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SPEAKER A: Today's story has a few distinctive details. The business is remote but with a team concentrated in Romania. The business model SEO for personal injury attorneys. Also the protagonists of the story are a husband and wife team. Husband Grant Hensel, already a successful entrepreneur, searched for the business that wife Julia now operates.

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SPEAKER A: The couple met over their mutual love of entrepreneurship and today they are both living that dream. A few other details to listen for getting a 2x multiple on a $1 million SDE business winning a deal due to values alignment the joys of having a seller who not only allowed them to meet the entire team pre close, but had the clients sign new contracts with Grant and Julia. Talk about de risking a transition, buying a business off flip up acquiring with a contrarian thesis around SEO and how to stand out in the hyper competitive world of digital agencies. Now if you're interested in buying a digital or marketing agency, also check out the recent interview with Scott Alexander where we spend time unpacking the category in general. Okay, here are Julia Hensel, owner and CEO of Lexigate, and Grant Hensel, Managing Partner of Entrepreneurial Capital.

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SPEAKER A: This month, Chelsea Wood of the Acquisition Lab has been hearing the same concerns again and again on strategy calls with prospective searchers and business buyers wanting to buy a business, not a job, for example, hesitation about taking a pay cut, uncertainty about personal readiness and others. Maybe you're grappling with a specific concern or two as you approach your own journey to buy a business. Well, come to this week's office hours with Chelsea, where she is going to address the concerns she's hearing from Lab members and as many as possible from those who come to the office hours, which is this Wednesday, May 28, 20 noon Eastern. Addressing this month's seven most common buyer concerns is the title. It's this Wednesday, May 28th.

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SPEAKER A: Register at the link in today's show notes or on the Acquiring Minds homepage. Acquiring Minds co. See you there.

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SPEAKER A: Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs and on this. Podcast I talk to the people who do it. The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers Entitled A New CEO's Guide to Human Resources.

[00:03:07 - 00:03:50]

SPEAKER A: It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download it is in the show Notes. Aspen is a professional employer organization, or peo, run by a searcher for searchers. Search fund veteran Mark Sinatra runs the company, which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll Fortune 500 caliber benefits and HR due diligence support for your acquisition, all for a fraction of the cost. Go to aspenhr.com or contact Mark directly@markspenhr.com Julia Hensel.

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SPEAKER B: Grant Hensel, husband and wife. Welcome to Acquiring Minds. Great to be here. Thrilled to be here. So this is an unusual1.

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SPEAKER B: You two own and operate a marketing. Agency, but the division of labor of. That story was really that. Grant, you searched for the business and Julia, you run it today. Let's learn more about how you got.

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SPEAKER A: Here and what it looks like now. Julia, start us off with your background, please. Then Grant will go to you. Yeah, so I think maybe the best place to start the story is about the why and why we were even interested in entrepreneurial or entrepreneurship through acquisition. And really that goes back to a long term, long standing passion about entrepreneurship that I've had.

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SPEAKER C: Even as a kid, I was like that kid who would have my parents come to, you know, recitals and talent shows that I would put on and of course I would charge them admission fee. So I've always been passionate about entrepreneurship. Grant and I actually met in entrepreneurship club in college and that is part of our story of how we fell in love and ended up becoming married. But then I started my career in corporate America, so. So for the first nine years out of undergrad, I was in various roles in corporate America, primarily in strategy consulting.

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SPEAKER C: And I love that. I love being able to work with big companies and understand their strategic drivers. But in parallel, I saw Grant, who was operating his own agency and really loved the ownership and the creativity that you get to have as a small business owner. And so I was excited to kind of dive back into the entrepreneurial side of things and find a company of our own for me to operate. So that's what led us to eta.

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SPEAKER B: Super. Thank you, Julia. Grant, fill in the, fill in the holes and tell us about yourself. My entire life has been a unwitting natural experiment into whether it's better to buy or build businesses. I've wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 12 and have started businesses from the ground 10 times.

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SPEAKER D: Two of them got acquired in small transactions, seven of them completely failed, and one has done well, which is called nonprofit megaphone and does digital marketing for nonprofits and has a team now about 60 people, which has been great. And I love entrepreneurship. But I went to Booth, my wife Julie and I both went to Booth and we were exposed to the whole notion of search and entrepreneurship acquisition through that I had friends that did all kinds of different Search paths. And when Julia sort of expressed the desire to be sort of more in charge of her own destiny and have a more entrepreneurial path because she was at BCG and so didn't have a ton of time, we ended up doing as you mentioned, like a hybrid where I searched and then we bought a business that Julie now runs which has been a ton of fun. And now I now invest in people doing self funded search acquisitions and have a little fun that does that and just love the space.

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SPEAKER B: And what did you mean Grant that your whole entrepreneurial journey has been an unwitting. What did you call it? Exploration of or. Or. Or tension between buying and building?

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SPEAKER D: Just that if you look at the stats I'm you know, depending on your count, either three for 10 or one through 10 on building and the track record has been much higher on buying. And so the whole whole like buy versus build notion, I've learned the hard way that it in fact is often much better to buy. Gotcha. Gotcha. And say more about your hit rate of three of ten.

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SPEAKER B: Two were small exits and then one of the ten has been transformative. Tell and it's called nonprofit megaphone. Not to be confused with an actual nonprofit. It means your customers are nonprofits. You are a for profit marketing agency.

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SPEAKER A: Tell us more. Give us, give us the story of that business. In, in a NutShell business is nine years old. We do, we provide a service for nonprofits that manages we managing the Google Ad grant for them. So Google gives nonprofits $10,000 a month every month forever in credit to run ads in Google search.

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SPEAKER D: And so we help them acquire that grant and we run their ads for them. And everyone makes fun of me because my name is also Grant, which is not my fault but it's a, it's been a lot of fun. We, we serve almost 800 clients and it was you know, classic entrepreneurial journey of took forever to get started. We eventually sort of figured things out. Everything blew up when we hit about $2 million in revenue.

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SPEAKER D: We ended up implementing something called EOS which helped a lot and it sense since grown meaningfully and gotten to the point where I'm actually we have such a good leadership team that I can be involved only at a strategic level and I'm actually not in the operations at all because the team is so much better at operations than me just like Julia is so better at operations than me. And so that's why she runs the business that we bought. And Grant, so you have essentially stepped out of this business. So this is from that perspective kind of the dream. You've got this largish small business, highly profitable.

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SPEAKER B: You're not that involved in the day to day. Yeah. You own 100% of it. Correct. Sorry, go ahead.

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SPEAKER D: Yeah, yeah, I'm very involved in the strategy and like being supportive to the leadership team and helping us chart the future. But operationally, everyone in the entire business is better at operations than I am. And so we've made the beautiful decision of having maybe 0% involved in operations so that they actually, actually get done very well. Right. Well, we will spend some time in this conversation on marketing agencies and why they can be good businesses because they can also be very bad businesses as, as we discussed at length on the pre call.

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SPEAKER B: So we're going to, we're going to get into that. Okay. So Julia, you have always had entrepreneurial DNA, but you get ultimately what finally pushes you is envy of your husband and his lifestyle and wanting more autonomy for your. Wanting more autonomy for yourself when you decide to on the past. And you've both been exposed to search at Booth.

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SPEAKER B: So I assume the model resonates, you decide to search. What does, how does that take shape? You're at a competitive, demanding consulting firm, bcg, of course, one of the, you know, absolute blue chip marquee consulting firms. So probably don't have a lot of time. But tell us, tell us how this project starts to take shape.

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SPEAKER C: I was going to say Grant was extremely helpful because of the situation you just outlined. Well, as far as I was very excited and passionate and kind of decided that this was something I wanted to do. But searching is a very intensive effort and I'm sure everyone listening understands that more. So, so Grant really led that part of the process and he'd perhaps share more about the key moments in that journey. Okay, Graham Grant, please.

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SPEAKER D: Yeah, so Julia came to me with a pitch of like, hey, why don't, why don't you find the business and then I will run it? Which I loved. Actually. I loved the search process. I thought it was a ton of fun.

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SPEAKER D: We ended up searching for nine months. We went to LOI four times or we submitted LOIs four times. The first one was the. The. The sellers took the ly and sort of like shopped it to other people and it ended up.

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SPEAKER D: The deal ended up falling through. So we learned at that moment it is good to present the LOI on a call, get verbal agreement and then send it for signature with a that day expiration period, which is what we did for all the other transactions or for all the other Lois. Which ended up great. Great tip. Yeah, highly recommend.

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SPEAKER D: We would never, we'd never send again like a blind non deadline not already. Agreed to loi which so again, so again have LOI communicate by email with with seller. Hey, we'd like to present an offer to you. We'd like to present it live via Zoom and then do so. And then, oh, by the way, this expires within a day.

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SPEAKER D: Today. It expires today to day. Right. That seems like the aggressive part of this strategy. How, how is that received?

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SPEAKER B: Obviously it's worked for you. But say do, do they. People chafe at that. It can be pitched in a thoughtful way. So we'd say we'd love to get on a call to explain the oi.

