How to Effectively Set Up and Scale Your Business to Sale- I'm Selling My Own Online Store, What??

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music] well hello and welcome to the e-commerce
podcast with me your host matt edmondson and a rather gruff deep voice yes if
you're regular to the show you will recognize these are not my normal tones no i am uh you'll be pleased to know i
am a man flu survivor yes the the horrors of it i've come through the other side so at least i hope i'm coming
through the other side uh but do bear with me in my croaky voice the good news is uh we are going to have a fab guest
on the show who actually has you know something great to say so i won't have to talk as much which is always
wonderful right so uh welcome to the show if this is your first time with us uh great to have you we are a podcast all
about e-commerce yes we are and our goal is simple just to help you grow your
e-commerce and digital businesses online and to do that every week i get to talk to amazing
people from the world of e-commerce i get to ask them all kinds of fantastic questions about what they know and how
it's going to help us grow online ourselves i try and have the conversations that you would have with
them if you got to sit down and have a cup of coffee yes it's that kind of casual conversation type thing we dig
into their stories we learn their principles that we can use ourselves so in this uh
if you enjoy this episode make sure you subscribe if you're watching on youtube like if you watch on facebook and
subscribe wherever you get your audio podcast from i got an email actually this week telling me we're now on amazon music
they've decided to feature us on amazon so if you're listening to us on amazon uh a warm welcome to you uh however you
get however you get the show it's great that you're here now this week we are going to be talking about how to
scale your ecommerce business to sell it now i'm from an era
uh i won't mention what era that is but when i was growing up in the business world uh we
kind of had the book called uh the e-myth by michael gobert it was a big selling book at the time and one of the
things i remember from his book is whenever you started business whenever you start your own company you always
build it with the idea that you are gonna sell it whether you sell that to a third party
or whether in fact you you buy it yourself with your own sweat uh is another question entirely but it was
i've always been fascinated with this idea that actually when you start a company you start it to sell it now
recently in the last month or so i have actually sold one of my own e-commerce
businesses uh jersey beauty company has been sold on to a much bigger and much better
organization that's for sure um and doing great things with it so i'm really keen to dig into this one uh that's for
sure and talk to ben leonard uh about the lessons that he's also learned from
building and scaling and selling his own multi-million pound uh
international website so ben apparently is best known
for being the founder of beast gear he's the classic millennial entrepreneur
and i love this because he built a business with a laptop in a cupboard in
his spare time is that the definition of a classic millennial entrepreneur i guess we'll do they'll do we'll take
that that works right uh ben grew an international seven-figure business uh
and successfully exited after three years which is the business holy grail we all have dreams of it don't we
building a business and then selling it uh and exiting in a good way so i know
this is going to be an interesting conversation because he's sold his businesses i've sold mine and and ben is doing it all over again and he helps
other people do the same thing with his company econ brokers so i'm hoping that ben is going to walk
us through the steps of setting up and scaling your business so that it is ready for sale
it doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or if you just want more cash flow we're going to cover everything from getting started and all
that sort of stuff we're going to get into it so i think that's enough talking from me without further ado i'm going to
press this button and we're going to bring ben onto the show ben good afternoon how are we doing sir you're looking very thoughtful then it's very
thoughtful yeah i was just listening intently to your uh to your lovely intro thank you very much
thanks for having me matt it's good to be here no problem is is honestly the treat is all mindset because we're gonna
we're gonna talk about a topic which is actually very close to my heart uh which is selling uh scaling setting up growing
scaling and then selling your business there's a lot of s's in that statement and we're going to talk about that in
today's podcast and actually i get to do this for the first time we've had other guests on in the show talk about selling
businesses but first time i'm talking to a fellow a fellow brit you know where we're kind of
we live on the same island two different countries i grant you but we live on the same small island in the north the north
sea uh and that's quite wonderful so i'm excited to to do this and for the
listeners uh that don't know a bit about you just give us a bit of beef brief background
sure um i stumbled into e-commerce in early my background before that was very
different i am a qualified whale dolphin nerd uh
expecting you to say that i'm not gonna lie i'm still a whale and dolphin known but not professionally anymore um so i
worked in the oil and gas industry as the token uh tree hugger in the room telling engineers that the chemicals in
the sea and working with the regulator to try to make make the rules a bit tighter
and i got quite ill um late with a heart condition absolutely
um but for a period of time i was signed off work and i had to stop all my fitness hobbies so no boxing no crossfit no running
around like a maniac no more scuba diving running for a period of time while i got better
