Overview:

The hosts discuss the booming market for buying and selling websites and online businesses. Valuations have increased dramatically over the past decade, with some sites now selling for over 10 times monthly profit compared to under 1 times profit in the past. Large private equity firms and corporations are getting involved in acquiring even relatively small sites worth around $1 million. The presenters encourage building businesses with an eye towards a future exit by negotiating ownership stakes or creating assets that could be sold. Quality content strategies using SEO are highlighted as an effective way for businesses to grow significantly in value within a few years.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

Next up we've got Matt and Liz Rad and Matt and Liz, I'm sure you are all, all familiar with them and, and and what they do.

So they're expert, I guess, at buying and selling websites and I was chatting with Matt and there's a lot that's happening with Covid in terms of how that's, how that's impacted the market.

There's lots of opportunities Matt's dealing with.

A lot of, Matt and Liz are dealing with a lot of people or a lot of the industries every single week.

So they know what businesses are hot, which ones aren't, what niches are likely to be big, you know, over the next sort of three to five years.

So yeah, I will hand the reins over, over to you guys.

Awesome.

Thanks Scott.

Thank you.

Yeah, so just, just quickly, we we're not Gonna do PowerPoints.

No, we're not gonna do PowerPoints.

We just wanna give a bit of an update.

Scott asked us to give an update of what we're seeing because like Scott said, I guess most of you are probably, you're either working with clients and you see a certain subset of websites and what's working online for Liz and I, our subset is like massive.

So where our background is buying and selling and investing into online businesses or tech tech companies.

And we also do angel investing and stuff like that.

And we also do coach a lot of clients.

So over the last, since March, actually since January this year, it's been a fascinating year for us and our community and what we're seeing and all the people that we're working with and we work with from beginners through to high net worths and private equity firms and stuff.

And uh, one of the things, like I was saying to Scott, I guess listen and I take it for granted, but we see hundreds of websites and we deep dive into them because we're helping people build them up and sell them off.

And so, you know, we take a lot for granted, but we see not just one or two websites or just one or two industries.

We'll see a multitude of industries, a multitude of ways to monetize sites plus our own portfolio.

And like I said, since March, I think the biggest take home point for us is this market is booming.

You probably already know that for your what, but we want to reiterate where the coalface and we're watching these websites sell.

And I think one of the surprising things for Liz and I is back when March hit us with Covid, we've been saying for years now, know internet businesses are where it's at for all the obvious usual reasons with the massive growth.

But it, I think what's happened over the last five or six months, we've seen the next five years compressed into the last five or six months basically.

And we're expecting us and a few high level brokers that we know, we're all kind of wondering, well what's gonna happen here with website sales?

Are they gonna crash a bit?

Are people gonna pull out of the market?

It went the opposite.

We've, it's record sites.

So websites are basically, the multiples have just jumped up to where we were predicting they're gonna be hitting in the next few years.

Uh, to give you background, so when we first started with this, what, 10, 15 years ago, multiples for buying a website, and when we say website we mean like online business.

So we mean we don't do any e-comm, we do only affiliate information product or advertising based monetization because we are all about the leverage.

Whereas Ecomms, Ecomms just too hard.

Although, no, you've gotta own stock.

So I've gotta say I do.

We've had that before.

We don't wanna do stock anymore.

I Will jump in and say one of the strongest selling segments at the moment is e-com sites.

They're gonna are selling for.

If you have any clients who have a seven figure e-com business, you are absolutely laughing at the moment.

You'll, you'll pretty much get a buyer within couple of weeks.

I'd be shocked if you don't have a serious buyer.

But I was just gonna say, just to give you some kind of perspec perspective.

So when we first started, we were buying websites for under one times multiple.

Meaning that when you value a business or a website, we value it on monthly profit or or yearly profit, let's say yearly profit.

'cause they've kind of switched over now to a lot of the brokers use yearly rather than monthly.

So if it's a website making 10 grand a year, you'd buy it for somewhere between five and 10 grand, which is just phenomenal.

So you're basically buying yourself cash flow.

Offline businesses traditionally are somewhere between one and three times multiples, depending on how leveraged they are, how automated, how what the competition in the marketplace is like, all that sort of stuff.

Now we're seeing website valuations and, and the sales are generally happening between two to three times multiples, but often jumping up to four and five times multiples.

And we've had students who've sold websites at 20 times yearly multiples.

So we are getting it, we are getting a lot more people coming into the marketplace under sort of finding out that, oh wow, we can sell an online business.

So that's probably one of our major things for all of you guys to make sure you're aware that the businesses you are building, but also the businesses that you work with, there is a lot of value in those businesses.

