The Exchanges

Q That's awesome. Um, so the business is doing well. You clearly have a ton of happy customers. It's growing extremely fast. What made you ultimately decide to sell the business?

A Yeah. There was a couple different factors that came into it. Um, you know, I would say the primary one was that I had a child in twenty-twenty-two. Um, that was a little bit eye-opening for me. I was, it was the first time I had a child, so I, I, taking on that task was, was a lot. Um, and I also really wanted to be involved in my son's life. Uh, as I mentioned before, I also work full-time in a, as a national account director in my full-time job, and so I'm traveling a lot. Um, you know, I have a lot of responsibility there. Mixed in with this e-commerce business that I was trying to scale and grow. Um, I would say that that was the primary reason was, was limitation in time. Um, I had done a great job of automating the business, but the limitation in time to be able to scale the business to the next chapter and, and continue making it worth my time. Let's say there was a lot of opportunity with that business. Um, we'd slowed down the marketing side of it and really relied on word of mouth. And I felt that I was doing a disservice to the Baby that I created, uh, it being the business, not my actual child.

AI assessment note: “I would say the primary one was that I had a child in twenty-twenty-two.”

Q I love that. Tell me about, let's step forward now. Tell me about the buyer that you ended up selling the business to. Was there something that stood out about them? Were they e-commerce background? Did you just get along with them? Was it the best offer? The mix of some of those?

A It was, yeah, a mix of all of it. We, we, so I met with a lot of different buyers who had, um, varying degrees of, uh, of, um, opportunity to, to present something to the table in, in regards to an offer. And when I met the gentleman who ultimately purchased the business, we hit it off right away. It was like, we were talking as if we were friends. Um, so that helped a lot. What I particularly liked about his background though, was that he was a EVP at A P firm that's quite large. And so I felt like, you know, if he's engaging with me, he's seen my P and L he's seen, you know, I had a, a robust amount of data, um, that I shared with, with the potential buyers. And, you know, I, I was like, if he likes it, he knows what he's doing. He has the background in, in acquisition M and a, and all that. And so I figured if, uh, you know, he was interested, he's somebody who's actually interested. And so we got along great. He really enjoyed the way that we were able to handle our data room. The insane amounts of data that we provided, the decks that we, we submitted, uh, we really came very well equipped. Um, we were very serious to sell the business, and, and so I think he appreciated that as well, and, you know, he jived with us, and

AI assessment note: “It was, yeah, a mix of all of it.”

Q you know, serious buyers from non-serious buyers. Um, so great job there. Um, so you pick the winning buyer. You're going to move forward. You have a letter of intent. You sign that you move into due diligence. Um, what did that look like? Did you have extra inventory on hand? Did you have a lot of assets that you had to transfer? Um, how long did that process take?

A Yeah, um, a lot of questions there too, but yeah, if I forget one, just please remind me, I'll do my best to remember them. But, uh, so yeah, we, we get into the due diligence phase, and actually it was incredibly easy for us because of how well prepared we were with our data up front. Um, after signing the NDA, like I said, we had a vast amount of information, and because we're using Shopify, a lot of it is integrated direct reports out of there, and you can't Make up an order number, for example. And so I think he trusted a lot in which, uh, was presented already. And so when he went into due diligence, it was more just assigning permissions so that he can physically go into Shopify, let's say, um, and look at the reports with his own eyes and Shopify is great for that because you can assign certain, uh, permissions so that they can't go in and let's say, you know, uh, change all the prices of your products or change your passwords or whatever. So yeah, Um, so he was able to go in and take a look at the reporting and give him permission for that. And yeah, he was satisfied with everything he saw. And so the due diligence phase was, uh, I was prepared for it to be almost grueling, so to speak. You know, I was, I was anticipating that and just because of how well prepared we were, it was, it was a very easy look over took, I want to say two weeks, if that maybe a week and a hal…

AI assessment note: “due diligence phase, and actually it was incredibly easy... took, I want to say two weeks”

Q Well, tell me this, Matt, um, if another entrepreneur is listening to this and you know, you had to give them three pieces of advice to successfully get acquired, what do you think those three pieces of advice would be?