and my then girlfriend now wife was very busy studying and i needed something to do so
i'd had this idea previously um to create a brand of fitness equipment really it had just been i've been at the
end of a crossfit session and somebody said oh we beasted it today and i said yes
beast gear that would be a cool name for a fitness bar and i forgot all about it until a couple years later i'm quite ill
need something to do sadly tidying out my gym bag and i hit up on this idea actually i could
probably make this better this kit is actually not really good enough and so i had this this idea to create a
fitness brand that i did and it was called beast gear and uh ben sorry to interrupt i actually have
some beast gear product oh superb i'm talking to a a bonafide a beast that's fantastic yeah
yeah a body fighter beast that's that's right it's um yeah uh i i like you i
have a little penchant for for crossfit so i'm familiar with the brand yeah yeah which is why i'm excited to have you on
yeah yeah sorry i introduced you carry on no no no at all and so um turned out i was quite good at it and i turned out
i discovered an entrepreneurial spark i didn't know i had so i i quit my job um or rather i took it my
boss was amazing i said i need to quit i need i need this is going some i need to quit she said don't quit because it's
scary starting your business um or going it alone so take a year sabbatical and hopefully we'll never see you again
because hopefully you won't need your job back and and i didn't and she was the best boss ever and so i scaled it up and after about
three and a half years we were doing about probably four million quid in revenue and um
i became aware that selling a an e-commerce business was
just on the cost of becoming a little more mainstream a little more normal yeah you know m and e-commerce was was not a thing
uh before and and this was was early and it was a crossroads in our lives my
wife was pregnant we wanted to move house and i knew that i could take significant money off the table and make us secure
uh despite i still had a passion for the brand but it was growing but we hadn't maxed out growth there was still a lot
of meat on the bone which meant that it was attractive to a potential buyer and i
liaised with a broker or several brokers and settled on one and the process took a bit longer than i wanted and
at the end of the process i had successfully sold but the experience with that broker could have been better
and it was my accountant allison who actually um has about years mergers and
acquisitions experience she kind of rode in like the night in shining armor and and uh saved the day a little bit with
with the experience with that broker and so after after we'd sold the business we put our heads together and said well
there's a gap here we can do a better job and in particular a gap in the uk actually yeah um we can combine our
skill sets me on the e-commerce side understanding what it is like day-to-day in e-commerce and understanding how to
build a brand and turn it into a valuable asset and scale it up and allison on the m a side in the
accountancy side and so we founded econ brokers in and
what i think is quite important is i'm still still building brands partly because i love it
partly because i now know how to build a brand and turn it into something valuable with a view to selling it so i'm always building to sell
and partly because i can't look my clients in the eye and say i understand what it's like to be you if i'm saying well i used to own an
e-commerce business but i sold it in because it's such a fast-moving industry it is yeah yeah
and so yeah that's uh that's me and that's where i am today wow so uh well like i say well done on beast
gear because like i say i i i it's a great little product you've got going on there how how did you find um
how did you find that i mean you said that you know you got a broker and there was a few bits and bobs there in that
sale how did you find the whole process overall of selling your business was it uh was it exciting was it a time of high
anxiety and stress where where were you at where was your head at both of those
moments of incredible excitement and cartoon style dollar signs rolling in
your eyes um to moments of sheer panic and terror
that that this could all fall through and uh oh my goodness what's going to happen if if this deal doesn't come off
and of course would have still gone to sell it um so it's a roller coaster of emotions i
think that's that's a really key thing is especially if you're very attached to your brand i hope everybody is
is that it's very emotional and it's really important that you iron
out that emotion when you're going through such important processes selling so that you can
make the big decisions without being caught up too much in things tugging at your heartstrings
and that's where when when you work with the right people they can help you to do that so yeah it was it was a roller
coaster of emotions and stress i managed to because the process took longer than we wanted i i contacted this
broker in early the deal wasn't done until halloween the
the nitty-gritty of the due diligence process unfortunately coincided with my wife myself and our four-month-old
daughter inter-railing around italy so we'd be pounding we'd be pounding the streets of venice by day and by night in
the hotel room uh budget hotel i hasten to point out um i would be on calls with people from all
corners of the world uh all different departments of this potential buyer um talking them through my business and
uh so yeah very very stressful but kind of enjoyable yeah it's it's
i found that when we sold jersey they're the same thing there's a mixture of excitement there's a mixture of uh
stress and anxiety the work load i think that was probably the thing which surprised me the most the amount
of work that was involved in selling the business was extraordinary no no i i couldn't have been
