Three and a half years ago, today's guest came on Acquiring Minds at the beginning of her ownership journey.

She's back now for the post-mortem.

‍Morli Desai was our guest in March 2023, a few months into her SBA acquisition of an e-commerce skincare brand doing $3.5m of revenue and about $1m of SDE. She was the target customer herself. So the deal checked boxes both financial and personal.

Today the business is liquidated, and Morli has been through personal bankruptcy.

‍Listen for the diagnosis.

Morli thought Google Ads drove about half of revenue. It was closer to 90% — the email, affiliate, and Amazon sales all traced back to the same Google click. So as cost per click climbed from 60 cents to $3 and she trimmed campaigns, every channel contracted at once.

Underneath that, a harder problem: a low 8% repeat purchase rate that nothing she tried would move. Customers just wouldn't come back to the product.

Then listen for the bankruptcy.

Her $2.7m loan carried a personal guarantee, and the bank asked the judge to take her assets, including the house she was raising her boys in. What protected her was a Subchapter V filing made just days before the CARES Act window closed.

What may surprise you most throughout our interview is the tone. Two years on, Morli is philosophical about her crucible — grateful, even, for what she learned and for where she has landed, which she did not see coming.

That perspective is hard-won, and rarer still is the willingness to share it publicly. Our thanks to Morli for coming back and telling us the whole painful story.

Here she is, Morli Desai, former owner of Amaira Natural Skincare.