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SPEAKER D: We'll walk through it if they have feedback. Maybe we're tweaking and we want to get to the point where we say there's no point in us sending you a document before we have verbal agreement and a meeting of the minds. And once we do get to that, there's now nothing left to discuss. Everything has just been discussed is on the paper. And so we'd love to do this deal if you would love to as well.

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SPEAKER D: We're going to send it to you. It expires today. There are other transactions we're looking at, but we're very excited about this. And so let's either move forward or not. And either way option is perfectly fine.

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SPEAKER B: So you don't put something in paper, down on paper and give and then in there and put in their hands that they can go shop around until they've all but said, you send it, I'll sign it. Correct. We'll show it to you on a screen, share in a document. But we are not, we're not sending it because as searchers will know, the notion of like the buyer, you know, you'll hear from the broker over and over again, like the buyer has multiple Lois in hand and we're just, we're just never going to be one of those. Yeah.

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SPEAKER B: So Carrie. Anyway, so four Lois. Yeah, so that was the first one. So learned a beautiful lesson there. The second one had a very interesting story as well, where the financial statements, they did sign the oi, the financial statements ended up being dramatically incorrect.

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SPEAKER D: The business was taking on debt from like the, the sort of digital fundraising or like digital capital providers. You'll have like your payment processor will give you a loan or like your accounting system will give you a loan. They were in a real cash flow bind, which they didn't really Understand, they were taking on those loans, and their bookkeeper was marking them in QuickBooks as revenue as opposed to debt proceeds. And so they thought they were making a lot of money. They were actually losing money and getting into debt more and more with each passing day.

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SPEAKER D: So that, unfortunately, did not work out, which was. Which was a. It was a great conversation for us to have. Like, hey, you should maybe look into a different bookkeeper. Um, but sadly, we're not gonna be the right buyer for you.

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SPEAKER D: And anyway, that's interesting. Um, the third one was a. A wonderful business that actually had something really positive happen to it in the middle of diligence. And so the sellers, who are great people and we stay in touch with to this day, ended up saying, hey, guys, we can't sell this anymore. Like, this is.

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SPEAKER D: This has become a gold mine. Let's stay in touch. Um, anyway, we've. And we've. We've stayed friends with them, and there's now, like, actually potentially some strategic, interesting opportunities for collaboration with them that have come out of that.

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SPEAKER D: So there's actually, like, no. No bad conversations in this whole process. And then the fourth and final one ended up being the business that we closed on. Right. Great.

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SPEAKER B: And so we haven't heard the criteria. So when you're going out looking for businesses, what. What were you looking for? I'll share mine. And Juliet has had hers, which are slightly different.

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SPEAKER D: Mine were remote only. And because that's what nonprofit megaphone my business is, we love the flexibility that that provides. And I wanted it to be something that had meaningful recurring revenue and something that we felt like we actually understood from more than just, like, reading a sim. I wanted to have some sort of background knowledge into that. So that was, for me.

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SPEAKER C: Yeah. I think similarly for me, I think another factor is just having a really great team, of course, as being the one to operate the business. I knew that, you know, I get a lot of my joy in life out of who I work with, so just having a team that I was really excited about partnering with was important to me. Great. So.

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SPEAKER B: Well, sorry, what about size? That's always. Yeah, so size. We. We basically wanted it to be something that we had the capital to acquire.

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SPEAKER D: And so we. We thought more about, like, upfront cash requirements than potentially, like, revenue or earnings size. We. We wanted it to be above on the order of, like, $300,000 of earnings just from a, you know, like a sizing standpoint. But we had no upper limit, just sort of financing constraints, because basically, one of the other factors is we did not.

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SPEAKER D: We were, we're sort of unique in that we did not, if all possible, want to use an SBA loan which added all kinds of wrinkles. Oh, you, you went into the process. Wanting to avoid an SBA loan. I know that you didn't for you wouldn't have been able to even if you'd wanted to. Not sure.

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SPEAKER B: I caught from a pre call that you actually wanted to avoid that altogether anyway, so. Say more. It's nothing against sba, it's just we don't love debt and I think it just as the person operating the business as well, I just didn't want to live with that weight on my shoulders and we didn't want to. Yeah, we're just kind of allergic to debt, to be honest. Oh, it's a personal decision, of course.

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SPEAKER B: Because so much of this, this model is, you know, LBO leverage buyout.

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SPEAKER B: Great. Well we should say then that if you weren't going to use debt, you were going to need to buy the business all in cash or use equity investors, third party investors. Which was it going to be? And yeah, but answer that first. Right.

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SPEAKER D: The target, which everyone has, was cash and seller financing. And if there was a universe where maybe equity investors would be helpful or needed to help bridge the gap, that's something we considered the transaction that ended up happening were fortunate to not need to do that. Which, which worked out beautifully. But yes, we, we did. I like, I, I love, you know, I love a self funded search model.

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SPEAKER D: I've invested in a bunch of people that have used, basically all of them have used SBA loans. We were just like, we know it's a needle in a haystack, but we'd love to find something that's maybe doesn't require that. And it was interesting actually because it gave us a, a unique lens on the search where I would go to brokers and I would say which deals do you have that are not SBA eligible? Were very interested in those. And the nice thing is that those tended to have far fewer buyers and often more reasonable multiples in terms.

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SPEAKER D: And so it actually led us down an interesting path. So you were comfortable with seller financing that's still debt. Correct. We were comfortable with non recourse debt. So the personal guarantee is really what the bright red line was.

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SPEAKER D: Correct. Looking for an SBA loan to buy a business. Then meet Pioneer Capital Advisory, your team for getting an SBA 7A loan quickly and at great terms. The team at Pioneer has closed 81 SBA loans in just the last two and a half years with an average close time well under the industry standard. Founder Matthias Smith and general manager Valerie Stash Bo both have 10 years of SBA experience and know the process cold.

[00:18:50 - 00:19:25]

SPEAKER A: There are three analysts at Pioneer who build you a lending presentation that speaks the language of the bank's underwriters and gets them to yes, two account managers to guide you from underwriting to close as fast and smoothly as possible and two sales associates ready to walk you through the Pioneer capital advisory process. That's nine people at Pioneer. A real team. To get you where you're trying to go. New owner of a business, go to PioneerCapitalAdvisory.com or click the link in the.

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SPEAKER C: Notes.

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SPEAKER B: Back to size 300,000 SDE or in earnings being your floor. Julia, did you want to replace the income that you were making at BCG from day one? Eventually. What did that look? What did you need to pay yourself?

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SPEAKER C: Yeah, that's kind of how we came up with that number is, you know, BCG was of course a lucrative endeavor and so just wanting to make sure that this was replacing that revenue. Okay. And so if I of course some of those earnings are going to need to be reinvested into the business you're not going to have. And if you have seller financing, you are going to need to have service debt. So I'll assume, or is it fair to say that you, you wanted to pay yourself Something in the 125 to 175 range?

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SPEAKER C: Yeah, roughly. That's fair. Roughly. Okay. And then of course the other point is that if you are not going to use.

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SPEAKER B: Often we use SBA researchers not because we necessarily are so taken with the LBO model, although it is quite a compelling model. It's simply because we're forced to because we don't have the equity to bring to the table. And so this is a way that we can become owners without already needing a lot of capital. If so you guys I guess don't have that constraint. We've already covered the fact that Grant, you have this quite lucrative business.

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SPEAKER B: So all to say your balance sheets probably bigger than many listening. Probably, probably a reasonable assumption. We are, we both are business nerds. We spend all of our time working that tends to, tends to produce money and then we, we try and spend very little money to the extent possible and so that, you know, we got married I guess almost eight years ago now and I've had a very aggressive savings rate that whole time and with, with the idea of capital can be used to enable entrepreneurial endeavors and so in some ways we didn't know it take this exact form. But in some ways this is something we've been pondering for you know, the past almost decade.

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SPEAKER B: Fantastic. Where were you looking for a remote business? A remote recurring business with a great team. I mean tell us because that's what we all want. The magical unicorn.

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SPEAKER D: So I started. I have a lot of friends who've done proprietary search as as well as broker led search. My theory was at the beginning I just want to see deals and understand how does this transaction process work. How does it work working with brokers, all that stuff. So started looking primarily at websites we knew that wanted to be a hundred percent remote.

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SPEAKER D: And there are some broker websites of businesses that are virtual. So website Closers is one. There's like Quiet Light, there's Flippa. There's a whole host of these types of broker websites for Although I feel. Like you've just named the big.

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SPEAKER B: The big three. Indeed. Indeed. Yes. There's a little bit of a drop off after that.

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SPEAKER D: That's fairly steep. So yeah, so yeah, just started looking at. Looking at deals, getting in touch with brokers, asking them especially about like okay, what are your non SBA deals? What are deals that have been languishing for one reason or another because maybe there's some weirdness. We're a very non.

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SPEAKER D: A lot of times businesses like that there's someone who wants to buy them primarily as like a financial buyer and like is not deeply interested in the operational side of things which we felt like we could also potentially differentiate on because we love the operations and that's what it's all about. It's. I didn't realize that but that's what brokers ended up telling us is it's like yeah, you guys are actually kind of unique because you have operating and small business experience which I would not have thought was a differentiator. So say more about this. So so these again to rename the three platforms that you talked about.

