Speaker 1Hi there and welcome back to another edition of Built to Sell Radio, the podcast designed to help you punch above your weight in negotiation to sell your company. I'm the executive producer Colin Morgan. Now as you know we're adding a new format to the roster. From time to time we're going to be running panels where we get a few people in the same room on one of the hottest topics in the world of selling a business and today it's earnouts which as you know comes up on this show more than anything else. Now most owners want their money at close but when the buyer and seller can't agree on what the business is worth the acquirer reaches for an earnout to bridge the gap and if you've been listening to this show for a while you already know how much risk comes attached with that. So we brought together two founders who have lived it. Rob Walling got paid, Garen Hillo didn't. Enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 2Rob, Garen, welcome back in both cases to Built to Sell Radio. Great to be here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, we were talking off mic and just the frequency and how common earnouts are and I wanted to have both of you on the show because you both experienced this firsthand. One, I think, story a little different than the other so I wanted to have you start off by kind of sharing your stories around it. So we'll start off by talking a little bit about what an earnout is and then we'll get into some advice on how you might advise an entrepreneur who is about to sign an earnout agreement. Rob, why don't you start? Can you just describe your exit at a high level and then sort of the
Speaker 3role an earnout played for you? Sure. So I started a software as a service company called Drip in, I guess the first line of code was 2012 but really launched it in 2013 and then sold it to a strategic acquirer in 2016 during the summer. And so we had grown it to, it was bootstrapped and we had grown it to a couple million in ARR, annual recurring revenue, and sold it and an earnout was attached to it because it was a full, you know, there were 10 of us on the team including me and my co-founder and I remember going into it. This was my first big exit. I'd had some small, like, they were still life-changing exits but they weren't never-have-to-work-again exits, you know, and this was the big, my big, big one. And I really, like everybody, didn't want an earnout. And it just is kind of par for the course, is what I found with exits that are this significant, you know, or acquisitions.
Speaker 2And are you able to share what proportion of the deal was tied to an earnout?
Speaker 3Yeah. So it was, you know, the original offer, like the first offer we got from the acquirer was 60% cash on close and 40% after, I think it might have been two years. And that was it. It was 60-40. So the negotiation, so that was a starting point. Then we came back, what we wound up getting eventually is 60% cash on close, 20% after 12 months, and then 20% after six more months. So it was 18. I got the full, we could leave at 18 and get everything. And we did.
Speaker 2And to be clear, the original proposal, 60-40, was the 40 contingent on achieving a milestone or a goal or EBITDA goal or a remedy goal?
Speaker 3Yeah, it was. I can't remember. It was pretty vague. I don't even think that was the first LOI. And their LOI was very thin. And I remember I pushed back, I think we negotiated for maybe six to eight weeks just on the LOI, because I wanted to know my salary, my co-founder's salary. I went really into detail to the point where the acquirer started getting pretty mad at me and being like, do we really want to do this? But I was like, I want it locked in before we go exclusive, you know, before I sign this thing. So it was, I think the initial one just said 60%. 60, 40. And it was like, to be, you know, pending milestones that we discuss. It was something like that. And so then I came out and said, I'm not doing profit milestones. I'm not doing revenue milestones, you know, and that was my demand. And so during the LOI, I think we started saying, well, how about like some features that you launch? So it was because of software, right? So it was like a couple of, well, I don't know what kind of milestones we would call those, but like feature, like product milestones, maybe. That's what it wound up. There were two. And then even by the time, trying to think if I specced it out, I think I specced it out during the negotiation. After the LOI, I literally went through and did a software spec. It was like eight pages of all the bullets and every button and everything that would be it. And that was in the APA of exactly what we have to build. Just define APA. Or the asset purchase agreement. So as folks who listen to your show know, you can have a stock purchase agreement or you can sell just the assets. So stock is when they buy the... Basically the ownership of the whole company. Ours was an asset purchase agreement.
Speaker 2Got it. That's helpful. And so they started off with vague milestones to be determined. I'm so glad you didn't sign that. I know. I know. But then you got down to 60-20-20 tied to product release, achieving the product release milestones effectively.
Speaker 3Right. Like building some features. And we set it up where my co-founder was the lead developer. And I said the first. Product feature, I said, how long do you think you could build this just you? Like, if it was you and a laptop in a room, he's like, about three weeks. And I said, great, we'll do that for the 12 months. You know, it was that type of thing. I was trying. I mean, it's negotiation, right? And there's nothing nefarious about it, but I didn't want any milestones, to be honest. And that was that was what we were doing.
Speaker 2Yeah. And did you ever get a sense of the motivation of the acquirer to to include milestones as opposed to having you, you know, paying you 100% off? 100%. Was it to keep you or was it in most, you know, in some cases it's because they don't want to pay the value you want until the profit goals are met or revenue goals are met? It doesn't sound like that was their motivation. What did you learn about it?
Speaker 3Yeah, that's a really good question, because the acquirer had raised $38 million in venture and they were doing, I don't know, $25, $30 million in annual recurring revenue at the time. So they were like, they had money, they had cash to spend. And they were much less worried about us. They were more worried about us generating revenue or profit, because in the venture game it really is, I guess revenue is important, but like profit wasn't wasn't the issue. They really wanted to acquire us as the team and they put a lot of value on me and my co-founder because we had built one of the we had basically bootstrapped one of the best marketing automation tools in the world. Frankly, we were in the top ten and we bootstrapped it and the nine ahead of us had raised between 50 and 300 million dollars. And so we were this anomalous, like two of us are pretty good at this, you know. And so they really they wanted to keep us around for years. I mean, that was the motivation. And they wanted us to contribute both to their org and continuing to contribute to Drip internally. The product milestones, I remember at one point saying, hey, why don't we just make it a time, just make it 18 months, like and that's it if you want to keep us around. And one of them brought up a good point, which was it was a COO at the time. And I think he said, well, then you could just come in and just phone it in and just show up every day and not do anything. And I was like, you know what, I'm not going to do that, but that's fair. Like, I did see his point. There was something they had to have some guarantee to and they have a board and they had to show I'm sure they showed the APA and I bet the board said you have to time to something so they don't just show up every day and sip coffee like you're in the office, you know?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And your co-founder had the same deal, 60/20/20.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, I was the majority, like the super majority owner of of equity, but we were it was all just one lump. It was one APA. We were the two key people. The key man or key people, as we say. So we it was tied to both of us. What I hadn't thought about is we got like six months in and we were both kind of unhappy. And I thought, you know what, if he leaves, I think we both lose the rest of the money. That wouldn't be good. And I had never thought to put. Yeah, that was probably one. I didn't have many kind of oversights or things that I missed, you know, during the APA process. I was super meticulous to the point of it not being fun. But that was probably the one that I remember being like, man, he could really screw me, but he was like my best friend. And so he was. He was willing to stick it out.