the last time i'd sold an e-commerce business was several years before that
and i was just not prepared for the sheer amount of paperwork uh you know and due diligence you actually have to
do in selling a business it was um it was it was much more than i was expecting that's for sure did you find
that yeah absolutely um you know you you think you've worked hard on your business well
try selling it you know you're juggling you're juggling trying to keep your business running and not only keep it running keep it growing and keep it
being an attractive acquisition proposition for the potential buyer
at the same time it's going through this due diligence process where they are turning over every single stone in
pebble um and quite rightly so if they're going to hand over a lot of money for a business and take on any potential
liability with that business the process was so intense i thought somebody would come around to my house and scan my
retinas you know and and now
i took that into what we do now we we get our clients a head start on that due diligence process so that when they do
enter a due diligence um period with a potential buyer everything is neat and tidy and set up
with a with a ribbon on top which makes their life a lot less painful and actually makes the process much more
enjoyable for the potential buyer because they're not trying to squeeze everything
out of the the business owner because it's all there ready and prepared um and
so yeah it is intense and it is difficult and there's a lot of paperwork as you
said yeah a lot of people just explain to those listening to the show that maybe have never sold a business before
or um you know at very early stages what do you mean by
the phrase due diligence because the way we're talking about it is this big thing which is going to cause you lots of grief and agony
um what is it um when a potential buyer wants to buy your
business they'll send you something called a letter of intent which is basic usually a non-binding legal letter that says
we intend to buy your business for more or less x
pending an exclusivity period of often days sometimes longer for a very complex
deal during which we will do our due diligence and that means
they're going to sign an nda and request access to
every single thing the entire dna of your business whether that is your
financials your tax returns your inventory reports your last months purchase orders any
contracts you have with suppliers freelancers consultants
your certificates of registration of your business your vat registrations your documentation your sops
any legal disputes you've ever been involved in absolutely everything to do with your business they want to see it
and it's nothing to be scared of um i talk about it being intense and stressful purely because
well it is they're trying they you know that's a lot of stuff to sort out unless you've you've got it prepared ahead of
time and preparation is one of the things i bang on about a lot um but it's just something to be aware of
you know it's it you're not going down to the shops to buy a packet of crisps right you know somebody's gonna hand
over an enormous amount of money for a a a complex machine if you like
and they need to know that everything is um is in good order
and that if there is anything that's not quite as it should be for instance suppose your business got caught up in
some black hat strategies or perhaps you were targeted by black hatters at some point that type of thing that doesn't
necessarily kill a deal but they need to know and you need to disclose it because if you don't disclose it you know there
could be repercussions down the line so that's what i mean by due diligence is this period of time where you agree
that you won't sell your business to anybody else so this potential buyer can take a good look at it yeah
that's very good and they like you say they get under the hood don't they and they check a lot of information out
yeah and that process that whole due diligence process i found quite fascinating
and i understand why they wanted to do it from the the from their point of view
um i guess from my point of view i don't know if you find this with people selling the business it becomes a time where you're a little bit nervous
because you kind of think i've done my business well and i'm fairly sure all our records are good and in order
but they're they're going to ask questions which might make you second-guess yourself
sometimes and you have to be prepared to give a response give an answer right yeah absolutely right and you learn a
lot about your business and once you've been through it once you can actually use that as a very
helpful way to reverse engineer more businesses that you're going to build you know if we're going back you
mentioned in the intro though the e-myth which is a phenomenal book and really helped me get
ready for my sale along with another great book called built to sell by a guy called john warlow and what going through that due
diligence process really helps you to to understand your business even better and yet you can second guess yourself and
they will ask you difficult questions and rightly so but it's also important to remember that the potential buyer
knowing what they know about your industry your niche and your brand and your business
they will know that there are certain things that you may not have all the answers to
and depending on the industry you're in they'll know what kind of thing they're getting into so for instance if you're selling an e-commerce business
uh and if you're selling on a platform like amazon they will know that it's possible for instance maybe you had a product
suspended for a month or two because it didn't comply with a certain policy but then you were able to get the right
certificate to iron that out and everything was fine and sometimes sellers say to me oh i'm not too sure
about disclosing that and i say well what happened they said well the product was down because we didn't actually have the right certificate to prove that it
