for investment

Thoughts on deal structures like seller financing

Where to seek for legal and accounting advice?

How to build  up mentorship and support for yourself

Tweetable Quote:

“I will buy any deal at any price as long as you let me name the terms. When you think what that means is price kind of irrelevant. I could tell you I will pay you a million for your business right now but I’m going to pay you a penny a day for a million days, that doesn’t sound very attractive.” – Chris Yates

Resources Mentioned:

https://rhodiumweekend.com/ - Rhodium Weekend

https://centurica.com/ - Centurica

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismyates/ - Chris Yates’s LinkedIn

In this episode, we interview Thomas Smale, the founder of FE International, a market-leading merging and acquisition firm that focuses on SaaS, e-commerce, and content business selling. They have a presence in New York, London, and San Francisco with a 94.1% success rate after selling over 800 companies.

Thomas talks about the processes they use in acquiring businesses and making it beneficial for both parties. He shares the categories of companies they work with and the ones that do not meet their standards.

Listen in to learn the emerging trends in online business buying and selling due to the Coronavirus crisis.

Episode Highlights:

• Thomas explains how the process of acquisition for internet companies works and how his company has done over 800 deals.
  
• He explains the 3 categories of buyers they work with- family-owned businesses, strategic buyers and buyers who have raised money from a group of investors.
  
• Why there are no set rules when it comes to performing SaaS transactions. How they approach the valuation of companies during the buying and selling process.
  
• Why they don’t work with companies that are not profitable and how they work around it for compensation in a situation where expenses are taking up.
  
• The overall difference between getting investments for your business and selling it and how the liquidation process works.
  
• The recommendations that Thomas has for both business sellers and buyers during the Coronavirus crisis.
  
• Why online businesses are doing well during this crisis and the appealing aspect of ‘work from anywhere in the world’ business.
  
• Thomas talks about how they work towards getting the best deal out of a buyer when it’s a well-performing business and how the Coronavirus is affecting the value of businesses.
  
• What advice does Thomas have for both buyers and sellers during this crisis?
  

Tweetable Quote:

“As a buyer looking for really good bargains and you think you can buy a $1M business at $200k don’t waste your time and if you’re a seller or a business owner and your business has been affected be patient and don’t make any rash decisions.” -Thomas Smale

Relevant Links:

Website: https://feinternational.com/about-us/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomassmale

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thomassmale?lang=en