Speaker 2So overall, a positive experience, it sounds like you.
Speaker 3Yeah. Hit the milestone. The features. Yep. We got a hundred percent of that. Correct. Yeah. And we actually stayed for almost two years. I stayed after the run out, which is unusual, but I was there for 22, 23 months. We did. You know what? There was one piece tied to uptime that I think we literally lost like I don't I don't even know, a tenth of a percent of the purchase price or some like minuscule number, you know, probably tens of thousands of dollars, which sounds like a lot. But in the scheme of things, it wasn't. But there was something about uptime and I don't even remember all of what it was and I don't even remember why we put up to him. And but yeah, so it was tied to these two features and having the site reliability basically just being up. So I would say we got ninety nine point, you know, eight percent of the purchase price.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Uptime being kind of software lingo for the sites available and available and serving customers. All that. Yeah. Got it. Well, that's super helpful, Rob. Why don't we go to Garrett? What what was your experience like to remind us of the business and sort of how how your exit all went down?
Speaker 4Yeah, sure. Happy to. We could have used Rob on our team, I think. So we were a company is Averis. I was one of the co-founders and we bootstrapped it as well. And we were a drug discovery service company. We'd help big companies discover their drugs, making specifically antibodies. And we sold in twenty twenty one when biotech was booming right after we'd contributed to a number of different COVID vaccines and our our figures are public so I can share them with you. We were bought by a public company. So our deal was one hundred. $150 million upfront, and then a $40 million earn out on top of that. And the earn out was entirely based on revenue. And, you know, Rob's earn out sounds like it went great. And mine went really poorly. We got to the way that it was structured with a $40 million earn out. And we needed to achieve 75% of our projections to pay the earn out. And ultimately, what happened is we got within we're within 1% we're at 99% of our revenue to pay out a $40 million earn out. And they said, you didn't reach it and refuse to pay it and refused to give us the accounting behind it because we were within an accounting error type payout for big money. And they kind of just dared us to sue them. Ultimately, we didn't sue them. It was a regret of mine at this point, because now enough time has passed that that's not worth it. And so yeah, so our deal was so I was like 20% of the deal was in earn out and the other 20% was rollover, which they also did not give us in like the nastiest way they could come across. But this is a burn out.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, talk to me about that. So you said 20%. So so 100. So let me see if I get the numbers right. 150 million sale price on top of that there was 40 million available or $190 million deal. That was the $190 million. That's how so then of the so the 40 was tied to an earn out or am I correct in saying 20 of the 40 was an earn out and 20 of the 40 was an equity.
Speaker 4So yeah, these get complicated. And john, you do a good job in your podcast, making it clear for 40 million was the dollar amount for the earn out. So then up to 150 upfront, if you will, just all paid in stock is an all stock deal. 20% of my take home and everyone's take home was rollover, which was I needed to stay for. a year to earn half that and two years to earn the full rollover. And they terminated my employment contract at 11 and a half months in the nastiest way they could. So
Speaker 2So, okay, so they terminated your employment agreement. And so you didn't have the choice to stay at that point you were
Speaker 411 and a half months in four things that I said about six weeks after they bought us. Wow. And so what did you say? I said things in email that I just shouldn't have put in email. And they also went back into, you know, they owned our email, they owned our slack. So they found slacks that were internal slacks that I'd written while we were in diligence, while we were on calls, and they were asking us questions that I thought were stupid questions from people who didn't know what they were doing. They had their it team go back and find our slacks and use that as reason to fire me, you know, 18 months after those slacks were sent, it was, it didn't end well between us and find our slacks. And so it was a life changing deal. For me, I walked away with a totally life changing outcome, having founded and bootstrapped the company. But it's a it's a cautionary lesson for people who think that they're going to get the money from their earnouts or their rollovers, because it's not entirely in your control, even if you get really, really close, or maybe we did actually hit it.
Speaker 2I can hear I can see Rob sitting on his hands. He's dying to ask questions. Go.
Speaker 3This is killing me. Oh, my gosh. So but just to clarify, was the 150? Was it you say it was all? All stock? It was all stock and their public company. So you were able to sell some of that stock and get cash out.
Speaker 4Yeah, I was tied. Personally, I owned more than half of the business, which was great. I was tied. I had to wait 18 months to sell most of mine and the stock precipitated pretty soon. It was $118 when they bought us and I sold a lot of my stock at $18, which was a pretty bad move because right now the stock is well above that. So anyway, even though we made a series of poor decisions in how I liquidated my shares, life changing outcome. But yeah, no, it's still I'm like less mad now. But for a long time, I was very, very mad. That's just didn't seem like it was how it should work. And now I've coached hundreds. I spent the past few years coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs, wrote a book about my experience, like, and so I love helping people think about how to structure that and how to protect themselves. Rob, it sounds like you were much more, you know, it wasn't your first exit, you knew how to protect yourself. Far better. That was my first exit. And those were very expensive mistakes. So hope to help some others.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, that's what today's all about. So that's, that's helpful, Garen, for sure. So let's just talk about the, the, the employment agreement. So you had an agreement that said, I, I'm, if I stay employed for a period of time, I will that will basically unlock this additional tranche of equity. And that employment was kind of a one way deal. And so you had to show up. But, but that didn't mean they didn't have the rights to fire you. Right? They could, presumably they could have, if they had fired you without cause, like under normal circumstances, they would have had to pay that, I'm assuming. But since it was for cause, which, depending on the legal jurisdiction you're in, like, I'm in Ontario, and like, you basically have to shoot someone for, for it to be cause. It's like there is the, the, the bar for firing someone for cause is astronomical. It would never, like saying something negative in a Slack channel would never meet the bar in Ontario. But Garen, where are you located? What city? I mean, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Okay. So the bar must be somewhere.