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SPEAKER B: Quiet Light brokerage known for E Commerce and kind of E Commerce adjacent digitally businesses. Website Closers same thing. And then Flippa of course which is more of a. A biz by sell for digital businesses if you will. So in this world a lot of buyers are actually not that interested in operating something.

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SPEAKER B: They're. They're buying these businesses as assets more. And so you can differentiate by saying no, I actually want to run this thing. Is that exactly. Say more about that.

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SPEAKER B: Just because that great differentiator for. For a would be buyer out there to. To. To. To Position themselves the way that you guys did.

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SPEAKER D: Right. There seems to have been a effective marketing campaign done by someone about the notion of digital assets where you could just buy these cash flowing digital assets and they don't take a lot of time and you know, the seller only works five hours a week and it can just be like real estate for you almost. Which is a thesis that I wholeheartedly disagree with and that sellers tended to disagree with as well. And so they tended to be attracted us. It was interesting.

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SPEAKER D: There is those, those, I'll say those three platforms have large email lists and so many of the transactions that they bring to market they will end up talking to dozens or hundreds of potential buyers. And the average caliber of that buyer from what the brokers have shared with us is quite low on average. And so by showing up, by wanting to operate, by being a nice person who is just sort of meets all your like normal business hygiene standards, somehow that was, that was a meaningful differentiator in the eyes of brokers and sellers based on what they ended up telling us, which was very surprising, but an interesting observation. The other thing that of course differentiated you, I imagine is that a lot is that certainty to close. So you were leading with were not by not being an SBA buyer.

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SPEAKER B: Again, returning to like many SBA buyers are there because they don't have any money or don't have very much money. Not what brokers like to hear. You could also differentiate yourself by saying we're not SBA buyers. We have some capital to put at this that probably put you in the top 10% of. Of buyers out of the gate.

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SPEAKER D: Yeah. You win some, you lose some. It gives you a lot of points for seriousness uncertainty of close. And it gives you the drawback of you were pushing pretty hard on the seller financing side of which the seller may or may not be deeply excited about. Okay, okay.

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SPEAKER B: Right, right. So I guess I shouldn't overstate this. This thing about not being a buyer at the moment. Yeah, well, because. Right.

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SPEAKER B: So. But, but also, I mean it's not that you guys were going to be paying 100% in cash for a business you were still going to negotiate pretty hard for substantial seller financing. So it's not like you were. Yeah. Cash buyers.

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SPEAKER D: Correct, right. Okay. Which I do think statistically appropriate in digital businesses where there's a lot of, you know, in a marketing agency it's clients and team and processes. And so that's hard to buy without some ongoing seller skin in the game for either like rolled equity or seller note or something. To sort of facilitate a smooth transition.

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SPEAKER B: Ah, okay. So wad take seller financing. Not just to get the, not just to, to enable you financially to get the deal done, but also to be the hook to incentivize the seller to. For a good transition. When you say remote.

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SPEAKER B: And the three platforms that you're looking at. Quiet Light, website closers. Flippa. Now, many of the for sale, quote unquote businesses, there are websites. They are kind of assets.

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SPEAKER B: They're not actual businesses. But were you looking at those types of things as well? Or did I guess, Julia, you said you wanted a team, so you were not looking to just buy a website. You were looking for a proper business with humans that did stuff. Exactly.

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SPEAKER C: Yeah, we were. I was personally really excited about working with a great team. Yeah. And that narrows down the. The pickings a lot because as I said.

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SPEAKER B: Right. A lot of what you find on those is. Are just kind of like, you know, not actual functioning businesses with teams. Correct. Is that what you were finding?

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SPEAKER B: Grant 100. And then we further narrowed it down. We realized that we did not want to do E commerce either from a working capital standpoint, from a you live and die by the effectiveness of your ads and the Facebook algorithm or the TikTok algorithm standpoint. And so that eliminated a huge swath of the businesses potentially. Yeah.

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SPEAKER B: First consideration, certainly Quiet Light, less now. But in ecom aggregator days of a few, you know, just in the wake of COVID Quiet Lights, positioning was very much like, this is where E commerce businesses are transacted. Yeah. So interesting when I started this, just how hot ecom was and how not it is now. Oh yeah, yeah.

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SPEAKER D: Hello, tariffs. I'll just underline, Grant, you being so skeptical about this idea of buying a digital business that can just be this passively run asset that throws off cash like real estate or something. Your skepticism weighs more because you actually have built a business like that. Okay. Not passive.

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SPEAKER B: You're involved in the strategy. You're, you're, you support your team. So I don't mean to suggest it's passive, but you're somebody who actually has built something in that direction. And so we should especially pay attention to your skepticism that it's even possible. Right.

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SPEAKER D: Well, and spoiler alert, we ended up buying a business that Julie now runs that does search engine optimization. That would be the other category that people would think about is a revenue generating website, for example. And as many people that own revenue generating websites have learned, is that Google continuously evolves. And your ability to treat that as an annuity that will Never change is often much less strong than you might hope. Yeah.

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SPEAKER B: Yep. You can kind of see the reason for the skepticism even in the listings too, because the listings will always say, oh, the seller spends, you know, two hours a week or five hours a week or whatever on this. And then why they. And they're like, why do you want to sell the business? It's because they want to retire.

[00:29:28 - 00:29:40]

SPEAKER C: And so it's like, okay, why do you need to retire if you're not working to begin with? It kind of underscores why we. We're always a little skeptical. Totally. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:29:41 - 00:29:51]

SPEAKER B: And so back to you being a couple and the division of labor here. When you acquired this business, what was this going to be? Jointly owned. What does that look like? Jointly.

[00:29:51 - 00:29:58]

SPEAKER D: Autograph. Yeah. Yeah. So I am the sole owner technically of Lexi Gate. We are a woman owned business.

[00:29:58 - 00:30:09]

SPEAKER C: Woman owned business. But, you know, we keep our money together. So. And we, you know, I, I run all of our major decisions by Grant. I kind of almost see him on the board in some ways.

[00:30:10 - 00:30:19]

SPEAKER B: Great. So you're the, you're the owner, but in the back end. The back end of the back end. Joint assets, married couple. Exactly.

[00:30:19 - 00:30:34]

SPEAKER B: Yeah. Okay. And then Grant you. So are you doing this search full time? I'm doing the search probably with meaningful hours a week, but not full time because I'm, I'm still, you know, being helpful and involved in nonprofit megaphone as well.

[00:30:34 - 00:31:02]

SPEAKER D: But I'm probably spending 15 hours a week on the search. Okay. Top of mind for me right now is a buyside advisor advising. I am preparing to host a webinar for Athena Simpson who runs such a service. And for that, that kind of category of services, buy side advising somebody like you, Julia, is kind of the, the ideal customer profile.

[00:31:02 - 00:31:38]

SPEAKER B: Somebody who's got a, who's got a high earning income and wants to go buy and own and operate a business, but doesn't have the time to search and is therefore confronted with the calculation. I can quit. I can burn the boats and quit my BCG gig and walk away from all of the, you know, that W2 income and start spinning down my savings because I'm spending it on a search and rent. Or I can hire somebody to search. On my behalf, which is yes, expensive.

[00:31:38 - 00:31:55]

SPEAKER B: On paper, but, but net net. I'm actually above because I'm still earning my great salary at the job. So this is all completely hypothetical because you had Grant, nice to have a husband do it for you for free. I did not get even, meaning my commission was nothing.

[00:31:57 - 00:32:19]

SPEAKER B: But is There am I, is this making sense? Is this, is this something that you could imagine have making? I mean if Grant hadn't been there, do you think you would have been a full time searcher, quit, gone and done your full time search or could or inevitably somebody was going to have to do the search work for you? Yeah, I think it was just not going to be in the cards for me to do both at the same time. Definitely.

[00:32:19 - 00:32:51]

SPEAKER C: Although I do think it's important to have some skin in the game. You know, like this is ultimately going to be a business that you're going to run. And so even on top of, you know, a busy BCG schedule, it's important to still like for me it was important to still be engaged and paying attention. And I think that also if you're in a scenario where you're going to need investors, I think showing that you're willing to invest your time in a search kind of proves out the grit and the effort that you'll put in post search as well. That's a great point.

[00:32:51 - 00:33:11]

SPEAKER C: But I think that being said. Yeah, I think the model that you shared makes total sense because yeah, for someone in my shoes it would not have been possible to have done, you know, 100% of the work on my own. Yeah. Doing, doing the active search though, if you're raising third party capital from investors, can, can be a signal of, of seriousness and of grit. It's great, it's great.

[00:33:11 - 00:33:33]

SPEAKER B: Call out. Okay. Anything more to say before we hear about the business that you found? The search process was fun even though it's up and downs like the I, I think back with nostalgia to the search days. It was a lot of fun and I think that, that my encouragement to searchers if you're in it is like yes, it is hard but I suspect you will look back with nostalgia on the search days at some point.

