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It's almost as much of a Christmas tradition as mummering or Figgy Duff - The Ennis Sisters are touring the province with a collection of seasonal tunes and recitations. Newfoundland Morning's David Newell spoke to Teresa Ennis before their Grand Falls-Windsor shows earlier this week.
In this message, Pastor David Newell discusses the prophetic word given by Pastor Aaron Michael during Cross Connection 2024.
In this episode, you will explore the first step in moving your organization toward being a generous community partner.Our special "neighbor" in this episode is David Newell best known for his beloved role as Mr. McFeely on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. With a career spanning over three decades on the show, Mr. Newell became an enduring symbol of kindness and community for generations of viewers. Beyond his on-screen role, he dedicated his career to Family Communications, Inc. (now Fred Rogers Productions), where he served as Director of Public Relations, working tirelessly to extend Fred Rogers' message of compassion, learning, and neighborliness.Generosity At Work is produced by Jackson Healthcare's LoveLifts community impact platform. It is free resource for business leaders and organizations seeking to be a force for good in the world. Learn more about Jackson Healthcare.
Pastors Bret Hileman, David Newell, and Trenton Cruse all gave words at Good Friday 2024. This is a compilation of those words, including a word given by Pastor Trenton Cruse on July 3.
Join DJ Bob this week for a conversation with David Newell! David is best known for his portrayal of Mr. McFeely on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He and Bob talk about diversity in children's programming, disability inclusion, Fred Rogers' inspirations for the show, and so much more!
This week, Shayne and David Newell share the story of their 25th anniversary vow renewal ceremony at Sea Breeze Point, with a reception at Rue de Paris and portrait sessions inside Magic Kingdom and EPCOT! You'll hear how they picked a different date for the event and why they chose to hire their own day-of coordinator even for such a small gathering. Plus they share what it was like to have Disney Uninvited Guests in lieu of traditional entertainment, and how food items like donuts flambée and Disney's cake ball machine served as entertainment too! Click here to see ALL the photos!
The big move out of Corner Brook's "old" Western Memorial Regional Hospital continues this week. For many patients and staff, it is likely a welcome change to get into a brand-new building. But, for some long-term care patients and their families, it's a major cause for concern. Eddie Joyce is the Independent member of the House of Assembly for Humber - Bay of Islands, and he spoke with the CBC's David Newell.
A Newfoundland woman is not pleased with the lack of accommodations available for her pet rescue dog on a Marine Atlantic ferry in late March. Danielle Irvine of St. John's set out to drive to Montreal, and she took her mild-mannered, seventy-five-pound husky/retriever mix, Whylie Coyote, in the car. The dog had experienced a lot of trauma before Irvine adopted him. He is still overly anxious and needs medication to calm him on long drives. Their trip to the mainland hit a roadblock once they finally left Port Aux Basques on the ferry. Irvine spoke with CBC producer David Newell. We also spoke with Marine Atlantic spokesperson Darrell Mercer.
A new episode from a popular online docu-series called "Canadiana" focuses on the strange, true story of -- get this -- a WHALE heist that happened back in the 1500s, around Red Bay, Labrador. Ashley Brook is a producer with Canadiana, and she spoke with Newfoundland Morning's David Newell.
There were a lot of smiling faces and some sad goodbyes in Gander on Saturday, as the 2024 Newfoundland and Labrador Winter Games came to a close. About 12-hundred athletes, coaches and officials took part in the week-long event. CBC's David Newell brought us some of the voices and sounds from the show.
Last week was an exciting one for young athletes across the province, as Gander hosted the Newfoundland and Labrador Winter Games. Not only was it the first Winter Games since the pandemic, it was only the second one ever for Team Indigenous. Port au Port's Candice Simon was the manager with the Team Indigenous female hockey team. Keira Evans-Rice of Makkovik and Lacie Bennett of St. George's played on the team. The CBC's David Newell spoke with them before they hit the ice Friday afternoon.
It was a homeowner's worst fear realized on Saturday in Conche when a woman ran out to do an errand and returned to her home, and her possessions burned to the ground. Glenn Symmonds is the Chief of the Conche Volunteer Fire Department. He spoke to Morning Show producer David Newell.
If you ask your children about school, they might tell you it stinks. They don't mean it literally, of course, but Hope MacDonald's children mean it. MacDonald has two children attending E.A. Butler All Grade School at McKay's, in Bay St. George South. She says sewer backups and the odours that come with them are a major concern. MacDonald spoke last week with CBC producer David Newell.
In this message, Pastor David Newell talks about how we can expect push back as we move into 2024 and beyond.
In this message, Pastor David Newell discusses the Great Commission, and its importance.
In this message, our newly ordained Congregational Care Pastor, David Newell, talks about Matthew 16, when Jesus asked his disciples the question, "Who do you say that I am?".
In today's episode of Jake's Happy Nostalgia Show, we're very honored to be joined by the one and only, David Newell! David is best known for portraying the beloved "speedy delivery" man Mr. McFeely in the long-running PBS series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Join us as we hear stories about Fred Rogers himself, how the series dealt with serious topics, various appearances David's done as Mr. McFeely and tons more! Speedy delivery!
For anyone who lives in Gander, it's not unusual to see people in uniform. Dozens of members of the Canadian Armed Forces live and work in town. This summer, the base at Nine Wing Gander got a new commanding officer. CBC producer David Newell met Lt. Col. Rhea MacLean last week.
David Newell is an American actor and public relations specialist for children's television. He is best known for his portrayal of delivery man Mr. McFeely on the beloved children's TV show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. However, there is much more to this enigmatic man than that. This is what you need to know about him. Podcast Notes: https://ancestralfindings.com/david-newell-mister-rogers-neighbor
This is one of the best times of the year for hunters in this province, as moose hunters are hoping for a successful season in the woods, Many have already been out a couple of times in pursuit of a trophy animal. But for one man visiting from Ontario, his hunting trip was over almost as soon as it began. Art Jameson spoke to the CBC's David Newell.
In this message, David Newell discusses how Next Level Freedom Church is like a Daniel Church; and just what he means by that.
In this message, David Newell discusses his life verse; 2 Chronicles 7:14.
In our climactic ending, the film crew grapples with their final assignment involving a double-decker bus in the heart of a bustling public square. Confronted with the critical choice between subverting their plan for the greater good or playing into the Minister's hand, which path will they choose? Come navigate the intrigue, fear, and deception of our last act. (Part 3 of 3)**Add our Patreon Feed to your Podcast App**https://open.acast.com/public/patreon/fanSubscribe/3607115This series is not suitable for listeners under the age of 18 and may contain material some people find disturbing.CONTENT WARNINGS:Auto Accidents, Body Horror, Gaslighting Mass Killing, Politics, Profanity, ViolencePlayer CharactersScott Dorward as Keeper of Arcane LoreRoss Bryant as AdrianNic Rosenberg as RizGraham Walmsley as Bencuppycup as KirbyProduction and CreativeGame Rules and Setting: Call of Cthulhu 7e by Chaosium, Inc.Edited by Scott Dorward and cuppycupTranscriptions: Sabrina Haenze and Sonix.aiPatreon Ideas we used in the story: "Falling from a power pole into a shark tank and then the power pole falls into the shark tank so you get bitten by a shark and then electrocuted to death." by Ethan J, "fell off a roof, on to a make shift seesaw, only to be killed by the concrete to launched in the air." by Drew M, "Trying to achieve immortality (perhaps with a pencil)" by Caolán, "Dehydration from drinking too much tea" by David Newell, "Forgetting to breathe" by Alex, "Using someone's fabric scissors and them finding out about it (iykyk)" by mmm0rphine, A "classic: piano falls on you but that doesn't kill you, you step aside and skip in a banana peel and break your neck on the stairs." by TanyaLashea, "Get stuck on an inversion table." by Grondel, "Making the safe word “wolf” and only pronouncing woof" and "Red telephone box" by Steven Horne, " Riz Gukgak from fantasy high because he's nifty and cute" by Max D, "Kirby, eat cake by day kill god by night" by Tomboi LaCroix, "Loki goddess of mischief" by Drew M and Coffey, "Tea as a cure for everything" and other team themed suggestions by Deanna B, Firecop890, and Coffey.Patreon ShoutoutAlthalos, Anthony D., Caolán M., Drew M., E.M.F.D., Heather P., India thank you terror, Kevin M., Killius Manjaro, Lancey Pants, Matthew C., Mikah S., Steven H., Tomboi LaCroix, ai.mmm0rphine, Call Me Dirt, Dan F., firecop890, Jeff F., Jessen, Mario S., Michael H., Nathanael C., Not That NicNew PatronsMeredith M., Nathan F, Oystein of the North, 0xbcd, James B., Merrick Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Our next story memorializes a man many of you may have come across. Peter Pickersgill's political cartoons and illustrations appeared in countless newspapers, including the Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen, Le Devoir and community papers across this province. Pickersgill was also a commentator on CBC's The Sunday Edition and Fisheries Broadcast...and he had a special dedication to outport Newfoundland - especially his beloved Salvage. Peter Pickersgill passed away earlier this week. Jeff Mierins was a good friend and associate of Peter's, and h spoke with Newfoundland Morning's David Newell.
Shanawdithit, the last-known of the Indigenous Beothuk people from Newfoundland, was only about 28 years old when she died in St. John's in 1829. Now, students at the College of the North Atlantic's Digital Filmmaking program in Stephenville are getting ready to tell her tragic story...and they want actors to help them do it. The film is called "The Last Beothuk." Auditions will begin soon, and filming will start in late May. Peter Buckle is an instructor with the program, and the CBC's David Newell reached him in Stephenville.
This podcast is made possible by our beloved MaxFun Members and is part of the annual #MaxFunDrive! To find out how you can contribute to the show and earn great gifts for as little as $5 a month go to Maximumfun.org/join. Plus, listen to find out how YOU could be a guest on Go Fact Yourself!And… Join Helen & J. Keith on Twitter for an “Ask Us Anything” on Wednesday, March 29 at 1pm PT (4pm ET). @gofactyourpod It's a beautiful day in the #MaxFunDrive – The latest edition of Go Fact Yourself!Get ready for the conclusion of our first-ever Listener Tournament, welcoming our two finalists to this special episode of the podcast.Lyn Fortman learned a lot about herself during the pandemic. After a great deal of introspection, she discovered more about her gender identity, that she's happy to share in the hopes that it helps others along their journey. Lyn will tell us about her career as a corporate recruiter and why she's proud to advocate for colon cancer screenings.Patrick Parker considers himself an all-purpose blerd (a portmanteau of “Black nerd”). If there's something to be nerdy about– from comics, to RPGs, to pro-wrestling and more, chances are that he's at least dabbled. Patrick will explain his goal to achieve his masters in social work, and why he so enjoys being a stay-at-home dad.Our guests will answer trivia questions about funny families and notable neighbors.Areas of ExpertiseLyn: The Crossfit Games, the comic strip For Better or For Worse, and Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny podcast (seasons 14 to current).Patrick: The movie A Christmas Story, Black superheroes from Marvel Comics, and the TV show “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.”What's the Difference: Minute MaidWhat's the difference between being the adjectives “minute” and “miniature”?What's the difference between a housekeeper and a cleaning person?Appearing in this episode:J. Keith van StraatenHelen HongLyn FortmanPatrick ParkerWith Guest ExpertsLynn Johnston: creator of the comic For Better or For Worse.David Newell: actor best known for his role as Mr. McFeely on “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.”Theme Song by Jonathan Green.Live show engineer is Dave McKeever.Maximum Fun's Senior Producer is Laura Swisher.Associate Producer and Editor is Julian Burrell.Seeing our upcoming live shows in LA by YOU!
My guest is best known for playing Mr. McFeely the delivery man on television's classic “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.” We discuss his career, his experiences on the show, the value of this type of programming, and much more.
Judge David Newell from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals joins hosts Garrett Farrel and Emma Catlett to discuss his time on the Court. Judge Newell discusses his time as an appellate prosecutor, his journey to the court, and much more. Judge Newell also discusses the Oral Arguments that will be held at Baylor Law School on Thursday March 23. For more information about the cases that will be argued at Baylor Law, please click on the link: https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1455887/3-23-23.pdf
The frequent closure of the emergency room in Bonavista has caused many people in need of urgent care to travel to Clarenville for treatment. Town officials and concerned citizens have been lobbying for a solution to the closures - and now there is some encouraging news about that facility. John Norman is the mayor of Bonavista, and he spoke with CBC producer David Newell.
Judge David Newell is currently serving his second elected term on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. He was born in Bethesda, Maryland and studied to be a writer, earning a degree in English with Honors from the University of Houston. After a friend was attacked, he began volunteering at the Houston Area Women's Center, which led to his decision to pivot careers and go to law school. He served with the Fort Bend and Harris County District Attorney's Offices before running to be a judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals. David and his wife live in Houston, Texas with their two sons.
This podcast will wake up some TV memories. If you grew up in the 60s and 70s you'll remember the famous catchphrase “speedy delivery.” It was used by the postman on “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.” David Newell played the part of Mr. McFeely. He was originally in the public relations department for the program and was then cast as Mr. McFeely. The name was Fred Rogers' middle name, taken from his mother's maiden name. David and Fred became lifelong friends. Newell toured the country promoting “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood” until he retired in 2015. In this podcast David talks about a Mr. Rogers' Christmas program that caused some controversy.
Students in the theatre program at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, are performing Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" this week. CBC's David Newell spoke to the show's director, Grenfell associate professor Michael Waller, about the production.
CBC's David Newell gets an update about Pride celebrations this week in Gander, with two excited but weary organizers.
In September of 1943, Gander air base was home to a squadron of B-24 Liberator bombers. The planes were meant to defend the east coast of Canada from U-Boats and other wartime threats. On a routine test flight on September 4, 1943, Wing Commander J.M. Young lost control of the bomber and plunged directly into Gander Lake, where the plane has rested ever since. This year, ocean hydrographer Kirk Regular of the Marine Institute was working on the lake when he decided to look for the B-24. He spoke with CBC's David Newell.
On this episode of Buddycast, our good buddy David Newell aka Mr. McFeely returns to Buddycast to discuss 1-4-3 Day. Hear all about Mr. McFeely's wisdom right here on Buddycast! #gobesomeonesbuddy --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nick-sorensen/support
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast
Mister Rogers, Now More Than Ever with guest Dennis Scott Amazon Associate Link Ask anyone and they'll tell you, “We need Mister Rogers more than ever.” This audio collection features interviews with fans, friends, and colleagues whose lives were changed by the simple wisdom and kindness of Fred Rogers. For the first time you'll hear both celebrities and everyday people tell their stories of how Mister Rogers affected them and, in some cases, even saved their lives. As incredible as it may sound, Fred Rogers personally answered every letter he received. Hearing his words read aloud and the heartfelt gratitude from people who experienced his kindness firsthand make this a one-of-a-kind audio presentation. Hosted by beloved TV personality Tom Bergeron, it will touch you and help you believe, as Fred Rogers did, that all of us are special. This spoken word collection includes special appearances by Kellie Pickler, The Cowsills, Lee Greenwood, Jim Brickman and Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. It's seventy-two minutes of fun and memories. It also includes a rare interview with David Newell, the "Speedy Delivery" Man from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Produced by our guest on this special episode, two time Grammy and Emmy winner, Dennis Scott Young Dennis Scott at the Concord Thank You Mister Rogers Web Site https://thankyoumisterrogers.com/ Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on podcast was Stay by Rick Lee James Special Thanks to my guest Dennis Scott and The @MisterRogersSay Community on Twitter. Our Substack page is https://rickleejames.substack.com/s/welcome-to-the-neighborhood-a-mister. Our Instagram page is https://www.instagram.com/misterrogerssay/ I'm your host Rick Lee James. My Twitter account is @RickLeeJames, my web site is RickLeeJames.com, My other Podcast is Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast), and I look forward being with you again next time. Until Then: You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are.