Speaker 4Definitely lower than Canada. Got it. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And look, my lawyers were like, let's go. Let's go. They're daring us to sue them. Let's go. And at that point, like, I was extremely burnt out running a business for eight years, a year worth of work. Working for people that I had no respect for and disliked going to work every day. And then I was like, I'm out. Like, if I spend the next two years spending millions in litigation to potentially get the money, maybe that's a financially right decision. But for me, I'm going to just have this negative energy for the next 18 months. Yeah. Looking back, maybe I should have just bucked up. And my lawyer was like, get a therapist and let's go to court. And I was like, I'm, I'm going to spend a year on my boat, man. I know.
Speaker 2Get a therapist. Get a therapist and go to court.
Speaker 4Easy for him to say. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2A thousand dollars an hour or whatever. I don't know. He'd make millions. Just one, like, clarifying point. So with regards to the, the, the timing of your liquidation of your stock, had you gotten liquid enough by that point to finance the legal action? Should you have taken it? Like, had you, had you like, like, you know, sold enough stock that you had enough money to finance the litigation?
Speaker 4Definitely. Yeah. I mean. If you chose to. Yeah. And more than half of the business. I write about this in my book. Like I should have made 60 to 80 million dollars. I walked away with like 20 million dollars, which you could be really mad because I left 60 million on the table or to realize that that's enough money for me not have to work again and change my life and the life of everyone around me that I love. And so it's a great outcome. And yeah, I could be mad, but like we had an exceptional outcome. And so could I have spent two million dollars to take them to court? Absolutely. Would that have been worth it for me? Probably not. I'm glad that I did.
Speaker 2But it is one thing for our listeners to remember that if they are given a good size cash upfront payment for their business, there is a disincentive for the acquirer to screw around like you're describing because they just written a giant check to you so that you know you have enough money to take them to court if that's what you choose. Whereas if you're downstroke, if your cash payment upfront is. So small that they know that even if they totally screw you on the earn out, you're not going to take them to court. You just don't have the money to do it in a material way. It's another reason to try to get as much cash, obviously, up front so that the acquirer knows you could sue them if you had the appetite for that.
Speaker 4That's a cool way to think about it. I had not thought about it that way. I just think about it like if you're going to sell your business, you need to get whatever you get up front has to be enough. Whatever else comes, it's really not out of your control. Rob, you're talking about your co-founder had the potential to leave like that's not in your control. And so you just have to be OK with whatever you got up front is what I generally coach people going through an exit.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. Let's turn our attention to some of that advice. I think it's fair to say and I've got some stats that we do assessments with business owners. I've got some stats around this idea that I think just a third of business owners say they'd be open to it. I've got some stats around this idea that I think just a third of business owners say they'd be open to an exit. Like it's a very low minority of business owners that say they'd be open to, excuse me, an earn out in an exit. Yet for a lot of acquirers, it's kind of a mandatory thing. They want to lock you in or they want to make sure that you bridge the gap between what you want as the seller and what they want to pay. So they're very common tool that that that acquirers use. So I think it's fair to say all of our listeners will not want an earn out and many of them will have to deal with the spectrum. So let's talk about that. Rob, maybe maybe you could start. I know through TinySeed, you've you've invested in hundreds, I think, of businesses. This question must come up a ton for your and the people you invest in. What's your general sort of advice around earn outs?
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. I'm invested in 241 mostly SaaS companies. The general advice is, look, if you're if you're selling for parts, you're selling just the tech and you're going to walk away. Usually that's a six figure exit for us, for my type of company. It's like, yeah, you're probably not going to have an earn out if you're selling for net profit. multiples in our world, because SaaS usually sells for revenue, you might be able to walk away within a few months. But generally, you're going to have an earn out. Like that's what I tell people. If you were having a great exit, if this is a high seven figure, eight figure exit or higher, because we've had entrepreneurs sell anywhere between 3 million and almost 50 million in cash. And they're mostly all cash deals. You're generally going to have one. So that's the first thing I say. They do want you as the founder. That's one of your superpowers is that you bring that. The rule of thumb that I tell folks is, you know, if you were to sell to Facebook or Google or a big name like Fang, I know it's not Fang anymore, but a big name company, you're probably going to have about a three year. They usually the standard there is a three year lock in. If you're selling to a lesser known company like I did, you're looking at two years. And if you can get it down to 18 months, probably doing pretty well. And then I talk about milestones of the way you're selling. And I talk about the way you're selling. And I talk about the way you're selling. And I talk about the way you're selling. And I talk about the way you're selling. And I I've heard of our profit milestones and slightly below that, our revenue milestones and slightly below that, our product milestones. These in terms of when I say below, I mean, these are a little better for you. And then slightly below that is no milestone. It's just a ticking clock. And so that's what I basically say is like, I would never do profit milestone because you're not in control of that. And I would really struggle with revenue milestones because what if they fire my entire team and it's just me and one other person trying to hit these revenue milestones? But yeah, they can screw with you, right? So that's my general, that's like the two minute version of the first advice I give founders who are thinking about selling.
Speaker 2Aaron, you were nodding. What was it that Rob said that you?
Speaker 4Yeah, well, I just wish I'd done so much more differently. One of the things that my buyer did was to take, I was a CEO for my company for the first six years. And then I put Tracy in as our CEO. She was exceptional. She was like, Michael Jordan for the bills, like for the bulls, you could. The best player on the team, like far and away MVP. And six weeks after they bought us, they took her out of our organization, had her move across the country to run another portion of their organization because their COO resigned. And I threw a hissy fit. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, we have to hit our earn out and you just took away our best player. She drives most of our revenue. And they were kind of like, nah, we can do it. Doesn't say we can't. And I continued to push. They were like, all right, well then. Technically, she's still in charge of that, but she's mostly in charge of this $100 million new facility we're building. And so I was like, what a doofus thing for me to do. I just agreed to a deal where they could pretty much take our best player and take her off the team and go. And they made a number of decisions that were just terrible decisions that may have just may have been altruistic or may have been deliberate to make sure that we don't hit the earn out. Who knows? We also had no right to see our reporting. Like according to our revenue numbers, we hit the number. And according to their revenue numbers, we didn't hit the number. And I didn't have the right to see that, their numbers. It's like, how stupid of me to agree to that deal. But in the time with everything moving, it was like, well, of course, there's going to be a number. Like, how can my numbers say we hit it and their numbers say we didn't hit it and I don't get to see their numbers? Like, that's a mistake.