[00:33:33 - 00:33:59]

SPEAKER D: So there, there's lots to enjoy even. In but what, what, what makes you nostalgic about it? Grant, what did you like? He has like the biggest in the world. So like maybe we have to caveat that with that because he just like loves learning about business models and hearing about different types of businesses that exist and how much money they make and how they're structured and anyway so I will say I paid him enjoy through him.

[00:34:01 - 00:34:15]

SPEAKER C: But anyway I'll let you comment Grant, on what you look back on nostalgically. No, that's totally it. I, I, I love talking to sellers. I like, I love talking to brokers. I thought it was so interesting there's stuff I learned from totally unrelated industries that was helpful for nonprofit megaphone.

[00:34:16 - 00:34:23]

SPEAKER D: I mean. Yeah. I mean I now it's like spend a lot of my time investing in this asset class because I, I just, I love that part so much. So anyway, yeah, I think it's fun. Yeah.

[00:34:23 - 00:34:43]

SPEAKER B: Looking under the hood. Learn it's, it's. I mean you learn a ton and you get to talk to all these interesting people. I understand that the, the obvious difference in your situation and many people listening will be that your Runway was much longer because Julia, you were gainfully employed. Grant, you had a business that was, that was going.

[00:34:43 - 00:34:55]

SPEAKER B: So you didn't have the, you know, the ticking clock that many searchers will feel if they've quit and gone all in on finding a business. Totally. About this business that you found. Please. Yes.

[00:34:55 - 00:35:09]

SPEAKER C: So the company we acquired is called Lexigate. We are a roughly 20 person marketing agency. We specifically do search engine optimization. We have clients across industries. But our largest focus is.

[00:35:09 - 00:35:34]

SPEAKER C: Is on law firms and specifically personal injury lawyers. So I now spend a lot of my day figuring out how to help people rank higher and higher for things like car accident. Lawyer Dallas is kind of in a nutshell what I do easiest way of explaining it. Okay. And so what we, we know your broadly what your criteria were, but tell us more about how this intersected with what you were looking for.

[00:35:36 - 00:35:52]

SPEAKER C: Yeah, a couple different things. One, like I mentioned, one of my biggest criteria was team and we loved the team at Lexigate. Grant actually went out. So one thing to note on our team is we are very spread out geographically. We have folks across the entire world.

[00:35:52 - 00:36:33]

SPEAKER C: But a lot of the team is in Romania. So Grant actually went to Romania in the diligence and met with not only the seller, but also the leadership team and other members of the team as well. Really everyone in the team who is in Bucharest and so really seeing their passion for what they do, their competence, they're just, you know, being good friendly humans who we'd want to be on a team with was a large part of it. The second thing is, I think like we were alluding to earlier, it can be a little bit difficult to be differentiated as an agency. And we liked that this was an agency.

[00:36:33 - 00:37:17]

SPEAKER C: But they did do some things in a very unique way. One of them is just having fairly strong operations and yeah, just a really good way of organizing the work that they do. It was a really well run organization and then to performing really great work for clients and having a track record of actually having improved clients rankings and to that end even doing like a guarantee on results. And so we liked their methodology and their dedication to results for the client grant. Anything you would add as far as things that you appreciated about the team and company.

[00:37:17 - 00:38:01]

SPEAKER D: 100% recurring revenue, which was wonderful operated and at like appropriate margins and so forth, was growing, not, not crazy but, but growing slightly and wonderful. Something I didn't appreciate until we were in the process, but wonderful seller on the other side of the table who was deeply committed to making a smooth transition for the employees, for the clients. We met him in person. He allowed me and then ultimately both of us to meet with all of the key people on the team and um, some in person, some over zoom, which was just wonderful. We ended up having new contracts signed with basically all of the clients right before we ended up actually closing, which significantly de.

[00:38:01 - 00:38:24]

SPEAKER D: Risked that transition for clients and for us. And so it was just like such a joy to work with a person who was very, very committed to leaving the business in a great spot moving forward. Amazing. Not only that you, not only that. You could meet with the, the employees who are so often a seller won't.

[00:38:24 - 00:38:44]

SPEAKER A: Come even close to that. And it's something that buyers always want and are almost always denied. So that in and of itself would. Be a huge win. But that you also got commitments from clients that what that they would travel with you, that you're you as new owner, that they, that they campaign would carry through to you.

[00:38:45 - 00:39:06]

SPEAKER B: That's, that that's very unusual. So, and so this is just all, all on the seller just kind of making this happen. And, and when. Let's talk about those clients. In particular when he goes to the clients and says, says that, you know, I'm, I'm talking to a new owner.

[00:39:06 - 00:39:40]

SPEAKER B: Will you commit to sticking with the business when under new ownership that caused no churn because of course so often that is a prompt for the client to reconsider working with a business. And some of them will invariably leave. Yeah, we were very fortunate to not cause churn. We were able to meet many of the clients pre close or like sometimes just after close, but a lot of them pre close and that, that gave them confidence because ultimately you know, the business is providing very valuable service for them. Their desire was that that service would continue at, at high quality.

[00:39:40 - 00:40:07]

SPEAKER D: A lot of them wanted to meet us, which we were thrilled to do. We wanted to meet them and that gave them confidence that you know, and we were helped by the background. Like I have a digital marketing background. Julia has run multimillion dollar projects for Very large companies with very intense, you know, time and deadline pressure and so forth. So it was, it was sort of a compelling story to come in to say we have the background and the experience to deliver great work for you and we're so excited to make this even better than before.

[00:40:07 - 00:40:20]

SPEAKER B: Yeah, yeah. And how many clients does the business have roughly? We have around 30 clients. 30, okay. So meeting with all of them or nearly all of them is manageable even before closing.

[00:40:22 - 00:40:51]

SPEAKER A: Where did you find the business Grant? So Flippa, which I was not expecting. Flippa is more often known for selling revenue generating websites or YouTube channels or other quote digital assets like that. But it was on Flippa and yeah, which is just goes to show that you never know where you're going to find something interesting and why it is very valuable to be on all the platforms continuously. What do the following acquiring minds guests all have in common?

[00:40:52 - 00:41:28]

SPEAKER A: Doug Johns, Morley Desai, Tim Erickson, Chirag Shah, Shane Ursam. They all went through the Acquisition Lab, the accelerator in community for people serious about buying a business. But they represent just a sliver of the Lab's success stories. The number of deals across the Lab's cohorts now stands at over 120 with over $300 million in aggregate transaction value. The Acquisition Lab was founded by Walker Deibel, author of Buy then Build, the book that introduced so many of you to the very idea of buying a business.

[00:41:29 - 00:41:52]

SPEAKER A: The Lab offers a month long, intensive, almost daily Q and A sessions with. Advisors, live deal reviews with Walker Deal. Team introductions and an active community of serious searchers. Check out acquisitionlab.com, link in the notes or email the Lab's co founder, Chelsea Wood. Chelsea buythenbuild.com.

[00:41:54 - 00:42:33]

SPEAKER B: Okay, so you find it on Flippa and can you say what numbers can you share about the business or the acquisition of the business? So we can share what's listed on my Flippa profile, which is that a total purchase price of $2 million on a 2 times earnings multiple. $2 million 2 times earnings, correct. Okay, so this business did, earned, earned a good amount of money every year for I imagine especially for Flippa, you probably don't see businesses that are generating those kinds of earnings on Flippa. I have, it's been a while since I've been on the site but fair.

[00:42:33 - 00:42:49]

SPEAKER D: To say it's a mix. Yeah, the average is certainly much lower. It, it was definitely at the high end like probably top 5% of Flippa listings in terms of size. And so did that make it a pretty competitive process grant or Again, this goes back to you. Could you.

[00:42:49 - 00:43:03]

SPEAKER B: You could differentiate yourselves as buyers pretty quickly. It's so interesting. So I talked to the search that we now invest in, and I say to them, there is always a story. Like, the story of a search acquisition is never. It was a competitive process, and we won on price.

[00:43:03 - 00:43:12]

SPEAKER D: That just never happens because. And. And it shouldn't happen. Like, a searcher should not be winning on price. We reached out through the Flippa platform.

[00:43:12 - 00:43:21]

SPEAKER D: The seller actually saw the message I had shared, like, hey, we're husband, wife, team. Love your. Love the business that you built. I've actually had a background in digital marketing. This is my company.

[00:43:21 - 00:43:45]

SPEAKER D: Nonprofit Megaphone would love to talk. He Googled me, found a video about Nonprofit Megaphone's core values of which I must have made and put on YouTube or something. And he messaged his CFO to say, I think these are the people that are going to buy this business before we even talked about, which is remarkable. He told us this all later because. Of values alignment in what.

[00:43:46 - 00:43:54]

SPEAKER D: Correct. Between him and what he saw in this YouTube video that you don't really remember making. That's correct, yeah. Values alignment. We're very proud of our core values at Nonprofit Megaphone.

[00:43:54 - 00:44:05]

SPEAKER D: We'd spent a lot of time coming up with them, and they're sort of unique. We have one that's called no Drama Llama, which is. We don't make drama. We just talk about things and have hard conversations anyway. So just the.