And so we encourage our students who are in your sort of situation where they're working with businesses to start doing things like negotiate some sort of ownership rather than just sending them all the leads and walking away when they're done.

Having some sort of ownership in those businesses is a really good idea.

But I think the, the biggest thing that we've seen is, and this is what I was saying to Scott, because valuations are going up, we don't see that ending anytime soon.

Mm-hmm.

And there's a lot of reasons why, but in particular what's of interest to us.

'cause our background is mergers and acquisitions and we work with private equity firms and high net worths.

And so we love that space and it's really interesting.

So we used to do that in with offline businesses, big manufacturing or wholesale import businesses.

And now what we're seeing is those sorts of buyers for the first time in 10 years, they're now like, they've always been around in our industry, but now they're definitely coming in and buying up.

So traditionally, give you an idea, private equity firms that the sort of clients that we would work with would wouldn't look at a business enterprise value under Oh Milli, but no under five mil by price or a mill net profit because they're just too small.

They won't touch small businesses.

Here's a new trend that we are seeing is these big private equity firms, even some publicly listed companies, and we're talking worldwide, this isn't here in Australia, it's like it is here in Australia as well, but even in America where traditionally big private equity firms would turn their nose up at what they consider a small business, they're now considering and actually buying up even websites that are for around a million dollars, which I'm quite surprised at.

That's it.

Normally they wouldn't bother with something like that.

And the reason why I think they're doing it is exactly the same reason that we're buying websites is 'cause they know even if we, so Liz and I will often buy really small, what we call micro sites.

And you think, well why would you waste your time with it?

'cause we know we can grow it.

We've got the teams, we can pump it and we can double or triple it.

It's better than money in the bank.

And I think some of these big time buyers now are looking at even these, what they would consider traditionally a very small micro business, like around a million dollars apparently they're just, they're the ones that are buying up these businesses around that site quite so quite quickly.

And particularly e-commerce sites, for obvious reasons, have just gone nuts.

The highest valuations are SaaS actually.

Yeah, software as a service businesses, because they're so automated.

So if you have something that is got ongoing membership, constant monthly, monthly payments for a service, they are, they tend to be the highest valued assets.

But then, but even e-com and e-com and advertising model is right, you know, pretty close.

I think e-comm, a lot of people, people understand e-com, like they, they understand this product, it sells it.

It's a, it seems to be a system that people know and feel comfortable with, but the, the advertising model in terms of leverage is far better if, if you're looking to leverage.

And so I think a lot of the bigger buyers are realizing that now, you know, when we first started there weren't those massive co corporations who were building huge portfolios of websites that were all monetized by Google.

Just even, you know, even Google, just Google AdSense or, um, affiliate offers.

Affiliate offers and Amazon.

And even though Amazon affiliate program has halved a lot, its of its commissions and everything, it's still lucrative.

We're still seeing a lot of, you know, huge turnovers.

The turnover growth is kind of balancing off that rege reduction in, in, uh, commissions in a lot of places.

And then also we've got a lot more direct affiliate offers now companies going bring a direct and high much higher up to like 25% commissions on a lot of products.

So we're seeing a lot of growth in, in those marketplaces and a lot of big corporates coming into those marketplaces as well.

And I think they've got contacts so they know they can buy up an Amazon affiliate site, a decent sized one.

They don't care what they spend on it because they've got the contacts in the teams to take it way beyond what your average Mar par owner of one of those sites will do.

So they will, and they conglomerate them.

So they buy up, they'll buy up, they're buying up portfolios and they're also behind the background.

I dunno whether, you know how private equity firms work, they raise funds off their high net worth friends.

That's typically how it works.

So they're all network, they all know each other.

And so they've got unlimited money out there at the moment.

And I think that's driving prices up.

And if you look at what's happening in the share market, obviously I don't know if you follow the share market.

I know we certainly do.

We've done really well out of it with tech stocks.

There, there is, they're generating such high returns at the moment.

There is so much cash out there sitting on the sidelines.

And we're seeing, and it's really interesting talking to all our broker friends and stuff and they're just saying, yeah, now all, all these private equity guys, yeah, they're starting syndicates where they're actually, and they're targeting either e-commerce or content sites.

And I've never seen the big PE guys go after content sites, which is really interesting.

So that will be a trend I think that grows now for the next couple of years.

I reckon that's here to stay.

And we are talking, just so you know, these are not complex sites, they're just your standard affiliate sites that have been around for the last 10 years.

Like what we've always talked about and what we own ourselves affiliate sites.