A Yeah. Believe in what you're selling, right? Um, you might get pushed around on price a little bit, but know what your company is worth. Know that you've put the time in. Don't get overly emotionally attached to it. Do the research, figure out what it's worth and stand by that if you feel that the price is right. But also don't be afraid to negotiate. Um, somebody who's very serious about acquiring your business, you have to be a little bit flexible and it's not always on price. It could be on assets and inventory and other things, but Be firm, be flexible where you think it makes sense. Um, and then the other piece of advice that I have is, you know, stick with it. It took me a long time. Andrew, I knew, um, through listening to your old videos that it took you a long time to sell your business. Um, so that video gave me a lot of hope. You know, I didn't feel like I was behind because it can get discouraged and don't get discouraged, you know, stick with it, continue to motivate your potential buyers with new data. We went viral one time, and so we created a new pitch deck and sent it out to all the potential buyers and told them what was happening and where we were ranking in SEO. Keep them up to date. Give them updates. Continue working on the business. Keep it, keep it valuable. Um, yeah, I guess those are the two biggest things.

AI assessment note: “Believe in what you're selling... don't be afraid to negotiate... stick with it”

Q few steps back. I'd love to learn a little bit more about why you picked that buyer would stood out about them. But before we get into that, um, you go onto acquire.com. What was your initial expectations? How did the The first couple of weeks ago, did it surpass that? Were you surprised in any way? How many buyers reached out? It's a lot of questions all at once.

A No, it's okay. I got you. I got you. Yeah. Um, you know, well, I guess before I get into the acquire piece, I think it's important to take a step back because when I was originally trying to start the business, um, I know a fellow entrepreneur and they put me in touch with a couple of different brokers outside of, um, of, you know, outside of acquiring. I tried to meet with them and, you know, it was just like, it was really rough going. Like I really had a poor experience trying to work with somebody to sell my business and I didn't really know how to do it. I'd never done it before and just kind of left me feeling a little bit sour. And so, um, you know, I did some online research, uh, came across acquire.com was, um, optimistic. I would say, you know, I, I thought, you know, we were talking earlier about really, um, telling the story that you have to offer and it resonated with me. And so I listed the website up for sale. I, uh, I don't remember all the initial pieces. I know that, you know, Acquire stepped in a lot more than I had envisioned that they would. I thought it would be very self-run. That wasn't the case. Um, you know, we had a great CSM working with us to help us get the listing perfect, um, find out what price to put it at. But yeah, there was, and then, yeah, going into your, to your last point about the amount of, uh, buyers, it was, it was overwhelming. You …

AI assessment note: “I thought it would be very self-run... the amount of, uh, buyers, it was overwhelming”

Q A hundred percent. Tell me, how did you market the business? How'd you attract customers? Um, I'm honestly not a big e-commerce expert like yourself. Like, what are the common paths? Did you follow those? Did you do anything, you know, unique or different?

A Yeah. So, you know, we started in 2017. Really, we're trying to figure out what our brand meant to us and, you know, what resonated with consumers kind of figured that out in late, 2018, 2019. And actually, if you're curious, I have a funny anecdote later, but we were trying a lot of different stuff and got the store shut down by accident. Um, which I can go into if you're curious, but, um, but going back to the marketing, you know, we, um, it was a lot of word of mouth. We found that the repeat rate, repeat customer rate on our products was, was really high because what ended up happening was Our products were geared towards the personalities of pets. So it wasn't just selling like a black dog, dog collar or a blue dog collar. They had specific text on it. Graphics. Um, you know, just a, a funny one that I loved for my dog. You know, my dog was part of this business. He's always been the model. We had a collar for him that said branch manager. Um, and so it was a lot of word of mouth, you know, um, we saw our collars out in the wild. Uh, my wife was always super, she wasn't my wife at the time, but she'd be like, oh my God, like, That's my husband's like brand, you know, very cool. Where'd you get it? And they, they were over the moon about the product. And so it was a lot of word of mouth. Um, in the early days of Facebook ads, again, it's evolved very quickly during COVID, b…

AI assessment note: “it was a lot of word of mouth... in the early days, we did a lot of Facebook ads”