Mister Rogers, Now More Than Ever with guest Dennis ScottAsk anyone and they'll tell you, “We need Mister Rogers more than ever.” This audio collection features interviews with fans, friends, and colleagues whose lives were changed by the simple wisdom and kindness of Fred Rogers. For the first time you'll hear both celebrities and everyday people tell their stories of how Mister Rogers affected them and, in some cases, even saved their lives.As incredible as it may sound, Fred Rogers personally answered every letter he received. Hearing his words read aloud and the heartfelt gratitude from people who experienced his kindness firsthand make this a one-of-a-kind audio presentation. Hosted by beloved TV personality Tom Bergeron, it will touch you and help you believe, as Fred Rogers did, that all of us are special.This spoken word collection includes special appearances by Kellie Pickler, The Cowsills, Lee Greenwood, Jim Brickman and Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. It's seventy-two minutes of fun and memories. It also includes a rare interview with David Newell, the "Speedy Delivery" Man from Mister Rogers' NeighborhoodProduced by our guest on this special episode, two time Grammy and Emmy winner, Dennis ScottThank You Mister Rogers Web Sitehttps://thankyoumisterrogers.com/Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood.Music featured on podcast was Stay by Rick Lee James Special Thanks to my guest Dennis Scott and The @MisterRogersSay Community on Twitter.Our Substack page is https://rickleejames.substack.com/s/welcome-to-the-neighborhood-a-mister.Our Instagram page is https://www.instagram.com/misterrogerssay/I'm your host Rick Lee James. My Twitter account is @RickLeeJames, my web site is RickLeeJames.com, My other Podcast is Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast), and I look forward being with you again next time.Until Then: You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rickleejames.substack.com/subscribe
Gav was at HTC to speak to the caretaker manager and 4 of the players on Wednesday. These are available on YouTube in video form. Enjoy the final tomorrow however you're watching it GGTTH
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast (Special Guest David Newell - Mr. McFeely) This week in the neighborhood, our special guest is Mister Roger's Neighborhood's Very Own Mr. McFeely, David Newell. Serving Mister Rogers Neighborhood since 1967, David Newell played Mr. McFeely, the Neighborhood's cheerful “Speedy Delivery” man. He was Mister Rogers' most frequent visitor. When there was a knock at the door, there was a good chance it was Mr. McFeely in his mustache, cap and vintage blue uniform, bringing a package, a film, or a visitor. Links For David: Speedy Delivery DVD: https://www.speedydeliverymovie.com/ David Newell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrmcfeely143 Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on podcast was Stay by Rick Lee James Special Thanks to my guest David Newell And The @MisterRogersSay Community on Twitter I'm your host Rick Lee James. My personal Twitter account is @RickLeeJames, my web site is RickLeeJames.com, My other Podcast is Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast), and I look forward being with you again next time. Until Then: You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are.
On this episode of Buddycast, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood as we talk with our new buddy David Newell also known as Mr. McFeely from Mister Rogers Neighborhood! Hear all of his stories and experiences right here on Buddycast! #gobesomeonesbuddy #speedydelivery --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nick-sorensen/support
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast (Special Guest David Newell - Mr. McFeely)This week in the neighborhood, our special guest is Mister Roger's Neighborhood's Very Own Mr. McFeely, David Newell.Serving Mister Rogers Neighborhood since 1967, David Newell played Mr. McFeely, the Neighborhood's cheerful “Speedy Delivery” man. He was Mister Rogers' most frequent visitor. When there was a knock at the door, there was a good chance it was Mr. McFeely in his mustache, cap and vintage blue uniform, bringing a package, a film, or a visitor.Links For David:Speedy Delivery DVD: https://www.speedydeliverymovie.com/David Newell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrmcfeely143Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood.Music featured on podcast was Stay by Rick Lee JamesSpecial Thanks to my guest David NewellAnd The @MisterRogersSay Community on TwitterI'm your host Rick Lee James. My personal Twitter account is @RickLeeJames, my web site is RickLeeJames.com, My other Podcast is Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast), and I look forward being with you again next time.Until Then: You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rickleejames.substack.com/subscribe
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast
Welcome To The Neighborhood: A Mister Rogers Tribute Podcast (Special Guest David Newell - Mr. McFeely)This week in the neighborhood, our special guest is Mister Roger’s Neighborhood’s Very Own Mr. McFeely, David Newell.Serving Mister Rogers Neighborhood since 1967, David Newell played Mr. McFeely, the Neighborhood’s cheerful “Speedy Delivery” man. He was Mister Rogers’ most frequent visitor. When there was a knock at the door, there was a good chance it was Mr. McFeely in his mustache, cap and vintage blue uniform, bringing a package, a film, or a visitor.Links For David:Speedy Delivery DVD: https://www.speedydeliverymovie.com/David Newell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrmcfeely143Thank you for joining us here this week in the neighborhood.Music featured on podcast was Stay by Rick Lee JamesSpecial Thanks to my guest David NewellAnd The @MisterRogersSay Community on TwitterI’m your host Rick Lee James. My personal Twitter account is @RickLeeJames, my web site is RickLeeJames.com, My other Podcast is Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast), and I look forward being with you again next time.Until Then: You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at rickleejames.substack.com/subscribe
Dear Friends, A short podcast from me this week to let you know about exciting future developments with Inner Truth as well as my top 5 books of the year so far. Links for the books mentioned: Bringers of the Dawn: Teachings from the Pleiadians by Barbara Marciniak The Seven Gates: Seven Steps Beyond Self-Awareness by Dr. Frances Yahia The Kybalion by Three Initiates The Archer by Paulo Coehlo Labours of Hercules: An Astrological Interpretation by Alice Bailey Much love, David
Its always a beautiful day when our dear friend Mr McFeely (aka David Newell) stops by to chat! Listen to this interview and get to know the man behind the one of the most iconic characters in television history! Be sure to also check out what new programs are coming from Fred Rogers Productions!
For many people in Newfoundland and Labrador who make homemade bread, the leftover dough provides as much of a treat as the loaves. Steve Bishop makes toutons at his bakery in Gander, and that's where CBC's David Newell met up with him.
Unlike many states, Texas has separate high courts for civil and criminal cases. Criminal practitioners follow the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals closely because its decisions impact criminal law in every corner of the state. As a former appellate prosecutor, Judge David Newell brings a unique perspective to that Court. Judge Newell joins Jody Sanders and Todd Smith in this episode to discuss his background, his experience as a prosecutor, and his path to running for statewide election as a first-time candidate. He also provides insights on Court of Criminal Appeals proceedings and how the Court responded to the pandemic, including its adoption of new technology and practices. Finally, Judge Newell discusses the Court's credibility, the role stare decisis plays at the Court, and opinions he wrote of which he is particularly proud.Imagine working in the DA's office and then the next thing you know, you're sitting on the bench with the robes and all. You are the judge of a courtroom. That is the life of Judge David Newell. David is the judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the equivalent of the Texas Supreme Court. Join your host, Jody Sanders, as he sits down with Judge Newell to discuss the Court of Criminal Appeals. Find out more about him and what piqued his interest in the law. Learn about the challenges and decision-making that are needed from a judge. Know why the Stare Decisis is important for credibility. Find out how technology and the pandemic affected court trials. Also. get more in-depth information about some of the more interesting cases of David's career. Learn what it takes to be the judge of the highest court in Texas in this episode.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here's How »Join the Texas Appellate Law Podcast Community today:texapplawpod.comTwitterFacebookLinkedInYouTube
Judge David Newell gives brings the right mix of humor and insight to his work on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals!
"Speedy Delivery" Purple Roads goes to Mister Roger's Neighborhood with David Newell. Mr McFeely, played by David Newell joins Carey for inspiring and amusing conversation from his career beginnings to insightful behind the scenes stories.
Finding COVID-19 vaccine appointments can be a challenging feat, and as more COVID-19 vaccines become available, more people will need to find pharmacies and other locations closest to them where they can be vaccinated. David Newell, Wharton Student and Founder of findashot.org, talks to Dan Loney about the website he created to help people find COVID vaccines, and how finding shots for his parents were his inspiration for creating this tool to help others. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
We had the best conversation with a true television icon, and it was beyond our expectations! David Newell has spent the majority of his adult life as TV's fastest delivery man, Mr McFeely on one of the most classic programs of all time, "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood." This is not a watered down, 5 minute, sound bite interview! This is an engaging and retrospective conversation with the man behind the character, although the lines do blur at times. You will soon understand why Fred Rogers, himself, selected such a wonderful person to play everyone's favorite delivery man. Speedy Delivery to you!
Wharton student David Newell launched findashort.org to help Americans reserve vaccine appointments. Because we need all the help we can get.
Buying an ecommerce business can be a brilliant move to build wealth, or have costly unintended consequences. Between finding the right business, knowing what to look for when going through due diligence, and avoiding misinformation - buying an eCommerce business can be a lot to handle. We're giving you a crash course on how to do it. Today’s show is a mashup of three episodes I’ve done with expert eCommerce entrepreneurs in this space - David Newell, Shakil Prasla, and Drew Sanocki. We talk about how to determine if you are the type of person who should buy or build, what a thorough due diligence process looks like, and the things to always investigate within a prospective company. We also breakdown the common pitfalls first-time buyers tend to experience and how to avoid them. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 4:30 How to determine if you should buy or build an eCommerce site 7:27 Buying a business to cross-sell 9:29 The 6 key tenets to robust due diligence when buying a business 13:12 How to assess the quality of a business’ backlinks 16:23 Financials you should always assess as a buyer 19:23 Problem areas to investigate before buying a business 23:15 Technical and legal checklist items you shouldn’t forget 25:38 The biggest mistakes most first-time buyers make and how to avoid them 27:34 Leveraging SEO and content for growth 30:53 Income and age: Two essential criteria for evaluating a company 32:49 Buying a business on a bank loan 35:48 Five things to always look for when buying 39:04 The advice Shakil would have given himself when he was starting out 41:30 Shakil’s process for reviewing prospecting companies and getting them through due diligence 43:30 What Drew is most excited about when buying 46:15 Merger and acquisition opportunities that can help your brand 50:45 Uncovering your blind spots within the acquisition process 52:26 Boostrapping vs acquisition: Which is right for you and which comes first? Links and Resources: Podcast: 095: 4 Reasons Why You Should Buy An Ecommerce Business & The 6 Key Tenets To Proper Due Diligence Podcast: 195: Austin Ecommerce Investor Reveals His Short-Cut To Scaling Podcast: 241: Evolutions In Lifecycle Marketing & New Approaches To Creating Wealth Websites: FE International, Pro Click Ventures, Nerd Marketing, AutoAnything Social Media: David Newell on Twitter, Drew on Instagram The San Francisco Fallacy: The Ten Fallacies That Make Founders Fail Brand Growth Experts The Coalition Foxwell Digital @a_brawn on Twitter @andrewfoxwell on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes
David Newell is an M&A Advisor at Quiet Light, a business advisory firm that helps online entrepreneurs achieve amazing exits. His main areas of expertise include e-commerce/Amazon FBA, SaaS, and content companies that range in size from $1 million to $25 million. David is also the Founder and CEO of Inner Truth Media, a digital platform for podcasts, video courses, and articles about spirituality and personal development. Before joining Quiet Light, he was an investment banker and spent three years in internet brokering, where he personally advised on the sale of 75 businesses. In this episode… Let's cut to the chase: you want to sell your business quickly and turn a large profit. But, with so many different paths for successfully transferring your company, how do you know which strategy will be best for you? Aggregators have recently become one of the most popular sources of transferability, especially in the Amazon FBA world. In short, these companies want to purchase and scale your business—ensuring not only a profitable exit for you, but also continued revenue down the road as they grow your business. However, transferring your business to an aggregator isn't necessarily as simple as it sounds. Today, Joe Valley and David Newell explain why and offer an alternative strategy that will boost your business' value in no time. In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with David Newell, a lead M&A Advisor at Quiet Light, to discuss everything you need to know before transferring your business to an FBA roll-up company. Listen in as Joe and David discuss what an aggregator is, why multiples aren't all they're cracked up to be, and the unmatched value of working with a brokerage during the exit process. Stay tuned to discover how to achieve a more profitable transfer this year!
Mr. McFeely remembers Joanne Rogers and what she meant to the community. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Temperatures, on average, are dropping and winter is nearly upon us. For the Lebanon Street Department that means transitioning equipment from leaves and brush - to snow removal. Street Superintendent David Newell joins the podcast, to give a street level perspective on this time of year...as well as pass along some tips everyone can utilize when we see plow trucks out and about. David also shares an update on some upcoming crosswalk work, and a possible new location for the Street Department.
Welcome to National Podcast Post Month! All month long starting November 1st until November 30th (and maybe a few bonus episodes in December), I will be posting “Spotlight Rewind” episodes going back and revisiting some of my favorite conversations from the first 5 seasons of the program! Back when we spoke to David Newell, who you might know as Mr. McFeely the mailman from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, we felt like we had only scratched the surface to the stories this wonderful man had to share with the world. I seriously hope you enjoy this conversation on Day 14 of National Podcast Post Month as much as I still do! FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL MEDIA: http://www.facebook.com/TheSpotlightNXT Twitter: @TheSpotlightNXT ( http://www.twitter.com/thespotlightnxt ) Instagram: @TheSpotlightNXT ( http://www.instagram.com/thespotlightnxt ) http://www.thenextlevelnetwork.com ( http://www.thenextlevelnetwork.com/ )
Following on from my podcast with renowned past lives psychic Ainslie McLeod, I jumped into a personal reading with the big man himself to reveal some pretty crazy stuff about my past! What happened afterwards was even more unusual. Listen in for the background on past lives, how they can help you remap past experiences and relationships, and are surprisingly beneficial stories for the soul.
David is an internet entrepreneur with a passion for self-discovery, internet businesses, and mergers & acquisitions (M&A).
