The Exchanges

Q Awesome. What does that transition period look like?

A Yeah, great question. So we have a, so we're acquiring multiple businesses, so we have a growth spree Slack channel. The initial part of that transition looks like I put them, particularly since there's going to be an independent contractor agreement, we have them join, we use deal, letsdeal.com for payments, they join that, um, so there's automatic payments, and that handles internationally, um, really well, so it, Puts their terms of service in their, um, country's terms. And then also, um, what happens is usually we set a weekly meeting, and we have that weekly meeting, we talk about things in between in Slack, but during that weekly meeting, we sort of agree on, here's what I'm gonna do, here's what you're gonna do, here's what the team's gonna do, um, moving forward. For me, I'm buying relatively smaller brands that need a good amount of, like, direction, particularly on the distribution level. So I have a team on the growth spree side. I have a team that focuses, a lead that focuses on agency. So creating an agency out of the software. I have a lead that focuses on marketing. So my growth spree team is primarily meeting with whoever it was we acquired. And so the, all of the growth spree companies are sharing, um, marketing agency operations, a couple of different, um, resources, if that makes sense, but then they have a point of contact who's usually the CTO.

AI assessment note: “The initial part of that transition looks like I put them”

Q a question there. Um, you know, there's probably a lot of founders listening to this and maybe thinking about selling their business. What's a way, what's like a red flag to you? Like when you, you like responsiveness from founders is obviously a great thing. Um, is there anything that kind of stands out as like, don't do this or definitely have, you know, these sort of metrics in place?

A Yeah, I think that for me, the biggest red flags come a little bit later in the process, so it's not necessarily just the post itself, it's like once we start talking, there's a willingness to, um, come to a, usually what I'm doing is I'm asking questions, like when we get on the phone, I'm gonna ask questions about what they're trying to accomplish. Because, oftentimes, we can structure a deal that, like, even better allows them to accomplish what they initially set out for, um, than, like, the, the number or the structure that they originally posted. So, like, I'm asking sort of questions. I'm sharing, like, what I'm looking to accomplish. They're sharing what they're looking to accomplish, and I find that, like, a red flag is just, like, unwillingness to talk about much at all. It's like, if we're gonna go into business together and we're gonna work on something, like, we sort of have to talk about where we're going and what we're motivated by. So those are my favorite parts of doing the deal, having those conversations about, like, what we're each motivated by. I have a, my main thing when I go into talking to a founder is trying to figure out what their relationship with risk is. Like, are they just interested in cash up front? They want to do something a little bit less risky, which they want cash up front. They want to be able to, like, walk away from it, or they don't w…

AI assessment note: “a red flag is just, like, unwillingness to talk about much at all.”

Q Right. I love how you're leveraging, uh, in-house resources for your existing company with this holding. Is that the setup that you have? So basically, um, whoever's in charge of marketing kind of takes a lead on building out the growth plan for every newly acquired company?

A Some, so there's definitely sharing of resources and the premise of really what we're looking to do at GrowSpray is to allow some sharing of resources. So for example, the person who runs marketing for GrowSpray, she's exclusively at GrowSpray. However, she used to run marketing with me at Apps with AppCode. So I've already worked with her for a while and hired her on to work on this other project. So I am working with people that I've worked with before to sort of place them in places. Um, from an agency perspective, we have an agency at Apps Without Code, and so my agency lead at Apps Without Code is also working with me on Growth Spree. Um, because what we, sort of what's foundational at The view of how we're approaching things at Growth Free is, and this is interesting because I've done a lot of helping people building my own software and selling it and helping other people build software and selling it. And one of the challenges with software is that people think that software should be free or cheap. Like most people believe that.

AI assessment note: “Some, so there's definitely sharing of resources and the premise of really what we're looking to do”

Q Nice. Walk me through your acquisition process. Like, how do you start your initial reach out? How did the negotiations go? Uh, kind of, let's, let's unveil the curtain on that a little bit.

A Yeah. Okay. So I will preface this by saying that I spent the first four to six months just trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. So there was a period of time where I just wasn't making lots of movements and getting deals done because I was trying to develop My preferences for what kinds of companies I was interested in, what deal size, there was sort of a range of deal size that I could do, and I wasn't really sure what was best, and also I had to get out of my own way in terms of the due diligence process. I think that there is a limited amount of due diligence that you can do depending on the deal size, and so I think I probably over complicated that part of the process when I first got started. Let me walk you through what I'm doing now and what's working. Um, my favorite site to find, uh, tools and software and company on is Microfire.

AI assessment note: “Let me walk you through what I'm doing now and what's working.”