[00:44:05 - 00:44:27]

SPEAKER D: The core values are memorable. But yes, he really liked the values alignment and he liked the digital marketing experience that we were bringing to this because it gave him more confidence that we'd be able to take care of the team effectively. So you, you, unbeknownst to you, you were on the short list quickly of buyers, correct? Yeah. Someone else, he, He.

[00:44:27 - 00:44:56]

SPEAKER D: He later shared with us that someone else had offered on the order of 25% more for the business, but made it clear that it became clear in talking to him that he was going to be a very demanding and tough and sort of unempathetic boss for the team. And he, he shared all of this with, you know, we're. We're in Romania having lunch. Like, it's me and a bunch of members of the team during diligence. And he shares about, like, yeah, Grant's going to be way better than this other guy who's you did not want to work for.

[00:44:57 - 00:45:33]

SPEAKER D: So there's again, it's like just being like a nice, thoughtful, like, humble, earnest person is very helpful in the search Process in ways that is hard to anticipate. Grant, why was he comfortable with his entire team knowing that he was selling the business where owners are typically so uncomfortable with that being revealed ahead of day one announcements? He wanted to retire, which was, in my mind, sort of the best reason that someone could want to sell a business because it was so great. Why would you sell it? But he wanted to retire, and that's a more natural conversation.

[00:45:33 - 00:45:57]

SPEAKER D: He'd actually been telling his team for years, I want to retire in this specific, like, in 2024. And so it had been a discussion that's actually fairly open with the team, and that made that a lot more smooth because I had conversations as I met each of the team members. They're like, oh, so are you surprised that he's selling? And a number of people said, nope, this is what he told us three years ago. That'll be right about now.

[00:45:57 - 00:46:17]

SPEAKER D: So this is right on schedule, which, if he's a very goal energy guy, is. It was really impressive. And is this. Is there a cultural difference here or not that nobody else on the team was stepping up to buy it or was being offered an opportunity to buy it, or maybe he did and nobody. Nobody said yes.

[00:46:18 - 00:46:45]

SPEAKER B: I mean, typically, the people in the business, you know, there might. Might be somebody there. Particularly I could see in a digital marketing agency where there's maybe going to be more entrepreneurial energy, that one of those people that you're talking to might have seen themselves as the buyer team. Is a little bit on the younger side, so that there weren't people that were maybe ready for that life stage. We've been thrilled that, like, the entire leadership team has stayed and has been great, and it's been wonderful working with them.

[00:46:45 - 00:47:03]

SPEAKER D: There was no sense of, like, you know, I'm disappointed that this worked out in whatever way. Um, yeah, I never asked about that, but it was never something that sort of came up or seemed to be an issue. But, yeah, yeah, the cult to maybe your other question. The cultural stuff. It's.

[00:47:03 - 00:47:17]

SPEAKER D: It's been. And Julia can speak to this. It's been wonderful having her. Her experience has been very interesting having a very diverse global team, and she's learned a lot just about, like, actually American culture through interacting with other cultures. I don't know if you want to share about that, because I find it fascinating.

[00:47:17 - 00:47:21]

SPEAKER B: I want to get to that for sure, Julia. But let's put a pin in it for the moment.

[00:47:23 - 00:47:35]

SPEAKER D: And. But Grant, going back to this moment in time, you go to Romania. That's where so that's where he is. That's where it sounds like the core team is. So basically, what's the distribution of locations of people actually?

[00:47:35 - 00:47:54]

SPEAKER B: Is it like. Yeah, how many, how many of, how many of the people in the business are actually in Romania? I can actually speak to that. So major, I would say about 60 to 70% of the team is in Romania and within that, most of them Bucharest. But we do have some in broader Romania.

[00:47:54 - 00:48:08]

SPEAKER C: And then we have a team member in Ukraine, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Spain. I might be leaving out one or two, but yeah, we have a full global team. And then in the US there's like. And then us. Yes, as well.

[00:48:09 - 00:48:26]

SPEAKER B: Do you think you differentiated yourself by flying over there to meet him, Grant, or meet the team, or do you think that any realist, real buyer would have, would have done the same? It's so. That's funny. I would think that any real buyer would do the same. The broker was very impressed and members of the team said like, wow, it's so cool that you've come over.

[00:48:26 - 00:48:44]

SPEAKER D: And I sort of thought like, of course I'm coming over. Like, this is a big deal, I'm not gonna not meet you. But yes, it did seem to go. And, and that was the goal is once we had a great conversation with the seller, virtually that was our next step is like, I'd love to meet you. This is a very human person to person transaction.

[00:48:44 - 00:49:03]

SPEAKER D: Like, I'd love to get to know you in real life as soon as we can. Yeah, I think the interpersonal piece is very important to us, not just in this, but even now in businesses. Grants. Just investing in the seller, like going to meet the, or sorry, investing in the buyer. Going to meet the buyer and sometimes even the folks involved in the business.

[00:49:03 - 00:49:12]

SPEAKER B: Is important in your search. Investing. Grant, you, you go and meet the, your, the searcher. I meet the searcher. I try and meet the seller if possible.

[00:49:12 - 00:49:20]

SPEAKER D: But yeah, certainly the searcher. And Julia goes now to Romania once a quarter for the leadership team meetings. It's, it's. I don't know, it's fun. It's nice to do.

[00:49:20 - 00:49:34]

SPEAKER B: Oh, absolutely. I, I totally. And I, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna turn the spotlight on you here. Julia in a second about to hear all about what ownership and operations are like. But Grant, one last thing on something you said a few minutes ago.

[00:49:34 - 00:50:02]

SPEAKER B: Searchers should never be the top. Bid something to that effect. Say more about why that's my belief. All of the, you know, we were not, we were not the top bid in any of the deals we went to loi on, to my knowledge, it was always we think you have making a reasonable offer and we have non monetary goals such as culture for the team, continuity for the clients. Just feeling like you're a great person to do business with.

[00:50:03 - 00:50:26]

SPEAKER D: We really want a seller who values that alongside the financial transaction. One, because they're probably a better counterparty to have just period. Two, it probably leads to a less risky acquisition because the risk of overpaying is lower. And three, if you're not doing that like that's, that's sort of the magic or like that's the. Searchers have many weaknesses.

[00:50:26 - 00:50:54]

SPEAKER D: Lack of committed capital, you know, lack of having run a very similar business before often. But the personal side is where we should be shining and that's the best way to see if that's actually happening at all is are you being chosen for non monetary reasons? Yeah, excellent. Well put and great, great point. Okay, so before we get into the actual operations, what anything more to say.

[00:50:54 - 00:51:08]

SPEAKER A: About the transaction itself? You're not using an SBA loan because you wanted to avoid that. This is a business with, with the entity. Is it a Romanian entity? How does one go?

[00:51:08 - 00:51:44]

SPEAKER B: How did you guys go about buying this business? What did that look like? They had a Romanian and a US based entity because all their clients essentially were in the United States. And we ended up doing it as an asset sale which is very common in any kind of cross border and just transactions in general. And that was the other reason why having new go forward contracts with the team members and with the clients was so important because ultimately that is what is actually, you know, that's a core and like transition services on the part of the seller, being supportive in the transition, the non compete like these are the things that are being transferred effectively.

[00:51:46 - 00:52:07]

SPEAKER B: And can you share anything about, anything about the terms? There was. You were looking for seller financing, did you get it? You were looking for seller financing not only to finance the deal but precisely because of this transition piece to, to ensure a stable transition. Any other terms?

[00:52:07 - 00:52:27]

SPEAKER B: What, what, what can you share with us? Yes, there ended up. There did end up being a seller financing component and ends up being over a relatively short period of time. But we were very comfortable with that and we just liked that there was a component of that to sort of make sure everyone's incentives were aligned for a really smooth transition. But other than that it was very simple.

[00:52:28 - 00:52:47]

SPEAKER D: We worked with a lawyer who I've worked with in the past who did a great job with the documents. But it was ultimately a very simple deal in many ways. We wrote a page and a half loi which had all the terms. The ultimate purchase agreement was just a 30 page version of exactly the same thing with everything spelled out. And it ultimately was not wildly complicated.

[00:52:50 - 00:53:18]

SPEAKER B: Getting these commitments from the clients in advance that they'll travel with you, travel to you as new owners. Did that mean that you didn't put in language into the purchase agreement to protect against lost churned business churned clients? So yeah, the, the way that those agreements were structured is that they're all like contingent on close. Then this agreement becomes active. And so there's all kinds of language to facilitate that transition.

[00:53:22 - 00:53:56]

SPEAKER D: There was one slight sort of contingency tied to revenue retention of some part of the revenue. And it wasn't that the seller note would be reduced. It was that if there was a meaningful drop off in the revenue post close, that the terms of the seller note would be extended so be paid over a longer period of time and that the seller would support business development efforts to attempt to replace that lost revenue. That was something we thought about a lot. It ended up being fine and there wasn't a revenue loss.

[00:53:56 - 00:54:17]

SPEAKER D: So it was sort of all a moot point. But that also gave us a little bit of additional comfort in the process. Fantastic, guys. Well, as we now pivot into what actually owning this business is all about, let's get there by talking about quality of revenue for a minute. So actually your interview.