On today’s episode of Startups For The Rest of Us, Rob Walling (@robwalling) talks with David Newell (@davidsnewell), a Senior Advisor at Quiet Light Brokerage, about the dos and dont’s of SaaS valuations. The topics we cover 4:12 Running your business as if it were a sellable asset 5:15 Quiet Light Brokerage deal count and […] Related StoriesEpisode 437 | Monetizing B2C, Selling a Small SaaS, and More Listener QuestionsEpisode 509 | Revisiting the Six Stages of SaaS Growth with DNSimpleEpisode 463.5 | Be Part of “The State of Independent SaaS”
It's time for a summer break :) Here's what I'm reading: 1) Spirit Hacking - Shaman Durek 2) Tantra: The Supreme Understanding - Osho 3) To Be A Man - Robert Augustus Masters PHD 4) The Law Of One (The Ra Material) Have a beautiful Summer! D x
On this episode of Quiet Light, David Newell talks about when a SaaS business earns a revenue-based multiplier. David is one of our colleagues who just wrote a guide outlining everything he knows about SaaS valuations. Tune in to hear his thoughts on how SaaS businesses have unique needs, the ideal scenario for revenue growth, and which valuation metrics to use when scaling. Topics: Revenue-based multipliers. What happens when SaaS businesses scale. The ideal scenario for revenue growth. SaaS valuation metrics. Why there is a bias towards monthly plan revenue. Comparing scaling a business to dating. Takeaways from David's guide. Transcription: Joe: I understand you spoke with our colleague David Newell about when a SaaS business becomes a listed at a multiple of revenue instead of multiple of discretion earnings, how'd that go? Mark: Well, there's an interesting dynamic when it comes to SaaS businesses, right? E-commerce is pretty straightforward. We have some pretty good metrics that just show that vast majority of e-commerce businesses will be measured as a multiple of their SDE but SaaS businesses, especially on larger levels, we see transactions happen as a multiple of revenue even in some cases when you have a business that is not turning a profit or is currently EBIDTA zero or close to it. And so there's a big question out there, what are the criteria that allow you to apply a revenue multiplier versus an SDE multiplier to a SaaS business? Obviously, this makes a huge difference, right? I mean, if you're multiplying your revenue by five, that's going to be a much bigger number than multiply SDE by five, or four, or three, or whatever. So SaaS valuations can accelerate incredibly rapidly. I mean, it's breakneck sort of whiplash valuations that happen. So I talked to David; I sat down with David. He had just finished writing a 15,000-word guide that really picks apart everything he knows in SaaS valuations and that's a lot that he knows. And he goes into how do we first make this determination between a revenue-based multiplier versus an SDE multiplier? And then the second question, which is again equally sort of murky if you haven't been doing this as long as David has, is where do you then find the multiplier because the ranges are a bit broader than we see in other sectors. And so he goes over the approach he takes for it and then we started talking about some of the individual metrics as well, which are going to apply to all SaaS companies whether it be revenue based multiplier or SDE multiplier. If you are a geek when it comes to valuation talking this is the podcast for you. It's definitely meaty. We get into it pretty in-depth on this. But if you really enjoy this, take a look check out the guide that he wrote. It's now published. It's going to be available on our website. It's also available for PDF download. Share it. Discuss it. Reach out to David. Chris Guthrie would be another great person on our team to discuss these items with. He knows SaaS extremely well. And frankly, anybody on the team, we've all worked in this space ourselves but really, when it comes to our resident expert, we look to David first and foremost and part of it is because of the guide that he put together here. Joe: Let's go to it. Mark: Hey, David, thanks for coming on the podcast. I know you've done a couple of these before, right? David: I have, yeah. Mark: Well, cool. I'm glad to have you back on and I'm excited to have you on this week because you finally finished, and I shouldn't say finally because it wasn't even expected of you but you put together a very comprehensive guide on valuing a SaaS company. How long is it? David: It's a jargon. I think it's about 15,000 words. We shouldn't say that just in case that thwarts people from reading it. I think we're going to do a distilled down version of it. Mark: It's kind of like a mystery novel, how to value a SaaS guide. You know I wrote the ultimate guide to website value years ago when that was what we were really talking about is valuing websites and I think that was a 25,000-word guide. I started out thinking this should be something I can hammer out in a week and it turned out to not be a week. It was much longer than that. It took a while to put that together. And I know this took me a while to put together but the stuff in here is really an authoritative guide on the valuation principles behind a SaaS company. David: Yeah, it's a strange terrain this SaaS valuation conversation because unlike other business models that everybody's familiar with is not purely an earnings-driven model. It's not all about seller's discretionary earnings. And you see that so much in kind of public markets, they speak about SaaS businesses based on revenue multiples and then obviously in our kind of business brokerage landscape, you see it more around SDE multiples and so there's this kind of big confusion in this cross terrain between both buyers and sellers about what is my SaaS business worth and on the other side of the table is how much should I pay for it. And so there's a surprising amount of similarities in the valuation logic between both but what I wanted to point out was the crucial distinctions between them and why they're there to really help people understand that both buying and selling. Mark: Yeah, and I think this is an interesting conversation because we talk so much about valuations at Quiet Light Brokerage. And I've said in the course I put together on how to sell an online business for six, seven, or eight-figures I spent a lot of time on the valuation side and trying to dispel the myth that the valuation formula creates the value of the company as opposed to the valuation approaches and formulas and methodologies are really a predictive exercise more than anything else. And that really, when you boil it down into kind of a philosophical standpoint, it's really a measurement of expected return on investment for the buyer discounted by risk or mitigated by risk. And so you can have other valuation approaches that are completely valid. I know in the web hosting space, which is where I cut my teeth in the brokerage world, that was a revenue-based multiplier as well, because you had a lot of strategic sort of sales going on. It was typically 10 to 16 months of revenue was the average range that we were seeing so I'm interested to get into this. Because I know when I talked generally to people about valuations, I always have this asterisk of but SaaS companies are different and it's kind of a mystery box. So let's talk a little bit about that right there. We'll start with the revenue-based multipliers. Why are we using revenue with SaaS companies and are all SaaS companies going to be valued on their revenues as opposed to SDE? David: Yeah, that's a great question. You hit the nail on the head with what you said there which is that it comes all down to expected return on the asset. And I think the way to think about it is actually kind of in the life cycle of starting a SaaS business. If you imagine starting as many you do people SaaS businesses out of their bedroom; a lot of entrepreneurs see a problem, decide they didn't like it, wants to code a solution to it, put in their own money into it, then they might bring in a developer to start helping them out and they start putting their own money into start scaling it. They get friends as customers and sooner or later they are 10,000 in MRR or so forth and then they start to scale a little bit beyond that. And so initially you're in this period of scaling often with your own capital. And this is kind of a lot of the businesses that we see in the very early stages; kind of like homemades, bootstraps, sub million dollars in ARR businesses. They can remain focused for a large part on earnings and that's why they get they tend to craft some seller's discretionary earnings-based valuations. A lot of these SaaS businesses, for example, one doing 300,000 ARR might have about a hundred thousand in seller discretionary, slightly more multiple of that. Now, what happens? Typically a SaaS businesses look to scale particularly as they kind of arrive more towards a million in ARR and above is that typically what's the case is quite a lot more infrastructure is needed to be brought in to solve the biggest challenges of SaaS businesses which is churn. And that infrastructure is a lot of sort of customer success, it's a lot of additional development in terms of creating better onboarding, and it's putting a lot more sort of infrastructure around the business to really mature and allow it to scale from a small business into a much, much, much larger one, which can happen very quickly, arguably faster than any other business model. And so what happens it seems to me has been the case is that it has become acceptable and standard within the SaaS establishment to at this kind of sub million and arriving at a million in ARR level be able to say we're going to sacrifice our earnings in the near-term, in the short term in order to now chase absolute scalability in the business. And this is acceptable, more so in SaaS than any other kind of business, largely because we have a recurring revenue model with unit economics that are stable once you have churn in place that allow you to do that race up and scale and then cut back on that expense and immediately just be accruing very, very, very significant profitability in the business. And so the quid pro quo for you, reducing profitability of what was a relatively profitable small SaaS business to a now significantly unprofitable or flat profit business is that you'd have to start chasing revenue growth significantly. And so to your point, Mark, about having this kind of expected rate of return, buyers basically say we'll let you run to EBITDA or EBIDTA 5% margins in order that you're going to start sharing consistently 40% to 50% to 60% year over year growth or higher while still going between a million in ARR to five million in ARR, to 10 million in ARR, and 20 million in ARR and beyond. And so that is really the thinking behind why you get to a revenue-based multiple with businesses because the expectation is that eventually a SaaS business will mature and become extremely profitable. A great example of that is something like Salesforce which is now striking off enormous amounts of cash but for a long period of time before it wasn't. And so a lot of the businesses that you see come to market eventually even IPO still have this same kind of fundamentals and eventually, their hope is that they do become very profitable businesses. So it all kind of descends really back from that and I think that some of the question marks around valuation methodology is where is in this kind of hundred thousand in ARR to three million in ARR level which is, of course, where we do a lot of business and where a lot of other market participants are; people listening to this looking to buy and to sell often are is figuring out where are you in a lifecycle, the life journey of the SaaS business, like what is your aim and what are you trying to achieve? And that really informs what the valuation method is for the business. Mark: So as you said there, and there's a lot in there to unpack but the tradeoff or the requirement if you're going to be running at a low EBIDTA or a low profitability or even zero profitability, and I have seen this, by the way, we get these messages from private equity all the time saying we are actively seeking out X, Y, and Z with these characteristics. And I've talked to private equity that is looking for SaaS companies where they said we are not concerned about the EBITDA, we're not concerned about the profitability, but the expectation there is revenue growth at that. I would imagine, though, that there's got to be some other elements in there as well that; let me back up a little bit, we have the revenue growth, but I'd mentioned the expense structure needs to also look at this as being a growth-driven company where the expenses are being driven mainly towards growth. I can't imagine a scenario where you wouldn't necessarily see that but what happens if the growth is minor? So you have a company who is maybe a 500k ARR and they're growing and they're trying. So they're investing heavily in advertising, but their cost of acquisition has skyrocketed. Or they've invested in a large sales team to do onboarding, but they just have not figured that out yet. At what point can we start to say it's not working or is that a solution or somebody just needs to wait in order to sell the company, how do we start to make that discernment in that kind of squishy middle territory where we don't have the clear revenue growth, but we still have the low EBITA? David: 100%. That's what we call the struggle and there's a lot of SaaS businesses in that exact pocket. And the decision for the management team really is what do we do to grow or do we park this and move on to something else? And the former can involve all kinds of different decisions. Obviously making pivots within the business, like changing terms of software products, customer base, also looking to kind of raised capital, the venture capital or angel just to try and get into different channels or find capital to source it from there. And you more or less, Mark, have to push towards that fabled grace, because that's the only available kind of exit option to you from there. Or you go the other way, which is; and you see there is a lot of businesses we're promising and then they haven't reached the cap in the market or a competitor outcompetes them or management loses interest or whatever, and they start to trail off, go flat, and you end up with what's called zombie SaaS which is a not particularly affectionate side while it's probably still a lovely business. And then the option there is more or less you have to cut back all of that operating expenditure in the business in order to restore some earnings and try and exit at typically a much lower multiple of revenue still, but considerably lower that looks more like a normal of an EBITDA type sale and just cut your strings basically and move on to the next thing. And so many businesses, of course, we all know how hard it is to grow and scale any kind of business are in that struggle and trying to figure out that option. Mark: Yeah, I love going through with people the basic framework that we created of the four pillars of value. You want to mitigate your risk, you want to have good growth, make it easily transferable, and have great documentation. Well, that's second pillar of growth is so easy for us to say, right? You want to have great growth and everyone's thinking, well, yeah, of course, I do. It's a lot harder to do. Let's talk about the ideal scenario here. You have a company that is growing strongly and let's say that you're in that one to three million ARR range and we're seeing that ARR grow rapidly so we can apply a multiple to the revenue here. I know what people are thinking, what sort of multiples can we apply to them? David: Yeah, so this is when we flip into a slightly different structure but with very similar dynamics to how we think about business value at Quiet Light and the way we model multiples but the difference, the departure is the starting point. So whereas we in the private buyer side particularly the earnings businesses, we draw upon the several hundred previous transactions we have. We know where the average multiples are for businesses with certain characteristics in nature and we can call on that data set. To start with the revenue multiples side of things you have to again go find the data set and the data set to pull on is generally the public market. And so the best thing to do to start with is actually go look at like an index of cloud companies; SaaS companies that are publicly traded on Nasdaq and so forth, and use that as the benchmark for that kind of revenue multiple that normal publicly traded SaaS businesses are trading at. And that could be something like 10 times, 11 times forward multiple around probably what it is right now. And then, of course, naturally, that's a multiple that's appropriate for a large publicly listed company so already you're saying like, well, that's not really relevant to my smaller private business. So the first thing you have to do is make a public to private discount on that and so there are varying schools of thoughts around what that kind of discount is. It can be somewhat arbitrary. There's a lot of private equity companies out there that speak about what they do, and they have portfolios of private companies that they pour. The received wisdom is it's anywhere between 25% to 30% immediate haircut for being a private company. So you can come down off that 11 to something like eight, for example, and you have what feels like a large private company SaaS business should be trading at. And then we get more into the territory of what we do Quiet Light and what you're just talking about, Mark, in terms of the different four pillars of the business and you start to adjust based upon where this business is aware of the SaaS business we're talking about is relatively strong or weak compared to businesses of its size and businesses of its nature. So three million in ARR is a great example, you'd actually expect on average businesses at that level and this kind of valuation exercise to be growing probably at something like 50% to 60% year over year because it gets harder and harder to grow faster and faster, obviously, with scale. And so if it was much larger, say like a hundred million, you'd actually reduce it and say the average business at a hundred million ARR would be growing at about 30% year over year. And so already you need to compare what's the revenue growth rate of this business versus the paired average for other similar-sized businesses. And it's again a case of going through all of these different classic criteria that we normally do; revenue growth, churn, lifetime value, diversification, all of this classic operational metrics that go back in kind of normal business logic land and just comparing where does it look like versus businesses of its size and businesses in its same kind of customer segment of category and that begins the adjustment process down until you get to a multiple and that starts to make sense. Mark: Yeah, so I want to touch real quick on just the size of a business in general because I know we experience this across the board with all different types of businesses. And yeah, my alarm bells went off, and let's just start with the publicly traded companies. Because I can hear all of my e-commerce clients saying, well, fantastic; I don't know what Amazon is trading at right now as a multiple of revenue, but I'm sure it's a ridiculous number. David: Yes. Mark: But Amazon is also the largest company in America at this point. Actually, I don't know that for sure. I'm sure they're up there, though. They're top five. So sort of with the publicly traded markets is a starting point but there's a lot of discussions that are going to happen in place. So if we're looking at a publicly-traded company like a Salesforce, as we scale down in terms of revenue down into the seven-figure territory from the nine-figure, eight-figure, seven-figure, the discounts do come in pretty rapidly. Why is it that larger companies earn a higher multiple of either revenue or earnings, in your opinion? David: Well, there's a perception of greater stability with greater size. Additionally, just generally speaking if you were to say a business growing 30% year over year at a hundred million in ARR versus one at 10 million in ARR it's more oppressive to be doing a more valuable; you're creating more value at a hundred million than you are at 10 million and therefore, it's commensurate with so the business is worth a greater multiple. It's much, much, much harder to do so. And you see that very, very clearly if you just go and look at a size-adjusted scale in public markets, at businesses at scale that are growing very quickly, they're the ones that are trading at the highest value and that's why Amazon's ballistic valuation. But it's because it's delivering unbelievable revenue growth for business scale. It's already absolutely huge in size so it is very, very, very impressive. But you're right, you need to start discounting down quite significantly. But it's tempting to be like we're starting so kind of pie in the sky with these public numbers and public multiples like wipe off of there. They are the heartbeat of overall like macro SaaS macro sentiment and like it or not, that is where a lot of sentiment; investment sentiment, think about it like kind of customer confidence. It's kind of like investor confidence really does benchmark from public market tech valuations. Mark: I mean, it makes sense, right? Everything that we're talking about here, any sort of valuation is really a market-based valuation. Anytime we're valuing any asset, whether it be a business or apples, it's based off of market dynamics here. So that part makes sense. I want to dig into the business metrics though that we start to get into in more. The regular as we are characterizing it, the regular valuation metrics that we look at. Within the SaaS world, these are going to be somewhat different anyway from, say, an e-commerce business, right? On an e-commerce business, we're going to be looking at gross profit margins, we're looking at growth, we're taking a look at some qualitative aspects of the products that they're selling such as the intellectual property protections and everything else. What sort of business metrics are we going to look at for a SaaS company, regardless of whether we're looking at it from an SDE valuation viewpoint or a revenue multiplier viewpoint; what are some of the other metrics we want to look at? David: Yeah, it's a great question because it's both actually identical and this is where the commonalities between the two methods are huge which is that it's all very well talking about in a revenue growth way of SaaS businesses but you have to look at what's the quality of that growth. And the key barometer of quality of revenue growth in any SaaS business is churn, average revenue per user, lifetime value, a monthly versus annual plan split, and the gross margins on there. So clearly if you just take the first one, because churn is such a focal point for everybody, if you have a business with an outsized level of churn versus its size and category, then that's a major red flag in terms of the business. You see that quite a lot in terms of Shopify or Amazon plugin