Speaker 2Garrett, just go further a little bit for folks. Again, our listeners, you know, they're about to get their first letter of intent. They've never seen the language that's associated with an earn out. And so they'll be looking at it for the first time. It may come as a shock or surprise to them to learn that they no longer control their bookkeeping and accounting, which is how you know what your sales are, basically. Just walk through, like, why that is. Like, what was it in the language in your deal that that it forced you to lose control over the reporting function?
Speaker 4Good question. So the way they recognized revenue was very different. And so in the contract, it just said revenue. We needed to hit whatever, 20 million in revenue or whatever the number was. And we would recognize revenue more quickly than they recognized revenue. So we had a six-month project. Most of the value is done in the first three months. Most of the billing is the last three months. The last three months of the project is just like tiddly stuff, as we're getting stuff out of the freezer and shipping it to them. So we would recognize the revenue kind of as there was value by phase, if you will. There was a value in each phase. They decided pretty late on in the year to change the way they were recognizing our revenue to backload a lot of it. And they took a lot of our revenue. So like in the year, they took a lot of the stuff from the end of the year and put it off to next year. And in the beginning of the year, they took a bunch of revenue. Right after the deal closed, we did a ton of revenue. And they said, you know what? We're going to recognize this as revenue for the year past, the year before. So they did very, they did the, it's a legitimate way to do accounting. I'm not trying to say there was anything fraudulent or anything, but they just chose the least favorable way to count revenue for us as possible. And then wouldn't let us see it. So I would be very particular about not just saying hit this revenue number, but exactly how revenue is going to be calculated and to make sure that we have some sort of, it would have been great to fight a monthly report. If on a monthly basis or quarterly basis, they were like, here's where you're at. And then we could have talked about it along the way, instead of being like at the end. And they, we thought we hit it and they thought we didn't. And, and I had no real recourse to go back. I would have had to, it would have cost me millions of legal dollars for me to even get to see their accounting basis. And that's something that could have been avoided with proper wording up front. What that wording is, I don't know, ask your lawyer, but those are, those are issues that can be, can be avoided.
Speaker 2Good point. None of us are lawyers. I'm a call to my knowledge. I don't think you've got a legal degree, Rob, did you? No, none of us are lawyers. So don't take any of this for legal advice. Please get a good lawyer, but it's good to know at least at a strategic level, what are some of the issues? One of the things though, if I'm reading between the lines, Garen, is that you lost control of the accounting. So when you were an interviewer, you were an interviewer, you were an interviewer, you did your own accounting, you had an accountant, and then when you were a division of another company, they did the accounting. And that's a, that's a fundamental difference in most acquisitions that you lose control of the accounting function. Rob, you're nodding.
Speaker 3Have you had experience with that as well? Yeah, it was the same with us, but it didn't matter, right? Because the revenue, like, I still cared, but I didn't have a vested interest. I
Speaker 2And your, your big draw, though, was the ability to release these product features. And then what you came to realize later was, oh, geez, like, I'm pretty confident my co-founder can, can release them if he wants to. But if, if he leaves, or if they were to fire him, or make life so egregious that he left on his own accord, that would have risked or put at risk potentially, year or now.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. We also, like Garen, we had, it was with cause. It had to be, with cause. They couldn't just let us go. But I don't, and I don't know, I just moved to Minnesota that literally for the deal. So I don't know what cause is here, how hard it is to, you know, to get or prove cause. One thing I want to jump in with is I think we, they made it pretty, they made it really good for us. Like, they liked us as people. They liked what we were doing with the product. They respected us. They gave us all the resources we needed. They wanted us to be successful. It almost sounds like Garen's relationship was the opposite. Like, on, on all fronts. And I think one of the ways, I don't know if it's, if it's a size thing, but like we were 10 people, the acquirer was 180 people. So I dealt directly with the CEO and the COO the whole time and the CFO during the deal. And we closed, they were the ones who had made, you know, there were some verbal things that just, you can't put in a contract, like that were just not in the contract about, Hey, I was like, I think we're going to hire like five engineers in the next year. I need the resources to do that. They're like, yeah, no problem. Whatever. You can hire 10. Like they were just like, let's go, let's go. That kind of give us a nice office space and to give us all the resources we needed. I don't take that for granted. I know that not every acquisition happens like that. And, and I, again, I don't know if it's the public company versus the 180 person startup or what it, or if they're just, they were just ethical, nice people and genuinely wanted, you know, the deal to, to go well, but that was it. It also wasn't $40 million of an earn out, right? It was a much smaller number on the, you know, the 20 and the 20% that we got, but they just, I remember at one point saying, you know, you, you guys could screw me. You could screw us. I said, that's one of them. And the CFO is like, we wouldn't do that. You know that. And it was a trip. It was like, we had a relationship. Like they were just ethical, good people. We hung out, had happy hours on weekends. Like, so it was a very different, maybe a Cinderella story for an earn out. You know what I mean? Like in terms of it.
Speaker 4That's a, that's, I was a 40 person company. They're a thousand person company. I never met the CEO. Not once in all of the diligence did the CEO come out? Not until the deal was closed. And I just assumed that we would be welcomed into the organization. I just lost the politics game. I'd never been part of a company that big. I'm a founder. I like the, frankly, 50 people was a little big for me. I liked it when it was little. And so as soon as we joined, I was like, oh my goodness, the sales team, like we'd been the company who bought us, we were just like crushing them for deals left and right. So I was like, all right, we're going to teach you how to do better deals. And the whole organization is going to do better. And I like went into this collaborative nature. And what I realized was that I was going to do better deals. And I was going to do better just like the other people on the commercial team who my team was joining, just wanted to crush us politically like like i didn't even realize that there was politics going on until we'd absolutely lost the politics game so 18 months on our entire sales team had quit and left so like we we were just pushed out they we didn't i didn't confirm what our commission plan would be and our people went from getting almost half their comp from commission to an impossible commission plan and so our sales people lost 40 to 50 percent of their compensation the first day that we were bought and like why would you do that like they would me pushing back on that and giving my commission to the team was one of the reasons that i was ultimately fired for later on i did that very publicly in a way that i probably shouldn't have but there you go so the politics and the people are really important rob i think you point to an important thing there
Speaker 2but that's actually a really interesting insight because rob in your case you're you're the the acquirer in your case was run by a group of entrepreneurs venture-backed it had entrepreneurial instincts and entrepreneurial sort of genes the gene pool was very entrepreneurial it sounds like in guarantee your case it was very corporate and and and and you did not have a direct relationship and that's really interesting like corporations if you just think by their very nature are run by managers who run by playbooks and they, there's T's and C's and things are, this is the play. This is what it says. This is, we're going to agree to. And, and you can see how, how those, those worlds are so different. It's a really interesting insight. I had never sort of reflected on it before.