was safe and did you get the right certificate to prove that we said well yeah we did and so what happened then well amazon actually reinstated the
product fine the potential buyer knows what kind of it what they're getting into when they're buying an
e-commerce brand that sells on a platform like amazon for instance or any other it's okay to talk about those things the
important thing is that you have done something about it you have all your documentation all your docs in
a row and that you're honest yeah i guess the problem is actually if you
don't talk about it because if that comes out later down the line after the sale there's usually all kinds of warranties
in that contract which is gonna which is gonna come back and bite you in the back side a little bit right absolutely and it depends on
whether you're selling and for the most part particularly with us because many of our clients are in the uk although we
have clients all over the world um for the most part business owners want to sell the entity so for example
the limited company and especially in the uk they want to do that to benefit from the entrepreneur's relief on the
capital gains tax and when you're selling a limited company the new owner is taking on the liability associated with that limited
company whereas if you keep the company but sell a brand that
the company owns then any liability that is with your company stays with your company so it's less risky for a buyer if they're buying
just a brand rather than if they're buying your company and that's why particularly when you're selling to an american buyer who
is usually in the states tend to have asset sales more more than share sales
and american is often a little bit more more uh thorough with their due diligence when
they're looking at uh buying your entire company yeah that's really interesting really
interesting so let's um let's go back to the beginning ben right so i'm let's say i'm starting again
right yep and i'm i'm building my e-commerce business and i think right this is good in the next three to five
years i want to build this to x amount in value and i want to i want to exit at this
point right what are some of the things that i need to think about in terms of
or do i am let me start off with a more basic question if that's in five years time do i need to think about it today or do i just go i'll think about this in
two years time you you don't need to think about it today when i started my first brand i wasn't
thinking about an exit but now i am always thinking about an exit so it's very helpful to think about it
today but um i like to talk about something called just in time learning
which can be very helpful when you're building your business particularly where you're in a very exciting stage of riding by the seat of your pants and
getting it to orbit it's not particularly if you're if you've got a five-year plan to exit your business it's not particularly helpful
to get caught up in wasting your brain power thinking too much about that now when you're still trying to launch the thing
and it's fair to say that during that initial phase your documentation your processes all of that kind of stuff it's
not going to be in in the most beautiful setup because you are very much in that
um that blast off phase the rocket boosters are firing the rockets shaking all over the place it's not a beautiful
thing yet but once you get into orbit maybe you're a little bit closer to that five years out maybe you're now two
years in you really do start needing to tidy things up again revisiting the e-myth and revisiting built to sell
which is another great book and so what i would say to business owners
if they're starting out the first thing to do is make sure that you're you're building your business in the right way in the first place in that
you're building a brand whatever you do don't set up an e-commerce website to just sell stuff
build a legitimate brand that you're you're passionate about so if you're trying to start a brand of knitting
products make sure you love knitting that really that really matters and you
know create a product followed by several others that solve a series of related problems for a particular group
of people and build a legitimate brand with and preferably with some intellectual property around it
and if you're more experienced what i would say is it's time to start
making sure that all of the main big ticket items are neat and tidy and looked after so
you know uh think about your stability are you in a risky niche um
have you ever dabbled in gray area or black cat strategies if you have stop now
what about you when you say black cat strategy except for instance um
again coming just amazon as an example because so many e-commerce businesses now even if the majority of their
revenues on their own websites so many are are selling on amazon um have you been buying reviews have you
been paying to have reviews up voted and down voted have you been paying to have negative reviews less not left on your
um competitors listings that type of thing whatever you know don't be doing that
don't get involved in that um how transferable is your business if you
fall down the stairs tomorrow and you're in hospital for two weeks is your business going to look after itself if the answer is yes and it sounds like
you've got a pretty transferable business if the answer is no you don't which means you can't hand over the keys tomorrow and your business can't be
absorbed into the ecosystem of whoever buys it whether that's a competitor or a private
equity or more recently an e-commerce aggregate or a roll-up and that kind of ties in nicely with the
other one that i often talk about with regards to you know stability is is your documentation all on the
entirety whether that's your intellectual property or systems and processes so really start
looking after those things and also be growing you need to be the best time to sell is when you're