[00:54:17 - 00:54:31]

SPEAKER B: So I just had an interview earlier this week with Scott Alexander who also bought a marketing agency. So we spend time in that conversation talking about the different types of agencies and the kind of quality of revenue in agencies.

[00:54:33 - 00:54:57]

SPEAKER B: You had mentioned that the cli your clients in this business really relied on. You say more about that because we. I think the general stereotype of marketing services is that in a, you know, belt tightening situation, they're the first to go. They're a cost center, not a revenue center. Usually you're going to disabuse me.

[00:54:57 - 00:55:18]

SPEAKER C: We would like to say otherwise. Yeah, exactly. So it feels like, it feels like while the revenue is recurring, it's also not the. Not the highest quality or not the, not the tightest, not the tightest held. So anyway, say, say more about why the clients were so eager to, to pay this business money.

[00:55:19 - 00:56:00]

SPEAKER C: Yeah, I think part of what we loved about this business was their laser focus on results and like truly bottom line results. Like I said, a lot of our clients are lawyers. So we actually measure results as far as number of signed cases that the lawyers get from specifically organic traffic, which is what we're working on driving. And so I think that's how they very quickly begin to see it as a revenue center, not a cost center, because we set up kind of that full lead attribution so they can see exactly the cases that they're getting from, from the work that we're doing and then there isn't a lot of desire to turn that off. Yeah.

[00:56:00 - 00:56:43]

SPEAKER D: SEO is an arms race. You're constantly competing to move higher on the search result pages or to maintain your position. And so if you're making money from a favorable search result listing, it typically takes a lot of effort to even maintain that because everyone else is trying really hard to take you down a notch. And so as long as that's working, it's a very, it's an interesting thing to turn off because then results will tend to decay and then you won't be making money. It's similar in many ways to, it has a longer, longer lead time, but similar in some ways to paid ads, where you turn the ads off now the customers stop reaching out to you and that reduces your revenue.

[00:56:44 - 00:57:09]

SPEAKER B: Sure. And what of SEO as a service? So obviously, implications, chat, GPT and stuff, we got, we got to hear what your interpretation of that is. But first, the, it's unlike managing paid ads where you can know what your results are going to be, how many clicks you can generate. I mean, you can really make that quite scientific.

[00:57:10 - 00:57:49]

SPEAKER B: SEO is a black, black box. We never know where rankings are going to be. So it, it seems like with your business model, you guys are really in an uncomfortable position of taking on all the risk of performance in a, in a notoriously in, in an area that's notorious for really being hard to predict what your actual results will be. Yeah, SEO is, we, we don't have a crystal ball right on exactly what Google will do in their next algorithm updates. But it's also very analytical, which is one thing that I love having come from the strategy consulting world.

[00:57:49 - 00:58:04]

SPEAKER C: As far as you can typically break down your SEO results into the different factors that go into them. So like what is your domain rating? How many backlinks do you have? What is the content on your page as far as quality and quantity? Quantity.

[00:58:04 - 00:58:29]

SPEAKER C: And how does that compare to your competitors? And what are your efforts around local SEO? And you can typically figure out like if you just Google car accident in Dallas and you break down the top 10 pages according to those dimensions, you'll typically be able to see trends. As far as why one company is higher than another. Once you really dive into it, it's not as random as you might think.

[00:58:30 - 00:58:50]

SPEAKER B: Yeah, great. Okay. And then what of Julia AI and the fact that ChatGPT, we're all, we're being told that, you know, it's going to be gen AI that we all interact with as opposed to Google searches. Yeah. This is a topic that is very trendy right now and we're discussing with a lot of our clients.

[00:58:50 - 00:59:39]

SPEAKER C: I think at the end of the day people need to find information. So say you've been in an accident, you need to find a lawyer. The platform that they go to to find someone is of course shifting, although Google still has the large, large majority of the search volume, especially for things that are transactional queries like finding a lawyer. However, the thing that we are noticing is that even if you're on a different platform like ChatGPT, the factors that cause a law firm to show up in a search like car accident, lawyer Dallas are very similar to the factors that would cause you to rank high in Google. And so we actually, we did a full study on this where we simulated for 10 different markets who's ranking in Google versus who's ranking in ChatGPT.

[00:59:40 - 01:00:01]

SPEAKER C: And there is a correlation between showing up first in Google and showing up more often in ChatGPT. That's not to say there aren't other things that are additionally helpful to rank in ChatGPT, and we're certainly testing some of those. But a lot of the like core best practices from an SEO perspective are still helping you rank in the AI tools.

[01:00:04 - 01:00:22]

SPEAKER B: Interesting. We could probably talk about this all day. It's a passing for right now. Yeah, it's a fascinating study. So the takeaway just for our general education here, we in the audience is that what's good for SEO is good for placement in AI.

[01:00:22 - 01:00:38]

SPEAKER B: Responses to my to prompts for the moment at least. Yes, by and large. Yes. Very interesting. And actually one thing that we didn't touch on, which is a, is a big number to Highlight, is the 2x multiple that you paid.

[01:00:39 - 01:01:02]

SPEAKER B: So that's a lower multiple. Right. Is that do you think because SEO may be suffering from stigma at the moment and people are worried about the, the long term prospects. Yes, I think that was especially at right at the time of the transaction there. You know, AI has gone through hype waves and we were certainly at the top of one of those.

[01:01:02 - 01:01:50]

SPEAKER D: There's a lot of fear that, you know, is there going to be a world where a year from now no one's searching in Google and this whole business has to fundamentally transform. Our theory was that that was maybe a little bit overhyped and that's what the experience has proven out so far. Obviously Julia's thinking a lot about AI optimization and so forth, but I in the diligence process and both of us, as we talked about it, we're comfortable sort of leaning a little bit into some of those messaging headwinds around the industry because you sort of have to be contrarian at some point. But just say more about it Grant that you just didn't think gen AI was going to usurp Google as quickly as all the headlines were suggesting. Indeed.

[01:01:50 - 01:02:11]

SPEAKER D: And like one example of that is that in nonprofit Megaphone we tried, we'd been trying at that point for over a year to build a little AI tool to help us write ads for our clients more effectively, just as an example. And we could not get it to be even close. Even we had a full time developer. We spent a lot of time, time and money on it. We could not get it to be even close to what our human brand managers could do.

[01:02:11 - 01:02:37]

SPEAKER D: And so I was seeing the hype that like we'll have AGI by September and you know, no one will ever work at a human job again. And also, you know, trying very hard to even accelerate one small component of what we were doing in nonprofit Megaphone. And it's like there's a disconnect here that I think the, the euphoria had outstripped the reality. I love it. Good.

[01:02:37 - 01:02:55]

SPEAKER B: Good for you guys for keeping your heads screwed on and seeing an opportunity by you know, being contrarian. As you said, one other thing just about quality of revenue and then let's, let's really get into what kind of starting to wrap things up and hear how it's going and how it's gone.

[01:02:57 - 01:03:30]

SPEAKER B: Within my conversation with Scott Alexander, we talk about how recurring revenue, we treat that as searchers as kind of binary is it recurring or not recurring good by not recurring bad. But of course the, there's much more. Nuance to it than that and not. Even doesn't have to be that sophisticated, but it's lifetime value of this recurring revenue. If you have a marketing agency where you have contracts but you know, customers are churning every three months technically recurring revenue business but in fact it's a really low quality revenue business.

[01:03:31 - 01:03:53]

SPEAKER B: So how did you, how, what was the lifetime value here? Or, or how did you think about that? Or do you think about that? Yeah, I mean I think to your point, like client happiness is way more Important than any contract when it comes to lifetime value. Because yeah, we do sign 12 month contracts with our clients but then they do have cancellation.

[01:03:53 - 01:04:39]

SPEAKER C: And so really as long as the clients are are happy then you know it doesn't necessarily matter how long the contract is because they will always renew. So we were glad we explored a lot of the the past client relationships and knew that many of the clients had been with the agency for a significant amount of time. Some you know, five years plus. And so that was important indicator for us in addition to the contracts. And will just a quick note because this is so important for people buying marketing agencies is the client retention and average tenure of existing clients is so important because let's say someone has a business that has like three year average client lives and they started the business three years ago, that growth curve is going to look beautiful.

[01:04:40 - 01:05:15]

SPEAKER D: But once you get to year four now on average a third of your clients are going to churn every year. And so just to stay at the same place in terms of revenue, you're gonna have to add a third of your clients again every year, which is going to be much harder to maintain that growth. And, and you're actually your best path to growth at that point is extending your client life even more than it is accelerating your sales efforts. We looked at a lot of agencies where that dynamic would have been a very significant headwind and something that is sometimes hard to appreciate if you haven't been in the agency world for a while. And that applies to actually all forms of recurring revenue is exactly where are you in the life cycle?

[01:05:16 - 01:05:41]

SPEAKER B: Yeah. And, and so do you have a sense of what a good churn kind of threshold should be like or retention threshold? I should say that you, you want to see an agency meet and it's a way of disqualifying agencies with which have problematic revenue quality. Depends. It depends like with all things depends a lot on type of the business.