Speaker 3Yeah. I would have lost the politics game too, Garen. That, I mean, it's just like, you don't know how to function in an org that big. I mean, in our, our, you know, our company, whatever was one 80 plus 10. So I think we were on one 90 when we got acquired. And I remember being like, whoa, there's a little bit of politics here, but the founder, this founder and CEO who acquired us was really trying to keep them. He didn't want any politics. He wanted a very flat org. And I think that that made it a more amenable. It was still culture shock. Oh my Lord, getting acquired and being suddenly being in a Slack with 180 people. It was like running through water. It was like, we, I need to talk to six people to get a decision. And they were, and they were a good org. Like they were well run, but it's just, it's just the more people, the more connection points and all that.
Speaker 2So really good point. Let's, let's turn our attention to surviving and earn out. So as I said in the beginning, the reality is in particular for service businesses and, and Rob, your case for, you know, larger SaaS companies are going to sell to one of the big enterprise SaaS companies. They're going to have an earn out of some description. And I'd love to know your advice to them for surviving, not necessarily achieving, because that's going to be very dependent on whatever they signed up for profit, revenue, whatever, but surviving the 18 months to three years as a employee in an earn out situation. What, what tips and tricks do you have for folks in that situation?
Speaker 3I mean, I think that there's a couple of things. Number one, and it's going to sound like I'm joking, get a therapist, be in therapy. Like I, it, you are going to have some tough times. I don't know of anyone like we had the Cinderella story earn out. We had a great earn out. They, they treat us very well. And it was still massively stressful and difficult for me to, to give my company, not give it, I guess, sell it to that to merge it in and to not be in control of stuff. Like I, I, I maintained product and engineering, but everything else support and sales and marketing, all of that I gave away. And I knew that was coming. They told me that upfront, but it was still way hard. I had literally written every line of copy, like it was on the website and all that. And so it was all my voice. And for them to take it over, which they told me they do was still difficult. So for me to have someone to talk to, that was not, not my co-founder and not my spouse was really, really helpful. I was actually in therapy twice a week at that point, which I was like, well, I guess I have the money to do this now. So that was, it's helpful to have something to vent and have someone to level set you of like, Hey, you know what? Because there are certain things it's like, you should fight, you should push back. That's, that's not okay. And other things where it's just like, you, you're just stressful and it's hard to give up a company. Right. So a level set there. The other thing is something that a good friend of mine is named Ruben. He's the founder of a sign. Well, electronic signature, he, we've been friends for 15 years. And he said, cause I was saying, man, this is going to be so tough. It's going to be so hard. It's I'm working for, I hate working for big companies. I, it's going to be like prison time, whatever. I was making all these analogies. And he said, you know what? What are you going to learn while you're there? Because they're better at some stuff than you are. And I was like, what a way to flip the question. And so I went into it. Then once we got acquired, I was in there with these, you know what? They were so good at marketing. They're one of the, they were one of the best SaaS marketing, marketing teams that I knew that existed. So I would just hang out with the marketing people and they welcome me in. I'd say how you, cause they were way, I thought I was a marketer. No, no, no. I was solidly mediocre. I was a good five or six out of 10. They were legit. They knew what they were doing. They had a 40 person marketing team out of a, you know, at a total of 180 people, a lot of marketing. I learned from them. I learned operations. I learned strategy. Like I then started saying, well, what am I going to learn to carry me to whatever I do next? And that became my goal is to actually not just look at it as serving time, but look at it as how can I, how can I better myself realistically and learn skills from people who are actually better at this stuff than I am.
Speaker 5Yeah. What, what, what's your reflection as you hear Rob talk about that?
Speaker 4It's just so positive. And I, it's, I'll, I'll share my new thing.
Speaker 2Twice a week therapy basically gets you, buddy.
Speaker 4Yeah. Instead of, I'm going to try to just share my experience instead of my advice. And that was similar to what Rob was saying. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it wasn't my business anymore, but I didn't make that mental transition. It took me like months. So like, they'd be like, Oh, we're going to, the marketing team's going to report to someone in Oregon and the sales team's going to report to someone in California and the finance teams in Colorado. And I was like, Hey, that doesn't make any sense. And they'd be like, no, this is my call. Or I remember one meeting where we flew a whole team together and they were vastly underpricing their services. And there was like something that we sold to. And I was like, Hey, we need to change this pricing. This is like way holding us back from us to be able to hit our earn out. And someone was like, Oh, well, the board stated that that's how that should be. Do you? And I was like, Oh, well we should, but we should change it. And they were like, do you really guarantee you really think, you know, better than the board? And I was like, well, honestly, I've looked at the bio of everyone on the board. I've got way more experience in this than any of them, but yeah. And I was like, next day I was hauled into my boss's office who didn't show up to that meeting. It was like, I heard you were disparaging. The board and a meeting yesterday. I was like, well, what a mess. And I just assumed that I was dealing with nice people or people that like, I just should have expected to be screwed. Here's another thing you were talking, John, about how I got fired for cause. It was more than just what I said. They, uh, they got me on job abandonment, which was kind of wild. My boss told me in my one-on-ones just verbally, I went back and tried to find it stupid. I didn't have it in writing. He was like, Garen, should we please stop coming to the office? Like we're going to go to this new management here. I was like pretty angry. It'd be more productive. If you just like just work from home. So I worked from home, but it was a company policy. Now that I'm part of this massive company that everyone needed to be in the office. And so they, they got me on job abandonment when I finally fired me for cause. And I went back through my emails and I didn't have an email from him to prove that he told me to work from home. What a stupid thing for me to do. I also was having major mental health issues. Like I've had a lot of mental health issues. I probably should have been with a therapist. If I had just told HR that I was having mental health issues, they couldn't have fired me for that stuff. Like if me assuming that they were nice people on my team was, was stupid. That's that I could have, it's not my company. I don't have to weigh in on all this stuff anymore. If they want to do silly stuff, it's not mine. It's not my call. And I should have expected them to not be good actors. I'd be in a much better place today.