growing but you haven't maxed out growth so potential buyers can be really attracted by this great growth history
you haven't plateaued you're not declining but also they can see the meat on the bone that is still there
for them to exploit because after all they want to take the growth you've had accelerate it even more and get in
probably exit themselves later if they're a financial buyer different story if they're more of a strategic buyer
so those are the things that i would be telling people to think about okay so
um uh get your business practices in order get your documentation in order um and start sort of thinking you know
ahead of yourself uh in terms of where you want to be and i guess
you know read up about it learn about it what's going to make your business attractive to to somebody that's going to make it easy to buy i think that's a
great question isn't it what's what can i do that's going to make this business easy to buy for the person that wants to
buy it you know the the and so you know you if i go back you sold b
skier that was in right yeah so you're uh sorry yeah
not that was a long time ago um so your uh [Music]
you're learning from that you've sort of you've you've sort of put all this together and you are now helping other
people exit their ecommerce businesses you're building your own brands with you know the idea to sell them based on that
learning what's the what's some of the top lessons i guess that you have
you have learned yourself uh from that pro from that process
yeah preparation is key we spoke about that a
moment ago regarding due diligence and having all your documentation your ip your accounts in order timing is key and
i mentioned there about growing selling your business when you're growing and not maxed out but
here's another lesson that i took away and it's it's less quantitative quantitative and
a little bit more wishy-washy but i stand by it this was advice given to me by my dad before i sold
and he got it from somewhere else it was this it was sell your business at the point of peak romance
and what that really means is you're at a point where you're growing and you kind of think to yourself wow
this could be something big and the reason that's a good time to
sell is that there's plenty of upside to attract a potential buyer
therefore you can get a great price for your business
and there's plenty of upside for you also depending on how you structure the deal of course can
benefit from as the new owner with more resources than potentially you have takes that business where you think it
might go and yet if it doesn't work out quite like that
and it doesn't go quite where you wanted it to go with the new owners for whatever reason
then you probably got out at the right time and you'll always be the person who founded that business and nobody can take that away from you so there's this
romantic notion that this could go stratospheric and yet that's all it is is this romantic notion so it's a good
time to sell one of the other things i really learned is about reverse engineering the exit
and so i i didn't quite do this because i didn't
decide to really start thinking about selling really until early then i sold more late
but it's more that i didn't do it i learned learn that it is the right way to do it which is this is it's find out
what you're even if you don't want to sell because i say it's a lot of people say to me um why should i sell and i say well that's
the wrong question the right question is why should you make your business sell a bull because ultimately one day there
has to be an end game what are you going to be doing in years years years and probably you're going to need to sell your business or want to sell your
business and so when you make it sellable and valuable when you do come to sell it or start
preparing to sell you're in a much better position it's much less painful and so when you reverse engineer your exit you do this you find out now even
if you don't want to sell what your business is worth okay great my business is worth two
million and you ask yourself what do you what would you be happy to
sell your business for want to sell my business for three million or four million great now you
know where you are you have a reference point it's like you know orienteering with a map and a compass if you didn't have a mac and a
map and a compass you'd be in a pickle yeah now you know where you want to get to what are the things i have to do to get there what are the dominoes i need
to stack up together and that makes not only does it make it a lot easier to get to your exit but actually
all of a sudden your business runs itself a whole lot better because when you start organizing your business in
such a way that exactly as michael gerber says in the emeth that it's attractive to a buyer and could be taken
into their system and absorbed into their system all of a sudden it just starts to scale because it's like a well-oiled machine and all the cogs are
turning really nicely and then i guess the last thing i learned from the the process was work
with the right people because in the first instance i didn't and then i did and when you work with
the right people to properly prepare you for exit whether that's getting everything neat and tidy
and built to sell so you're ready for the due diligence process or whether it's actually calculating what your business is worth properly
and with the appropriate accountancy skills and understanding of your business and you know deep analysis
making the appropriate adjustments and add-backs to fully just realize what the business is
actually worth on day zero that the new owner buys it and then market that to a pool of the
right buyers so that you're gonna have hopefully a competitive environment
that's where whoever you work with whether it's a broker or an investment bank or an m advisor that's where
they're really earning their money is is those calculations and then marketing the business to the right people so yeah
