The Exchanges

Q and you look at everything someone doesn't like in a market and you offer the exact opposite. That is awesome. I love that. If you had to go back and change one thing as you were building the business or do one thing differently, what would that be? Like a learning through working with clients or maybe the pricing or the service? What's like one thing you would do different?

A There's a million things I would do different. I, cause the business at the time I sold it was like the most evolved phase of the company, right? All the tweaks were made. There was no, there was no like one tweak that changed everything per se. I think it was just a bunch of the little ones, but I, I, I did really see that things started taking off once I got the right people in place. I hired a A really good account manager that changed the company for the better. And there was another time I hired a really bad account manager that lost us like a 100,000 dollars worth of revenue in a year. So by me taking the slightly cheaper option of the bad account manager that saved me like 500, like 5000 bucks over the year, it cost me a 100,000 dollars in mistakes that made. So if I had to choose just one thing, it'd be hire the The better person from the start instead of hiring it, losing all that revenue, and then hiring the right person.

AI assessment note: “if I had to choose just one thing, it'd be hire the The better person”

Q Right on. How was, how did you get new clients? Was it mostly referrals, or did you do some marketing yourself?

A Yeah, so at the beginning, we really, that, that business partner I told you about, he, we really used his network to get those first few clients, and so that was really great, a great resource for us to get started, and then as time went on, we tried to spread the word more in those markets. We, I got some Facebook ads going. I failed. I tried different ones that failed. I tried different ones that failed. I probably spent tens of thousands of dollars on Failed attempts of, of sales funnels to get us new clients, and then I finally found a recipe that really worked, getting like the right message, the right funnel, the right follow-up, the right sales pitch to, to, to get more, more clients that way, and then once we started growing, we had enough people that referrals started coming in as well.

AI assessment note: “we really used his network to get those first few clients”

Q I feel like that's a mistake all entrepreneurs just have to make themselves and live through it. Sometimes the cheaper option is actually the more expensive option. For sure. That makes complete sense. So why did you want to sell the business? You had product market fit, it was an extremely profitable business, tons of happy clients. What made you decide to sell?

A I got to a point where So as an entrepreneur, like we, we were super excited about ideas and stuff. I got the business to a point where every, every role was filled, all, all the responsibilities I had. There was an employee who, who now had that task and I didn't really have to work on the business too much. And I got to a point where, okay, there's all these improvements to scale the business. And I looked at that list, and I'm like, I think I'm more passionate about starting businesses more than, like, scaling them, per se. And so once I kind of realized that that's my passion is building, not scaling, that's when I was like, hey, what, you know, what would it, I started asking myself the question, like, what would it look like if I, if I sold this, you know, use it, use this chunk of, this chunk of change to start a new one. What's more, what's more, what am I more passionate about, studying that, that second one, or doubling this existing one, and I just naturally felt more excited about studying a new one, and so to follow my passion, I wanted, I wanted to go with, with, with that route, and yeah, that, that's where the conversation came from.

AI assessment note: “I think I'm more passionate about starting businesses more than, like, scaling them”

Q started a business. It's grown to a certain point. They're starting to get bored. And I think that's huge because whatever you're most passionate about, that's where you're going to be really great. That's where you're going to typically add the most value. So I think that makes a ton of sense. Let's move forward a little bit. You reach out to acquire.com. What were your expectations? Let's start there.

A Um, I didn't, I didn't really have a lot of expectations. Like, I, this is, this is unknown territory to me. I had heard about Acquire through, like, social media or something. I wasn't a hundred percent sure how, because I'm, I'm, I'm, I've been, I have a lot of experience with building businesses and stuff like that. I've never really been, like, the person to, like, build, sell, build, sell, build. So, so this is kind of a first for me. So I had heard about Acquire. I just, Listed it on the platform for, just to see what would happen, and it seemed, seemed to work pretty, pretty good for me. I had a coach who kind of helped me know what things look best in the listings and stuff like that, and helped me build that, and once I went live within a month, we had a couple, a couple really solid offers.

AI assessment note: “I didn't, I didn't really have a lot of expectations.”

Q Well, tell me, why'd you focus on those types of businesses?

A So the reason I chose, so our first vertical we really focused on was yard care. And the reason we chose that really intertwines a lot with kind of like our backstory, how we got started. So I'll kind of dig into that really quick. So back when I was actually in high school, I worked for this lawn care company, not doing anything fancy. I was really just the one pushing the lawnmower. And once I graduated high school, I get a, I get a call from my lawn care boss and he's like, Hey, why don't you come work for me again? And I said, you know, I think I'm done mowing lawns for, for one lifetime. Like I mowed like hundreds and hundreds of lawns, you know, me and my buddy would work for him and mow like 30 lawns a day. And, you know, five, 30 lawns a day, five days a week, you know, a 150 lawns a week is, is, you know, enough for me. And so when he called me, he's like, hey, why don't you come work for me again? Like, oh no, I think I'm done mowing lawns. He's like, no, no, no, no. I heard when you were in high school, you took a web design class. And so I don't want you to come mow lawns for me. I want you to come work on my website, make it better. And I was like, okay, sure. I mean, like, this is, this is, I'm like, yeah, sure. Let's do it. He's like, sweet. You're now like the CMO of my company, basically. And I was like, whoa, okay, well, I am underqualified, but let's, let's g…

AI assessment note: “our first vertical we really focused on was yard care.”

Q Nice. What was the business model? Was it set a fee and then a monthly service fee? What did that look like?

A Yeah, we're just, we made it really simple. The thing that kind of separated us, especially at the beginning was, like I had mentioned in our backstory, my initial boss was going from marketing company to marketing company, not being satisfied. So our business model was, hey, why don't you make a list of everything you hated about your past marketing companies? And our business model is to be opposite of that. And so one of those things was he hated that, like he got locked in for like a year. On, like, contracts. So, like, what made us kind of special is, like, hey, why don't we do month to month? So, we're, we're, our business model was, was, was month to month services.

AI assessment note: “our business model was, was, was month to month services.”

Q Yeah, I remember when that happened, the whole acquired team was watching it and monitoring it, so I'm happy to see it successfully close. What were some common questions that other buyers had about the business? Was there a certain sticking point? Was there a part of the business that got them really excited?

A They, so unknowingly, I created, unknowingly, I created like the ultimate SOP system. So basically, Whenever an employee would ask a question, I would answer the question on Zoom, and I would just press record every time. And so out of laziness, I created like this FAQ document that says the question and then answer is just a link to the video question, answer link to the video. And so over the years I created like 500 or like, like I think two, two, I know it's at least 200 videos. It felt like 500 and I created at least 200 videos of like every possible question and answer you can come up with in the business. And I also did, whenever I, like, showed them how to do something, like a tutorial, I also recorded that as well. And, and that document itself, when buyers were asking about my company, they, they, that was really valuable to them. So they're like, oh, like, you know, because usually they're like, one of the questions they kept asking is like, oh, if, if you leave the company, it's going to be really hard for me to take over from here. And be like, no, because every question you could possibly ask me is already answered here. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and you'd be just fine.

AI assessment note: “one of the questions they kept asking is like, oh, if, if you leave”