#375 - Crafting Your Money-Making Exit with Nate Lind

#375 - Crafting Your Money-Making Exit with Nate Lind Speaker 1: Happy holidays everybody and welcome to episode 375 of the AM-PM Podcast. This week my guest is Nate Lind. Nate is an entrepreneur by trade and a business broker by profession now. And in this awesome episode, we talk about everything around selling your business, around entrepreneurship and affiliate programs and a whole bunch of other really cool and interesting stuff. I think you're gonna really get a lot from this and really enjoy this episode. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Welcome to the AM PM podcast, Nate. How are you doing, man? Speaker 2: I'm doing awesome. Just enjoyed some great travel and I'm kind of hunkered down now for a while, grinding some stuff out. And thanks for having me on. Speaker 1: I'm glad to have you here. Now we, we, I think first, I think we've known of each other for a while, but we first, I think met at the last billion dollar seller summit in Puerto Rico back in June of earlier this year. Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. I heard you were coming to town. I had like not a whole lot of notice. I just found out about it maybe a month in advance and reached out to you and figured it'd be, uh, would definitely be worth me getting, getting together with you guys and hanging out for a little bit. Um, I was able to get into your guys' WhatsApp group after I bought some tickets and I was telling people, you know, here's some activities you can go snorkel over here and go do some of that. So I've been in Puerto Rico for two years now and you know, it's my home. Speaker 1: Yeah. You were like the tour guide. Everybody's like, so where should we go to see the, what's the, what's the, uh, the, the water that lights up at night. And you're like, no, don't go to the bioluminescence Bay or whatever. Speaker 2: Yeah. Don't do that on the full moon. You won't see anything and it's too far away anyway. Just like stick to stick to San Juan. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: You were telling everybody where the cool places would go, where the cool places to eat or drink or whatever it was. Uh, that, that was, that was a lot of cool. So, how was it? You don't get too many events that come in the e-com space that come to Puerto Rico, do you? Speaker 2: No. Ezra was going to do one the year before and he canceled it because there was some leftover craziness still going on with COVID. I've done events in Puerto Rico before for my entourage. But yeah, not too often does someone come through, which is a pity because the island is beautiful and it is a US territory, so you don't need passports or anything. You just fly in there like you would from Texas to Oklahoma. So yeah, it was really cool. It's an interesting experience because for me, I was an e-commerce entrepreneur for a decade before I became a business broker, but more direct to my own website. Amazon, I think I made like between 3% and 10% of my gross sales on Amazon. Most of it was all on my own website. So to see all these other entrepreneurs where more of their focus was Amazon, In fact, many of them don't even have their own websites. It's all just Amazon. It was kind of a unique twist because there's definitely some nuances with Amazon that people were having to deal with that I didn't have to deal with and then stuff that I had to deal with that they didn't have to deal with. So there was some disconnect on like what were challenges or frustrations. As e-commerce owners, we were all operating, but it was neat because there's always challenges. There's always bottlenecks or issues or Other obstructions to our end goal. And it tends to be this Goliath company that with one algorithm change can squash everything, you know, whether it be Amazon or, you know, merchant account or Facebook ads, or, you know, Instagram or Google, like, or Shopify, like somebody, somebody else has the power to shut down these eCommerce entrepreneurs at a moment's notice. Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember even before the Amazon days, there was some big Google update, was it Penguin or I forget, some animal name. Overnight, literally, it wiped out billions of dollars of revenue overnight because some of it needed to be done, in honesty, because people were hacking the ranking system and doing some things. But it's nice when these huge platforms have all this massive traffic, but it's also a little bit scary when you don't control it. And even people say diversify off Amazon, And we'll talk about some of that in a little bit and how it may affect your valuations and stuff, but go on to Shopify, but you still, you have a little bit, you have more control, but you're still depending on it. And unless you have your own audience and own method of generating that traffic, You're still dependent on algorithms and things. Speaker 2: Yeah, and even a second layer of that, if there's anybody involved in the flow of money between your consumer and you, they've got some control. And that's always the case unless you own an acquiring bank and you're processing your own credit cards, which no one's doing. So, yeah, it's interesting. Speaker 1: Amazon's doing it. Amazon has it. Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. So, Amazon's controlling traffic and controlling the money, but us as third-party sellers on Amazon's platform, that's two things that Amazon can shut off for you. Shopify is tending to do a lot of the payments themselves as well because they disincentivize you to use your own merchant accounts. They actually surcharge you. So, like everyone's like trying to get a grip on the most important things in that whole ecosystem and traffic and the money flow, those are two critical components that other people tend to have control over, not us as the entrepreneur. Speaker 1: And the money flows, the traffic one can be overcome with the right strategy and the right marketing to a degree, but the money flow is difficult. I remember I've had problems before the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. We did Manny and Guillermo at Helium 10 that started Helium 10 and I did an event called the Illuminati Mastermind and it was kind of the precursor to the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and we did two of them. We did one in Cancun in 2017 and one in Hawaii in 2018 and one in 2017 in Cancun. This was an eight or nine thousand dollar ticket event. And we decided at that time that we had a Stripe account, processing credit cards, and then people were asking for PayPal. So we added PayPal on it. What we did, I don't know, 150 grand or something like that in sales through PayPal, nice little chunk. PayPal held that money for six months. And they made us prove with pictures that there was people at this event, show them where they signed up, show them all this kind of stuff. And we're like, come on, guys. That was basically All of our profit and then some of the event and I've had that happen in one of my other businesses. About 15, 20 years ago, PayPal held money for a long time. I refused to use PayPal. To this day, if someone's like, pay me by PayPal, no. And PayPal owns Venmo. So if I'm selling something on Facebook Marketplace and someone's like, I'll just Venmo you, it's like, no, you won't. I won't use anything to do with PayPal if I can avoid it. Now, there's a few affiliates sites that that's the only way they will pay you. So I put it in some account and that money comes out immediately. But I've had merchant accounts where I had stuff Hundreds of thousands of dollars held for no reason. It wasn't like I was doing drop shipping and one of these crazy things where there's a lot of fraud or return rates. It's one of the frustrating things about being in business is there's a lot of times you have no control. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've had millions held in international merchant accounts where there's consumer fraud. So consumers would be defrauding the merchant processing entities and the merchant of record by just instead of calling for a refund or sending a return, it would simply just do a chargeback. And keep the product. So to get their money back and to keep the product, which, yeah, that's a brutal combination. So there is a group of very, very savvy consumers out there that, yeah, they're merciless. They'll just take your stuff and then take back their money and then cause you all sorts of problems. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, with chargebacks, I mean, a lot of times they're not even worth fighting. If it's a big amount and someone just paid you for a $5,000 ticket or something, you probably want to try to fight that. But a lot of times on a little $10, $15, $20 subscription or product, it's not worth the time and effort to even fight it unless it's just going to kill you on your return rate because then they don't like it to go over about 0.05%. Or maybe sometimes it's 1% if you're high risk. But yeah, that's a whole animal there. Speaker 2: There's a crazy industry there. I was in affiliate marketing, selling a lot of supplements and vitamins, using performance marketing and direct to consumer. affiliate marketing. And that is also fraught with fraud. You have affiliates who are kind of like your independent salesmen, like they're out there promoting your products. And in some cases, they will promote consumers to sign up for, you know, a free trial or sign up for some type of product with you. And then charge it back or refund it or here's how you go back to your money and so they're getting compensated to drive verified sales to you and then they're telling the consumer this is how you get away with getting the product and getting your money back after they've gotten their sales fee it's. The internet's the wild west. You really have to know your business and you have to look over your back. You have to have wingmen that's covering your six at all times because people will steal money from you coming and going if you're not careful. Speaker 1: Well, you remember there was a time in the 90s and early 2000s where a lot of sites in the adult industry and the supplements industry, they were doing free trials, either like a 30-day free trial as a subscription site or get a free bottle. And you'd have to enter your credit card information or maybe you'd have to pay, you know, it's a free plus shipping, pay seven bucks shipping or something. But what they didn't tell you is that they're going to charge you if you didn't cancel. It was very not clear, not there at all, or it was like so tiny. Nobody ever saw it. It was on the third page of the terms of service or something like that. And there was a huge problem with that for a while. And a lot of merchant accounts and PayPal started just banning people left and right if they smelled anything like that. Speaker 2: Yeah, there were some notable people in the mid-2000s. I think Jeremy Johnson and a couple other guys that, yeah, they made a killing doing that. And they didn't even send out products. They were just literally taking people's credit cards and charging them over and over and over again, didn't even bother fulfilling anything. Then after that, a whole host of people who would at least send out a product, but yet not disclose the full nature of the billing in terms. I know that area really well. That's definitely fraught in the affiliate marketing space. And yeah, it's given a lot of consumers a lot of distrust in being able to purchase products online and the FTC. They rolled out a new law called ROSCA. It's like Restore Online Consumers Something Something Faith, you know, and, you know, basically trying to restore online consumers' faith in internet purchases. And they made it illegal for companies to do that, you know, to be showing one thing and then doing something else. And it started prosecuting people. And going after them, taking back all their money, giving them prison sentences or deferring prison sentences for multi, multi-million dollar judgments, people having to give over their houses and cars and that kind of stuff. And yeah, it's real. I think for us as entrepreneurs, that makes me feel really good these days to be able to offer a service to somebody. Who then at the end of it gives me a 15-20 minute video of just how much I've affected them in such a positive way and that's it's exactly why. I've pivoted over the years and combined real estate experience in the 2000s, e-commerce experience in the 2010s to become a business broker now and combine those two. I've never met another broker that's done over $100 million worth of e-commerce sales like myself and also had over $100 million worth of transactional experience such as myself. So I feel like I'm kind of a unique broker in that I've done what most of my clients have done. And then I've also done all of the behind the scenes stuff that goes on with the transactions and making sure that I'm aware of what's going on before we start bumping into things and stepping in potholes because little things like negotiating net working capital upfront or later can cause a $10 million transaction to only be an $8 million transaction. Or a $2 million transaction to only be one and a half. And little things like that, you don't pick up unless you've been doing it for a while and you just have to have experience going through it. So I love to be able to provide those sorts of services to my clients. And then at the end, like they tell me that now they've got retirement money or they're on their way because they just had the biggest liquidation event of their life. And that just makes my heart sing. I love that. Speaker 1: So that's an important point there. There's a lot of people out there that help you sell or organize to sell business that maybe they came from the corporate world or they came from, and they may be good at math, good at accounting, good at those kinds of, maybe they're good in law, but they never had to rob Peter to pay Paul to make payroll. Or they've never had to game the system on floating a check to make sure, you know, I know there's a three day window here before it's going to hit the bank or whatever it may be. And having that experience, I think it's crucial when you're out there looking for someone to help you if you're going to be planning on an exit or trying to grow the business. And those little things, like you said, that you have, you've been there, done that, sold $100 million plus on your own, is a huge difference. Speaker 2: All self-funded. And I didn't come from wealth. I didn't have millions of dollars. I put most of our investment capital on my credit cards. We were buying inventory with credit cards, buying traffic with credit cards, and paying them off, and definitely robbing Peter to pay Paul. And then negotiating terms. That was the key thing. Once I was able to negotiate credit terms with my traffic source and my product, the manufacturer, then Man, that really blew the lid off. I was able to go from a million dollars of sales to $10 million worth of sales just doing that and then keep that rolling for years. Speaker 1: What businesses were these in? Was it supplements? Speaker 2: This is my supplement companies. Yeah, so I launched over 21 supplement brands. Over the course of about nine years, and nine of those sold for over for a million dollars worth of revenue. It's not like exit value. I exited a software technology, not actually my supplement brands, and I could talk more about that, and when there's the right timing to sell. But Anyways, a couple of the brands sold over $10 million in gross sales. And a lot of it was started out with dietary supplements and then moved on to anti-aging, skin creams and that kind of stuff. And then I started to develop some more customized formulations and we started getting into hair oils, beard oils, stuff for skin and nails. We sold this really, really potent biotin vitamin for a while. It was three times as strong as what you could get in the stores. And then complemented that with argan oils and jojoba oils and different things. And then in 2016, we kind of rode the, the beard fad. And I had this massive beard. If you Google Nate Lind, you'll see some of me at the world beard and mustache competition in Austin, actually had this like two foot long beard and we're selling all these beard oils and stuff. It was like super trendy, 2016, 2017. And then that kind of died out. And so that, that brand kind of, You know, kind of petered out over time, but then we switched over to selling women's hair oils and having, I found this Persian chemist that developed a process and had patented this process to ozonate oil. And so he would, he would force inject oxygen into these oils and it changed the molecular compound of the oils to the point where you could, you could smear this oil on your hands and just rubbing your hands together, it would completely sink in and evaporate. Unlike Most oils you get now, which leaves this like gross sheen and like makes you like slippery. And then we added some essential oils. We was all natural. We had no alcohol, no formaldehyde, which people don't know. A lot of formaldehyde gets put into some of these fragrances. Yeah, we