work with the right people is is a is a big lesson that's
that's really good advice i mean one of the things that i didn't do when we sold jersey is i didn't work with a broker we
were approached actually out of the blue um i wasn't necessarily looking to sell it we were just approached tonight
and we managed it internally i think in hindsight i would have done what you suggested and i would have i would have
definitely got some help um but i was i don't know if i want to say the word naive i don't think i was naive i think
i just didn't anticipate what would actually be involved in selling it you know and actually getting
that help uh was because you know to this day did i sell it for the right price i genuinely don't know i was happy with
the price i sold it for but i never i never i never went out there and got
it valued um yeah jeremy and i think that reference point does help it depends who you're selling it
too and i don't know who you sold to but um a lot of people right now are getting
cold approached by this new um we're in a new wild west yeah any
comments since an organization called thoracio was was created in september
and i can say this next bit because it's public to me they bought my business uh the following year
they raised a lot of money to aggregate or roll up e-commerce businesses primarily selling on amazon but not just
amazon and now a whole load of other uh firms
have followed the same model some successfully some not and about of them will fail i think
and these organizations are cold approaching e-commerce business owners every day with emails saying we want to
buy your business and that's absolutely fine it's very exciting when it happens you put your blood sweat and tears into your business and now somebody wants to
buy your business from you for potentially quite a lot of money and they'll they'll dangle a pretty big carrot
and that carrot can be enough to tempt people but depending on the organization that's
dangling this carrot often times your business is where the whole sack of carrots if only you would
take it through the thorough process to maximize its value
get it ready for sale and then market it to a pool of the right buyers and the next bit is really crucial have the right legal
representation to make sure that the deal is skewed as much in your favor as possible and a lot of people are parting ways
with their business right now for far less than it's really worth and the reason i said wild west before it's just
because this is so immature mergers and acquisitions in e-commerce is so immature and in every other industry it's it's
quite normal to you know take your business through a process to get it ready for sale and work with a professional to maximize its value and
then market it to approve the right buyers but in e-commerce we're just having these cold approaches every day
and um business owners who are fantastic business owners and have created great
businesses who will happily pay experts to help them with their ads their social media their translations all sorts of
stuff all of a sudden when it comes to selling their business they say oh i don't want to pay someone to help me
sell it i don't want to give away a commission or something when actually if only they did they would have a uh they would get a
much bigger exit um but yeah it's it's yeah that's a really interesting point and
one of the things that you you mentioned there which i want to sort of circle back to is the idea of having good legal
representation and i think again one of my learnings from this whole experience is
my lawyer was great uh i was really pleased with with
and and actually read things in the contract which i i wouldn't have picked up on uh and he
was very good and just said listen if you sign this this is what this actually means so i can't i can't advise you to sign
this document this is ridiculous it was a phrase he used quite a lot um certainly in the early days
and so what i found was uh and i don't know if you found the same ben you know you you need good
legal representation it wasn't until the lawyers actually started talking directly to each other though that
things really started to move um yes so when they were when my lawyer was talking to me and their lawyer was
talking to them and then we'd talk to each other and then we'd go back jeremy it became that was quite a complex
process now if it's a bit frustrating yeah when we well we didn't sit down in the same room we sat down on the same
zoom call because you know it's pandemic times and we sat down and started so i i found
actually i think i should have got them together a little bit earlier um but i found that quite helpful i don't know if
that's a common thing extremely helpful particularly
if so we you know oftentimes there'll be an american organization buying a british
or european business and it's very helpful then when the american organization has is represented by a
british in uh mergers and acquisition solicitor yeah who can translate everything from
british to america for them and suddenly things speed up a lot faster and you know what often happens is the buyer
will send a proposed share purchase agreement or an asset purchase agreement and if you've got good legal
representation which and so if you're working with a broker they should be connecting you with a an excellent
solicitor who is experiencing mergers and acquisitions so if you have good legal representation that con proposed
contract should be going straight back covered in red microsoft word track changes
because what the deal they're going to put in front of you and people without legal representation or with poor legal
representation just sign it well that looks good enough to me great um but actually your business is worth a whole
lot more than that and the deal structure is entirely skewed in their favor it should be going straight back covered in red microsoft word track
changes um to bring the deal back skewed more towards you know a fair