And like Liz said, everyone knows now, now you've gotta get off Amazon.

So, but the focus on quality content, and as you guys know, like our strategy is ss e o.

So we don't do paid advertising, we don't do social, our sites are based around majority ss e o.

And so we are seeing incorrect like great growth just through simple ss e o.

So you don't have to make it a massively complicated strategy can actually be quite simple strategy.

And that's what a lot of these bigger guys are doing, just hitting them with phenomenal levels of content, a good quality content of course, and keyword based and keyword focused.

But, um, they Have whole teams doing exactly what each and every one of us, I'm presuming on here, no one and do all the time.

These guys are paying, they're paying their, their writers and stuff, same as what we would pay 'em on Upwork, like 10 or 15 bucks an article.

These are big corporates, public illicit companies like Doc Dash, there's a ton of them out there at the moment that are doing it and they're getting really big wins.

So the good news is that flows down.

So what we wanted to, to share with you all, don't be just thinking about your business or your client's businesses, it's just the, you know, it's a standalone growing online business.

You need to be thinking, well, two to three years out, I may well be sitting on a hugely valuable asset way more than what I realized it.

So it's certainly not saying go and sell now I actually think the best is yet to come.

And I think it's over the next two to three years, we'll, we'll we'll see what happens.

But, But we're seeing huge growth.

Like, I don't know, do you wanna talk like, oh, some of our niches, some of our, well some of our niches and some of our students, students, you know, you're, we're investing in the tens of thousands in the market and growing those businesses within 12 months to be worth hundreds of thousands.

So it, it we're in an exciting time.

I think that's something that we wanted to get across to you.

There's, there's huge growth out there at the moment and you guys are right in that place where you know what you know is incredibly valuable to yourself and also to the businesses you're working for.

Um, yeah, what did you want to talk about?

Maybe, uh, some growth niches, because you might be thinking they're all fancy, but, you know, no, So does anyone, can, you guys can probably pick what are the growth niches, all the stuff you're written about in the press.

Well, we can confirm that yes, pet, anything in the pet niche is going nuts at the moment.

Anything in the exercise niche.

So we have Lisa, I, I'll just tell one cute example.

We have a student who's really excited, who I've personally helped grow this really cool little website that she bought for three grand or whatever.

And it was just making 150 bucks a month.

This is before Covid, so she bought it in January and I said, let's pump some content at it.

That's a really interesting news.

It's just an affiliate site.

Am Bog standard Amazon affiliate site make 150 bucks.

She's just done an update for us.

It's gone nuts through covid and it will, I think it will triple from here, but now it's netting two grand a month this site.

And that's just a sta And so I've value that site.

Now, she could probably sell that next week for around 70,000 bucks.

Pri like, like that cash buyer.

So, but I told her, don't do that.

You wanna hang onto this thing for two or three years.

But as an aside, she said, Hey Matt, you know that site that you're always harassing me to work on?

So she bought a learner site years ago to learn off and it's just, all it does is standard Amazon for reviews, head mills, anyone else seen those sort of sites out there?

It makes, I can't remember what it was making.

And it was a learner site that would've only cost her a couple of grand and she hasn't touched it.

And during Covid it just took off.

So Google suddenly discovers it, all these clients discovered it, now it's up to two grand a month.

And so finally she said, all right Matt, I'll listen to you and I'll actually start posting some content on there.

So the classic niches, what we're seeing are the, the classic niches, affiliate niches are working really well.

So anything in exercise, exercise equipment, home gyms, pets, anything in Anything to do with pets like, um, sports equipment, Online education, of course as you would expect.

Mm-hmm.

Another hot niche that we found was Gardening.

Gardening and home improvement.

Oh my goodness.

As you all probably saw that trend.

Look at Bunnings just bursting with, with people Gardenings.

Um, that same is reflected online.

We've got a clients who've got a gardening, big gardening site, massive.

And their turnover has jumped by 50% and they, they hadn't done anything yet to it.

They just, it's just because of the, They're working on it now.

They're working on it, I'm helping.

So, uh, so what else have we got Online Education is of course huge baking home cooking.

So I know all this stuff sounds boring, but we are talk, I believe our clients with the gardening site, I think that'll be a seven figure business within the next three years, which is not bad when you consider these guys are, you know, traveling around the world on a laptop.

We Had a few clients get into some medical supply websites and just boom, straight through nuts.

So I think it's, it's just action time at the moment.

So if we are seeing absolute beginners have this kind of results, then you guys as experienced pros think, have a lot of opportunity available to you right now.

