The Exchanges

Q Nice. What was the business model? Was it like a placement service? Was it a monthly subscription fee? What did that look like?

A Yeah. We thought about doing a finder's fee early on, but because I've, I come from the cleaning world where everything is recurring revenue, you want someone who's going to come to your house and clean every week or every month on a regular schedule. It had been ingrained in me to, to when I do a business to make it a recurring monthly revenue type of business. And so You can charge a lot for a finder's fee. You can charge five, seven, 15,000 dollars for placing a great office manager, but it's a one-time thing. So, um, I'd started out with a small group of people on a beta, and I just said, hey, look, I'm happy to train them for you, happy to manage them for you, um, but in return, I would like to charge you, um, this much per month in a set, uh, set hourly package. So the way that we bill is a little different than you would pay an employee. So an employee, you'd pay them for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, And you'd run payroll. Um, we do it differently and I'll tell you why. So in the home services industry, there's something that we kind of joke about called the valley of despair. And what the valley of despair is, is when you're running a home service business, sort of between 205 100,000 dollars per year in revenue, there's a valley where you're profitable and you're very busy, but you as the owner are not profitable enough to actually hire a full-time office manage…

AI assessment note: “charge you, um, this much per month in a set, uh, set hourly package.”

Q But yeah, tell me about due diligence. How did that go?

A Uh, painful, I would say, but good. I mean, closed, right? So, um, I had done basic due diligence before, so I kind of knew what to expect, but I'd never done it at this level before. So, just, just to give a little background, the person who bought it owns a fund of other companies. So, His experience is extremely professional. He's not just a guy with some money buying the business. He was coming at it from a private fund perspective. So there was an intense amount of due diligence. So at least from my perspective, so he had, um, he had a list of, of a very long list of specific requests, um, that were very granular, you know, contracts for clients who'd left years ago. So he could review those to make sure there was no pending obligations, right? So So it wasn't just financial due diligence of your profit and loss statements and preparing those. It was, um, legal due diligence. It was making sure that I'm a US citizen, which I have been my whole life, but because I live abroad, you have to do a certificate of non-alien. I think it's called a FINRA, which is a certificate of not being a non-resident, right? So, so there was all these, um, small due diligence parts that you had to do, which I was not prepared for. Um, because they seemed fairly non-standard. So I will be honest with you, that was, that was a tough month. April first is when we started due diligence, and April …

AI assessment note: “painful, I would say, but good. I mean, closed, right?”

Q What an amazing business. I love this, Chris. This is great. Um, tell me this. So, you know, you're, you're running the business, um, is profitable. What made you decide to potentially sell the business?

A Sure. Um, I think it was a natural progression in what I want out of life rather than any compelling reason. So we're a profitable and growing business. It doesn't take me a long time to run it. I typically spend four to eight hours a week running the business. Um, but last year I'd made the decision to simplify my life a lot. Because me and my wife are planning a family over the next year and I want to maximize that time. So the way that I've always been as a business owner, Andrew is very time freedom focused. I've, I've happened to have built some bigger businesses, but it was never an intention. It just happened to be something that I'm grateful to have done, but I've always focused on maximizing my personal time and freedom for my hobbies and my family and my dog and whatever. Right. So, so the way that I built businesses from day one is to be very efficiency focused. So that they can manage themselves to a large degree. So last year, um, I was running, uh, several different businesses, uh, three cleaning companies and, uh, a VA agency and a consulting agency. And I just, early on the idea of being a serial entrepreneur is fun and it's invigorating, but after a few years, your focus is so split on different projects that at least for me, it kind of lost its magic. And I found myself being pulled in too many different directions. And so I decided to simplify and sell my cle…

AI assessment note: “I'd made the decision to simplify my life a lot. Because me and my wife”

Q name or anything like that, but I assume they had these qualities that you're describing. Um, was there anything else that really stood out about them? Was their offer the highest? Did they have great terms? Did you guys just get along really well on the first call? Did you kind of just, you know, like this buyer just kind of gets it? Like what made this buyer stand out?

A I'll add more detail, but actually the answer to everything is yes. So I had done several acquisitions myself, but also sales, um, again, in the cleaning industry. But they were always to people who I'd already had a pre-existing relationship with. Maybe they were another cleaning coach in the industry, or they were a student of mine. There were, there were people that I already knew and could to a degree vouchsafe for that they would be responsible owners. So this was my first time selling a company I built to a total stranger. Um, and I was very nervous about that. So Kai will tell you, if you ask him, I peppered him with questions about that man. Um, but to, to answer your question about him specifically, the buyer, we jumped on a call. And I was, I was, you know, a little interested in him, moderately interested perhaps because of his background. So his background I'd noticed was in the staffing industry and virtual assistants really are temporary or permanent staffing agency, um, just for the virtual world. And so he'd scaled, um, staffing agency very successfully up as well as several other companies in the past. So he'd had the experience of taking a company from my current size. To 20, 30, forty million a year. So he'd actually had very specific industry experience of doing this just in the IT industry instead of in the virtual assistant agency world. So there was so mu…

AI assessment note: “actually the answer to everything is yes. ... his background I'd noticed was in the staffing industry”

Q specialists at Acquire. I'm glad he was able to make this a huge success. That's what we like to see. Um, tell me about the buyers. Were you surprised at the quality of buyers or were you not impressed? Like, what was your thoughts when buyers started signing NDAs? You hopped on those initial buyer calls to meet them and answer questions that they have. Uh, what was that experience?