[01:05:41 - 01:06:06]

SPEAKER D: I prefer to see things like three years at an absolute minimum. Five years is good nonprofit microphone. I think we're getting close to like seven, seven, eight years, which is wonderful. There are some dynamics though that I think if you can drill into are even more interesting which is net revenue retention. So maybe that there are some clients that are leaving but that's being offset by other clients upgrading the work that they do with you.

[01:06:07 - 01:07:05]

SPEAKER D: Such that that evens out to me that like the two most important metrics for a recurring revenue driven agency are new client MRR new client monthly recurring revenue added over the period and the current client MRR change which is the impact of upgrades, downgrades and lost clients from your existing client base. Okay, so you take ownership of this business, Julia, and say goodbye to bcg. First of all, what's it like to that kind of transition in your day to day going from again, you know, a very type a hard driving sort of environment to being a small business owner? Yeah, certainly a transition. BCG was of course a very fast pace where things were new and do every day and then transitioning into SEO world where I had so much to learn.

[01:07:05 - 01:07:46]

SPEAKER C: I did not have significant SEO experience and exposure beforehand. It felt like a bigger open canvas as opposed to like the daily deadlines of the BCG world. And so I spent a lot of time at the beginning just learning and absorbing as quickly as I could. Flew out to Romania very quickly after we closed to meet with everyone on the team and learn about what they do. Watched a wide variety of the different training videos we have for our team trying to just learn the day the the ins and outs of the daily SEO work as well as starting to jump in on meeting more and more of our clients.

[01:07:46 - 01:08:24]

SPEAKER C: Any we hadn't met already through the diligence and understanding their objectives, probably preferences etc was kind of my first focus areas. And for those listening who might be sitting in a consulting gig or other W2 what what takes adjustment, what's maybe not so good. Yeah, I think it was a different type of stress management. I guess I would say so BCG was stressful in that I would say BCG is like FedEx. It's very expensive but you get it overnight.

[01:08:24 - 01:09:13]

SPEAKER C: Like there was just a very high quality of work that need to be delivered at a very fast pace. And so that was a certain kind of stress. I would say business ownership feels like a different type of stress in that there isn't necessarily the, you know, very past fast deadlines like there are when a client pays you a million dollars a week. But there's the different type of stress of wanting to make sure you know, at the end of the day like you are the business owner. And so making sure that you're providing a great experience for your clients, for your employees and that there isn't turn on either of those fronts and that you're able to, you know, continuously provide great new opportunities for your whole team is like just a different level of accountability than I had at bcg.

[01:09:13 - 01:09:36]

SPEAKER C: At the end of the day there's always someone you know up the chain from me who was accountable. Yeah. And do you find that this be now being an entrepreneur is kind of is in line with what your expectations were given that you've been, you've had your eye on being an entrepreneur for so long. Yeah. Overall, I loved the experience, I will say consulting.

[01:09:37 - 01:10:18]

SPEAKER C: While I did not have direct SEO experience, consulting did still make for a great big background for this in that I was getting new projects all the time. And so I knew that I really loved trying to figure out what to do when I had no idea what to do. And I feel like that was a very transferable skill set now owning a new business in a new industry, because I just enjoy the rush of figuring out, you know, this isn't something that necessarily I have perfect information on or perfect expertise, but what are going to be the most influential drivers of the results. I'm trying to drive and try to dig into understanding each of those. So I've loved the like the fast pace of learning that this has afforded me.

[01:10:18 - 01:10:46]

SPEAKER C: And then I also love getting to work with the team. It's been a truly incredible team. And so overall it's been a positive transition. So this thing, this idea that consultants are in some ways one of the, one of the skill sets that they bring is the ability to deconstruct an industry and a business pretty quickly and understand it is. Is as advertised.

[01:10:46 - 01:10:59]

SPEAKER B: It actually has. It works well in your case. Yeah, I think so. I think I've. I've learned a lot about how to quickly at least give structure to something that feels like a bunch of unknowns.

[01:10:59 - 01:11:19]

SPEAKER C: And so that's, that's been helpful in this context. And is the business that you guys bought what you thought it was? Overall, yes. I mean, you know, there. I've asked probably a million questions since I started and you can only ask a subset of those questions during the diligence.

[01:11:19 - 01:11:51]

SPEAKER C: So I do feel like I learned something new every day. But overall, you know, obviously learn both positive and negative things. But overall, the, the main strokes of what we were hoping for from the diligence as far as the client relationships, what the team has been like, et cetera, have been what we have hoped. You said that one of the things that you saw in this business and liked about it was that it had pretty dialed in operations. And that's something that can really be a weakness in agencies in general.

[01:11:52 - 01:12:05]

SPEAKER B: Say more about that. And, and are the operations in fact as clean and well run as you they look from the outside? Yes, I would say yes. And we're continuing to improve. So I would.

[01:12:06 - 01:12:41]

SPEAKER C: One of the first things that we did during the diligence is understand all of the project management system of the business. So they religiously use Asana, which many people may be familiar with, for task and project management. And so that was in great shape as well as there's just a whole series of different client, you know, systems of client files and templates and Excel files and whatnot. And so I think from that standpoint, the operational basis was strong. One thing we've been doing since we acquired the business is implementing EOS Entrepreneurial operating system.

[01:12:41 - 01:13:30]

SPEAKER C: And I do think that that has helped bring the organization to a new level because it gives even more structure to how do we think about goals, how do we identify and solve the root causes of issues, what types of meetings do we need, and how do we organize the team across different meeting structures. And all of those, I think have helped, you know, identify even more things that can be solved on the operational front, but also has given the business a lot of good structure to be able to routinely identify and solve issues. Grant's been using Entrepreneur operating system for years and there are always issues. That's the core part of EOS is helping solve issues. So I don't think there will ever be a place where we'll never be at a point where everything's solved.

[01:13:30 - 01:13:51]

SPEAKER C: But I think the sign of a strong team is at least having the forums to identify, find the root cause of those issues and systematically root them out is important. So it was inevitable that you would put an eos you weren't necessarily being responding to the organization. Grant was already well versed in it. And you guys knew you would, you would do this. Absolutely.

[01:13:52 - 01:14:09]

SPEAKER B: Great. So you fly over to Romania once or you now, you go over now as well still? Yes, I go once a quarter for our leadership team meetings. So we talk about this as being a remote business. Sure.

[01:14:09 - 01:14:27]

SPEAKER B: But it still kind of feels like it's a Romania based business or a big chunk, I guess. No, a big chunk of the team is just Romanian. And so it's a way to see a lot of people in person all at once, I guess is a better way to put it. Exactly. Yeah, I get a lot of joy out of seeing people in person.

[01:14:27 - 01:14:48]

SPEAKER C: And yeah, since about 60, 70% of our team is in Romania, it's a good chance to get to see as many people as you can. We're not to the point yet where we can have like a global retreat flying in everyone from the Philippines, but maybe one day. But for now, going to Romania is the best way to see as many people as I can. And so you Go over there once a quarter. For how long?

[01:14:48 - 01:14:59]

SPEAKER C: Uh, it depends. Usually about a, a week at a time. And Grant, have you gone back? I've gone back once. Post close and we're going back.

[01:15:00 - 01:15:09]

SPEAKER D: Julia can remind me of our calendar. I have it on in June. Yeah, we're going back to June. Great. You had said that working with people from other cultures helps.

[01:15:09 - 01:15:30]

SPEAKER B: Helps you understand your own culture, our culture, American culture. Any examples that are worth sharing? Yeah, I really like this book that's called the Culture Map. It like puts different cultures on different spectrums. So for example, one is communication and how much context is provided in communication.

[01:15:30 - 01:16:06]

SPEAKER C: And that's something that I have been learning a lot more about how different the US can be than other places. So in the US apparently we are very, we are a culture that provides a lot of context and so we kind of over explain things, some people may say, whereas in other cultures there's a lot more that is implied. So for example, in many of my Romanian colleagues would not necessarily always give the detail on even simple things like is a meeting in a.m. or p.m. so it would just say, you know, the meeting's at 3.

[01:16:06 - 01:16:29]

SPEAKER C: And in the US we'd almost always say it's at 3pm Right. But they're kind of thinking, you know, isn't this obvious? No one meets at 3am so we're not going to give that level of specificity. So yeah, I've just been learning a little bit more about kind of my own style and norms and, and how to adapt to the way other places work. I have to get my hands on this book.

[01:16:29 - 01:16:48]

SPEAKER B: I, I've never heard of it and I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by it just academically, but also I think it will have bearing on my own life. This exact point you're talking about, Julia, that context versus not is one I experience acutely in my private life. I'm the explainer. As the American, I'm the explainer. Uh huh.

[01:16:49 - 01:17:07]

SPEAKER B: But hey, it's, it's better to over explain than under explain is my argument. Argument I tend to lose. But anyway, totally no. And I see it even in, you know, friend dynamics and whatnot. Now as far as I have some friends from other cultures and they're just, you know, they more jump right in and say, oh, she said this.

[01:17:07 - 01:17:17]

SPEAKER C: And you know, who, who are we talking about? Who is the she? Right, right. You know, more American culture we would always know first name, last name. Everything's very explicitly called out in detail.