And, and maybe just start thinking about some of the other things that you could be building in the background or, or doing for yourselves or for your clients.

Just understanding that there's a value to what you're doing that, that these assets, what you're building is assets and the assets that you can sell.

'cause What we find is people in the industry, I think we're all they get so we all too close to it and they overthink it and they think, ah, pets, no.

Well, like how can you have total beginners making tons of money out of the pet niche or the other, the other classic or really good one, just use Google trends and you can check out that the keywords yourself anyway is homeschooling.

I think that's going to be my hot tipple.

That will be a really good growth marketplace.

A lot of people now it seems in America are big fans of homeschooling.

It's a unique niche and I think there's some really big opportunities in that space.

So just giving you a, a hot tip there, from what I've seen, you might want to check it out if you're a marketer.

And the other one is local getaways, of course.

Caravan, Caravan, camping sort of stuff form Driving.

So we've got a few students who've got sites in that niche and they're seeing really good increases in, in traffic.

And so just things like we're talking, so obviously covid iss not going away.

The market's changed.

We've got still this big push to have a lot more commerce done online and, and searching and interaction online.

And so, um, we are seeing it, I mean obviously in the big guys, Google and Amazon and are all reporting reporting well, and so what, I guess I'm, we're A bit better than, well, Yeah, our main message to most people at the moment is, well, it's not just those guys that can benefit from that growth.

You can be doing, putting some things in place now for yourselves to be able to actually take advantage of some of that growth as well.

We're seeing we're, Matt and I are viewing it like the property boom in Australia a few years back.

You you're going, you're getting a lot of growth Potentially, potentially.

And I think, I think what we'll also see is I know a number of you probably have digital agencies or you help clients with their online marketing.

I think what you are also going to see is buyouts in that space.

So we we're starting to see it in America now where they're coming in and buying up service providers in our industry, like social media experts or digital agencies or or social media agencies.

And they're putting them into much bigger operations or publicly listed companies.

There's been a few, like $20 million buyouts in the states.

So if you do have, if you're thinking you want to exit your business down the track, which everyone should always be starting with the end game in mind.

Now of course I'm gonna say that 'cause that's our background, helping people sell their businesses.

But seriously, you should, you might wanna be thinking maybe now's the time to start setting it up and getting it ready for an exit in two to three years as more and more.

'cause you, you'll see I think these American firms coming here to Australia even to buy up digital agencies or social media agencies or service providers in that, in that space.

So that's another one where you kind of just wanna keep your eye on it, but at the very least maybe be thinking about your own, whatever online business you're in, start viewing it as a, as a valuable asset and with a potential eye to an exit maybe in say three years time or maybe even five years time.

But I, I think you, you're sitting pretty well from what we're seeing out there.

No, that's, that, that's great.

And I think did Nick, Nick you had a question there about where to find the sites to buy and sell.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So to start, so it depends where you are at.

For anyone who's wanting to go out and start checking out the marketplace, the starting place we get everyone to go to is Flipper because they have the complete range.

You can buy a site for a couple of hundred bucks, you can buy a site for a mil million.

And we would, we would always recommend anyone, even if you're, even if you're pretty experienced, experienced online, that you buy a site under a thousand dollars to start with.

Just to go through the process and understand how this thing works.

I mean, obviously we have all full due diligence processes and things.

'cause once you start stepping up, I mean most, most of you guys probably intuitively know a lot of the due diligence because you know, you need to, you need to confirm that profit, you need to look at the traffic and in d at Google Analytics and you need to, if they're paying for traffic, we need to make sure, like know their systems and understand where that's coming from and how that's working.

And we social media, so you gotta make sure are they real followers?

And we've got a, we've got do due diligence on the, any profiles that are coming with that asset as well.

But you can start with Flipper.

And then as you get better, I mean if you are already experienced, you go the bigger brokers now, empire Flippers and FE International Fee does a lot of the bigger deals like the, the multimillion dollar deals, eCommerce, but they've still got some sort of 30 to 50 K kind of range sites as well.

Empire Flippers starts at 30 to 50, 30 K and up.

And then you've also got ones like quiet light brokerage.

So there's a lot of brokerages now springing up, which is really, we, we see that as a really positive thing because obviously it's becoming, I think before people thought it was a kind of, not real, I don't know, dunno dunno.

But now, uh, people are realizing, hey, wow, these are assets and, and we've got a lot more broker coming on board.

Are Any specialists marketplaces for apps and SaaS products?

Yes, there is.

Yeah.

Yes.

Um, that SaaS is, you would speak to FE International FE does quite a bit of SaaS, Empire flippers.