Speaker 2So interesting. And here's what, the thing I'd love to get your read on.
Speaker 5I wrote a blog post about this maybe a year or two ago, but
Speaker 2for a seat for a founder to reach the point that you all reached in your businesses, at least a million dollars in, in ARR, in your case, Rob, a couple of million dollars in ARR. I think that the proportion of people that are able to achieve a couple of million dollars of ARR bootstrapped in the SAS world must be less than one. Would you agree? It's a very, very small universe. In your case, Garen, what was your top line revenue when you sold? 12 million. 12 million. So to get, so I think it's 4% reach a million. To get to 10 million, it must be less than 1% of all entrepreneurs ever get to. So if you think about your own worlds, you're probably Olympic level entrepreneurs. Very rare, very unusual skill set to get to where you are. For everyone, Garen, at 20, 12 million, there's probably a thousand or 5,000, you know, people with the Subway sub franchise, not trying to disparage Subway sub, but you know what I mean? Like that's, it's a very different level that you're playing at. You've reached the Olympic level, the elite level of your game. And then compare that with a director of marketing, a manager of facilities, a VP finance, and they're at the good level of the corporate hierarchy in the, in the, in the, in the sort of business world. Business world, right? They're not a senior vice president. They're not a president. They're not a CEO. They're not on the board. They're like, rank and file. Yet in some cases, you're all of a sudden reporting to someone who you're not actually, you don't think of them as a peer. You think of them head to head, you could beat them. You're an athlete, Rob. Like you probably had the experience of running for a boss or doing track for a coach who you know you could run faster for. Like you head to head right now, let's go. If you want to teach me how to run, let's go. I'll show you how fast I could run. That's the sort of vibe that I get for a lot of entrepreneurs. Like head to head, I could do your job five times better than you do. And you're telling me what to do? Are you kidding me? Yeah, that I worked with,
Speaker 3I want to say I appreciated the team. I liked everybody I worked with at the, at the Acquire. But within weeks, my co-founder and I was like, do you realize that we really know what we're doing here? And most, most of the people here don't. They are employees of a company. Yeah, most of them. And you're right. There were some, the C-level folks that I worked with knew more about some things than I did. But for sure, if you haven't been a founder, that's a, that's an incredibly unique skill set. And I've tried to figure out a way to communicate that without sounding disparaging. You know, not even just an, yeah, well, I appreciate you saying it because you don't have anything to lose, right? I, I, but, but I have had this conversation with founders who've been acquired and, and asked them like, so is it interesting to see how good you actually are? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to assume you can deal with the politics and navigate it. And like, you're not completely unemployable because there are some entrepreneurs that are just unemployable, right? But put them aside. If you are a high functioning person, an entrepreneur, a founder, and you come into an org like that, you could probably work at about 50% capacity and be better than most, almost everyone around you. It is very, yeah, that, oh, that's the other thing. Actually, that's another piece of advice someone gave me. They said, back off a little bit. Like you don't own the company anymore. Don't, don't half-ass it. Cause I don't do that. That's not a thing that I, I don't even have that gear, the half-ass gear, but he was like, work 80%, 75, 70, just something, just work a little less, care a little less. It was hard for me, but that was, that was actually helpful. It helped me cause I was burned out similar to you, Garen. And it helped me start to get through that and be like, okay, I'm maybe not going to check email and Slack all weekend, all the time. Like when I owned the company, maybe I'm going to shut it off for like 12 hours or 24 hours, you know, on my vacation that became helpful. And even if I got a little bit of flack for it later on from someone, I'm not going to shut it off for like 12 hours or 24 hours, you know, on my vacation. It was like, but it doesn't matter. Like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4It's like this crazy change of gears too. If we're going to be a successful entrepreneur, it probably means you're bootstrapping as we have, like that is way harder path. It means you're working way harder than probably everyone around you. And then you have to go up a gear cause now you're selling the business. Now you're in diligence. Now you have to run and scale a company and sell it on the side. I've never worked harder. And my process was like almost a whole year. And then you sell the business to someone else and you have to step back like a couple of years. And I, I'm not good at this to keep my mouth shut when people are making decisions that I wouldn't make cause that's their decision. And so that's a major, major change. It takes like I asked after we sold the company, I asked for a week off and my answer was, I'm sorry, you're a new employee. You'll be earning one and a half days a month of vacation time. You actually have zero vacation time. And I flipped them off and said, I'm going on a two week vacation, which was another thing added to my fired for cause of like, I can't, what do you mean? I don't have any vacation time. My company has been unlimited
Speaker 2vacation the whole time. Like, man, it's so true that you learn 1.5 days a month. And so you can take him, you can take him, you know, a week off and next. It's interesting because I gotta go back to this, this sort of parallel, but for better, for worse, and I know we're all into like product and people and, but at the end of the day, I think most entrepreneurs, at least on some level use money as a measuring stick. Like at some level, there is a way to measure the success of a business person and it is money. We're not all philanthropic, charitable creatures. And, and, and, and when, when you have an exit, you all of a sudden have a worth put on your head effectively. Like in your case, it was 150. $50 million. I think about that per second, $150 million. So let's, let's put the fortune 500 companies aside because the CEOs of fortune 500 companies make an enormous amount of money. And that's a different stratosphere, but for most sort of companies in America, if you're making a million dollars a year as the CEO, you're like, that's a huge salary, right? And someone's just written a check for 150 times that. So it goes to reason that, you know, it stands to reason as least in case your, your case care that you're, you're like, I'm 150 times smarter than you. And you're talking to the CEO, not the COO or the VP marketing or the director marketing or the manager marketing. Like you're 150 in your own, in your own mind, there's a tendency to have that calculation because you're like, yeah, yeah. Like I just got a check for 150 million bucks. You make a million a year and you're going to tell me what to do. Are you
Speaker 4going to say it? Yeah. That's yeah. And you still have to shut up and listen to what they tell you
Speaker 2to do. And I'm not suggesting for a second that money is the only currency and we should all be focused exclusively on money. I'm just saying the reason I think entrepreneurs tend to be hard to employ. One of the reasons we are hard to employ is someone just wrote a giant check to us. And if we measure ourselves on some level by compensation, we can look at the people we work with and go, you're not even in the same league. I will admit that
Speaker 3going into the acquisition, being acquired, I remember thinking they know a lot more about all this stuff than I do because they have venture funding and they're a legit company and they're 180 employees. And I was kind of self-deprecating. Both my founder and I are like, I just say relatively humble people. And I was like, I don't know. I'm just a guy who boots. I write about things and I podcast and I start companies, but I don't really know what I'm doing. That's how that's my mindset going into it and getting in there. I was like, oh, no, we are actually exceptional at what we do. I didn't think about the money thing, but it makes it does make sense the way you're running it. And I was like, oh, no, we are actually exceptional at what we do.