type add-ons, where largely because of the type of end-user which on Amazon can turn over quite quickly buyers and sellers come and go there. Those tools can kind of have quite high churn rates. And so it's an interesting one because they often have very fast growth rates in general, like a very sharp revenue growth rate because Amazon is an absolutely enormous space to be in. There's tons of new sellers turning up, signing up for new tools that they're churning away after three to four months. So you have to immediately look at can I appraise this tool that's going 100% year over year growth versus the 15% monthly churn? Because if it stops growing even just a little bit within 12 months, it's going to churn out almost the entire customer base and cut off all the growth. And so you have to look at those two. They're absolutely symbiotic. And it's the same with seller's discretionary earnings type businesses because ultimately that impacts the bottom line as it is with revenue multiple. And then the interesting one is looking at monthly versus annual plan split. Naturally, most SaaS businesses are an amalgamation of both and it's definitely favored and preferred that there's a much stronger bias towards monthly planned revenue if that makes up sort of 85% plus of your overall business. That's perceived as a very good thing. If annual is a bigger proportion of that, that's something of a concern. And that's really just because what you want in SaaS is predictability. That's what everybody loves with recurring revenue. Monthly plan revenue is more predictable than annual planned revenue, which seems psychologically counterintuitive, but it's not when you consider that every single month customers have the opportunity to churn away, whereas with annual planned revenue that only happens once every 12 months. So you have no idea what's going to happen in 12 months' time to a large cohort of any bias. Their whole lives could have changed quite a lot so the data set there is less rich and so it makes it more opaque for bias. And so they actually value that pop business generally lower than monthly occurring revenue. So they are just a few of a couple of the kind of revenue quality metrics that should be really important for both buyers and sellers. Mark: I want to talk about ARP but before that, I'm going to talk about churn and a concept of it. I don't know if you would take this into account an evaluation of an Amazon SaaS business, for example, that is supporting sellers. As you know, David, I have an interest in a dating website online and there's a concept in dating world called the good churn. It's somebody canceling their account because they met somebody. And within the dating world, you want to have good churn even though it does impede growth. I know with the site that I have interest in, the business I'm interested in, we have monthly turnover on 23%, which is massively huge and it does impede growth, but we want to have 23% be made up as much of good churn as possible because when people meet somebody they then talk to each other. So within the Amazon space, do we take that into account or with any sort of support service where you're getting somebody off the ground and they outgrow your product because it served its need, right? That's really the dynamic here. If your SaaS business serves a need that your users no longer need it that would be good churn. Would that be taken into account with that churn number very much or are we really looking more just the throttling on growth and the fact that you're chasing ever-increasing growth numbers with high churn? David: Yeah, it's hardly the latter, because if you think about it, I mean, SaaS valuations, in general, are higher than any other business model. And the reason for that is because for every single unit of revenue you're bringing in you can predict how long it's going to stay with you for and you can't with any other business. And so helping people out for a shorter period of time, even if they're then canceling for good reasons while still brilliant from a customer success standpoint, isn't something that a buyer would attach a higher multiple to. So you kind of want to help people for the longest amount of time to create the most amount of value and that's why I like businesses with very high lifetime values and their churn are generally speaking, the most valuable type of SaaS businesses. So, yeah, you've got yourself a beautiful paradox there Mark with your site. I think in that situation, you just have to turn into a massive marketing spend then. You need to post those numbers all over your website and say people are gleefully canceling because of what we do. Mark: Well, you know it bleeds out into the other metrics, I think. And I wish I could say our 23% was good churn. It's not but it bleeds into be other numbers, right? Because if you have good churn where it trickles into is your cost of acquisition becomes effectively lower. So the more good churn you have, the lower your effective cost of acquisition compared to people that don't have as good of churn because you have more social proof. Now, it may not be a very clear or strong relation, it's more murky but let's talk about ARPU and also a lifetime value of a user. When we're looking at these metrics, how much does taking look at cohorts in terms of time play into that? Because I know Chuck sold a business a while ago, it wasn't directly SaaS. It was sort of SaaS-y in its makeup, which it was pretty much awash for the first 24 months in terms of lifetime value and cost of acquisition. But after that 24 month period, everything was profit on top of that. And I look at that and say that's fantastic. That's great. I get it. But from a buyer's standpoint, the cash requirements for a business like that, especially if you're growing rapidly, becomes a constraint to growth. You have to be able to fund a business with a 24 month period lead time. How much does a cohort analysis play into a valuation? And I would assume kind of the logical conclusion here is the shorter period of time to be able to get from your cost of acquisition to your revenue is more desirable. But is that something that you look at closely? David: Yeah, I mean, from the challenges with LTV in many monthly recurring revenue businesses, is it's moving around so much. I just sold a business just recently where the LTV posted up and profit well is going everywhere from 2,800 to $7,000 month to month. So try marketing a business with that level of variance. So to your point, Mark, you do have to look at cohort analysis, I think to go back and be like, what's the kind of longer-term trend in the business here? Like what's actually evolving because that business is a great example, the same phenomena you're talking about which for two years, more or less, didn't really make any money and then started to hockey stick. Not so much because the revenue growth was absolutely phenomenal it's just because the cost base no longer needed to go up anymore to substantiate it. They kind of refined the products enough, spent enough on development, finally figured out the marketing channels, stopped spending really a lot of both and then it just started to fly. And that is the case in point for so many SaaS businesses, which is that it's kind of like swimming into the dock a bit for an indefinite period of time until you do hear those unique economics that makes sense. And it just flies from that point in many cases, anyway. Mark: I think that the whole world of trying to value SaaS companies, especially in this murky range, is a fascinating exercise. When we do an e-commerce valuation, so much of it is cut and dry and I think part of that is just due to the volume that's out there. It's also the nature of these e-commerce businesses as you buy an asset and you turn it around and you're selling it so your profit becomes kind of immediate as opposed to the longer periods of baking and growth with the SaaS company for the long term, which makes it more of a complex exercise. So let's talk a little bit about the guide. 15,000 words, you talked a lot about this idea of moving over to the revenue-based multiplier. I would imagine that there are some examples. And we joked about this before we started recording, I haven't seen the guide yet and reviewed it so I'm going to be speaking a little bit and guessing. I'm assuming that you have some examples in here and other information. Tell us a little bit about what's in the guide and what people could take away from it. David: Yeah, so the guide really breaks down how to do the traditional SDE approach valuation and the revenue approach valuation, and most importantly, how to discern the difference between case studies where you should do one or the other. And I kind of put a four-part test in there which is really the size test. Is it or around or above the million dollars in ARR level? The next thing we look at is where's the revenue growth trending towards, is it showing these kind of fundamentals we're talking about 40% plus year over year growth? The next thing is looking at is this still a business that's kind of a single owner-operator in a relatively thin personnel business, or is it starting to staff up with customer success, starting to wrap around some significant infrastructure to enable it to start going from one to 10 million dollars? That's a really important kind of qualitative factor. And then the last one, of course, is churn, because in reality smaller apps, generally speaking, have higher churn rates. So you'd expect to be seeing kind of an over tuned 4% to 9% in monthly churn in immature let's say, and to the immature SaaS apps. And as you start to get up to this million in ARR level you'd like to see that really dropped below 4% monthly churn. That's the big thing, because churn, as every SaaS business more or less in the world will tell you is the hardest problem to solve for because it is the ultimate barometer of whether people think you're creating enough value to not want to churn out and cancel. And so the more value you're creating, the more helpful you are to people, the less they're going to churn. And that's ultimately what anybody wants to pay for in any business. And so it being the most difficult problem to solve for makes it the most valuable one for a buyer to want to buy. So the lower the churn, generally speaking, the higher the value of the business all else being the same. So those are some of the key distinction points. And then, of course, I'm aware that there's both sellers and buyers looking at it. It's really useful information for both sides to see. Buyers are looking to buy to grow up and scale, sellers are looking to increase the multiples, everybody wants to increase value so I put in a bunch of additional kind of growth value; what I call value-centric growth levers. And what I meant by that is like what essentially the top three things that you can do that will most dramatically impact the most part of the business right away beyond just getting more growth which, of course, always helps. But like specifically one of the things that we've seen over the years in Quiet Light selling businesses, one of the things that we know dramatically increase the multiples of businesses. So I shared some of those in the guide as well for both buyers and sellers to look at. Mark: So if we want to just be trite, we can say if you want to get a great valuation, grow your business or reduce the churn, right? David: Yeah. Mark: All right, the guide is going to be available on the website. We will include links, obviously, in the podcast. You're going to be seeing some emails from us about the guide. We'll also have a PDF downloadable version of the guide. And of course, if anybody has questions about the valuation of your SaaS company and where you fall or questions, I'm sure David would be more than happy to answer any questions about this as well. David: Absolutely. Mark: David@quietlightbrokerage.com. David, thanks for coming on and enlightening me a little bit on this. And it's a complex topic, its super interesting, though. You know, I've been doing this for 14 years now, and it's sort of refreshing to look at different types of companies, different approaches to the same problem, and seeing where we can get some variation. So this is absolutely fascinating to talk about it and I'm looking forward to reading it, which I should have access to it. I'll be reading it here soon. David: My pleasure. Mark: Thanks David. Resources: David's Article About SaaS Valuation Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
Often this year I have quoted Fred Rogers from the book, “The World According to Mr.Rogers.” It is a small book full of the warmth and intelligence that were such a part ofMr. Rogers' life. This past weekend, the man who played Mr. McFeely was in Rochesterat the Strong Museum. His name is David Newell and he states easily how much hemisses his friend.A report in Thursday's Democrat and Chronicle quotes Newell as saying it isn't theyoungest fans that miss Mr. Rogers the most, it's the adults. He says, “I think what theyrealize is that we won't get another like him. The tears are really a tribute to Fred. And Imiss him dreadfully.”We are sending our ninth graders off to a new building, but there are two who are notgoing to make the trip, and we miss them dreadfully. Brian Scipioni and Matt Gnage losttheir lives while they were in our junior high family. Truly there will never be anyonelike either of those two young men. We will remember them.There are no television shows that live on with Brian or Matt. There are no books ofhelpful wisdom. They didn't get to that point in their lives. But, they lived long enoughto touch our lives. Let's remember how precious each of us is to our friends, our familiesand to our school. Today, value each other.
It's the 52th Anniversary year of TV's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and we're very excited to welcome one of the show's stars, David Newell! For over 30 years David Newell played the role of Mr. McFeely on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He continues to play the role in public appearance all over the country. This year David Newell has been promoting the new documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? that is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on September 4th! David is also promoting a new biography on Mr. Rogers, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers, by author Maxwell King. David Newell was also the subject of his own documentary a few years ago. It's called Speedy Delivery, and well worth checking out! Special thanks to our patrons William La Bruna, Shawn Fisher, Martin Collins, Todd, Liza W. Rudolph, Jim Simon, Bill Greenan, Melissa Bartell, the Bathtub Mermaid, Joey Hockeypuck, Rick Weaver and also Water Tower Cinema! To support the show, please go to Patreon.com/MegaPodTastic Patrons receive early access to the raw and unedited VIDEO FEED of each podcast recording. Help Support MegaPodTastic by buying a MegaPodTastic T-Shirt or some other MegaPodTastic merchandise! Shop.Spreadshirt.com/MegaPodTastic Please become a fan of MegaPodTastic on Facebook, and subscribe to us on I-Tunes. Please send your comments to us at MegaPodTastic@Gmail.com or give us a review on I-Tunes. MegaPodTastic has a voicemail line! Call us at 610-624-1985. Give us a call...maybe you'll be on the next episode! Keep on wearing those pajamas!!
A year in the making and I'm honoured and privileged today to bring to the world one of the most powerful tools I've found in my years of self discovery. In my experience I've seen that as humans we are all programmed with subconscious patterns through childhood that can block our true nature and as a result we can end up living off course, off-purpose or doubting our gifts. So much of our true nature lies in the depths of our subconscious mind and our deepest longing and really the spiritual journey is to unveil that mystery to live in harmony with it. We were each born with a unique purpose and a soul path that can be revealed by the archetypal code of our subconscious. And today we launch The Destiny Course which through the ancient wisdom of the Tarot and Numerology in the Sphinx Code, unveils these precise insights for your persona life. In today's pod I talk about my own experience with it over the last 3 years, including some of the insane insights its given me and how much it has been able to reveal (or predict) about the thousands of others that have used it. Destiny has officially launched and you can sign up to get your get your archetypal blueprint and training at: https://www.seekingdestiny.com/
This week I hopped back behind the mic for the first time since September(!) to talk about why more and more people are getting into self-discovery + how to get deeper into it. Inner Truth has thousands of listeners now (thank you all!) with some truly remarkable stories of self realization. This week I answered questions that have come up a lot from the community about certain self-discovery experiences, how to decide what's right for you, and what it is at the very core that we're all looking for :) In this week's pod: • How to answer your own question: should I do a vision quest/vipassana/ayahuasca/toad medicine medicine? • What's 100% a bad idea (a lesson from my 5-MEO experience) • Is there one source code, a grand plan, behind everything? • Why what you're doing is in no way as important and why you're doing it (and how to really figure out why you're doing it) • What I've got planned for this year(!), what things i've cut out, and what I'm focussing on • + BONUS: A sneak peak at some of the new guests lined up for 2020!
You can listen to this week’s episode of NEXT QUESTION with Ernie Manouse in the audio above. Below, you can find audio, video and photos of the various stories discussed on the show. Beyond the Story: You can learn more about Mo Rocca and his book & podcast Mobituaries HERE Mo will be part of a live conversation with Ernie in Houston on Tuesday, January 21 at the Julia Ideson Building at the Houston Public Library For... Read More
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s David Newell joins Nancy to discuss his role as speedy delivery man Mr. McFeely on the beloved children’s show, his friend, star and show creator Fred Rogers, and the new feature film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (1:37). Find out more about our segment sponsor Ultimate Disco Cruise (49:30). Also, Chris Rodell, author of Growing Up in the REAL Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, offers up some travel suggestions if you’re heading to Mister Rogers hometown of Latrobe, PA (49:55). And listen to this episode’s Mister Rogers-inspired takeaway tip (1:01:30). Visit Nancy’s website.
One of the misconceptions people often have about Quiet Light Brokerage is that most of our transactions are e-commerce based. In reality, we have got quite a sizeable number of SaaS deals in our portfolio as well. Today, the Saas CFO Blog founder Ben Murray is here talking about his career, the blog, and his passion for sharing the metrics founders need for better planning and forecasting. Through his blog, Ben shares his passion for organizing the numbers, implementing SaaS metrics, and forecasting. Ben's advice is all about getting the lumps out of the profit and loss. Anyone looking to learn more about the topic both from the acquisition and the ownership side, this is the guy to know and this is the episode to listen to. Episode Highlights: The value in forecasting. Why do it in the first place. Things that proper forecasting might protect your business from. Software recommendations for businesses looking to get started with inputting the financial data. Types of metrics that are important for the owner and potential buyer to dial in on. The Rose Metric. Numbers a potential buyer should be looking for in a healthy acquisition prospect. How deep should the buyer look into the metrics? Warning signs to look for in a business evaluation. The why behind the data. Healthy levels of sustainability in the balance between recurring revenue and sales/marketing expenses. How Ben became so interested in the SaaS arena and why he feels compelled to share his knowledge with his readers. The cash runway forecast model. How to get started in forecasting. Transcription: Joe: Mark one of the misconceptions about Quiet Light Brokerage is that some people think we do; the vast majority of our transactions are e-commerce related when in fact we've got quite a sizeable SaaS component as well. And I understand you had Ben Murray from SaaS CFO on the podcast recently. Mark: Yeah I just recently became familiar with Ben. I was going out and taking a look at some of the people that are writing in this space and just kind of doing some research trying to expand our network in this area and I happened upon Ben's blog and I was absolutely blown away. So Ben is a CFO obviously and specializes in the SaaS arena and talks a lot about the metrics that we want to be able to track in the SaaS world for better forecasting and better planning on the part of SaaS founders. So naturally, I thought I had to have this guy on the podcast. We also sponsored a little ad in his newsletter as well to promote David's webinar. David Newell for those of you that don't know recently did a webinar on how to solve a SaaS business for 6, 7, or 8 figures. We're going to include those in the show notes we'll also make sure that we advertise that in our weekly newsletter if you don't get that; a really, really well received. We've had hundreds of people attend and have had great response from that webinar. We partnered with Ben to help promote that webinar as well. And as I told you Joe just before this call he knows more about SaaS than you and I will ever really know because he lives and breathes this on a day in day out basis. And so we talked a lot about some of the metrics to look at, how to think about some of the metrics, how to calculate some of the metrics in a way that makes sense because we know that we're supposed to be tracking some things like lifetime value, churn, and everything else but how do you actually construct these calculations in a way that makes sense for your business and then forecasting as well. So the topic; I'll be honest, I got a little wide-ranging with my questions because I wanted to ask him every question at once. And it was difficult to stay focused because I wanted to ask every question at once but there's just some really cool nuggets in this podcast including one that you and I talk about all the time and that's cash versus accrual accounting. Joe: Yeah, most people think about it only in terms of e-commerce but SaaS and content they've got to do it as well just to get the lumps out of the P&L. Mark: Yeah I mean look it just comes down to this basic concept accounting; double-entry accounting system has been around for a long time and it's been around for a long time because it works. And so we should be making sure that we're actually paying attention to our books in the proper way and understanding what sort of insights we can pull out of this. Ben talks a lot about the need for forecasting which is something that I'm increasingly growing aware of as being an important tool for business owners. And