sold a bunch of that. In fact, I wish we still had some. I have to go back to the manufacturer just to order small batches because it's like you can't find it anymore. That was our key to success was we started generic and we just had a small market share of diet supplements. Then we moved into more unique things and really cornered the market there for these unique brands. Speaker 1: And speaking of that, you just reminded me of a couple of things. I missed a couple of big opportunities in that space. In 2010, I was in Israel and I went out to the Dead Sea and the little souvenir shops were selling Dead Sea mud masks and Dead Sea products. And at that time, it wasn't the hot thing that it became. And I was like, I looked at it, I bought some back. I was like, this is pretty cool. But for whatever reason, it didn't trigger on me to actually try to sell that and blow that up. And right before that, you mentioned argon oil. In 2009, I was in Morocco just as a tourist, and they took me to a place where there's this little shack basically on the side of the road. And these women were sitting around, all sitting around the floor, little baskets, just pounding on these nuts. And these nuts came off of a tree. These goats would like go up on the special tree and eat these nuts. And then they would, they would poop them out. And they, someone would then go on the ground and pick up the, the pooped out, you know, cause they're kind of peeled in a way after the process of the animal and bang it out. And it was Argon oil and they were using it, you know, like, this is great for your hair. This is why all the Moroccan women are so beautiful. And I was like, I told my business partner at the time, I was like, dude, we need to get into this. We need to start doing infomercials or something on this. So we went back to Morocco, tried to get distribution, tried to get supply and nobody could tell us they could give us enough supply. They're like, we need this much because if we run an infomercial, it's going to be this much. We'll sell this much and they're like, we can't, we can only give you, I forgot the numbers, but X number of gallons or X number of Whatever. And it just wasn't enough. So we ended up backing off of it. But then shortly after that, it starts appearing everywhere. And like every freaking cosmetic there is. I was like, man, that's another one I missed the boat on. Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't start doing ours until 2015. So about five years between there and between your experience and ours. And I'm sure there was other stuff going on there before us, but we, yeah, we, my, my key experience was I could, there was a math equation I had to figure out. So I needed to know how much to sell the product for to reverse engineer, how much to pay for marketing. And once I figured that out, then I knew how much I could pay affiliates and affiliate networks to promote my products. And then the other piece that we got really, really good at, my team did, and I can't take any credit, my team did it, is we created the most effective and frictionless sales funnels. And so someone could purchase something and then You know, innovations around one-click upsells, so they could then add something to their order and add another, you know, thing to their order and then like make it recurring. And that just like blew the lid off of our profitability. Speaker 1: So you were doing this before ClickFunnels then existed, pretty much. Speaker 2: I don't remember when Russell started that. Speaker 1: I never really- It was like 2014, 2015, somewhere around in there. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was doing this in 2012, late 2011, 2012. So yeah, I guess I didn't even know about Russell until later. I met him at an event later on and I've tried using the system a couple of times, did not work for how I needed it. So we just never bothered with it. We always just coded and customized our own funnels. Speaker 1: So were you driving, it was a combination, was it some social traffic or was it mostly just depending on affiliates primarily? Speaker 2: Mostly all Facebook. So Facebook was, especially pre-IPO, Facebook was an advertising behemoth. Once they went public, then of course their compliance started kicking in and they started making more and more demands around truth in advertising and anything that was high risk started to become a bigger, bigger deal. At one point in time, they took a policy, they didn't want to supplement anything, no supplements whatsoever. So, then there's a cat and mouse game between affiliates that are cloaking pages and doing it anyways against Facebook's terms and conditions and then, you know, getting caught, getting those shut down and then starting to transition over to Instagram or other places. But most of it was paid media direct through social, not like SEO, not just trying to get like backlinks and, you know, ad pages and that kind of stuff going through it. Speaker 1: Yeah. And Facebook, I mean, has some pretty tight rules nowadays on if you're trying to do supplements and say, hey, this helps you lose weight. You can't do that because it's body and anything around body image or this makes your hair glow and you can't do that because it might offend somebody or what. It's super, super detailed on what they will allow and what they won't allow. Speaker 2: Yeah, Google too now. It's changed a lot. In the last couple of years, they've made it much, much more difficult. I think I wound down my last brand in 2019. Yeah, it was just too much. There's too much oversight, too much compliance. It wasn't fun for me anymore at that point. I had been doing it for six or seven years. I couldn't imagine doing anything for six or seven years now. That's why I love being a broker. Six or seven months is It's long for me. I want to get the deal done and out the door and on to the next one. Speaker 1: So as a broker, I mean, so you're with Website Closers. And so for those that don't know, that's one of the oldest brokerages in this space. Can you tell us a little bit about what Website Closers is? A lot of people may have, they may have heard of some of the others out there, but maybe they haven't heard of that one. Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we're the largest brokerage and marketplace for $1 million to $150 million online businesses. Jason and Ron started the company a little over 13 years ago. Speaker 1: It's only online, right? Speaker 2: It's not- We're a boutique. We only do online businesses. Online, digital businesses, technology businesses, SaaS, and then the services that surround that. We sell a lot of digital marketing agencies. We sell a lot of technology and services related to And, you know, internet businesses as well, but we don't know brick and mortar businesses. We don't do any restaurants, no retail, like none of that. So all the, like the 98% of what you see on BizBuySell, we don't touch. We only do the 2%. That it has an online presence and that's been their focus from the beginning. I met the founders at, actually somebody was a speaker at one of my events, said they sold their business with website closers and I'd never heard it. I'm like, website closers, that's weird. What is that? So I went to their website. I asked for an introduction. I never got one. So I ended up just going to the website, filling out an introduction form, explained who I was. Like you, I've done a bunch of trade shows and masterminds and events specific for affiliate marketing and supplement companies and that sort of thing. And I just filled out an intake form. I was on the phone with Jason and Ron within like four hours and invited them to come to actually a Puerto Rico mastermind I did. I invited them to come to Puerto Rico. I held it at the Marriott down there in Ashford. And they came to the event and kind of explained, you know, the M&A marketplace for supplement businesses and other internet businesses. And I was just blown away by how many buyers they said are looking at these types of businesses. Now this was late 2019. I had already wound down my supplement businesses and I had had an exit by selling some technology I built that helped support my supplement companies. So I sold something to a shopping cart, some software to a shopping cart and had wound down my supplement companies. And then hearing what they were saying about the marketplace of how many buyers they have, honestly, I didn't believe them. But I kept running into other people over the course of the next year that had sold their business website closers. And I added them to another mastermind in Fort