Speaker 2You're framing it, John. As I frame it, do you like when you hear that you go off the reservation here? He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Or do you think like in your own mind,
Speaker 3do you do you do you agree on some level on that? I certainly agree that to be a founder, and this is one of the reasons that an earn out is so. This is one of the reasons why an acquirer wants the founders or the execs to stay on is because we are like unicorns. We are so rare and so unique. And you can't like at some point I was going to leave. I could have moved for after a year. I could have moved to a consulting role and still got my is what it said. No one reported to me that was just written in the contract. And as we approached the year, they were talking about who to replace me with. And I was in some of those conversations and they were just like pulling their hair out because they're like, well, no one can do all the things that I do, because as a founder, you do everything. So I was running the agency, engineering team. I was running the product team. I would help with like a little bit with dabbling in marketing and then customer success would come and ask me advice, because guess what? I did customer success and marketing and product and, you know, all this stuff. I mean, with my co-founder and all that, but like nobody does that in the corporate world. And so you're and if you're good enough, you don't even I would say, you know, Jack or Jill of all trades, master of none. But guess what? As a founder, even if you do five things, you probably do them better than most people that are even.
Speaker 4I agree. And I think that we should expect them to replace you. And I didn't really realize this going into the process. I think it's a first time founder thing where I was like, I'm so good at this. They should acknowledge that I'm so good at this and they should want me here. And that kind of led to me being less humble than maybe I should have been. And, you know, after selling, I was invited to this dinner. It's in Boston, best restaurant in Boston. You had to have sold a business for more than $100 million to be invited to this dinner. And the guy sitting across from me was at a major private equity company. You would know the name and we're not going to talk about it. But like my $190 million exit's like small. That's like a fundraising round for them. I was like, I have to ask you, it's like after a couple of bottles of wine went around, it's like when you buy a business, how often are you expecting to replace the founders? And he did not miss a beat. He answered immediately, said 100% of the time. It's just a matter of when. I want someone in that company that works for me, that I trust, ideally with some gray hair and the other VCs and PEs around the table. And oh yeah, oh yeah, every single time. Like it's just a question of whether it's immediately or whether it's like soon after. And I was blown away because as a founder, I'd never expected them to have this plan going on to replace me. And so that's, that's just a difference in perspective. Now that's a difference in perspective. Now I don't expect them to be on a path to replace me, even though they say we want you here. And it sounds like Rob, you had a great experience. In the back of their mind, they're looking to replace you. And so that's a, that's, that's a helpful mindset as you navigate things post-exit or, or during, while you're, while you're negotiating your deal.
Speaker 2That's really fascinating. I, I, I, I knew it was relatively high, but I'd never thought, and I actually have never really thought about the reason that they would want to to replace you other than just performance, but just the loyalty, right? I want my own people that I've recruited that have loyalty 100% to me. That's interesting. What advice would you all have for acquirers? I know this show is not about acquiring a business, but we do have some acquirers listening. And it might, in a fun way, sort of give entrepreneurs some semblance of what they should negotiate for. But if you had an acquirer in front of you, and they were asking for your advice, like, how do I structure this to keep this entrepreneur around, to bottle what you talked about, Rob, the kind of unicorn, fairy dust, whatever the description is, without having it blow up in my face?
Speaker 5What advice would you give an acquirer? I think that I'll go first. Sure.
Speaker 4I think that people... People get lost in deals, and that everything's very financial, and that... Like, to realize that the founder who just ran their business is probably pretty beat down. And a founder who just ran their business and made it through an intensive diligence process is probably at the end of their rope. Like, Rob, you're right. Every founder who goes through that diligence process should be in therapy. And what I needed... I'll just speak from my experience. What I needed when that was done was two... Two weeks off. And I needed them to say, like, good job, and thank you, and recharge, and come back. And they were like, F you, Garen. I just paid $150 million for your company, and you're going to take off for two weeks? Absolutely not. You're going to be at your desk every day, because I want to get my value out of you. Like, I'm so good at what I'm doing, and recruiting people, and keeping people engaged, that if I had a chance to reset after that deal, I could still be there today. Like...
Speaker 2Don't forget the good advice, Garen. I think that's fascinating. I've heard that before. Savvy acquirers will build in a month for the founder just to sort of reset. Now, it's not always practical or even realistic, given whatever's going on in the business. But this idea of, like, at least a cooling-off period where the earn-out doesn't start, immediately the share purchase agreement is signed. Like, there's a month for, you know, a transition for you to get your feet. That's really interesting. What would you add to that, Rob? In terms of advice for an acquirer?
Speaker 3I think the big thing is, if you're acquiring, to start to evaluate... I like what Garen said about treating people as people, rather than as deals. And it's, does this founder make sense to stay in the seat? Do they, you know, is this... And knowing that, and you may not know that on the first day. I mean, if you think about it, it's kind of like a job interview when you hire someone new. You're going to know in 30 to 60 days, usually, if they're going to work out. That's how I think about it, is if I was going to acquire a company, pay a big chunk of money and bring the founder in, I would have a gut feel as to whether this founder is going to stick around, or am I just acquiring it for the business and the team without the founder? And once I know that, I can take steps. If we're going to oust the founder, I guess be kind about this. Like, ethical and kind. And if we're not, and we're going to try to keep them around, then think more about retention. You know, think more about treating them well and helping them feel well. Which is something that my acquirer did a really good job of, asking me how I am. I remember a couple months in, after the acquisition, I was burned out. It was noticeably burned out, like everyone could tell. And the CEO pulled me aside and he said, hey, we got you this gift card. And it was for... I know, this could go in directions. It was for a cabin for like two or three nights up at the North Shore of Lake Superior here in Minnesota. And he was like, go up there, take your family, go alone. I don't care. You need to recharge. And I did. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing, right? Because he knew, they knew they wanted us around. And so they were trying to actually be humans to us. And if they knew they didn't want us around, you know, whatever, they're going to try to get rid of us. Blah, blah, blah. That's a whole other story. But that's, I like that thought of like, treat us like people.