we talked a little bit about how to do that in the SaaS world in this podcast as well so it's super interesting. And I think for anyone that's interested in SaaS both from an acquisition or an ownership standpoint, Ben is a guy to know, this is a podcast definitely to listen to. Joe: I'm looking forward to listening to it myself. Let's get to it. Mark: All right I have Ben Murray from the SaaSCFO.com, Ben thank you so much for taking the time for a conversation here on SaaS businesses, CFO and everything metric heavy. I'm really excited for this conversation. Ben: Thanks Mark, it's great to be here. Mark: So let's start out pretty simple and give just a quick background on yourself; what you do, and also a little bit about the blog. I found you through your blog the SaaSCFO.com but a little background on yourself so that our listeners know who I'm speaking with. Ben: Sure yeah. My name is Ben Murray and I've been in finance and accounting for the past 20 plus years and my background has been airlines and software specifically SaaS. And so I've been a SaaS CFO for about the last 8 plus years or so. And about 3½ years ago I started blogging at the SaaSCFO.com where I just wanted to share my metrics, models, templates that I've been using and creating over the years and hoping that others will have; they could use those and implement the models and metrics in their businesses right away. Mark: Yeah and look there's a lot of people that write on this material, right? I've come across a lot of different blogs that kind of become this intersection of marketing and metrics and company structure and everything else. Yours is really focused on metrics and metrics from a kind of financial outlook perspective and probably a deeper dive than I found in most other places. So I can definitely really, really appreciate what you're doing here on the blog and some of the information that you share. I want to start off with just kind of a big question, your website title is Ben's post on SaaS metrics and forecast; pretty simple. I want to talk about that second half there and the forecasting side of it. I know a lot of business owners and even buyers who are looking at acquiring a business look at forecasts with a bit of a skeptical eye and wonder well what's the real value on them? Now I think people that are growing businesses at a higher level tend to see the forecasts and see the value in them. But I'd love to pick your brain a little bit about the value in forecasting and creating a good forecasting model and maybe what the foundations are for that. So why don't we start with that first question as why forecast in the first place? I mean isn't it really more wishful thinking or is there a real science behind this. Ben: Yeah there's definitely a science behind it because it really leverages your operational understanding of your business and I really feel you can't forecast until you know where you've been. So really understanding your historical financials, all the metrics around that, and then once you have that then you can put a very good forecast together. But if you don't understand your current financial state it's going to be really hard to create a forecast and obviously, the number one thing is cash, right? Cash is king. So if cash is tight or you think it might be tight you definitely need that forecast to balance resource requests versus cash balances. So that's number one. After that say if you have decent margins then again it's really understanding where your revenue is trending; your margins are trending. And as you scale so you don't get in trouble down the road; if you hire too fast, invest too fast. So forecasts it's definitely I'd say part of science part of intuition but it's really critical I think in any business as you scale and of course just understanding your cash and then the metrics that are coming out of your forecast. Mark: Yeah, what are some common areas that you see people running into with a lack of forecasting; just kind of sticking their finger up in the air and feeling where the wind blowing today as they're growing maybe a rapidly growing business. You already mentioned one, hiring too fast and bringing on too much support staff maybe anticipating more growth in the future. What are some other things that proper forecasting might be able to protect you from? Ben: I think when you create that first financial forecast and you have been forecasting it really exposes areas in your business that are kind of weak data-wise. The number one thing is like booking; tracking your monthly bookings whether that's MRR or ARR basis you need to know when new lows are coming in or new customers are coming in any expansion business churn downgrades. So that sometimes exposes that tracking. You're going to be kind of revenue forecast together. It all starts with your booking patterns. So that's one thing. And then it's just basic stuff. What's your current MRR? What are your current customer accounts? How many paying customers do you have so you can put again that revenue forecast together and then it's just understanding where you spend. You know one big thing that I see with SaaS firms is that they're coding all their expenses to one big bucket. And I think once you reach say a million or two ARR you really have to have more sophistication in your financial forecast than you're coding expenses to buy an apartment because without that you really can't create any SAAS metrics from that. So you really need clarity around your expenses as well to see that quite a bit. Mark: Yeah and so much of this when I give presentations at a conference and I get to the part where I'm talking about keeping good clean accurate verifiable books I get the sense sometimes that it gets glossed over. And I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who say yeah I know my books are important but then when you find out are they actually managing them well we found out that they aren't and because it becomes sort of an afterthought to it. But what you said there at the end I think is so clear. Once you start having good numbers brought in to the business and you're starting to analyze these numbers it brings clarity to the business as well and being able to identify maybe the risks that are actually present in your company that you aren't seeing because you're not looking at the data. A lot of what you're saying here about forecasting, of course, requires keeping track of the numbers in the right way and you need to start somewhere. For somebody that's maybe at the smaller end of the spectrum in a SaaS operation, say sub one million dollars in revenue what sort of recommendations do you have to make sure that the data that they're getting is A. getting input correctly and categorized correctly and B. do you have any recommended software any recommended systems that you would start out with? Ben: Yeah I wrote a post because that was a question I was getting a lot on what SaaS accounting software can you recommend. And of course, when I speak with founders 9 out of 10 times their financials are in QuickBooks . So that's kind of a ubiquitous accounting system out there. And I've seen all sorts P&Ls but really it's good organization to your expense categories. Not having too many. Sometimes you see a QuickBooks P&L and it's 50 expense categories and you've got $5 posted in February and 10 the next month; just too much detail on that where a SaaS company is really 70 to 80% employee wages, benefits, taxes, etcetera. So that's the big thing is getting to know your wages classify them correctly; encoded by department. Then it comes down to travel, rent, commissions, so they're big expense categories that are common within SaaS, advertising, that you want to see those coded and classified correctly and kept track of each month so you're not getting behind and have very lumpy financials. So that would be the big thing is just to clearly categorize P&L by expense category and then obviously the other one is just not applying proper reverec which you can't blame SaaS founders that saved some 1 million but they're not playing proper reverec to their revenue. But eventually, you will need that in order to calculate again good metrics, good gross margin and so forth. Mark: Can you explain that last part a little bit more? Ben: Yeah, about the reverec? Mark: Yes. Ben: So often rates with an MRR business it's not as pronounced where you invoice monthly and recognize monthly but with annual contracts say quarterly, semiannual, annual, multi-year contracts you see a lot of SaaS companies posting that revenue right to their P&L. So, for example, a $12,000 annual contract that should be advertised and recognized over twelve months. They're posting twelve thousand in just one month. You'll see very lumpy revenue that it could be 50 or 100,000 in one month and it's $1,000 a month the next month and I've even seen negative in some months. And with that, you really cannot manage your SaaS business without a proper reverec and that could be finding a SaaS accounter bookkeeper who is familiar with the SaaS business model. But without that, you don't know your gross margins at all. You really don't know what's going on with your business kind of on a good steady run-rate basis. So again under a million, I get it. A million and two and scaling you definitely have to get to that point. Mark: Yeah. And so in our world again we've talked about this a lot on this podcast and pretty much every chance I get. And it's that simple difference between accrual and cash basis counting, right? Instead of saying oh I just got $12,000 in on an annual contract saying well I have an annual contract which means I need to service this client for the full 12 months and that equates out to $1,000 a month which I'm earning as I go along with this contract. It's kind of a foreign concept to a lot of people. But again the importance here is not treating the P&L like a statement of cash flows only and treat it again as a profit and loss statement. I would imagine Ben, this is something I didn't see on your site but I'm sure you've covered because your site is extremely comprehensive, it would make sense at that point to look at your financial statements and understand the balance sheet is going to be important in here as well. What role do you see and let me see if I can back up; I'm kind of all over the place right now but I'll ask this in a very basic way. I know a lot of people are kind of scared or mystified by the balance sheet. How much emphasis do you think people should put on actually getting familiar with the statement like that or do you think it's more important to look at some of the other metrics instead and focus on those? Ben: Yeah I think say as a founder-owner you do need to understand the balance sheet to some extent because the SaaS balance sheet is a little different than others. One obviously is deferred revenue, so in the example, we talked about when you invoice that 12k it's actually posted at the balance sheet as deferred revenue; as a liability, because you have an obligation now to say perform or to service that customer. The second thing with the new reverec standards you now have to capitalize the contract costs that arise when signing contracts with customers, for example, enabling commissions now that becomes an asset on your balance sheet. So that's the second area that's different with SaaS and that's actually new and then, of course, capitalizing software development. You can also capitalize software development once it reaches technological feasibility. And again that's another asset on your balance sheet. Other than that SaaS balance sheets are pretty straightforward but if you're applying the proper accounting you probably will see; you definitely should see deferred revenue and probably capitalized commissions. Mark: Yeah I can kind of hear the collective groan from people listening thinking well I thought we're going to be talking about SaaS metrics here and here we are back in the old accounting stuff but this stuff plays together, right? I mean when we go into some of the other more advanced metrics that you're talking about it depends on having those books done correctly so that you can pull out the right metrics and the right ratios that you're looking for. But let's get into some of those other metrics and just kind of a very basic question here, what do you consider especially forward for companies that 1 million maybe 5 million 10 million and then above as we kind of work up the strata here, what sort of metrics would you generally say are really important for an owner or potentially an acquirer to really dial in on a SaaS business? Ben: Yeah I think once you're past that early stage where you really have to manage your cash flow I mean it's going to be your go-to-market, sales, and marketing efficiency metrics and that's something I'm constantly looking at. So it's really all; it becomes a lot about the go-to-market efficiency. One are your inbound or outbound sales engine and marketing engines and then one metric that's a favorite of mine is cost of ARR, cost of MRR where you're looking at your ARR and MRR bookings and comparing that against your sales and marketing expense to see how much it costs you to acquire one that new dollar or ARR or MRR; that's a big one. And there's a great survey out there, a SaaS survey put out by KeyBank each year that provides those private company metrics so you can compare how you're doing against other SaaS companies who put data into that survey. So it's a great benchmarking tool. But again there are a lot of sales and marketing efficiency metrics that yeah as you're scaling, how efficient are you, how much cash is going to be required to hit your booking plan, and then really just that balance; it comes down to that balance between bookings and sales marketing. Mark: Yeah that's great. Let's talk employees it seems to be one of the costs that seems to kind of spiral out of control with SaaS companies on occasion right? The cost of supporting the clients can be higher and higher. You have something on the blog which I'd just kind of chanced upon which you came up with called the Rose Metric. Can you explain that a little bit? Ben: Yes sure. Again it kind of gets back to the concept that really a SaaS company or any software company is all about the staff; the employees because that's the major expense or as I call merits that investment in the business around your staff. And you see that revenue graph that you metric out there is kind of a general gauge around efficiency which I think is just too high level; too generic. So I want to look at really it's so important that your investing employees, that employees are happy because they are creating that software company; they're creating the product. And really comparing how efficient are we in headcount wages versus the bookings coming in. So it gets you kind of a balance of as we scale what resources do we need to support our bookings plan or rounding plan and just see how efficient we are in acquiring new MRR or ARR against our kind of employee headcount or employee wages. Mark: Yeah it's an interesting piece and again I'd recommend people take a look at the blog and kind of dig into some of these employee metrics. It's one that we don't see as much in our world and I think it's an interesting one to take a look at. From a merger and acquisition standpoint if you're a buyer coming into a business and trying to evaluate it where are you going to begin looking at a company's books? What sort of numbers are you going to be looking at in trying to calculate within that first day as you're trying to see is this a good opportunity and a healthy company? Ben: Yeah obviously the first thing you're going to look at is just are they good books are you inaudible[00:19:12.5] accounting so they're good financial statements. And then after that, it's really understanding the health of the recurring revenue because a lot of valuations are based on almost full of ARR or MRR and then also EBIDTA. So really when I look at it you know it's really looking into that recurring revenue; so the bookings data, what's your gross dollar retention, net revenue retention, how many logos are you losing per month, how many dollars are you losing per month, and churn and dock rates. And then of course if you've got multiple products it's understanding all of those metrics by the product lines. Because that's what you're really buying is the recurring revenue stream and of course any profitability or lack of profitability that goes along with that recurring revenue stream in the form of EBIDTA. So those are the same first things that I dive into is really understanding the revenue streams and then really the business model; what does it take to support that recurring revenue stream? Do you have tech support? Do you have CSMs? What's needed support that revenue? And then, of course, another big thing is to go to market engine; understanding sales and marketing, how they're acquiring customers, how efficient they are, and then of course looking into GNA, RND, the product roadmap etcetera. Mark: Sure absolutely. As far as dealing with a company with weak books like of we're evaluating a company that maybe has this lumpy revenue because they're recording everything on a cash basis. Are there ways that you can suggest that would not involve a whole deconstruction of books but maybe to be able to evaluate a business that has weaker books or weaker data tracking practices? Ben: Yeah if you really can rely on the financials for the revenue stream then you have to really build a backup through their bookings data or their invoicing data. So getting say a couple years of invoicing history of their subscriptions; so dollar amounts, start and end dates, it helps if you knew is this a new logo expansion etcetera so that you can reconstruct what the revenue stream should look like and then get back into you know what kind of expansion are you seeing, churn are they seeing so you can build out that revenue stream if it's not; if they're not [inaudible 00:21:30.3] to the financial statements. Mark: Sure. What would be some warning signs that you would look for an acquisition? Obviously, you said you would really look at the health of the recurring revenue. How trustworthy is it? Also the go-to-market cost as well. What are some things that would be just kind of a deal-breaker for you if you were evaluating a business? Ben: I mean a couple of things would be looking at again I think it's going to be around churn and payback periods. So payback periods are extremely important. So how fast are you paying back those upfront customer acquisition costs. So one looking at their cash balance, of course, are they trying to [inaudible 00:22:10.5] fund working capital through lines of credit or debt that their business model isn't quite working for some reason or the payback period is too long or they have just too much cash tied up in check. And then, of course, new logo acquisition, do they have the go-to-market model proofed out or product-market fit and then again just is churn under control, can they acquire customers but then can they retain them over time. So again those are some of the things that if you see warning flags; you might see some warning flags there that the metrics just as a whole don't add up together. Mark: Right. You mentioned payback periods. This is something that I've ran into a number of times where I see somebody pretty plainly put out there hey my LTV is this my CSC is this so look I'm going to acquire the customer for 80 bucks the lifetime value is $400 and you're going to make a great return on your investment on that. But when you dig into it a little bit deeper you find out that if you take like an 80% cohort, if you're taking a look at the majority of customers the lifetime value is much lower. There are a couple of unicorns in there that are pulling in this really high value. What are some ways that you can recommend dissecting this when you get this kind of flat up numbers of my lifetime value is X and my cost of acquisition is Y so, therefore, you're going to make that killing on this business. How can you sort of dissect that and actually get some better insights there? Ben: Yeah especially with LTV because that can be so sensitive to the denominator or what churn number you're using as the dominator. So you really have to understand what inputs they're putting themselves because that lifetime value can be all over the place. So again you mentioned cohort analysis, are they taking the cohorts, are they using aggregate churn or are you looking at really with check and payback periods you should be looking at it's really a point in time like the cohort analysis that what's the most recent cohorts coming in and the paybacks on those and also lifetime churn from the cohorts say from the past 12 months. So you really have to I think look at the details on the numbers that are building up into those formulas to really prove out what they're saying that they can really claim great numbers. Mark: Yeah, it's one of the reasons that LTV to me I'm not a big fan of that metric on its own I mean it's interesting but I think it's just kind of a live number way. It doesn't color a whole lot when you're looking at it by itself, right? It can really take you to a lot of different factors. Ben: Yeah and I definitely calculate LTV it's interesting because I think SaaS metrics in isolation don't mean much. You kind of have to look at the big picture obviously it's LTV to check but also looking at cost of ARR payback periods. So maybe it's one data point but it's not telling the whole story. So I do look at LTV but again I think say cost of ARR or the payback on that is a much easier way to understand. And LTV I still think is kind of a ballpark because it's always changing and it's such a sensitive calculation that it's not the number to just look at alone. Mark: Yeah. A question I get all the time from people and it's really basic in your world so I apologize for even asking this but people ask me all the time well how am I supposed to calculate my lifetime value, how am I supposed to calculate my churn when I have people that are still; that have been with me from day one? And these numbers sometimes can be difficult to calculate because of that or even people that are dropping off but then coming back on and then dropping off again and then coming back on. Ben: Yeah. I hear that a lot too. Yeah especially if you're a couple of years in you really don't know your lifetime value yet. Again it's just a formula; it's a calculation so it's a ballpark but you don't really know true LTV yet if you've just been around a couple of months or a couple of years. And then the whole dropping off dropping on back on that's where it just becomes almost company-specific that you really just have to define internally what does a new customer mean, when does it really mean that they churn so that everyone within the company understands that. And if you're in any sort of M&A then that's clearly; that you're transparent with how you're actually tracking those stats. Mark: Yeah. And I think that part right there that point is probably the key that I think is so important especially from an acquisition standpoint. If you're looking to acquire a SaaS company and you're just looking at the