one and it's not because the buyers are are bad bad people you know i work with with them every day particularly if
we're talking about the e-commerce aggregators but business is business and they want to get your business from you for as little
as possible yeah they can well afford to pay what it's really worth yeah yeah that's a very good point that's a
very good point and so i think on this occasion i i mean you know we lawyers
jokes aside they're actually a good lawyer is worth the money here uh would be would be our advice
so so what's next on the scene on i for you ben are you
you now building uh ecom brokers is that your plan or do you spend more of your
time building e-commerce businesses themselves econ brokers is my biggest hat and i'm
dedicated most of my time to it i'm still building brands i say brands plural several in the pipeline one
at at the moment and it needs to be that way so that i can i can focus on econ
progress one of the lessons that i learned in my journey if you want to use that over this expression
uh with beast gear was that um it's important to recognize your your
strengths and weaknesses and now with the new brand i'm building and
this one's in the parent slash baby niche i'm partnering on that so i'm more
of the visionary and my partner mark is more of the the the the integrator kind
of guy if we're going to talk about uh traction by gina wickman for a minute
and i've learned that partnering is a really great way to go so that takes some of the pressure off but of course now i
know how to build teams and i know how to delegate tasks to the right people so
that i can have the vision and get the flywheel spinning and other people can uh keep it spinning for me if you like
so i'm not gonna be day to day in the nitty-gritty um you know checking uh
checking that the shopify site is ticking over nicely every day or whatever or or updating email marketing
software that's going to be for team members and um hey a great book on that is is
who not how by dan sullivan right recognizing who you need to help you
so from that point of view um that's great because i i can i can have my cake and eat it i
can build a brand and enjoy that without having to get stressed out and running around like a headless chicken like so
many of us do with our first brand because after you've had that you have um
you have the resources to do that as well so what are you looking for then when you
um you talk about building brand not just you know creating a website that sells any old thing but you're looking
at brands you're building brands so your first brand was beast gear you're now looking in the parent uh sector for obvious reasons because we
can hear your beautiful children in the background it's that you know this is very real to you right now and you talked about having a passion for that
brand that you're building but what are some of the things that you're looking for or what are some of the things maybe that potential buyer is looking for
when we're thinking about what brand could i build online what are some of the things that we should think about there
it's interesting you mentioned about the buyers because more and more buyers and more and more investors in the
buyers are looking at brand because when ever again if we're gonna talk about the
e-commerce aggregators for a second uh when they first started months ago
two years ago um it was all it was very simply about well e-commerce is growing at whatever
percent a year so if we just roll up a bunch of e-commerce businesses they're gonna grow right but the investors are
are understanding now that actually it's so much more than that um and and brand is where it's at so
they're only going to invest in an aggregator who understands that brand is important and that you need the
operational chops to run it so
what i'm talking about when i talk about brand is i mentioned it a bit before a suite of products that solves a range of
related problems for a particular group of people and that brand needs to have a clear
identity and understand who its customers are which is why it's really important that
either you preferably you or someone else in the organization is that customer
so for b skier i was the fitness fan for the for the new parent brand i am a parent
and that the brand reflects who the customer is but also who the customer aspires to
be and when you do that it becomes so much more easy to build a
tribe of fans who will continue to buy your products as you as you bring them
out and that is extremely attractive to a potential buyer of your business because
they can see that not only can they take what you've got and improve on it with their their
capability but they can actually continue to grow by launching more products because you have a group of of you know
cult-like almost evangelical fans of your brand who keep coming back again and again and again whereas
if you're either selling a mishmash of stuff or you're selling you've built a brand but it's not very compelling
your marketing is not very compelling the story behind the brand isn't very compelling um it it's it's you know
you're still just selling stuff you've just put up every product has the same you know
brand name if you like that's a really easy trap to fall into that's not going to work it needs to be a compelling
brand that's really i find this fascinating because um
as i'm listening to you talk one of the questions i guess that comes up in the back of my head is let's say i build a brand i am its target customer i'm
passionate about fitness i built this fitness brand um i've been on social media i've done jeremy i'm involved
and i've become the face of that brand is it is that a problem for a potential
purchaser because that you know there's the brand and then you're kind of the face of it you're the driving force behind that how does
what happens if you're no longer in that does the brand plug yeah how do how do we safeguard that
it's not a problem you've just described exactly what i did with b skier so the interest the reason i did that