Yep.

There's specialist app brokers.

There's, there's one called App Business Brokers, I think they are.com.

Um, they're good.

They're nice blokes.

I'm just thinking who else specializes in apps.

Most of those brokers will have apps as well.

Like they, they usually have a range of assets, so you just connect with them.

But there are some specialist app brokers.

Um, Cool, thank you.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of another one.

We don't buy apps, so Don't Touch.

No.

'cause I've been running SES for a while, so that's, we need to acquire more now.

Yeah.

And well, yeah, certainly a fee or That's the, that's the hottest space to be in, Nick.

That's really, really smart.

If you're, you're lucky if you're in that space.

And that's where the big buyers are definitely floating around.

It's a lot of Work too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You, you look at the, you look at the share market at the moment, that, that's where you, that's where No, that's where me and all my friends are making most our money.

So off the SaaS companies.

And so, and so, so how are you managing these last portfolios in terms of who's running it?

Staff VAs.

So all our, we've always had staff overseas.

We just hire, we recommend people start out hiring of places like Upwork or freelance.

And remember, we're not doing complicated SaaS.

No.

Our sites are not complex.

We, yeah.

We don't do that ourselves.

Yeah.

Cool.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So we don't need dev teams or anything like that.

Gilbert's got a question.

What industry segments, SaaS platforms are you seeing are hot property at the moment and which SaaS market segment?

Oh, hang on.

Is that a, that a written one?

What was it?

Is that A written one?

Yeah.

What industry segments?

Sa Oh, okay.

Oh, I don't have a, I don't have a good answer for you.

Sa sa for that one.

I sa I Don't keep sa Yeah, it's not, it's not our specialty.

So we, we stick to content sites and affiliate sites and advertising.

I Take that techs pretty High.

So in terms of the SaaS, all I know is that it's, it is very highly sought after by bigger buyers and because especially if they've got the right teams and everything.

And so the multiples tend to be a little bit higher in the SaaS space.

Any, any SaaS?

There's no specific, actually the answer is there's no specific industry segment.

Yeah, No, that's, that's, that's good just to, I I, I got no idea if this is possible or not, but self-managed super.

Can you buy a business in your self-managed super or is that out of the Difficult Can I, can I answer this?

We're in a private forum.

Don't do it would be my advice.

So go for your, like, if you want to, if you want sit and try and explain to the tax department that I'll have to, this is a valid, you know, I've spoken to our accountant on numerous cases.

We get asked this all the time.

It's just too gray and too risky.

Yeah, yeah.

'cause you're buying a business.

Yes.

And it's, some of our clients say you can, but their accountants have said, yes you can, but I'll take the advice of my accountant who only works with high net worth.

And for of you said you do not want to be interviewed by the tax department on that one in your super fund.

Yeah.

Yep.

No, that's, that's, that's good.

In any, we've probably got time for one more question, then we'll go into breakout groups.

Any, any final questions?

Nope.

That's, uh, yeah, so tha thanks guys.

That was awesome.

So what we'll do is, we'll, uh, we'll go into breakout groups.

I think the th really the theme for the breakout groups.

If we wanna look at, well, how can we actually leverage, you know, create more leverage in our business through, and what are the potential opportunities for either ourselves or our clients?

You know, looking at, I guess selling an asset rather than just selling time for money, so to speak.

So Yeah.

Or individual products.

Yeah.

That sort of thing.

So I will, there's 15 of us, so I'll go for five, probably four.

Four breakout.

Oh no.

Five breakout groups.

I'll, I'll do that.

And off we go.

That's actually good.

Hey, Liz and Matt, can I ask a question while people are coming back?

Sure.

It's Kate.

We were just, I was trying to find you.

Um, we were just having a conversation about people like me and Julie in, in our breakout room who sell courses.

And we use a platform, say like Kajabi, how does that affect on sell later on?

If you are using a third party website rather than kind of building your own hosted site, that's fine.

As long as you have, 'cause you can transfer it, move that, yeah, you can move that account to a new owner, I'm assuming.

And you could contact Kajabi and just double check and say, Hey, look, if I sold this or if I wanted someone else to take over this entire account, can I transfer that to someone else?

Or, I Think it's literally as easy as changing the email address.

Yeah, probably.

I was just about to say it's a lot more accepted now when we first started out.

Yeah.

I Thought it used to be not accepted that if you were using Yeah, but now it's fine.

And, and like you said, Kate, literally all people that you, I wouldn't, I wouldn't contact Kajabi.

I'd just change over the email and the, and and the passwords.