metrics on the surface how does that seller define those metrics within their own company and why did they set up those rules because with multi churn you can look at that in a number of different ways. You can calculate that number using different approaches the same way with LTV numbers you can use different approaches and get different results. So why did you choose a certain method; why did you choose a certain approach to this? And that's the color I think from an acquisition standpoint that starts to get really important when you're looking at any of these metrics is understanding the why behind what data is being presented and then the rules and applying a sanity test to it. Are these people just giving numbers because that's what they're supposed to pick or are they actually looking at these and using these metrics within their company, yeah just a really good point on your side as far as understanding the metrics and where they're coming from? Moving beyond that cost of acquisition, moving beyond the lifetime value numbers and you've mentioned a few times the going to market costs as well, what are some health levels for the sustainability of ARR or MRR on a SaaS business. Ben: You mean as kind of as far as the balance between recurring revenue and sales marketing expense? Mark: Yes. Ben: Yeah, so healthy levels, the things that I look at and this is probably more mid-market enterprise but usually if you can acquire bookings for $1 of a new ARR for a dollar of sales market expense that's pretty good. So again there are some surveys out there that kind of give you some benchmarks and that's kind of you can say in whole new logo and expansions of course expansion in ourselves should be a lot cheaper than acquisition, maybe that's 30 to 50 cents of sales and marketing expense acquire one net new dollar of ARR. So certainly it's just that you look in and if it's higher you just need to understand from that business why it's taking longer and what's the story behind go to market. Is that a longer sales cycle that's impacting the [inaudible 00:28:48.6] so just different things to really understand their business model. Mark: That's great. I'm going to just take a quick break from some of that heavy metric discussion here because we're throwing around a lot of acronyms right now. How did you get your start in this rollout? You said that you had experience in the airplane industry and then also in the software industry. How did you get to be so passionate about this and kind of digging in as deep as you do? Ben: Yeah well I guess one that you really loved forecasting and financial forecasting though in Excel models and you kind of build-up that tool kit over time and just really enjoy it really understanding the economics of businesses and especially software is so interesting and yeah I did start in the airlines which is also kind of metric intensive and very financially disciplined and I kind of applied that to the SaaS areas. So I just noticed out there a lot of resources on SaaS but it didn't quite I felt go far enough or really just give you the whole story and the template that they were using it kind explained it but then you might have to go do an hour or two of work to recreate what that person did. And so I said; I thought you could be a little different by just providing the exact models, the templates that I'm using and hopefully the bits and pieces of those would be applicable to some people in SaaS that they could incorporate into their business and I received great feedback from readers, subscribers downloading templates that it's helped them out a lot, founders that are trying to do their first forecast. So I just wanted that kind of transparent value exchange out there and it's just really from my kind of on the job experience as a SaaS CFO and just things I encounter every day that are pain points for me that could be pain points for others and just help them out with maybe something with a template that I've used to solve some of those problems. Mark: Yeah you have all these comments on the site from people who have written into about the resources and I love the one here that says great resources that save a lot of time and brain damage to replicate. It's very true. Again there's a really good stuff on here. You brought up forecasting again so I'm going to start to bring this full circle here back to forecasting because we talked about that and it's a topic that I'm personally very interested in as well right now. You have a whole page here on the cash runway model. Can you explain that at a high level and maybe we can get into it a little bit? Ben: Yeah definitely because I have my financial plan out there that I live in Excel every day that I kind of take it for granted that other people can also open up Excel or just dive right in and for a lot of people it's still a little too advanced so with kind of that you could say advanced side of financial planning model. So I tried to create something very basic and it is really inspired by a founder I talked to who said that he got some funding just with a super basic cash forecast. So I thought well how could I take that and just make it super simple say for founders and non-excel people to just start inputting even it really gets to their cash invoicing. So they really could forecast their cash balance and how long that balance is going to last. If they funded it and then they're looking for investments that they could say hey here's my cash invoicing coming up, here's my headcount, here are some other metrics; that major expenses and then just forecast their cash balance in one tab. So that was the genesis of it just trying to really boil down to really something basic that founders and again non-excel people could hopefully use right away. Mark: Yeah. And you have this template available on the site. And you didn't actually answer it's kind of the question I was going to lead into and that is how does somebody get started with forecasting if they don't have the resources for a CFO like yourself what are some basic models that they can put together to start forecasting their cash flow? Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think really it's understanding their invoicing patterns; so what is your cash coming in whether that's funding or just the invoices you're sending out to your customers or their credit card payments they're making online line through your site. So that's really the first step. It's just that cash in. And then it's going to be headcount. Again headcounts the majority of expense for SaaS company so really and I'm quite informal as to how do we easily calculate and forecast that expense. So whether you've got one person 850 cut that into model, forecast that expense out. So the second thing again is headcount. And then any other major expenses, maybe it's rent, maybe it's tradeshow, advertisements, so it's kind of that 80-20 rule start with those big expenses; start with the big invoices as a place to start to put together kind of a basic forecast. Mark: Right then as with all things you can refine that as you go along and improve it and make it more accurate and you can look back to see how accurate was our forecasting and get the insights that you need from there and be able to really plan out what's going on or if you're looking for funding obviously very useful for that as well. This has been really interesting and maybe a little bit of a scattered conversation because I want to talk about everything at once. That's my downfall. I've never really claimed to be the greatest podcast host in the world but there is just so much here to be able to discuss. We are up against the clock at this point though and so I want to give you the chance to kind of round it out and with what you do you obviously have a passion for a lot of this in you being able to help out a lot of people. What are some of the common problems or common questions that you get at the blog and what would you say to SaaS founders currently operating a business right now or those that might be looking to get into this through acquisition? Ben: Yeah I mean the kind of questions or problems that I see really one is just how do you calculate this stuff, how do you calculate these metrics, what are the inputs? And that really comes back to just a nice clean P&L that you take the time; make that investment through your bookkeeper or accountant to really set up a well-organized P&L because that's where all the metrics emanate from. And if you don't have that it's going to be really hard to calculate the metrics and really have that financial transparency to manage your business. So really again it starts with what's your SaaS P&L and I try post on there on my site kind of walking through from bookings down to income; what the major components of the SaaS P&L are and again it's getting good organization and good fundamentals there and then you can build upon it then you can start forecasting then you can calculate metrics. So again it starts with I think a nicely organized SaaS P&L. Mark: You know I had Babak Azad who was with Beach Body; he grew that company into a billion-dollar company and he was talking a lot about the metrics that they use there and I asked him a similar question about how do you get started; how can you start tracking this and his response was just what yours is and that is just start; you just have to start with it right. And your advice to start with a P&L and having that set up correctly. It's what we've been preaching here at Quiet Light Brokerage for a very, very long time. Get those books in order. You want to have those books in order. It doesn't matter if you want to sell or not. As a business owner having good financial records it's irreplaceable. Once you get it you will be so happy that you've had it. But it starts with how you're inputting it. I've run into bookkeepers; maybe you have as well but I run into bookkeepers especially when somebody hires them remotely who kind of don't want to do an accrual basis books because they consider it to be more difficult but it's the proper way to do it and as you said all the metrics derive from there. Alright, one last time Ben where can people find you? What's the best way to contact you? Ben: Sure you can contact me through my site. It's the SaaSCFO.com and then actually later this month I'm launching the SaaS Academy.com. It's an online digital course for SaaS metrics and more so that's coming out soon as well. But definitely my blog you can contact me through to the site. Mark: That's fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on. I hope to have you on in the future. In the future, I'll choose one topic and I'll stick on that for the entire topic but thank you so much for this really good overview episode. I really appreciate it. Ben: Alright thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me. Links and Resources: Ben's Blog The SaaS CFO Ben's Blog post: The ROSE Metric Ben's Software Recommendations David Newell SaaS Webinar
David Newell, Fred Rogers' co-worker & friend, discusses Mister Rogers' being a guest on Carson, Johnny's Mister Rogers parodies, & Rogers paying a surprise visit to Eddie Murphy.
Last month as part of my semi-annual tradition of launching myself into a self-discovery escapade of some kind, I set off to the Basque Country for a 12-day Vision Quest in the Spanish mountains. Vision Quest is an old shamanic rite of passage that typically takes the subject off into the wilderness for a week with no food, no company, and no distractions. Once there, participants are encouraged to still their minds, become one with nature, and gain access to their wisdom mind for guidance on their true direction and purpose in life. The experience is usually capped with a final initiation through a series of plant medicine ceremonies to learn from the plants and integrate insights from the mountain. It was probably one of the best self-discovery I’ve ever been through. The combination of solitude, nature, fasting, shamanic teachings and plant ceremonies was a powerful formula for finding my centre, uncovering powerful personal insights, and opening up some exciting avenues ahead. In this week’s convo I’m joined by my dear friend Brian who came on the retreat last minute and as a virgin to such experiences. We talk about why we went, what it was like, what we got out of it, and why it could be a great experience for you too. As always, there’s no shortage of bizarre tales from the trip! You’ll find it in all the usual haunts online. Enjoy!
What does it mean to be a man these days? First partner? First job? First kid? Two weeks ago I took a trip to Ireland to find out. Alongside 40 other men, bound by non-disclosure agreements, I took part in The ManKind Project’s answer to this question. Over the next 2 days we went through a series of secret processes to explore the deeper and darker recesses of ourselves to find out how we too could become part of a new generation of kind and compassionate fathers, partners, and community leaders. Why? Well, maybe its just me but it feels like masculinity has gone a little but sideways these days. MeToo, addiction, binge drinking, domestic violence, just some of the pathologies stemming from unhealed problems in the collective psyche of men. Not to mention depression, loneliness, and suicide. For me, when I look around in society, I see desperately few role models of a man I want to be. Our films, TV, music, political leaders, we seem to elevate some really stupid shit (at least in my book). So in this week’s episode I took the topic head on to talk about the problems of modern masculinity, how these are being created from an early age, and what can be done about it. I talked about about some of the darker aspects of my psyche that came up at MKP, how the experience massively helped me, and the impact it has had as a result. Most of our listeners are female so please listen and share with your boyfriends, brothers, fathers, husbands - if it resonates. Enjoy!
“We are all essentially shades of shadow to light, and the shadow is just aspects of ourselves that we haven’t forgiven and brought into light yet.” Like many of us, David Newell started out on the traditional path through life. After graduating, he took a lucrative career in investment banking and all was good for a while - until he burnt out aged just 25. The burnout was so severe that David was forced to quit working and take 6 months to recover and find himself again.But as often is the case, this rock-bottom moment blossomed into an opportunity for massive healing and self-discovery. In this time, David chose to travel, invest in retreats, and get curious about life. This healing journey uncovered an enduring need to dive deep into the inner self to understand the workings of the mind. It’s where his Inner Truth podcast and business was born - work that he loves and work that provides a platform for continuous growth.Nowadays, David is obsessed with diving deeper and exploring further. It’s a journey that’s taken him from the Amazon, to temples, to everything in between. He’s read books, taken courses, had deep conversations and met indigenous cultures - all fuelled by his desire to figure out what it takes to live a good life.In fact, thanks to David’s many explorations (including a trip to the 10th dimension courtesy of Toad Medicine), he’s developed a level of consciousness that inspires me. And I’m sure you’ll feel the same when you tune into this deep and meaningful conversation about life, love, and everything in between.“Everything is the pursuit of love. Even in the most twisted and wobbly and fear-bound and shadowy and sometimes manipulative ways, it’s all an attempt to find love.” In this episode, David and I explore the meaning of life from all kinds of angles. This is a great one for thought-provoking questions and ideas that will challenge your thinking and inspire a fresh perspective.Tune in to hear about:David’s trip to the 10th dimension and the universal truths he discovered thereThe 10kg appearance lesson that collapsed David’s lung and taught him to ‘rest’ into what nature gives youWhy everything in life is actually taking place inside you (and how you can leverage this insight to live a good life).What becomes possible when you take responsibility for EVERYTHING that happens in your life (including the things you don’t want to own).David’s four-part Life Visioning Process that will help you create a life well lived.A powerful decision that ensures you can create a life where it’s possible to do it all.Exciting details about the groundbreaking human design product that David is getting ready to launch.And so much more. Can’t wait to hear your takeaways about this doozy.“Essentially everything is a manifestation of love and we’re all here just to remind each other of that. That’s the game of life. That’s the boss level.” How to contact Follow David on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/dlppnCheck out the inner truth podcast: https://innertruth.org/Listen to David’s Inner Truth Podcast here (this is a link to his conversation with me) - https://innertruth.org/podcast/why-why-is-the-most-important-question-of-your-life-with-raj-janaWe thrive on your feedback, so if you’ve enjoyed this show, please rate us and leave us a review. And don’t forget to subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode again.https://www.instagram.com/inner__truth/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Today the newest member of the Quiet Light team, David Newell, joins us to discuss the four pillars for buyers and sellers, particularly when they apply to SaaS businesses. David knows SaaS super well and covers all the metrics that buyers and sellers need to pay attention to on both sides of the acquisition process. We discuss everything he looks for when listing a SaaS business, the challenges in measuring some of those metrics, and some common SaaS buyer pitfalls. David started his career in investment banking and worked in that environment for four years. Looking for a taste of life on the outside, he started brokering online, eventually working his way through the ropes to a head broker role. David is now a successful entrepreneur in his own right, with a brand in self-discovery and personal development which has grown from a podcast to a full online brand. Inner Truth offers a wealth of courses, community, and content for anyone embarking on a journey of self-truth. We're very pleased to welcome David to the Quiet Light team. Episode Highlights: David takes us through his background and the SaaS business floodgate that opened for him as he learned about this niche and began brokering SaaS deals. The top three things David feels are important to hone in on to add value to a business. What churn is, how it's calculated, and why it's a cornerstone to a SaaS business. The difference between MRR and ARR and how each can affect the revenue profile of your business. David's software recommendations for measuring the metrics he looks at in a SaaS business. We get into what micro SaaS is and how it differs from the traditional SaaS model. Potential pitfalls of owning a SaaS business and the challenges to consider when getting into the SaaS acquisition arena. Tips and advice for folks preparing to sell their SaaS business. Compelling acquisition tips on how to do the good work before getting ready to sell. Transcription Mark: Joe we are quickly being outnumbered here at Quiet Light Brokerage. We just hired on somebody else who hails from the UK. Joe: Yes; David Newall, a fantastic guy, and another Brit. I guess Brian's not a Brit he's a— Mark: What is he? Joe: He's Estonian, that's what he is. Mark: Yeah but he's kind of an international mutt when we would think about it. He's Estonian but he lives in the UK sometimes but now he's looking at living who knows where. Joe: Well, he's a true entrepreneur. He's been living all over the world with his wife for the last 12 months. And we just got together at the Prosper Show last week with both David and Brian and Brian's wife; a first time we've met a Quiet Light spouse right? First time you've met … you've owned this company for almost 11 years and you've never met a spouse until last week. Mark: Over 12 years. I mean talk about the age of the modern company right? We are a distributed company. Everybody lives in different states and when we see each other it's at conferences. So it's pretty rare for me … very rare being that this is the first time ever that I met a Quiet Light spouse. And I think the only reason that I did is because Brian and his wife don't actually have a home that they go to. Joe: That's right. Mark: I mean obviously they have places where they live but they're constantly on the move which is fun but I'd like to meet more of the spouses. Joe: I'm with you. Yeah, they were in Vegas and then they were heading down to … I think it was Panama for two months and eventually they're going to make their way back to the UK and settle down I believe but we'll see. Time will tell. But yes we have a new member of the Quiet Light Brokerage team. His name is David Newall; a former investment banker, a former head of brokerage services for a competing firm, a fantastic guy. I gotten to him a lot on the podcast but even more last week and I knew we were going to hit it off well when I started calling him Harry Styles because of his British accent and his affinity towards Taylor Swift. Everybody call him Harry if you want and I think he called me grandpa at one point. So I think we're going to get along well. Mark: Didn't sort of from Australia though, is he? I mean— Joe: Not at all, that's what I kept saying just to bust his chops a little bit. Mark: Well, let's get to the meat of it though because David really knows SaaS super well. The guy is a genius when it comes to SaaS businesses and you guys talked about some of the metrics that both buyers and sellers need to pay attention to in a SaaS acquisition. Joe: Yeah, we did. We went through everything that he looks for when he's listing a SaaS business for sale and he's done dozens and dozens of them personally. So all of the different metrics and what some of the challenges are in measuring those metrics from a selling standpoint and then we focused and flipped it over to what buyers should look for and what some of the pitfalls are. Very, very knowledgeable; a very smart guy and it's going to be a great podcast for those SaaS business owners out there. Mark: Well, I love having these British guys on staff because they make us sound so much more intelligent. Joe: He does. Come on now there's nothing like a good southern drawl though. I don't have it but there's plenty of folks that have. Mark: Well, it helps that David is actually a really really smart guy so it's not just the way he says words, it's what he's saying. He's always extremely insightful. And he puts things in a very simple way as well that makes it pretty easy to understand and adjust. Joe: Yeah so let's get to the accent. Let's focus on SaaS and what David has done in his history and how he's going to help the Quiet Light team build a much, much bigger brand and a great, great addition to the team for all the buyers and sellers out there as well. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley with Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got one of our newest brokers with us. He has a ton of experience. It's David Newall. David welcome to the team and Quiet Light's podcast. David: Thank you, Joe, it's a pleasure to be here. Joe: That's a funny accent. Is that Australian? David: It's British and I saw you write it as Australian in an email the other day. I was absolutely savaged by that. I was going to reprimand you. Joe: I was only kidding. I was on the phone with Ben. We won't say his last name but he's like yeah tell him he's a great guy but I really don't like that Australian accent. He was kidding at the same time as well. Anyway, I'm going to kick this off just the way we do with every guest David and that is can you give us some background on yourself? Tell us about who you are, where you've been, that kind of stuff. David: Yeah well, I started life out in in investment banking actually. I've been a business degree undergraduate and then I launched myself into the windy world of investment banking. And I worked in merger and acquisitions for Citi Group in London for four years which as you can imagine is a very intense environment but also an incredible learning environment. And there I got to work on some of the biggest tech media and telecoms, M&A, Capital Races, for the first four years of my life. And you learn a lot, you earn a lot, you don't sleep very much and so at a certain level you start to think I wonder what life looks like on the outside of this office. And so I left that and took some time to travel and then shortly thereafter I decided it would be really good to get involved in something smaller where I could have more a managerial position and bring a lot of the experience that we had into a more exciting and a hotter area. And so that's when my online business brokerage life actually began. And I started life out at one of your competitors. Joe: Our competitors; you're on the team now. David: And yeah so I started like everyone does with this so that's the bottom realm with always the view to building up and becoming the [inaudible 00:07:48.7] which is just the head of brokerage and operations there. And so with the three attendant that I have, we obviously expanded very well out of London and moved overseas to Boston. Built a team up and so in that time yeah I must have done about 75 deals and sort of oversaw the rest of the team doing about 200. So a lot of deals across a lot of business models and a lot of niches. And yeah it was a very exciting endeavor. Joe: You know I was out for a walk this morning and yes folks I'm in North Carolina and it's sunny here and I was thinking about having this conversation with you this morning and the fact that you mentioned the last time we chatted that you've done 75 deals. And I'm thinking wow David might have more experience than I do. And I'm adding mine often. I think I've done more but I'm doing it longer, that's the key. David: Yeah for sure. Joe: But you have me by doing a larger deal than I've done as well which is it's great to have that experience that you bring to the team just because that's everybody here at Quiet Light, a very successful entrepreneur business person and a great deal of skill and talent in the internet space as well. You are also an entrepreneur as well can you touch on that just for a moment? David: Yeah, that's right I mean I think one of the things that was just becoming kind of a burning seed for me in 2016 which is the year that I sort of decided to leave was to strike out and become sort of my master and flex my entrepreneurial feathers a little bit. And so I spend the best part of sort of nine months, ten months as really resting and thinking in to what I wanted to get involved in. And my personal interest is massively in self-discovery and personal development. So I got really deep into yoga and meditation and shamanism and breathe work and all of these wonderful tributaries that are now becoming really big parts actually of modern culture. And so around this time last year, I actually launched my own online brand of self-discovery called Inner Truth and it started as a podcast and then we since added on audio courses with various famous speakers from around the world. And yeah the podcast is growing exponentially now and I'd had some really amazing people and I've got to interview some of my favorite authors, singers, writers, speakers, yeah it's mostly really famous people so it's kind of an interesting life now hopping on the podcast every week we have a celebrity and— Joe: It's pretty neat. David: Yeah yeah [inaudible 00:10:18.8] Joe: Yeah, it's … Mark and I did a podcast on the benefit of podcasting for your business and for us at Quiet Light it's just opened up doors to very successful authors, professors at Harvard, whatever it might be and then there are these celebrities inside the world we live in which is e-commerce and SaaS and so on and so forth. But it really is a great tool for anybody that's running their own business. Start with a podcast, it doesn't cost that much. You can always edit out stuff that you're not good. I think actually when we did that podcast I must have stuttered and stumbled in the first three minutes and we decided not to edit any of it because we said look if we can do it anybody can. David: Yeah, 100%. I mean on the first episode I recorded it was an hour long and I spent four hours editing it. Joe: Yeah. David: Well, I've got the last move and now and there's a lot less going on. You sort of have to force necessity when you're doing some of the bigger guns now. Joe: You certainly do. Speaking of big guns let's talk about some of your experience in the e-commerce brokering world or internet business brokering world. A lot of folks think that Quiet Light is really specialized in physical products or e-commerce as they label that whereas the largest deal I've ever done was a content business. The next largest after that was a SaaS business. Sure I do lots of Shopify stores with an Amazon component or more these days an Amazon business with a Shopify component but you have a tremendous amount of experience in the SaaS base right? David: Yeah exactly I think you know around 2014, 2015 we really started to spot this emerging trend of micro SaaS businesses coming up and sort of not really being thought about perhaps and valued in a very sophisticated way given the strength of these businesses, the IP mode that they've got and the recurring revenue. And so we really started to pour a lot of attention into what makes SaaS special. And yeah we're very happy to start working with some great names like Patrick McKenzie and Rob Walling and as they bought their businesses to us and we did successful exits for them; the floodgates opened really. And so for me yeah I think … you know I sold several dozen SaaS businesses over my time and culminating over course the successful sale of Rob's business direct in Leadpages in 2016 which was an incredible transaction an awful massively personally gratifying because Rob is such a good friend and great to get a life changing exit for him but also to sell into a company as big as that with Claire as a CEO; a super dynamic deal environment and yeah definitely a lot of learning. Joe: Yeah, Mark had Rob on the podcast talking about his story of building Drip and exiting from it and it was a great, great podcast. If anybody hasn't listened to that please do. But it's kind of funny I remember when you were doing that deal and we were getting wind of it and it's funny we just thought oh yeah no we don't want to do 10 million dollar deals or whatever the number was. You have to fly all over the country, you got to put a tie on then you … and I don't think you probably did any of that. And now we're doing deals that are that size and a little bit bigger so we all grow up in this business and have to evolve so to speak. So let's talk specifically about SaaS David. For the audience that's out there, if they're running a SaaS business, if you're working with them through Quiet Light, you get a referral and boom you've got a SaaS business that you're going to value what are the top three or four things that you're going to sort of hone in on that is going to bring more value? Maybe even speak to the buyers here what should they be looking at and what would you look at as the seller's broker? David: Well, I think that one of the most important probably least looked at and least understood metrics of any SaaS business is churn. Churn really is the cornerstone of successful SaaS business because it is completely cancerous to revenue growth if you don't get that right. Joe: Can you define that for folks that are just beginning to look at SaaS; what churn rate is and maybe how it's calculated? David: Yeah, churn rate I mean you can look at it from a revenue perspective or you can look at it from a customer account perspective. Revenue is probably more helpful and that's simply telling you how much revenue, how many customers you're losing per month through cancellations, expiries or sort of billings that aren't going through. Joe: That's measured against total revenue and what's a good churn rate in the SaaS world? David: Well, that's a great and a pretty seminal question that comes up a lot when you're evaluating SaaS businesses that specifically are targeting different end users. So if you're thinking like the B2B space the monthly customer churn rate actually varies quite a lot depending on which business segment you're looking at. So if you have a SaaS business facing an enterprise segment it's going to have a materially different monthly customer churn rate than one interacting or facing against an SMB segment because those end customers have different purchasing behaviors. So in enterprise, for example, you know very, very, very low monthly churns expected and we're talking like 1.5 to 1% a month which annualized is 6 to 10%. When you're looking at SMB something doing 3 to 7% is— Joe: What does SMB stand for David? David: Small to medium sized businesses. Joe: Thank you. David: And so annualize that's more like 30 to 60%. And so now you can start to see that the difference between a 6% percent monthly churn rate and a 4% monthly churn rate is going to have a mega, mega, mega difference to the revenue profile of the business 12 months out from now. Joe: Yeah, let's just … I want to talk about the other two aspects in terms of things that you look at in terms of the metrics but the churn rate measured against the revenue; obviously, the revenue has to continue to climb and new customers need to come in at a higher phase than the churn rate in order for the business to be growing. Or even actually just staying steady right? They can be losing 5% a month and be gaining 5% a month in revenue just that. And the beautiful thing that buyers love about this is that … or SaaS business is that it's the recurring revenue. And they generally trade at a higher multiple. If you've got a straight up e-commerce business selling physical products with its own brand even with a patent I think that a SaaS business that's growing and has lots of growth opportunities and a reasonable low churn and workload is going to trade at a higher multiple. Is that your experience as well? David: Yeah well, I think that the recurring revenue piece is one explanatory factor for that premium in multiples. I think the other is simply the moat that exists around the average SaaS business; having that intellectual property. We work in a space where if you can find product market fit for a very quick rate with an Amazon business and very quickly start to scale it but with the SaaS business you might have to pile in anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 into development and may not even make a penny. And so one of the things that actually make these micro SaaS businesses very valuable when they come to market is that actually, they've simply found product market fit after having put down a lot of Cap Ex. And so it's interesting that that's actually a large amount of the value proposition for people that are looking to acquire these and scale them because that in itself is finding a diamond in the rough. Joe: Right, so that risk is one of the four pillars for those that listen often. It's one of the four pillars and it's the lower the risk as David's talking about the defensibility of the business, that moat around it, it lowers the risk so therefore the value of the business goes up. All right throw in another couple of metrics that you generally look at and it's important for buyers to think about as well when they're looking at SaaS businesses. David: Yeah well, I think acquisition channel for the customers is really important and I think the really premium SaaS business at the higher end of the multiple range are just like every other type of business managing to acquire customers across a multitude of channels so the concentration risk is low. And that within those channels the competition is relatively low. You can look at say a SaaS business in the project management space which is absolutely saturated with VC vat competitors and that's a pretty frightening spot to be in. You'd much prefer to be somewhere in a quieter segment just like we'd look at in e-commerce. The same rules apply. I think it's quite nuanced in SaaS though because you have put down a lot of Cap Ex upfront to develop product and so you have to be pretty savvy when it comes to acquiring customers at a reasonable rate. Joe: Okay. So we've got the cost to acquire a new customer, the channel that you're getting them from, the churn rate, anything else that really jumps out that you're looking at? David: Yeah, I think the profile in terms of the revenue of the business is really important. So obviously we've been talking about MRR but there's ARR as well right? Joe: So that's Monthly Recurring Revenue and Annual Recurring Revenue. David: Yeah, exactly and it's very tempting when you're a business owner and this is kind of an important thing that I think a lot of business owners can trip up on to want to sell lifetime and annual plans at a gracefully discounted rate in order to book that revenue. But when it comes to sell it presents a pretty lumpy revenue profile at a major risk for the acquirer. And so actually the multiple that can be applied to MRR should be higher than ARR because it's more predictable. And this is, even more, the case when you know you're using debt financing to buy a business. And so something that I would always do when I'm evaluating a SaaS business is actually use something of a blended multiple where I value MRR higher than ARR. Joe: Right so to further detail that and explain a little bit that annual recurring revenue if you have one or two months a year where let's say the subscriptions are opened up and there's a flood of customers with a special promotion and a steeply discounted price for an annual subscription but you're selling the business a few years later and you are nine months away from or actually just say two months after that annual subscription, the person that's buying the business they're going to go 10 months without having that big bump in revenue. They're not doing any daily or weekly or monthly work for that revenue. It's going to occur so there's no discount necessarily but it can become a challenge like you say when they're getting debt financing. They've got a monthly payment to make every single month and if that big bump is not going to come for 10 months it can be a bit of a challenge. That's great. David: Yeah, and it's not entirely guaranteed that those annual subscribers will renew a great wish that came in there and I think people expect a certain level of annual around Black Friday but if the business is struggling to show MRR growth in off months then that's a bit of a red flag potential. Joe: Right, so from the buyer standpoint you think really the focusing on the monthly recurring revenue … you got to look at the annual recurring revenue but the more attractive business would be one that's got more monthly recurring revenue because it's spinning out that risk a little bit more. David: 100%. Joe: 100%. Okay, software that's out there to help SaaS owners measure these metrics. It's a challenge like I've looked at trying to calculate at lifetime value. It's very, very difficult. Everybody does it a different way. Is there a particular software that you've seen more SaaS owners use than not? David: Yeah I mean I really like the Profitwell analysis actually. I think whatever you use standardize. I think it's not helpful to swap between Chartmogul, Baremetrics, Profitwell, and just keep skipping around because then you're looking at very inconsistent numbers and methodology as in if trying to evaluate a number of SaaS business that's just not an additional complexity that you want to commit into your analysis. So I think stick with one and the one … the dashboard I've seen as the friendliest and the most well explained and the easiest to use is Profitwell. And in particular, looking at their cohort analysis the churn is this incredible way of seeing whether the business underlying is improving or getting worst as new customers are coming on board. Joe: Okay, Profitwell or wells? David: Well. Joe: Well, Profitwell. Yeah, I've seen Baremetrics used quite a bit on the SaaS businesses that I've sold. It's a great tool for buyers and sellers just to go look at it and study what these metrics are that people are analyzing these businesses on. David: Yeah, 100% and there's a bunch of open source businesses upon the Baremetrics platform where you can just go and look right now. I mean you can look at Baremetrics and their own metrics I believe on their own platform and I [inaudible 00:23:14.4] I think convert kit was on there for a while. They may still be. So it's fascinating to have a poke around and once you've looked at a handful of SaaS deals you can really start to get a feel for what makes sense for and what doesn't around from all of these metrics. Joe: I got you. David, you've mentioned the term micro SaaS more than once can you define that for us? Is there a certain size? Is that what you're referring to? David: Yeah I mean I think of micro SaaS as sub a million dollars in value but really when I think about it more deeply it's characterizing the business that has not gone down the sort of venture capital deep investment. You know fast growth, pushing for a revenue multiple exits and instead gone for the bootstrapped— Joe: I got you. David: Slower grave way of doing it. And that is absolutely not to say that you can't take a micro SaaS and push it into that revenue growth multiple VC back territory. It's just that I think a lot of the businesses that we look at in our world tend to fall into the micro SaaS class version. Joe: Yeah, I sold one last year that literally was started by someone that had a problem and he solved it himself. It was sort of a self-calendar tool and he had it for 14 years but he was an engineer by trade and you could tell by the interview that I did with him that he was not comfortable selling or talking; very, very much an engineer. The person that bought it very much the opposite of that and is already talking to private equity folks to invest or get it to a certain point and take it beyond this sort of micro SaaS market that you're talking about. David: Yeah this is a really important point actually that I want to extend because what I've observed in my experience is that a lot of the businesses that come off exit were designed by the engineer, by developer types that find a problem that solved that and pushed it out to friends and family and other developers, acquire a customer base. It starts to grow organically but they simply either don't have the appetite, the interest, or the skill set to market it. Nor do they want to. And so these businesses become right for marketers to take them over and actually work on building them out from a marketing standpoint because a lot of them are in very good shape on a technical side. They just need more sales effort poured into them. Joe: Yeah, the one I sold it was doing … I forgot exactly, let's call it a quarter million dollars in discretionary earnings. His advertising budget on a monthly basis was $325. David: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, I get emails every week now from them. I'm on their list; the guy that bought it and they're doing a much more aggressive email campaign, retention campaign, and adding new tools and features for the existing customers. Let's talk about the pitfalls of owning a SaaS business for those that are potentially buying one for instance. What do you see as major pitfalls and I had a gentleman named Ezra Firestone, you probably know Ezra. David: Yeah. Joe: I had Ezra on the podcast and we talked about a number of things. He's very much into yoga and meditation too by the way but we talked and he's got e-commerce businesses and he got SaaS businesses and he talked about the differences and what he likes about each and what he prefers. But I'd love to hear you talk about pitfalls and I'll tell you Ezra's feel. David: Yeah, I think that the IP roadmap for any SaaS business is always something that you have to be very clear on. I think you can easily fall into a trap where you start the design … excessively design the product either on specific customers and then it becomes this very odd sort of pool of mud. They like to use that phrase in SaaS world where you're designing around specific customers or you're just adding features to it that perhaps aren't really needed. And actually, I think a lot of SaaS business actually benefit more from dialoguing with customers about how to use their products more effectively. Because oftentimes they're only using about 20 to 30% of the functionality and then often churning away because they're not aware of the other 70% than just by adding feature sets for the point. And of course, this really does stack up because as you add more features that's going to add more complexity. You create more of a UX headache for your customer base. You create more of an operating manual to train your sales team with and everything starts to become … to slip out of control of. And I think that having a very clear crystal clear vision about the road map is actually like something that yeah probably keeps a number of SaaS owners up at night contemplating that. I think churn is a real challenge for micro SaaS businesses specifically because a lot of the time there ain't SNBs so they're naturally facing against a client base that's got higher churn. And the best way really to reduce churn is to really improve your onboarding experience and your customer success. And something we're all absolutely crushed during one of the best in class onboarding processes I've ever seen but it is expensive to do that unless you go down a very intelligent sort of IT lead onboarding route. And that's a challenge that I think a number of business owners struggle with because once you get up into massive scale on your VC back so you can have a whole sales team that come on and really help train every single house member when you're in this micro space you don't have the capital to do that. So you got to think very creatively about really educating customers, really onboarding them very well so that you can solve the churn issue and scale the business well. And the churn is