would be skier is i'm averagely fit i enjoy training but i am not a professional athlete
and so are so many fitness fans so the fitness industry is an extremely elitist industry who's
strongest fastest most muscly skinniest whatever and so with beast gear i positioned
myself as the face of the brand saying hey i'm ben i'm averagely fit but i believe that we all should have access
to excellent training products that don't cost too much don't fall to bids and that shouldn't be the preserve of
elite athletes and the extremely wealthy so i'm going to bring you excellent products at fair price and with superb service um if you are the future
heavyweight champion in the world you're a beast come join my tribe equally if you are really unfit and starting your
first couch to k provided you're setting some goals and you're getting after them you are a beast come join my tribe
that really worked and the reason i was still able to sell the business is although i had
made myself a face of the brand i'd still built a business with all the systems and
processes which could be handed off although the business
was using me as the face of it it wouldn't fall apart without me and actually when you
negotiate your deal to sell your business that can come into play so bsq continues to use my image
and i can actually continue to develop products for it that's you know you could you may want to you could negotiate a side agreement as a
consultant you might even want to retain equity in your business depending on where it's going there's a million ways to get to to
structure a deal you don't have to sell it and so it shouldn't matter provided that
the business can still be run by another organization i mean everybody knows ben francis
is the founder of jim shark he's not quite the face of it but everybody knows it's better
does that mean that he can't sell jim shark no of course it doesn't dyson a little bit more difficult because it's
got his name in it right but equally you know everybody knows elon musk is is
mr tesla right but it's it's not called musk motors
right so you can be the face of your brand provided there's enough separation that the business isn't going to fault the
bits without you and you know it's not it doesn't have your name on it right
um you you can still sell it absolutely that's really interesting so
fascinating ben listen i feel like we're just getting started here but i i say this a lot to guess it's
like um i feel like i could keep going and going and going but i need to be respectful of your time and
if people want to connect with you if they want to reach out to you if they want to get hold of you how can they do that
sure absolutely so uh first off you can head over to uk ecombrokers.com a uk domain but we've
got clients all over the world you can email me ben econbrokers.com
and i am on all the main social media channels my handle is at ben leonard pro
and on linkedin just search my name and you'll find me and i'm happy to chat with anyone fantastic fantastic and we will of
course put all of ben's links in the show notes as well which you can get on the website uh
ben listen it has been an absolute privilege talking to you really really helpful uh
and uh you know good luck with with econ brokers and uh i'm
when you get the new parent brand you'll have to come on and let us know what it is and talk to us about how you set it up and why you did it i'd be really
curious um as to your thought processes behind that uh and how it's going so
hopefully we'll have you on again um but yeah no but an absolute treat a real pleasure uh i'm very very appreciative
of you being here thanks ben thanks for having me no problem wasn't ben
great now uh i'm sure if you are thinking of selling your ecommerce business whether
it's now whether it's in a few years time it'll be worth reaching out to that young fella wouldn't it and just having a conversation with him
and you can reach out to benny give you all his details but if you need to know uh what those links are again or if you
want to read the show notes if you want to go through the transcript all of that is available on our website
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash yes it is because this episode number
so you can go to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash and there you'll find all the information
relating to ben you can reach out to him you can get in touch with him and i'm sure ben will be super super
helpful just love it always love talking to guests and his insights and his ideas around brand and building a brand that
people want to buy so so helpful so yeah
i hope you got a lot out of it i'm sure you did wherever you are thanks for listening appreciate you being with us uh as i said at the start of the show if
you haven't done so already make sure you subscribe you know all the usual call to action stuff subscribe like
share all that sort of stuff be really really helpful i will be back next week
with another guest talking about all things to do with e-commerce i'm actually really looking forward to next week we've got a great guest on the
show coming so do stay tuned stay connected with what's going on come and listen into that
that is going to be fun as well but like say in the meantime just think about all the stuff with ben and just
just watch it again on youtube or listen to it again take lots of notes download the transcripts and all the best with
building your business in such a way uh that you sell it and if you do do that if you do scale it and build it in such
ways to set it i'd love to hear your story maybe come on the show and tell us your story it'd be great to hear from you okay i think
that's about it from me thanks for bearing with me and my weird voice today uh it's been much appreciated uh god
bless you have a fantastic week and we will see you next week bye for now
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
tips and tools for building your business online