Speaker 4As an acquirer, how do you figure that out? And I'll say that when people would ask me during diligence, like, Karen, what do you want? You want to stick around? Like, the people in my year, my bankers, my lawyers would say, Karen, here's your answer. You say, yes, I want to stick around. I want to add so much value. I want to grow your business. And in my heart, I'm saying, I want out of here. And so I just kind of had to, you know, I didn't exactly say what my lawyers told me to say. I didn't exactly tell them how I felt. So how do you figure out what someone really wants pre-deal? Or does that happen after the deal?
Speaker 3I think it happens both. I mean, I will tell you, the CEO, you know, again, I worked with the CEO, but let's say instead he was a corp dev person. Like, the CEO flew out to California and met. And was at SASTR, which is an event in San Francisco, and drove three hours to meet me at my house. And we had coffee all after. Like, we hung out for like three or four hours and just had kind of straight one. It was just he and I, nobody else. That, if I was trying to evaluate, do I want to keep this founder around? That's the kind of stuff that I would do. That makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 4It blew me away that I never met the CEO before she wrote a check for So High. And then when we did meet, it was just so brief. And it was crazy to me. Just one more deal. Again, I thought I was more. More important than, you know, maybe I was.
Speaker 3It sounds like you were just another, like, line, another agenda item. Another deal. You know, that's, it's crazy.
Speaker 4I was also the first deal they ever did. So I think they learned a lot. I was the first acquisition. So, you know, that's.
Speaker 2There's like the Garrett Halo Memorial plaque on the wall.
Speaker 4Like, never do this again. I carry some scars. I guarantee they do too. Like, no, no. Like, well, we'll all do this better next time. But if I could choose, if I was looking at two deals and they were similar deals and one was with an acquirer who's done a bunch of deals and one is a first timer, like, that would seriously play into my decision, like, to go with someone who's got some experience in doing this. Same. Yeah.
Speaker 3Mine was also the first deal they ever did.
Speaker 4Interesting.
Speaker 3Isn't that crazy? Yeah.
Speaker 2One of the things I've heard, and I'd love to get a quick reaction from both of you before we wrap, is this idea of, like, as an acquirer, you should understand why you're buying this business. And there's sort of two, I'm sure there are many, but two broad streams. Come out a lot in conversation. One is I want to integrate this company into my company. They've got a product. And Rob, it sounds like this was very much in your case. Like, they've got a product, a service, a sales team, something that I want to really infuse into my company. And if that's the case, an earn out is a disaster because you're basically, you know, especially if it's tied to profit or earnings, you're going to fight with that entrepreneur on every attempt to integrate. The second scenario. The third scenario is where you're really wanting that unit, that business, that division to operate independently and continue to grow and achieve a goal and not integrate effectively. Let them do their own thing. In which case, there's a better case perhaps for an earn out. Where it blows up is where you put a profit goal in front of an owner that you want to integrate their business. It sounds like we're sort of summarizing a couple of the themes here, but would you have it? It's just a broad strokes reaction to that idea. Integration versus sort of separate business unit.
Speaker 3Is the integration involve kind of, because I felt like we were integrated into the company and we had an earn out. And so, but our product was kept separate, right? Drip was kind of email marketing automation and lead pages was landing pages. And so, but we were absorbed. We were absorbed throughout the company. So I guess my. Sorry, go ahead. But I was going to ask, like, is the integration, would that be if they kind of. Got rid of our product and just migrated our customers over? Is that like the, because if they had done that, it would, it wouldn't have made any sense to have a milestones of, of anything, but ours, we were integrated into the company, but our products stayed separate. Interesting.
Speaker 4Interesting. I think you touched on an important thing for a buyer. Yeah. If you're gonna, if your goal is to integrate, then you can't do an earn out. Like as soon as they bought our business, we were, we were a Boston based business. They were mostly California, but as soon as they bought us, like I was in control of our sales. Yeah. And marketing team and now marketing was reporting to Northern California. Sales was reporting to Southern California. Finance was in California in another spot. Operations was in Oregon. And so like my ability to just walk over to my marketing person and change something on our website or change our pricing was now like I needed to go to the marketing person's boss who was in California, who it was, it was a nightmare for me. And so they would try to do all this integration and I'd be like, we need to hit this earn. And so the earn out was a major thorn in our side. Like everyone would have made more value out of it if we just didn't have the earn out. So I tried to convince them, just pay it, pay us a percentage of it and then do it. And then they found their own way out of the earn out.
Speaker 2I could riff with you guys for hours. I think this is a real fun experience. I'm sorry, Garen, that you, you know, that had the experience that you did, but it sounds like things worked out really well for you despite that. Yeah, yeah. I'm thrilled that your earn out was. Yeah. Was a success as well. And I'm grateful for you both for sharing your wisdom with our listeners. Just briefly, I know our listeners are going to want to reach out. So is there a place that you would invite them to reach out? Maybe LinkedIn, Rob, or maybe a website? Where would you, where would folks, if they want to reach out to you, find you?
Speaker 3Yeah, they can find me at my home on the internet, Rob Walling.
Speaker 4And how about you, Garen? Yeah, ping me through LinkedIn. You can find my LinkedIn page, Garen Hillel. I post often and I usually check my messages. So find me there. Garen, Rob, thanks for doing this. thank you john you are so good at this it's so it's so fun to be on your podcast and so good for your listeners thank you so much for doing this you had so much value to the community you're too generous thanks man
Speaker 1and there you have it for today's panel episode if you enjoyed today's podcast hit that subscribe button wherever you're listening to today's show if you know of someone who'd be a great fit to be a guest right here on the podcast you can nominate them head over to built to sell.com forward slash nominate where they're gonna have a chance to nominate yourself or someone else to be a guest right here on the show with john also a reminder you can watch these full video interviews over at our youtube channel at built to sell special thanks to our group of advisors who help us bring our message to you our advisors are experts in helping you build the value of your company to get in touch with an advisor or learn how to become one yourself head over to valuebuilder.com i'm colin morgan I look forward to talking to you again next week.
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