A Sure. I had set a few Maybe guidelines for myself. I wouldn't call them make or break deals per se, but I'd set a few guidelines for myself on what I wanted from buyers, um, which are sort of intangible. So when I was searching for buyers to connect with, obviously I'm interested in people who could pay the money that, that I wanted. There's a base financial requirement, of course, but what's always been important to me is the teams that I built. When I pass a business on to someone, I'm not just saying, here you go. Here's my business. Now give me money. And I'm sure this is common with founders. I really want to make sure that the next person coming in is going to be a steward of that team. And they're able to do something for the business that I haven't been able to. And so what I was searching for wasn't just someone who would pay me the money and then roll up my team into a bigger organization. I was looking for a strategic buyer who wanted to enter the U S market. Cause we're a U S based VA agency or someone who had a existing service where a VA service on the backend would compliment them well. For example, one of our partners is, um, a, a well-known house cleaning company, uh, CRM software. Well, they've white labeled our VAs in the past, and so we talked with them, for example, about a potential acquisition, because for their audience, it would make sense to provide bo…

AI assessment note: “I'd set a few guidelines for myself on what I wanted from buyers”

Q to, to successfully get acquired, um, and just have a great acquisition journey. Um, but tell me about that journey. Um, let's, let's start at the beginning. What was your expectations? Um, you know, you initially go live on acquire.com. What kind of happened in the first couple of weeks? Did that meet your expectations? Were you surprised? Were you let down? Like, let me get the short scoop there.

A Sure. There's a little backstory that you won't know, actually. Um, about four years ago, I discovered micro acquire when you were still micro acquire. So I, I created an old profile just to, I was kind of curious what my valuation might be at that point. Um, but I wasn't in selling mode at all. I was just kind of curious, like what might we bring in, you know? So I created an old profile and acquire, um, and something reminded me of it. So this was maybe November, December last year. I started to think more seriously about Should I get more funding for this company, um, and really take it to the next level? Or am I committed to bringing a little more balance into my life, um, and, and exiting myself? So I was having this conflict perhaps on which direction to go with it. And I remembered acquire.com. And so I just checked out your guy's site and then found the rebrand and that you're now acquire. Um, and I logged into my old profile and it was still there. So I, I, I, I just on a whim one day, really with no more thought than that, to be perfectly honest, I updated it, and I resubmitted the listing, and one of your senior advisors, Kai, who is a fantastic guy, reached out to me, um, to talk about the Guided by Acquire program, and so it was really that stage that I thought a little more seriously about exiting. There's a few people in the industry I respect and know that we'd …

AI assessment note: “There's a little backstory that you won't know, actually.”

Q fast and why it was so profitable and why you have so many happy customers. So I'm just stoked, Chris. I'm happy for you. A huge congrats. You know, you accomplished what, you know, really every entrepreneur dreams of. Um, I guess my final question is, you know, what's next for you? What are you, what are you building next? Are you, is it time to, to relax for Chris?

A Thank you, man. Um, just one last thing on the advice. Make sure you celebrate your team too. Don't just celebrate yourself with a nice glass of wine. Celebrate your team because they built the business more than you did as the owner. We all, as the owners, we put in hard work, but I think most of us know our team does the hard work every day. So, so just make sure you celebrate your team in this. Um, there's a few things that are next for me. This might sound strange, but But I'll explain it anyway. Um, two things, or three rather. Number one, I still have my consulting business. So, um, I was kind of the pioneer way back in 2016 of what's called the remote local cleaning business model now. I still teach people how to do that. It's a very common thing now. If you go on YouTube, there's a bunch of people teaching it, so it's nothing special anymore. But I teach it, um, in a very specific way for people, and I help them get unstuck. So for me, um, I'm gonna continue consulting for the time being because I love what I do. And what I do Is not actually teach people how to build a remote business. Although that is what I do on the surface. What I really teach people how to do and what I actually care about is teaching people how to build a balanced business and a balanced life. Many of us get obsessed with the next KPI bill we're tracking or an extra zero on our monthly revenue or…

AI assessment note: “there's a few things that are next for me... Number one, I still have my consulting business.”

Q really does, um, make acquisitions happen. Um, so that's great. Tell me about this part. So you signed the letter of intent, you and the buyer on the same page, you move into due diligence. Um, what did that process look like? How long was it? Uh, any speed bumps, any Big learnings that maybe you'd give to another founder. What did, what did the due diligence process look like?

A Sure. If I could just add one more comment from the previous question real quick, um, cause I think it might be a good thing to share. You want to make sure that your timelines for an acquisition line up too. So I actually had another really perfect buyer, someone I I've known for a long time and worked within the industry, but they were looking at an acquisition end of year, beginning of 20, 26, which is very different than what I was looking for. So the buyer that I ended up going with, We talked about our timelines and those timelines had matched up perfectly. It was somewhere between the next two to six months. Um, in reality, after the LOI, we closed in less than 30 days, but, but we, our timelines had matched up very well. So I just wanted to mention that that can really be a deciding factor too. If you have two or three years, those smaller things can really matter. So, um, just wanted to mention that. So, so you asked about due diligence, which is the key part.

AI assessment note: “If I could just add one more comment from the previous question real quick”