Worth. And I took the guys to dinner. I talk about this in my book, and I'll give your audience a copy of it too. A digital copy of it is I had dinner with them at Bob's Steakhouse at the Omni in Fort Worth, and I spent about three hours with them. And they continue to reiterate how many thousands of buyers are looking at these types of businesses. And at this point, I had a pretty large network of entrepreneurs that were coming to my events. And I was thinking to myself, like, this might be like a nice little side hustle. Let me let me look into this. And I talked with them about becoming a broker. And I ended up joining them in January 2020. And the first deal I brought to the company was a $25 million sale from somebody that had been within my mastermind prior to that. Basically, it's a marketplace. It's like the MLS of these online businesses. Website Closers is the largest marketplace. It's been around for 13 years. We've sold over 3,000 businesses. There's 50 brokers. It's like Keller Williams. It's massive and the volume is massive. I own a franchise in Puerto Rico, so I'm one of the largest franchisees. I've got two associate brokers that work in my franchise, one on the buy side, one that helps me on the sale side. We just list businesses that are Amazon businesses, Shopify stores, anyone that has their own store if they're selling physical products, and then people who sell information and e-learning and marketplaces. I've sold marketplaces that bring buyers and sellers again. There was a voiceover Marketplace that I sold in 2020 that brings together voice actors and voice producers and publishers and stuff. So really kind of anything with kind of a digital and tech and sort of SaaS sort of spin to it or product spin to it is what we focus on. And now we have accumulated because of so many listings. It's like every time you do a new listing, you get new buyers. We've just accumulated the largest buyer pool of any of the brokerages just because of size and volume and time. We've got such a runway against our competitors. It would take them years to catch up, but we're also still shaking and baking, so they'll just never catch up to us. Speaker 1: What was this mastermind that set you down this path of where these guys came out to it and also gave you some of your first leads? What kind of mastermind was this? Speaker 2: This was specific to mostly the entrepreneurs that were my competitors and colleagues in supplements and in the affiliate marketing space. So, the big trade show at the time was called Affiliate Summit, but that was focusing on the affiliates, the ones who are controlling the traffic and doing the sales. And I started this event called Advertiser Summit. And the nomenclature, it's kind of janky, but the nomenclature for that Performance marketing is the advertiser is the person who owns the brand. It's like I've got this coffee cup over here. It's called Reduce. Yeah, Reduce is the name of the brand. This would be the advertiser who's trying to sell these mugs online. So there was an event for the seller, the salesman, the affiliates who were doing, they're actually putting Facebook ads out and they're like, you know, manipulating algorithms and that kind of stuff to try to get sales. To try to get paid by the brand owners. So because that was going on for a while, I didn't really, I mean, I was like kind of cool talking to the affiliates, but I want to talk with more advertisers. I want to talk to more people who were the brand owners like me. So I started doing these, uh, these events basically like once I get introduced to other people, I actually created a Skype group first. That's how it all started. So I had a Skype group and we were all just like talking and chatting. And once that grew to like a hundred people, Then I proposed like, hey, let's all get together and have like a weekend kind of retreat. So I invited everyone at the time I lived in Albuquerque to the Hyatt Tamiya and a beautiful resort north of Albuquerque. And I had about 35 people from around the world fly in. I didn't charge anything for it. I just said that you got to pay for your own cost and pay for the food and beverage, like 750 bucks. And I did this like room, it's like a big you, it's like just one big mastermind, like a big boardroom. And we sat around for three days talking about credit card processing challenges, traffic challenges, compliance issues, and we created this What I call the continuity council, which we were all continuity subscription-based advertisers. So all of our products had like subscriptions associated to it. And with that comes a whole host of challenges with credit card processing and fulfillment and projecting and inventory and all that sort of stuff. And I started in May of 2015 and I kept doing events and I started to lump them onto before the bigger trade show affiliate summit. So people would fly in the day before And then we'd meet at a hotel or whatever for... Four or five hours and then everyone would go to the trade show and get sloppy and then like, you know, go home and be done. Speaker 1: Is that different than the one that, what's it, Affiliate World? It's like in Dubai, Thailand, Spain or something like that? Speaker 2: Yeah, Affiliate Summit is the big boy in America. They've got an event in Las Vegas and New York City during usually spring and fall and then Affiliate World popped up a little later in usually like in Barcelona and then Thailand. I think they may have moved them around since then. But yeah, those were some pretty big affiliate marketing type events that were going on out there. And then, yeah, I just continued to create my events. And I got to the point where I did Advertiser Summit. The first one was a standalone event in Aspen, Colorado in December 2016. And I had 350 people come to it. I had 100 sponsors. We had our own trade room floor. We had booths and banners and speakers and stage stuff all going on. In a separate room and then I had a lot of entertainment. I had hired a burlesque troupe to come and do like a burlesque show in the evening in the Hotel Jerome and it was really cool. People still comment that first ad sum was incredible. And that's why I love Aspen. I just did a honeymoon in Aspen. My wife and I just finished our honeymoon and we are sitting in Texas now, but Aspen I go back to a couple of times a year if I can. Speaker 1: Yeah, I like Aspen. I was there last year. It's the first time I've ever been there. I've been everywhere else around, but I was like, I've never been to Aspen. I kept hearing these good things. Speaker 2: It's awesome. Speaker 1: I drove actually from Texas up there and went through that one mountain where you go up to like a peak of 10,000 feet or something. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's all these little windy, windy little mountain on the side of a mountain that you, yeah, it was a, there's one way to come in by freeway, you know, from the North side, but we came in from the South side, I guess, or East or whatever it was. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a fun drive, but if you're afraid of heights, afraid of heights, it might not be for you. Speaker 2: Well, the land and the mountain is so broad, you're not going to fall off anything. You're just way up there. But yeah, my wife and I, we got our photos done after we eloped in Puerto Rico and then we got our photos done in Aspen. And yeah, it's beautiful up there. Independence Pass is such a special place. Speaker 1: It is. So when it comes to selling business, I mean, you see a lot what, what is what's hot right now? What what? I mean, for a while there was Amazon stuff, every aggregator couldn't get enough of them. And we're paying just crazy multiples. And that's kind of died down. There's still a great opportunity to sell, but a lot of people think, oh, now is not a good time to sell business. There might be a recession or interest rates are high. It could be a little bit more challenging now, but I think it's still a good time. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely still a good time. I've got seven listings, three of them are under contract. Another one, I've got an over asking price and it's a big one. We're asking 24 million. We've got an offer for 25 and we're negotiating the networking capital on it right now. So, we're still closing deals. We're still selling deals. We're still listing deals. The market hasn't stopped. The one caveat is we have, it's in some ways, it's good. Because there's less earnouts and less performance based payments being negotiated right now. So more of our deals are structured with, you know, 50 to 80% cash at closing, you know, lump sum at closing, and then the remaining tends to be a seller's note. So it's guaranteed by the business and the cash flow of the business, as opposed to, oh, the business has to grow to this, and then you'll get, you know, an extra million bucks, or if the business grows to that, You know, the next level up, you'll get a million and a half, which it's really tough to sustain that type of growth when there's so many factors that are outside of your control. And most of my clients They don't want to be bound to the business continuing to have to grow, especially when someone else is running it. They don't know how well that person is going to perform as an operator. And the buyers are always thinking, well, we want you to be invested in the long-term growth of this business. It's like, bro, if I wanted to be invested in the long-term success of this business, I would keep it and run it. I want to sell it because I'd like to take a step back or I want out of it completely. So that's where I, as the broker, I have to Thoroughly understand my clients wishes because some of my clients, they're looking for partners and they do want to be a long term involved aspect of the business. And others are like, man, I am done. I've got this other project I want to work on, or I want to go do real estate, I want to go do something else. And as long as I know what that is, then I can match the right buyer up to it. And we can skip all that, you know, nonsense. Speaker 1: So in our space, I primarily focus on the Amazon space. That's what most of the listeners are. What's the difference is really if you're, you know, a lot of failed Amazon sellers become agents, agencies. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And so that's where a lot of failed Amazon sellers end up is in running agencies or software companies. How does the, what's the market like out there now for like agencies and software companies and the e-comm space? Speaker 2: Yeah, and I didn't even answer your last question. What's hot right now? Actually, it's agencies. So, I sell a lot of digital marketing agencies because they do really well. They're getting pretty good multiples. There's a lot of desire for marketing in of itself has changed so much in the last 10-20 years. And internet marketing, digital marketing, It's constantly in demand. And it's the pandemic helped in so many ways to bring exposure to e-commerce as, you know, like a salve for any like world, you know, issues of supply chain. And so people weren't able to go to stores, they were having to buy stuff. So Amazon, like, things just went nuts for Amazon and Shopify and like all those platforms. And since then, a lot of older school brands, older school companies, like more institutional and legacy companies have started to really take a look at, you know, what did they need to do to get their act together when it comes to, you know, creating Funnels for specific products and like L'Oreal, for instance, like imagining them creating funnels for all of their best sellers and like putting them up on their websites. They're still not there yet, but they're starting to figure this out. And as one dinosaur retires or quits, and a young, you know, you know, Tron level, you know, internet marketer shows up and starts, you know, flashing some lights around and starts getting some attention. People are seeing how important that is. And digital marketing agencies are really at the at the The forefront of that, it's funny that you joke that like the failed entrepreneur turns into an agency. I've definitely seen plenty of that, but I have also seen some incredible experts. Digital marketing put together some really impressive businesses and those are some of the funnest ones that I have because I was the consumer of the digital marketing companies and the affiliate networks selling my products. So I spent millions of dollars with them selling my supplements and I know them from that angle and I've gotten to know over the transactions I've done more and more the intricacies of what goes on in those digital marketing agencies. Amazon stores still sell very well. I've got an $8 million transaction right now that's about a Forex multiple. I think they're right at about $2 million in trailing 12 months EBITDA. So we're at a Forex multiple on a transaction there. And it's a sexy supplement Amazon store. And it's some part of its private label, some of it's custom manufactured. And I listed that and it was under contract. We have multiple offers, but it was under contract in less than two weeks from the time that it was listed. Speaker 1: Wow. Do you see a lot of people that end up buying Crash and Burnham? I've heard horror stories from people that have sold like a supplement business for 20 million bucks, someone you probably actually know that lives in Puerto Rico. And then a year later, they're begging him to come back because they've just tanked it. Did you see that happen a lot? Speaker 2: I think the buyers are reluctant to share that with me because I almost never hear that. I'm for sure, I'm conjecturing that it's absolutely happening, but I don't ever hear that. Like a buyer doesn't come back to me and say, Oh my God, this thing blew up. And I've never had anyone come back to me and say like, you've defrauded us or this was misrepresented. Because I am Mr. Transparency over here. As soon as I hear, feel, like smell anything from my sales client, like the sales side client, I'll talk with them about, you know, there are certain things that need to be disclosed at a certain proper time. And we have to make sure that this is all done in such a way that That is fully transparent to the buyer. So I've never had an issue that people have come back with like lawsuits and stuff that this didn't work out the way that we imagined. I have definitely heard a ton of horror stories from the aggregators blowing up. You know, Thrash.io is a huge example of putting everything on pause in May of last year. And I don't know if they're, they haven't inquired on any, and they would have, but they haven't inquired on any of my companies this year either. So, In fact, we've hired Gwen from Thrash Yo's to join the team. She's on Tom's team. There's other people that have gotten laid off from aggregators that have inquired to become a business broker because we're still doing deals. The aggregators, remember, was only about 180, maybe 200 aggregators at its peak. There may be like 10 or 15 of them now. But that is a tiny fraction of our buyers, where most of them are private equity or individual investors. They'll use the SBA to buy deals that are under $5 million, over $5 million deals. We have private equity funds, private equity sponsors. We have a lot of family office activity going on now. We've got some really cool search fund groups out of Europe where they're working with MBA grads, not just like MBA grads, but like seasoned CEOs who have MBAs as well to be the acquisition entrepreneurs. So they'll be the sponsor, but then they'll provide all the funding. They've got this really cool vetting process where they'll have hundreds of 30, 40, 50-year-old CEOs that are looking for a large business to work with. They don't have the funding for it, but they've got the operational skill set. They're out hunting deals. Then they've got this massive investment group behind them. It's not that crazy SPAC stuff where they got to go public and go raise the money. This is wealthy family offices that have all aggregated a ton of wealth in Switzerland. And then use that to go buy businesses and putting in the operational seat, a seasoned CEO from other ventures and businesses, which I think is brilliant because half the time I'll get a great buyer that's a private equity fund, but they don't have any operational experience. So they're basically they're just money and they need to have an operator. But the problem is my client doesn't want to be the operator anymore. So they want to sell and they want to walk away. Then I'm in the position where I'm like, God, I need to start a recruitment company and find CEOs and other MBAs and people that are operators to fill the ranks. I've got all of these buyers with money, but not as many that have operational experience. And so this one particular search fund has done, I think, a really smart thing to solve that problem and go take down a bunch of deals. Speaker 1: That's awesome. You're speaking about transparency there with your sellers. There's a lot of people in the, in the e-com space that kind of skirt that line, whether it be Amazon and they're doing search find buyer, a little bit