That's it.

And you wanna takes it over.

They won't even know.

So it, it's actually fine.

And the cool thing is most buyers these days will know all those platforms and they want it on there anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but I, it, yeah, like I said, used to be a problem.

Not now.

It's, yeah.

Thank you.

I wasn't sure whether it that had changed.

Yeah.

Following on from that, we, we had quite a discussion.

Sorry Scott.

Go for it.

Matt, Liz, Patreon, what are your thoughts around having your, your content connected to Patreon?

Uh, that one may be a little more because then you've kind of relinquished control over that content a bit more, or Yeah, ideally, I guess you want to, so you've gotta think about it from the buyer's point of view and, and when they buy it, they need to feel comfortable that they're going to get access to all the assets and that they will be able to con their, their main concern is, can I continue this business?

Will it keep making the money that it's making?

And the more that you can provide security for a buyer, the higher the valuation because a buyer will pay more if they feel like their, their transaction is more secure.

How would, How would Patreon not make that secure if, I guess No, If that's the case, it'll be fine.

Yeah.

But I think it's how you present it to the buyer.

Yeah.

As long as, as you can show the buyer and the buyer's comfortable that you show them the systems that you use that it's working.

I, I'd actually think it would be fine.

It would be Fine.

Mm.

I think a lot of Patreon traffic Though, is based on the person that's creating the content.

Yeah, I was gonna say there is an, isn't there a big element of Yeah, it's the person and so it's very tied to you, which means that's, that's a risk for a buyer.

They don't know if when they buy that business, whether when you are gone, whether everyone will stick with them though.

Cool.

It's, and, and courses, businesses are like, it's something you need to think about.

I mean, maybe your course as business is your cash flow and maybe there's a, you could just maybe start thinking about, okay, was an element of this business that isn't really connected to me personally, and that's the part that potentially I could sell or leverage or something like that.

And yeah, it is a good question.

And it's certainly when, when you are the business or your name is very connected to the business, it, although Julie, like your agency, so you do have you part there, but there's also your agency's a separate thing really.

Is it, is it a branded separately to you?

It's not your name Or Kate.

Oh, but either you, I was talking to you, but yeah.

Oh no, mine's just all totally centric to me, sadly.

But yes.

And I'd love, and Kate, I we're having a joke in the breakout room that think Kate's gonna go out and sell dog clips.

Was it Kate, anything?

It's not me.

Dog anxiety.

Oh my gosh.

Wow.

Just A question I saw come up In, in a couple of the groups that I was in was around this focusing on one business versus having a, I guess a portfolio in terms of split, split attention, shiny objects focus.

And I'd love to just get your comments on that, Matt, is in terms of how I guess businesses can balance that or Yeah.

How to approach that, I guess.

Yeah, it's a really valid point.

And I guess Liz and I need to be careful because we come from a, a mindset of we've, if you, what is it?

You judge someone, not what they say, but what they do.

And if you look at our actions in our, as entrepreneurs, we have always bought and sold multiple, multiple businesses.

We've, That's our strategy.

That's our strategy.

For whatever reason, it works for us.

And we understand totally it's not gonna work for everyone.

And there's a big element of, I guess it's a mindset thing.

Do you want to be solely focused on one business and go hard at that, Liz?

So we have friends that, that do that, and they have seven and eight figure businesses and have done the big sellouts for publicly listed companies.

Liz and I have always, I think it probably stemmed from a mindset, you know, growing up with no money or whatever, we've just felt so much more safer in our business journey owning multiple businesses, multiple websites.

So for us, it's just a personal choice.

We prefer the portfolio strategy because I think we, we've also had sites that we've lost in Google, you know, 'cause Google Slacks or whatever, but it doesn't hurt us at all because we have other sites that quickly take up the, the the income.

So for us it's a safety, But you can, I think one of the things you can probably do is start maybe thinking if you're thinking bigger picture.

So we always think about any investment we make where, what's the leverage?

Like how is this gonna fit into our, our world?

And one of the things yeah, Scott, we were talking about is that, okay, so in your agency, so if you're running an agency, should maybe you set up a client that's you, so you do allocate some time to you.

It's kind of that, like that thought process of pay yourself occasionally and, and have, maybe you service a business or you keep on the lookout maybe for a business that your services could grow really well and you have take some part ownership in that business so that you do get some of that upside.

And so it might not necessarily be about changing your existing business, but having something there on the side that you don't have to focus a huge amount of attention on.

But that, that you can get some leverage on.

Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

Thanks.

Thanks guys.