[01:17:18 - 01:17:33]

SPEAKER B: Yeah, I can't wait to get my hands on this. Okay. And so as leader of an organization where you're in the minority. Charged word, but just speaking mathematically, you're in the minority. Do you adapt to their culture?

[01:17:33 - 01:17:55]

SPEAKER B: Do you expect them to adapt to yours? How do, how do you bridge the cultural gaps? Or is it not so over thought you just go with it and you feel your way? Yeah, I think more the latter as far as just kind of going with it. I think in my mind I always want to make things as smooth and easy as possible for the team.

[01:17:55 - 01:18:21]

SPEAKER C: And so wherever I can adapt to what feels comfortable for them, I think is helpful. But I think part of it too is just recognizing where there are differences and knowing. So for example, one of the other spectrums is kind of how hierarchical a country is. And the US Is, is very non hierarchical. But other countries, especially if I think about my colleagues in the Philippines, are much more hierarchical.

[01:18:21 - 01:18:48]

SPEAKER C: And so realizing that when I say something as CEO, it carries maybe a lot more weight than if someone in my position would say something to an American is very important. So just recognizing the difference and you know, trying to be sensitive to that, I think is important. Yeah, I don't think we got the time. So when did you close and how long have you been in the business, Julia? We closed July 1, 2024.

[01:18:49 - 01:19:05]

SPEAKER C: So we are about nine months coming up on a year. And what can you say about the, the prospects for the business? Is there room to grow in the personal injury space? Or are you looking at adjacent markets to go into? Or what.

[01:19:05 - 01:19:17]

SPEAKER B: What are you. How is that taking shape? You're the next, you know, five years? Yes. A lot of my focus has been on the sales and marketing front, especially continuing to expand in the personal injury world.

[01:19:17 - 01:19:38]

SPEAKER C: There are many personal injury lawyers out there. If you just drive down the highways, you can come up with your client list from all the billboards. So anyway, I, I'm very focused on that. We can do good work typically for other local services businesses as well. We typically wouldn't take on say like an E.

[01:19:38 - 01:20:02]

SPEAKER C: Comm customer. But you know, personal injury is the most competitive search engine optimization world out there. And so those lessons of optimizing for local keywords also expand to say like a home contracting business or a landscaping business or some of those other kind of local SEO model businesses. Yeah, sure. But less competitive.

[01:20:02 - 01:20:15]

SPEAKER C: But less, less competitive for us and for them. So we can make a big impact really quickly. Typically. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Of course, yeah, great call out SEO is of course very competitive period.

[01:20:15 - 01:20:40]

SPEAKER B: But Particularly in high ticket service categories. And so from the perspective of a personal injury lawyer, if you get a single client, that client can, can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they're willing to pay probably tens of dollars or more per click. Although I know we're doing, we're talking SEO, so we're not talking. Yeah, but totally.

[01:20:40 - 01:21:10]

SPEAKER C: But it's a good way of thinking about it as far as their ROI on their SEO investment. Like if we are able to rank them in such a way that they get just one more client per month, and typically their investment in SEO is paying for itself. And one client a year in many cases could pay for the entire year's investment if they get, you know, one of those high ticket cases. But we, we typically try to dimensionalize their return on investment by thinking how many clients per month would they need to make this investment worthwhile? Great, guys.

[01:21:11 - 01:21:24]

SPEAKER B: Before we wrap, Grant, I want to hear just a little bit more if there is, if there's more to say about your search investing. But on the story proper, on this whole experience, is there anything that we. Haven'T hit on that you wanted to. Make sure we talked about?

[01:21:26 - 01:21:39]

SPEAKER C: I don't think so. How, how is it being in, in. Business partnership together as a couple? Talk to, talk to the couples or the. Yeah, talk to the couples who might search and buy together out there.

[01:21:40 - 01:22:29]

SPEAKER C: Yeah, it's been great. I think one of the keys to success of our entire marriage has been kind of each taking certain things that we are the primary driver of. And so, you know, for me, I am kind of on point for Lexigate, but then kind of consulting the other person for advice, questions, et cetera. Because I think sometimes where people get frustrated is when, you know, it's not clear who's responsible for something or it feels like, you know, the other person's all up in the other person's business on something they're trying to run. So I, I've had the privilege to find a ticking point on Lexigate, but Grant and I, you know, I asked Grant many questions every day right from his own agency ownership experience.

[01:22:29 - 01:22:41]

SPEAKER C: And I've been very appreciative of his willingness to share that. I don't know, Grant, if there's anything you'd add. No vice versa. Yeah, we've loved, we've loved the, the divide and conquer approach. Like I did the search.

[01:22:41 - 01:22:55]

SPEAKER D: Julie operates the business, Julia operates like C8. I operate non profit megaphone. But we ask each other questions. You know, every night, basically we have dinner and we talk about each of the businesses and talk about the baby. Yeah, exactly.

[01:22:55 - 01:23:06]

SPEAKER D: The opportunities and joys and struggles which has been a lot of fun. And we're again, we are business nerds. So we love this stuff. It's been a joy. But we're kind of weird people as well.

[01:23:07 - 01:23:34]

SPEAKER B: On Business Buyer Fit, I imagine there's a lot Grant of expertise having built an agency that you can share with Julia. If to what degree is that true and to what degree is the success that you guys are having or you Julia in particular because you have this, you know, you go to bed every night next to somebody who's. Who's run one of these businesses before. I mean I would imagine the business Buyer Fit here is kind of incredible. Yeah.

[01:23:34 - 01:24:02]

SPEAKER C: There have been a lot of things that have been really helpful. One is eos and Grant's experience in that I've been asking a lot of questions as we roll that out and being able to have the specific examples from nonprofit microphone has been very helpful. The second is on the sales and marketing front. So Grant at nonprofit Make Fun has a very robust cold email process and so. So I've been learning from that as well.

[01:24:02 - 01:24:27]

SPEAKER C: Grant, I don't know if there's any you would add. No, I think that's great. And I have benefited a lot from Julia is being. Julia is a much better operator than I am and actually has very good strategic and focusing insights in a way that is sometimes very helpful for my I want to do everything or look at all these great opportunities. She's much better at focusing and zeroing in on the things that are most impactful.

[01:24:27 - 01:24:44]

SPEAKER D: So she. We haven't talked about it at all but she's enormously helpful for me in thinking about how to lead and grow nonprofit Megaphone also from the skills that she brings to her jobs in the past and now her business ownership. So that's been a ton of fun. Yeah, that's great guys. It sounds very complimentary.

[01:24:44 - 01:25:00]

SPEAKER B: And is there some sort of marketing agency family Holdco thing taking shape here or. Not really necessarily or at all. Just two separate entities. I. I'm a big non believer in the idea of shared services and all that stuff.

[01:25:00 - 01:25:18]

SPEAKER D: I just think it's have two pure play businesses that do their own thing and don't make it complicated. Great. Anything more to say about your search investing or any message you'd want to share with self funded searchers? Of course we'll leave your contact information so they can reach out to you. But anything more to say about that aspect of your search life?

[01:25:18 - 01:25:55]

SPEAKER D: I love this universe so much that I have created the world's smallest little investment fund called Entrepreneurial Capital where we are investing in self funded search transaction. So I love having gone through it and having invested a bunch. Personally I just love this universe and investing in the next generation of people that want to buy businesses. That business ownership is deeply joyful and also deeply hard. I've spent time crying on the floor trying to figure out what to do in a in a bad business situation and my desire as an investor is to be there with the people we invest in, in the trenches, in the good times and also in the bad times.

[01:25:55 - 01:26:15]

SPEAKER D: It'd be encouraging. So that is that is the mission of Entrepreneurial Capital and it's been a. Ton of fun and it does sound like indeed you are a a very involved investor as opposed to just placing capital. Want to be helpful but not overbearing. So all the people we invest in are deeply capable and do not need me looking over their shoulder.

[01:26:15 - 01:26:31]

SPEAKER D: But they often value having someone else who can be helpful and supportive and share experience when it's useful. So we love doing that. Fantastic guys. Julia Hensel Grant Hensel. We will of course link to your LinkedIns.

[01:26:31 - 01:26:52]

SPEAKER B: Lexigate is the name of the firm. I don't think I have personal injury attorneys listening, so not very not sure the plug does anything for you. Nonprofit Megaphone has a slightly larger broader TAM there, but again mine's a for profit audience. They're not doing nonprofit stuff. But thank you guys very much for sharing your story.

[01:26:53 - 01:27:01]

SPEAKER B: Really an interesting and harmonious thing that you built here together. Great showing you. Thanks. So fun. Hope you enjoyed that interview.

[01:27:01 - 01:27:47]

SPEAKER A: Don't forget to subscribe to the Acquiring Minds newsletter. We send an email for every episode with an introduction to the interview, a link to the video version on YouTube, and soon key takeaways, numbers and more essentials from the interview. For those of you who don't have time to listen or watch it, subscribe at acquiringminds Co. You'll also find all our webinars there on the website, both those we have coming up and recordings of past webinars. At this point There are over 30 webinar recordings, a wealth of information on all the technical nitty gritty of of buying a business acquiringminds copy.