of black cat or some of the internet marketers and affiliate marketers, and they've grown a good business by kind of riding that gray and if not sometimes black line. How do you deal with that when it's time they say, Hey, we want to exit, but you know, they may have a little bit of a egg on their face from the past. How has that dealt with? Speaker 2: We actually need to disclose it early and often. We have buyers that will take those risks and they will take that business methodology and they'll run with it. And then we've got some that are like, uh-uh, absolutely no. So I would much rather just shine a light on it early because we can still sell those deals. Like, in my opinion, I think like some particularly hairy or black hat, you know, deals. And there's some buyers that, you know, it has to be legal. So that number one, it must be legal. But remember, Amazon is not the law. Amazon has its terms and services, and you could be going against Amazon's terms and services doesn't make you're doing something illegal. But it does mean that you have the risk of being shut down by Amazon if they catch you. So we communicate that very clearly to our buyers. And some buyers are more aggressive than others. And they're okay with taking on that risk, because the buyer is assessing the business based on a variety of factors. The number one most being what's the risk? What's the risk that after they purchase this, that the cash flow that was shown to them is going to dry up? I personally think that's a pretty high risk if you've got something that you're doing that's against the terms and conditions of one of your larger vendors, Amazon, which is controlling your traffic and your money. But for other entrepreneurs like in the affiliate marketing, Usually, they have their own website or maybe they're running a combination of Shopify on the front end and they've got CheckoutChamp or something like that on the back end that's just processing the funds. So, you don't have to worry about CheckoutChamp or someone shutting you down, but you do have to worry about your credit card processing shutting you down if you're over a certain number of chargebacks. So, what I do is I know what rocks to look under. There's not much that you can get past this old dog. When it comes to affiliate marketing and Amazon, we understand about review manipulation and that sort of stuff. So I know the questions to ask to figure out how to start tiptoeing around that to get the discovery going on my end, just between me and them, how it looks. And often the seller will come to me with a concern or they may even stop themselves from deciding the list because they think they're unsellable. But I'll tell you, man, we have sold some black hat businesses before and the buyers have been happy as hell. One example is on the affiliate marketing side of things, it'll be a supplement company where a manufacturer bought them because they're going to manufacture all of the products as well. And they only need to run this black hat entity for a year or two to make back all of their cash on the acquisition. So they're kind of rolling the craps dice, you know, they're rolling the dice like they're at Vegas to see how long this thing's going to run. But if they get a year out of it, they paid themselves back. If they get two years out of it, they've made an insane amount of money. Because the volumes of some of these and you just never know what buyers are out there and whose risk is less than the next guy. Some people's risk is going to just be way too high, but for other buyers are like, okay, I'll accept that risk. I'm not going to pay you 4x, but I'll pay you 2.5 or 3x. Speaker 1: What about, there's a lot of listeners here that aren't, don't live in the U.S. They may have a U.S. business or they may not have a U.S. business. You know, do you sell a lot of stuff internationally for, you know, Chinese sellers or European based sellers or people in the Middle East or Africa or is it really the focus is primarily the U.S. and that gives you a big leg up or can you talk a little bit about the pros and cons and advantages and what people might need to think about there? Speaker 2: The big pro for being a U.S. company and selling to a U.S. buyer is there's more financing opportunities for them than any other country. Speaker 1: Like SBA? Speaker 2: SBA, for anything under $5 million, I want to try to get it SBA pre-approved. If it's over $5 million, then the SBA only goes up to $5 million and it's kind of like it is what it is. But you can get a lot of private lenders or capital market lenders to come in and finance businesses over $10 million. So I've got kind of a dry spot between 5 and 10 that requires some creative financing to get to it. Usually it's some SBA and then it's like a seller note or some combination of some other financing in there. And then once it gets over $10 million, then that opens up the floodgates for the private equity and family offices to start to take interest because they just don't do smaller deals because it's not worth their time. They have to spend as much due diligence and cost on a smaller deal as they do a bigger deal. And then the payoff, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. So, and the US is definitely the top dog when it comes to M&A. It's been that way for years. It'll continue to be that way for a while. The next one is Europe. We don't have as many financing options in Europe, but we're starting to see some SBA banks being willing to try a US buyer of a European entity or other foreign entities. I haven't gotten one across the finish line yet, but we're working on a couple right now that we're watching because it would be really helpful if that would show up. When you start to get into the big, big deals, like once you're over $10 million, we can find lending partners all around the world. So that part doesn't really matter. And there are some that only focus on certain parts of the world as well. So then you have kind of an advantage, like we've got some European buyers or European lenders. In Germany that like German businesses. So, you know, it's the pool of buyers is so big. We've got 160 some odd thousand buyers on our email list. So we just have such a huge reach. China is a can be a bit tricky in typically it's the language barrier. Typically it's the time, you know, it's a time zone difference. There's other like just nuances of doing a deal. You have to be friendly. You have to be available and you have to be like a willing contributor and willing to compromise to get these transactions done. And if you approach these deals that you're not available, you're not particularly friendly or you're hard to understand, like that creates friction typically between the buy side and the sell side. And as a broker, I do everything I can to try to like reduce that friction. But yeah, Chinese companies don't tend to do particularly well With US buyers right now, it's getting better because there's definitely some really cool companies and we've got several transactions that we've gotten done and we can do them, but they are a little bit more work. It's really more work for me than it is for the seller. So, we don't mind doing it, but it does create a little bit of extra work to get through. But every business from any country is still sellable as long as it needs to be at least two years old, And it needs to be profitable. Like we have a cash flow based buyer base, like they are looking for businesses that are producing cash flow. I had a call with somebody the other day that they're They're in growth mode, so they're reinvesting all of their money back into the business and they have no EBITDA, they've got no profit. I told them, I just don't have a market for you. I'd like to look at your books and confirm that because sometimes you may be calculating it differently than I calculate it, but if that is indeed the case and you don't have any profit and you're for growth for a longer term play, then when you get to a point when you're spending out so much cash flow that then you're profitable, that's the time to sell. We don't want to sell pre-profit. Speaker 1: I hear a lot of stories from friends and stuff that have sold that say the due diligence process is like having a second job when you're going through that. Can you talk about a little bit of what someone should expect if I'm sitting here, a couple points, if I'm sitting here and saying, hey, I think I want to sell my business, how much of a runway do I need to give myself to prepare to do that really, to do it right and maximize it? And then second, what should I expect once those LOIs start coming in, I got to do all this due diligence with these buyers? Speaker 2: I'll summarize it, but I do want to plug my website where you can get my book because I've got several sample due diligence checklists in it as well. So if you go to natelind.com forward slash gift and fill in your name and email, I'll send you a link to where you can get a digital copy of Maximum Exit, my book, and then also within it is all the resources that I And referencing in the book, and one of them happens to be exactly what you said. It's a due diligence checklist. Speaker 1: So it's natelind.com, just for those of you, natelind.com forward slash, what was the? Speaker 2: Gift, G-I-F-T. Speaker 1: Gift, okay. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: All right, cool. Speaker 2: If you go to that, you can get all of it, but just in summary, You've got to upload all of your financial documents, so your profit and loss statements, your balance sheets for as far back as you can go, usually three to five years if you've been around that long. You have to upload all your corporate hygiene, so your formation documents, your meeting minutes, and if you don't have them, don't worry about it. Most of these businesses are independent owners or maybe it's a husband-wife. you just upload your articles of incorporation or formation or whatever, whatever your entity is. So you have to, there's usually be a folder for all the corporate documents, a folder for all the financial documents. Then you'll have a folder for all of your sales management documents. So your seller central, all that stuff you download and the buyer will give you specific reports to pull and literally it's going to be in seller central, click on this, then go here and then change your date to this and this and this, and then change the headings here. So, You download and do all that and it can definitely be a second job for a week or two. I find that the more organized my sellers are, the less work it is for them. The less organized they are, the more work it is for them. But after the sales reporting materials, then there'll be usually some additional stuff around like your processes and your operations. And sometimes people have to like write that out or they have to like record videos or they have to schedule a call. Most of the time it's like it's a call and it'll be like a Zoom like this or something where it's a recording of you going through like your daily activities and showing what you're doing. And then frequently, there'll be like a bunch of inventory related materials. So you'll have to upload your inventory reports and cash flow analysis and cash flow reports around ordering and, you know, your, you know, time it takes you're all in all of your contracts, every contract you've got with any other entity, you've got to upload that if you've got any obligations or employment agreements, stuff like that, you've got to you've got to upload all that too. So kind of give you a sampler of all that. Speaker 1: And how long of a time frame should we be, if you want to sell, should you be working on this, start organizing and trying to get things in order six months in advance, two months in advance, a year in advance? Speaker 2: I have clients that don't prepare for any of that and they just do it after they get an LOI and they can still get it done in a week. So I don't think it's, I would not stop the process because you're concerned about trying to gather up all that material. I find that it's really motivating when you've got a sexy offer on the table that you've just signed and they've sent you a list of stuff they need to be able to pay you the money they just said they would pay you. That most of my clients like, yes, that second job is probably more like two full-time jobs at the same time where they're uploading everything over the course of like a week or so. But then again too, I've had some clients that they take some two days, they upload everything in two days and maybe they were the super organized ones, but I would not, I would definitely not delay a sale and I hate it when people delay sales because they're waiting for something. I've seen more deals crash and burn because they waited too long than because they got started too early. Speaker 1: How do you know when to sell? I mean, obviously if you're burnt out, that's one, but how do you know when to sell? You're like, man, if I just stay with this another year, I could raise the sales. I know on the trajectory on, I could make an extra $2 million at exit. Should I hang on or should I exit now? I mean, how do you know when is that time to actually exit stage left? Speaker 2: It's really intuitive and I think us as a lot of very brainy and heady entrepreneurs, this is the hardest part because the feeling has to be in our gut. We have to feel that it's time to start thinking about selling and usually it comes because of maybe the family obligations are demanding more and more time of you or not demanding. Maybe the family would like to spend more time with daddy or with mommy. And for me, it came because my youngest was wanting to spend more time doing outdoor activities. And we were out hiking and outside Albuquerque, and it was a Sunday evening. And he said, like, Dad, why do we have to go back so early? I told him, well, you know, I need to get back home and like rest and relax, recuperate before the work week. I was like, why? Why do you work so much? It's like, well, I have to pay for all of this stuff. And I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and as soon as I said that, it kicked me right in the gut because I had not created the type of passive income portfolio for myself to be able to pull back out of the day-to-day work of my business. And that set me on a trajectory of, wait a second, I got into being an entrepreneur because I wanted more money. Then I grew up with and I wanted more time with my family than I got as a child. I've got the more money, but I don't have the more time. So I need to free up my time. And usually the best way to do it for entrepreneurs like us is you've created a business that is the biggest asset that you've got. If you liquidate that business, you can then diversify your portfolio into passive income to get yourself the time and the stability That you wouldn't have gotten from a business because let's be honest, the reality is most of us start businesses and we don't delegate very well. We don't create a team or we don't build a business big enough to support financially an executive team that can run it without us. We bump along in these businesses which are still super profitable and also like it's a great kudos to us to get to You know, 2, 3, 4, 5, even 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 million dollar businesses, which may or may not be retirement money for some of us, depending on our lifestyle, but it's going to be a massive war chest of money that you can use to put into a shoot, look at bonds right now, you can get you can get bonds at incredible interest rates that you can have for 10, 15, 20, 30 years paying out for four and a half percent interest rates that We couldn't get until like half a year ago. So just that by itself, you can put a million bucks in it and get a really nice passive income from that and not to mention real estate and other investments that you can put out there. Speaker 1: It's kind of like you're talking about there, it's the four burners theory. Are you familiar with the four burners theory? Where you have a stove and you have four burners on the stove. And one of those is health, one of those is work, one of those is family, and one of those is friends. And the rationale goes is you can do two of those really well, you can do three of those really well, but if you have three of them, now you're just really well, you're into just doing them all good. And if you have all four, trying to do all four, you basically, they're all going to suffer. And so that's, that's, you got to just decide which of those four are you going to be good at? Is it going to be family first and friends first? Or is it going to be work first and health first? Whatever, and it's a pretty good little theory. I think James Clear talks about that and it's a pretty good thing for entrepreneurs to look at to say like, where is my focus? Speaker 2: I love that. Speaker 1: And just like you said, the rich guy, rich dad, poor dad is also a really, with the four quadrants, is another really good one. Speaker 2: Yep. No, I love that. And yeah, for me, it was a, it was the family that I wanted to spend more and more time with. And, um, you know, yeah, it's