What, what we might do, just to, uh, just to, to finish off is we might just go around the, around the room and just for 30 seconds or so, if you just wanna talk about what was your biggest overall takeaway from, from today's session?

So we might start from, uh, we'll, we'll start from, we'll start from Ari and then work our way, work our way out from there.

I think just stretching our mindset and, and seeing things in the bigger picture.

I love the insights about buying.

Business has always been attracted to me, but like, like you're saying is you have to make the choice.

Do you wanna work on your own business and grow it, or you wanna focus on another concept, which is a portfolio which, and they're both interesting to think about, but, uh, so good to hear the market's growing and there's opportunities and we live in the right space, so who knows, we might switch at some point and try some new things, but I just thought that was really interesting to seeing the opportunities in the market right now.

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome.

And uh, Peter, I I just constantly like being reminded the exit strategy.

I think we get so in our business and working hard on our business and making it successful for right now, but we constantly need to be, remember, remind ourselves that to have that bigger goal of the exit strategy and some smart things to do now, so that in the years to come, it pays off.

I like that.

Yeah.

That's, that's awesome.

And uh, Gilbert, What I, what I found really interesting and was part of our group discussion was, okay, what is it that we are doing now that we could consider as a sellable asset?

And talking about SaaS and talking about website, that was really good understanding how to look with a different lens at what you've currently got so that you could have something that's solvable.

But even more interesting for me personally was now with Liz and, and Matt's description of what's going on.

Um, it helps me understand another level of conversation with prospects who don't go forward because they don't have the business acumen.

Now there's an introduction to things that they need to look at and that should minimize if presented the right way, any barriers for proceeding with building out an asset for sale later.

That was really cool.

Yeah, no e excellent.

And uh, Tim Actually a couple of out of it and, and I was one of those people that said, you know, do you, do you run two marathons at the same time and do neither of 'em well, is is possibly looking at that longer term thing.

And I think you picked that, that point up there that, you know, can you pick up a relatively cheap website or a, a series of relatively cheap sort of e-commerce sites, apply what it is that your business does for clients to those personal assets, I guess.

And like you guys do, you don't have to run it, right?

You can hire a VA very cheaply at, at the cost of the thousand dollars or $2,000 a year of $3,000 a year revenue it might create for you in the short term and just have it sitting there ticking over, ticking over, ticking over.

And you know, maybe in 2, 3, 4, 5 years time you've got this asset that suddenly, or a series of assets that might be dropping sort of 20 k a month into your pocket, which could either be onsold or just used as, you know, just sit them there and make a lazy 20 k.

You know, that's certainly got me thinking about, you know, where are some potentially these other portfolio assets to diversify income.

Yeah, no, that's, that's great.

And Dane, Yeah, I look, I really love that wedge concept of Toms specifically around the way that you can use current content and make it a little bit more interesting, like with the doodly and the audio someone else mentioned and the blueprint, et cetera.

And then combining that with what Liz and Matt were talking about in the home improvement space.

You know, John and I have created eight years worth of content on renovation and improving your home.

And then I'm like, well, why don't we just go and do doodles and blueprints and audios on that and just do it a Google affiliate thing?

And I was like, no, it's too shiny, shiny object, gotta concentrate on one thing.

So yeah, I, I could see that we'd already had all of the content ready and it was just basically getting someone to start putting it onto a website.

It could be an opportunity.

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome.

And joy, I really love the, is that me?

Sorry.

No, Julie, Sorry.

I, I really like what Liz and Matt said at the very beginning that they're just using simple s e o, they're not really, you know, trying to juggle multiple different streams here.

They, they're doing simple ss e o and getting great results from that.

And, and I think sometimes we forget that the basics are really, you know, the foundation blocks of building a great business.

So thanks for the reminder guys.

Yeah.

Ex excellent Sean.

Yeah, I love the pre-qualifying people that Tom went through.

I love just, just really slashing ruthlessly before people even get to you.

I like our pretty qualified clients, and that is Matt talking about, I mean the, the SS e o and the and billing websites.

I mean, it, it's, I just love that stuff.

I really do totally love it.

And I wish I, hang on, I hung onto that dog training website that I built 10 years ago.

I gave it to a client@aneventnice.com site too.

That's great.

And Luke?

Yeah, I think it comes down to, you know, creating a website and being able to either keep it to generate affiliate income or flip it.

I feel like my tool belt and arsenal's quite sharp these days and you know, it'd be so easy for me to throw together different websites with different topics quite easily.

So yeah, really appreciate then given a nudge again to go in that direction and why not?

And and it's the alignment, right?

I think that's the whole thing.