just like, that's what, that's what it was for me. A gentleman the other day called me and he's having some health issues. And so for him, it's his health, like he wants to sell a business, you know, take care of his health and jump back into it later. For others, it's, you know, it's kind of like accomplishment, you know, like they've, they've grown a business, but they've never had an exit. And they want like that, that checkmark like on their professional kind of on their CV, like they want to have, you know, on their CV that they've done, you know, an M&A transaction. And like, it's also like on the entrepreneurial journey, if you think about it as a ladder, You eventually are going to bump into M&A. So you're either going to merge or you're going to acquire something or you're going to sell something because we are all driven and motivated and ambitious individuals. That's why we got into being an entrepreneur instead of working a nine to five. Eventually, you're going to figure out, well, the real money is in selling the business and then starting to look at acquiring businesses. And it's so much easier to start buying businesses if you sell something and you've got a nest egg You can then go work with and then you know the process from the sales side and you can start acquiring other businesses the reason why. Most of the public companies and larger private companies grow through acquisitions as it's faster and more profitable to grow through acquisition than it is through innovation. Innovation takes forever. And like the pioneers, you're getting arrows in your back innovating versus coming along a little bit later and acquiring the settlements that have been laid out before you. Speaker 1: Yeah. What about on diversity? I mean, a lot of people say that it's better if you have diverse revenue streams when you're going to sell versus depending on one marketplace. So do you see that as to be true or is it just a buyer dependent? It really doesn't matter. Speaker 2: It's really buyer dependent. It doesn't matter. I sell businesses that are one trick ponies all the time. They could be An Amazon supplement company, it's a private label, you know, contract manufactured company, nothing custom about it. They just make good cashflow. I will sell that thing in a heartbeat. It could be, then on the flip side, it could be a company, let's just use supplements again, because that's my background. They're selling through affiliates and Amazon and they're also selling, you know, with joint ventures and email blasts and like they've got like Very diverse. And maybe they're also doing direct mail. And maybe let's just go ahead and throw in telesales or infomercials. I don't see too many of those. Honestly, most entrepreneurs are good at, or can be great. Maybe this is the four burners methodology. They're great at one channel. They might be good at two channels, usually not good at three channels. And I almost never see someone with four channels. But I've got buyers that will do all of that and they'll pay handsomely for all of them. Speaker 1: I've noticed another thing too with people that exit is a lot of times they're like, okay, I'm done with this. I'm tired. I want to go travel. I'll go sit on the beach. I want to go paint and sit in my house and just paint artwork all day or play video games or whatever it is. But a lot of times they started getting antsy after six months or a year of that. These entrepreneurs who have generational wealth and are like, all right, I'm bored. Now what? Do you see that happen quite a bit? And they start getting back in, they go back to work in 80 hours a week and for a while and stuff. Speaker 2: Yeah, I see. I think there's a variety of paths I see people go on. Two common ones that come up for me is they either go back into entrepreneurship and startup mode. Actually, it's free to come to mind. So, they'll go back into starting because they just love the start of it. Others will graduate to acquiring or they will team up with lending partners and they'll start to acquire businesses. And the third, they'll go be life coaches. They'll go through a spiritual awakening. And I've done a combination of that because I definitely have found myself going through more of the spiritual awakening and personal growth path and stuff after I sold my business. And then also, still have a balance. And that's where I feel like I've got two burners going pretty well, that I'm good at both. And I like to keep it that way. Speaker 1: So, Nate, you wrote a book that documents some of your past history and some strategies and tips on if you're thinking about selling your business. Can you remind everybody again the name of that book and how they can get a copy of it? Speaker 2: Yep. It's called Maximum Exit. If you go to natelind.com forward slash gift, you can get a free digital copy of it. It can also be bought on Amazon for Kindle and on Audible for audio. Yeah, it's a story basically of my first exit, and then that of like five different entrepreneurs who I've exited. One had a $25 million transaction, then in the middle range, some, you know, $5 and $6 million transactions, and then on the lower end, like two $3 million transactions. And I share a variety of things that buyers are looking at, talk about who the buyers are, How they need things to look in order to finance the transaction. I get into some specifics around how you need to set up your books and your accounting and your chart of accounts. Some things you can think about, whether it's too late now for your entity or for the next entity on how you can structure your business. You can still kind of use it like a cash, like an ATM machine, like for your personal business expenses, like meals and entertainment and travel, but then also get the full value for your business when you sell it by having some thought put into your corporate structure using a holding company and then an operating company. So I'll get into some specifics around that. And then I showcase some examples of other businesses that we've listed. And the type of like attention they've gotten and why and how and then in those free resources as well. I show some examples of businesses with the financials set up in such a way that they sold and some that were set up in such a way that couldn't sell them. And so you can see the difference between what works and what doesn't work. Speaker 1: If someone's interested in selling their business and wants to maybe see if a website closes a fit, what's the best way to reach you or to get a hold of? Speaker 2: The best way to reach me is go to natelin.com, click on the contact button and you can fill out the form. It'll send an email straight to me, promise you I'll respond to you straight away and we'll schedule a free consultation. I always offer a free business valuation and a sales plan in that consultation so you'll know at least what your business is worth. What the trading range of it will be, and then the likely method, the channels that I would go out to solicit those buyers. It takes about 45 minutes for me to do it. Even for those of you who don't have a business or it doesn't make sense for you, like right now, we do pay a 10% referral fee for anyone who refers somebody to me. Once again, you can go to the contact page on natelind.com, like you know a buddy or so-and-so is talking about selling. I'll pay 10% of my commission. And on a $2 million deal, I tend to charge 10%. So that's $200,000 to the firm, which means $20,000 as a referral. And that adds up. Speaker 1: Always affiliate marketing. Speaker 2: That's it. Speaker 1: Well, Nate, I really appreciate you coming on today. We could keep talking for a while, but I appreciate your time and all your insights. It's been great. Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, Kevin. Speaker 1: All of us entrepreneurs have a common bond as Nate and I's discussion shows. And one of the best opportunities you could have to change your life and to make it what you want it to be is to actually build a business and exit it and then maybe repeat the process and do it over and over again or Take your money and run and go sit on the beach. But it's great being an entrepreneur. It's great having all these opportunities to just drastically change your life. And I hope you got a lot of good stuff out of this episode. We'll be back again next week with another awesome episode. But just remember, it's not what you get that makes you happy. It's who you become that does. It's not what you get that makes you happy. It's who you become that does. Have a great week, happy holidays, and we'll see you again soon.