It's the alignment, like with your skills, Luke, you know, if you have, if you have a bit of a d like a down period, you just go and buy a website and go, Hey, focus on that.

You get one of your staff to, to build something up and you've got a new yeah, a new asset sort of thing.

So exactly.

You could build, you could build a website in an hour and then just have blogs flowing in and that's about it really.

Like, and then obviously backlinks if you need them.

Like yeah.

Very basic strategy to generate something pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's, and Nick, Sorry, is there any other nick in you or just me?

No, just you, you're the best looking one anyway.

Face for radio.

Yeah, no, I, I was quite intrigued by mashing the, the various strategies that have been shared today.

I've bought and sold quite a few businesses in the past, mainly offline.

And then I've built my SaaS, but I've never done any online acquisitions as such.

So that's why I was curious to see how they're doing it.

And more recently I've been researching into this market, I've just shared a link of a place where you can actually buy people's side projects.

So these are SaaS products or apps that people create in the spare time, but they don't know how to monetize it.

And this is a massive problem in the SaaS and app world, which is no one knows how to do customer acquisition and everybody in this forum is a master at that.

So either partnerships or things of that sort would be, would generate a lot of value, especially when you bring in the ability to acquire customers while they take care of the techy stuff or the, the, the stuff that they aren't very good at, which is making the product.

And a lot of this products are just thrown away, which could easily be acquired and and scaled.

Yeah, no, that's, that's great.

And I think we've got four, four more.

So Scott, Yeah, I was, uh, I love the four things that, um, was spoken about in that, just that prequalification stuff.

I love what Liz and Matt were talking about, but I've got a squirrel brain and I was fighting every urge to want to jump on and just race down that path, which I will, but not right straight away.

But it was so much good content and it was just reinforcing all the things that I'd thought and felt about that were happening in the market at the moment with other, like, it just seems to be a sentiment that's going from like right at the beginning all the way up and the website sizes and retail clients that I know that are doing, yeah.

Seven figures that they weren't doing a few months ago or before covid, which is quite staggering.

So Yeah, no, excellent.

And John, Yeah, I love the wedge, the follow up, the multimedia follow up, which is such an easy thing to do, you know, repurposing the content for the video and just coming at it from a couple of different angles.

So I'm gonna definitely do that.

And also the, the filtering was really good.

Got a couple of extra questions for that pre-call survey and even adding in a pre-call video, just, which as a positioning slash indoctrination piece, I think is really, really helpful as well.

And, uh, love the TV monitor for the background of the, or the video monitor for the background of the, I've just got that up on the website at the moment and, uh, yeah, it really, it, I like the idea of thinking about an exit strategy and what that looks like.

Is it dialing back a little bit more from a personal brand and, and you know, perhaps using other people in your videos or something like that.

What would that, what would that look like?

So I'm gonna think, think a lot more about that too.

Yeah, no, that's, that's great.

And, and the other John.

Yeah, perfect.

Uh, yeah, that's, I I actually was in, in with Matt and Liz and I felt like I just did a 10 to 15 year loop around when I sat in, in one of their first ones that they were running in, in, I think it was in Brisbane or Gold Coast.

And just like thinking about all these opportunities in, in that space and just bring it all around again and going, oh, okay, so now I'm probably more ready, you know, things are quietened down and we can probably now look at how we can just utilize this, the skills we already have with the clients that we have and all the different niches and we just, we just take that and we just create the business a or a site behind that, which is not a whole bunch more effort, it just means thinking about ourselves at the same time as thinking about them and it's gonna be added value to them as well.

And those niches.

And for sure definitely utilizing things that I'm purpose purposely, you know, love in life.

Like I'm building like a healing spa in my home and I'm just like, okay, well maybe I could even do sites on healing spas and, and all those something that people are looking for in internal, in their homes.

Like how do you build a healing spa?

How do you build all of that part and what are the health benefits and all that type.

So things that you're, you're passionate about ebi, definitely.

So yeah, it was really nice just to kind of re you know, run through that.

And of course Tom Tom's stuff.

Fabulous.

I loved all of it.

Excellent.

Excellent.

And only Matt, Matt and Liz.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ah, awesome To be here.

Like, really great to hear everyone's perspective.

So it's been really awesome for us to hear your ideas, Nick.

That was fantastic.

I love that idea.

Yeah.

In and yep.

And I really enjoyed being challenged by Tom actually.

'cause Yeah, he, that prequalification, I I was really, that was good.

That was really good.

Good.

I liked that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that's, that's excellent.

Well, uh, yeah, thanks everyone.