also important because it really starts to impact your ability to run paid for example [inaudible 00:29:03.4] acquire customers that way and so there's a lot … you have to be just very, very thoughtful such I'd say churn is quite a headache as a SaaS business owner. Joe: Yeah, it sounds like any business with customers. Take care of the customers first. Make sure they're using the tools to the greatest extent possible and that will reduce the churn. Which will, in turn, give you more money to do paid advertising than more than $325 a month. Yeah, I was going to go to the same place not that there's a right business or a wrong business to buy, they're just physical products businesses are just different than content versus affiliate versus a SaaS business. So anyway I was talking with Ezra about it. He owns both. He owns Zipify and he owns BOOM by Cindy Joseph or a portion of that one. In the physical products world, you create an ad and it hits and you scale. You spend more money on the ad. With a SaaS business it may be the same but then you've also got more support, more customer onboarding, and focusing on that churn rate and the metrics and you've got the cost of those developers which are also a lot more expensive than the cost of really good customer service people or graphic designers in the physical products world. A big, big difference though and again it all balances out. With the physical products business you have to have working capital for inventory. Your business is growing like crazy … sometimes I've sold businesses that have been 24 or 36 months old and had in-depth conversations with the owners of those businesses David. They bootstrapped it. They don't ever take any money out of the business. It's just growing and all they do is take every ounce of profit just trying to keep up with the inventory demand; that working capital demand. And sometimes they still run out of inventory. So there are two different ways to look at it; two different worlds. Those people that exit on the e-commerce world they don't take a whole lot out the first couple of years if they hung on that accelerated growth always slows down a little bit and they can then start taking salary and pull some more money out of the business. But you don't have that physical product or working capital requirements inventory in SaaS but you've got more expensive staff and developers that gosh if you've got a key developer and they go away it's a key employee and you've got to replace them. It can be very challenging and very expensive. So I'm not sure which is right. I always … I think people that are new in the in the internet space that are coming from the corporate world and want to live … work at home and see their family more and travel less and I've talked to a lot of people like that they say what … where should I go? What space should I look at? And I kind of think that they understand more easily physical products and can easily say I sell a widget versus I sell software to that people subscribe to to help them manage their calendar better. It's very different; very challenging I think. What are your thoughts on that? David: Yeah, I agree entirely. I think there's a lot of things to think about with SaaS. It comes down to … as in life right? You always have to choose what problems you want to solve for and some people like solving for very intellectual problems. It's very interesting looking at the buyer base for SaaS companies that often people that enjoy the intellectual challenge of having a lot of the moving parts to think about. And there are people that enjoy the challenge of just scaling e-commerce. So it's … yeah, a totally personal preference. I don't think that one is better than the other. I think it's entirely a form or like disposition of character. Joe: Yeah. Well, listen, David, we've had you on talking about SaaS. You had more than SaaS experience right? You sold lots of content, lots of physical product sites in the past as well. David: Yeah, more than I can remember. I mean when I really started my brokerage career I spent almost exclusively doing content sites so we have all of the … it comes in affiliate stuff, Ad Sense sites and I love them because again you know we talk about these beautiful nuances between different business models. For me, it was just so interesting looking up the SBA strategies of these businesses, looking at the approaches that these owners are taking to rank specific pages. And I got super into ad optimization group and it just fascinates me with this psychology of ad revenues and clicks and so forth. So yeah I actually have a lot of reference for Ad Sense likes and I think I often look at them from my own personal acquisition perspective because I just love the pessimity of those business models. Joe: Yeah, yes, absolutely for those that don't understand it's good quality content developed over time that's driving organic traffic and you're getting paid for clicks either through Ad Sense or a lot of folks doing affiliate stuff as well when they're doing product reviews and things of that nature. But that was the larger one that I sold last year which is under 9 million and it was a content site; just crazy, crazy growth. A great story too and we've had Ramon on the podcast. And this goes to the relationships with the people that we work with. The first one that we sold for Ramon a few years ago, let's call it five years ago it was maybe $125,000 business and a few years later he comes back as a client again. He says okay I've got another one like this out. It's 425,000. And then he comes back in December of I guess it was '17 and you know he's got one where we think it's valued around 5 and then we get it under a Letter of Intent and it's just exploding growth. And so he says Joe I just don't think I can do this. It was a hard, hard call for him to make on a Saturday afternoon in April of 2018. And he had to walk away from a 5 million dollar deal because revenue was growing at 300% every month which really just drove the multiple down and the total value up. We pulled the listing and the same person it was under LOI for 5 million, he didn't go away. He wanted to stick in and he knew that the value was there so he bid it up and two others bid it up and it sold for just under 9 million; a great story for that guy. David: The high quality strategic exit there to come back at that level. Joe: It was a risky move to walk away from 5 million but it worked out for sure. And the buyer was fantastic too. You've got to have a good buyer and good seller on both sides of the table. Structurally business on the side I know but it was a combination of private equity money, a little bit of SBA money, some family fund money came into it, and then the owners… the buyer's personal money as well and as strange as it is that particular by David also bought the largest SaaS business that I ever sold. So relationships with buyers are critical as you know. Any quick tips or advice for people that are thinking about selling their SaaS business, what should they do? Should they just focus in on churn or maybe have a conversation with you with an eye to exit even in 12 to 24 months, what are your thoughts there? David: Yeah well, I think definitely I'd advice there as based on how far you are out. If you're quite far out I do think it's worth split testing price increases. Over the years we've seen a surprising number of wins from people making micro price improvements. I'm obviously not grandfathering existing customers by trying that out. I think if you are closer into the potential exit talking six months like the really important stuff is actually things that seem to become incredibly easy to miss. But I've seen over the years things like just securing IP properly and then that's much more than just getting trademarks sorted out. But actually, if you've had a lot of third party developers working on the code getting proper IP assignments. Because the number of transactions I've been involved where they've got to be done retroactively is a little bit uncomfortable. I think another piece is around security. Again if you're not patching passworkds properly or if you're storing credit card data or any of this kind of things, like if there's any aspect at leaking they really need to be on top of that. I think absolutely avoid any kind of large discounting, annual plan discounting. Don't sell any life time plan type things. I mean that attempt to sort of artificially increase revenue earnings three to six months out is really, really, really visible unless of course, it's around something obvious like Black Friday. And I think that don't be too heavy with sort of trying to cost cut because again that's really obvious when you come into a sale that if in the last six months you suddenly just gone extreme and leave in order to get an attempt at inflated SKU it becomes very obvious to any experienced buyer. Joe: Yeah very obvious. David: I think one of the things that really does have a pretty big impact in terms of leveraging the multiple up is as much as possible obviously document source code and annotate that well. But as you can try and bring in … if you're the owner/operator and you've done a lot of the IP yourself and built a codebase really start to consider six months out bringing on a developer in time to hand that off. Because if you can show you by the time you come to exit that the third party developer has been in the business for six months, understands the codebase intimately, and has made … pushed out various updates; that is going to be a very compelling acquisition proposition for a buyer versus … you know that all of the knowledge is inside the owner's head and then we've got to do like fulfill the email gates at transition and our third party developer is part of this. So do that work before and you will get paid multiples upwards on the backend. Joe: David, unknowingly you've talked about the four pillars; the risk, the transferability, the growth, and the documentation. It's not just financial documentation but it's SOP's and all the other stuff as well. All of the things that you're speaking to sellers about buyers can focus in on the same thing when they're analyzing a purchase of the SaaS business. Everybody, David is reachable david@quietlightbrokerage.com. Reach out to him there. He's up on the website now. A phone number extension is there as well. We'll put it on the show notes too. David welcome to the team. I'm thrilled that you're a member of the Quiet Light team now. Thank you for being here. David: Thank you, Joe catch you. Joe: Alright, talk to you soon. Links and Resources: David's Quiet Light Profile David's LinkedIn David's Podcast
Just back from a month-long road trip in the US and a very special experience participating in a traditional Native American sweat lodge ceremony. Lasting for 5 hours, the ritual was an epic opportunity to reconnect with myself and mother Earth whilst purifying the mental and emotional body. This time round I took my buddy Chris along for the adventure to see what he would make of the sweat bonanza. Both of us were blown away by beauty of the ritual, the reconnection to Earth, and the deepening of our friendship through the experience. With a handful of gaffes in ceremony etiquette (all me of course), I recount the experience in this week's podcast. If you want to detox your mind and body of past memories, challenges and issues, this is something I'd strong recommend.
How would you fancy 10 days sat crossed-legged, meditating 10 hours a day, in silence? No phone, no journal, and no mates. Just you and your thoughts for company. Sounds like hell right? It’s got a fancy name – ‘Vipassana’ – but I like to call it the ’10 day suffer fest’. Vipassana means to ‘see reality as it is’ and in that regard, it definitely delivers. A ridiculously hard but insanely rewarding experience, Vipassana will show you things about yourself and the nature of reality that can take decades to figure out in the real world. In this week’s pod I talk about my comedic and mostly unbearable foray into this unique self-discovery experience. In this episode, you’ll discover: What Vipassanna is and what it involves; How 10 days feels sat in the same spot; Why all pain is in the mind + how you can transcend it; How you can uncover unhelpful thought patterns/beliefs + nuke them; What life-changing insights the experience gives you; and The god-like super powers you get from Vipassana With poisonous snakes, emotional tantrums, and an unhealthy dose of cloud animal spotting, this is an ambitious attempt to persuade you to consider do something rather radical – spend an awful lot of time with yourself. Enjoy!
Following on from my solocast a few weeks back on the Toad Medicine (5-MEO-DMT), I’m continuing the psychedelic series with a two-part episode on the increasingly popular psychedelic vine ayahuasca. In this episode I talk about my funny, crazy + very intense experience on a 10-day ayahuasca retreat in Peru and unpack all the essentials from: What ayahuasca is What happens when you take it Why people are doing it How to prepare mentally and physically for it Setting your intent What ceremony is like How to make sense of your experience Integration back into normal life Realizing your kinship with plants You can find all the things I mentioned in the episode here. Got a question? Hit me up on Instagram.
In conversation with award-winning journalist Tracey Matisak It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood as we welcome Maxwell King, author of The Good Neighbor, a personal, professional, and artistic biography of Fred Rogers. A figure as deceptively sophisticated as the namesake television program that brought an unerring message of kindness, compassion, and equality to millions of children, Mr. Rogers remains one of America's most beloved cultural icons. King, CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation, former president of Heinz Endowments, and editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer for eight years, weaves archival documents and original interviews into a portrait of the man who-spoiler alert-really was as gentle and empathetic as we all hoped he'd be. Speedy delivery! Mostly known for his portrayal of Mister Rogers' deliveryman, David Newell was also the director of public relations for The Fred Rogers Company. As an ambassador for everyone's favorite neighborhood he toured the world as Mr. McFeely until his retirement in 2015. Watch the video here. (recorded 9/24/2018)
Following on from my solocast a few weeks back on the Toad Medicine (5-MEO-DMT), I'm continuing the psychedelic series with a two-part episode on the increasingly popular psychedelic vine ayahuasca. In this episode I talk about my funny, crazy + very intense experience on a 10-day ayahuasca retreat in Peru and unpack all the essentials from: What ayahuasca is What happens when you take it Why people are doing it How to prepare mentally and physically for it Setting your intent What ceremony is like How to make sense of your experience Integration back into normal life Realizing your kinship with plants You can find all the things I mention in the episode online. Got a question? Hit me up on Instagram.
Three weeks ago on a relatively spare of the moment decision (call it divine inspiration), I smoked the venom of the Senoran Desert toad known as Bufo Alvarius. The venom contains the chemical 5-MEO-DMT, commonly considered the most powerful psychedelic in the world. Lord knows who tried it the first time (they probably had quite the shock), but when you smoke it, you experience extremely rapid ego dissolution, lose all sense of your body + mind (as you know it) and become one with the universe. It was simultaneously the most beautiful and terrifying experience of my life. In this episode – a first solocast for Inner Truth – I share the story on why I did it, what it was like, what I learnt, and why I’ll never be the same again. Buckle up for a comedy ride to the 10th dimension.
BTB's own Chachi McFly interviews actor David Newell best known as Mr. McFeely from Mister Rodgers Neighborhood on-location at the Keystone Comic Con (www.keystonecomiccon.com) in Philadelphia, PA! David talks about some of his fondest memories from working on the long running children's show! David also talks about the award winning documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor and Tom Hanks newest film in production "You Are My Friend", the Fred Rogers biopic!
BTB presents another great show to get you through the week! This week we are happy to present the final on-location interviews at the Keystone Comic Con (www.keystonecomiccon.com) in Philadelphia, PA! BTB's own Chachi McFly interviews actress Angela Kinsey from NBC's hit comedy The Office! Angela talks about the possibility of the return of The Office return to television and reuniting with his Office cast mates at Keystone Comic Con! Angela talks about her previous actual work in a dental office and how she applied those skills as Angela Martin! In addition Chachi interviews actor David Newell best known as Mr. McFeely from Mister Rodgers Neighborhood! David talks about some of his fondest memories from working on the long running children's show! David also talks about the award winning documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor and Tom Hanks newest film in production "You Are My Friend", the Fred Rogers biopic! In addition we welcome actor Michael Jonsson from CW's Arrow and SyFy's Van Helsing! The Vancouver based actor will talk about everything from his work on Supernatural, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and more! Michael will also talk about the app he developed for actors to memorize lines! BTB’s host with the most Al Sotto brings you another entertaining program! Also on the panel is BTB Original and the "King of the 80s" Chachi McFly. We also welcome back actor and stuntman Big Nick aka The Captain and actor Matt Sharpe! So expect all the late-breaking news on pop culture, entertainment, and more! Listen to our gut busting humor, insightful commentary, and thought provoking opinions on the world of entertainment uncensored only on Below The Belt Show (www.belowthebeltshow.com)! Classic Cut: Kernkraft 400 "Zombie Nation" Classic Cut: Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" NOTE: Due to copyright, songs have been removed from the podcast show so listen to our show LIVE to hear all the music and commentary uncensored!
We have yet another retro concert report, as Kevin and the Mayor enjoyed an evening of Chicago-style (and Karate Kid-style) soft rock with Peter Cetera. (We did it all for the glory of being stuck in the mid-80s.) We also attended a screening of the new Mr. Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, with a special guest: Mr. McFeely himself, David Newell! This inspired a silly little exercise for this week's show, as we attempt to cast a hypothetical Neighborhood of Make-Believe movie. (Do we want Wil Wheaton to play Prince Tuesday? OF COURSE WE DO.) Also: Happy Birthday to Kenny Rogers. As always, we consider ourselves honorary cowards of the county.
David Newell is an American television actor known primarily for his portrayal of Mr. McFeely, the delivery man on Mister Rogers Neighborhood and works in the public relations department of the Fred Rogers Company (the entity responsible for all rights relating to the program, and other series currently in production from the company). His character's most famous catchphrase was "Speedy Delivery!" He toured the country until he retired in 2015, promoting Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as Mr. McFeely.
Shamanism: A 21st Century Approach to Energy Medicine Podcast
In this episode of the LightSong School of 21st Century Shamanism Podcast, Jan Engels-Smith is interviewed by David Newell of Inner Truth. A broadcast and show out of the UK. What is shamanism and how is it useful to us in day-to-day life? Are there other realms we can journey to and experience? Has science disproved or given further evidence to support this ancient practice? These are some of the questions I put to Jan Engels-Smith, a shamanic practitioner and the founder of the LightSong School of 21st Century Shamanism and Energy Medicine where she teaches shamanism and journeying techniques. Central to Jan’s work is the philosophy that shamanism is not the preserve of a gifted few seers or just for indigenous cultures to practice but that we all have the capacity to cultivate a shamanic skillset through journeying and practices that help move us from left brain focus into right-brain experience. In her book, Through the Rabbit Hole, Jan talks about dominance of left-brained thinking in our culture and in particular the limiting belief that all we see is all there is. This belief keeps our imagination and our other subtler senses locked away from the wider world around us. Opening up our minds to other realms and possibilities connects us in new ways to the universe. You might think scientific findings would be at odds with a shamanic perspective of life but actually there’s more correlation than you would first imagine. Relatively theory and quantum mechanics indicate there is a vast amount of the universe not observable to the human eye, indeed almost all of it is dark matter and dark energy. Within that, it’s already been shown for some time that our consciousness has a direct impact on the world around us, a phenomenon known more widely as the observer effect and something that has been espoused in shamanism for millennia. With this level of cross-over though, shamanism still remains a niche activity in popular culture today. I caught up with Jan to talk about what has happened to shamanism in the West, the ways it can help cultivate a relationship with spirit and mostly importantly help us find greater fulfillment and peace in life. Episode Topics What is shamanism and what does it mean for the average person? Why has shamanism been traditionally seen as a craft of a select few? How does shamanism, journeying and other ritual practices help people? How does our left brain and right brain relate to the practice? What is shamanic journeying and how do we do it? What are the realms available to us in shamanic journeying? What is a power animal and how does it relate to a person? You can learn more about Jan’s shamanism courses at LightSong including her entry-level Shamanic Journey Skills that is also available online. Learn Shamanism and Shamanic practices at LightSong School of 21st Century Shamanism and Energy Medicine. Find more information: www.LightSong.net or email info@lightsong.net.
David Newell has worked with the Fred Rogers Company since September 1967 when production began on the very first national broadcast of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. He has served as the Director of Public Relations for the Fred Rogers Company and is best known as Mr. McFeely the Speedy Delivery man in the Neighborhood. **This is the full 26 min interview.**
Author/Illustrator Mark Crilley teases a new graphic novel project that features a Michigan location, Bryan Popin, who has worked with Justin Timberlake's NSYNC and Chaka Khan, shares why he decided to become a Gospel artist and Mr. McFeely (David Newell) from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood discusses the iconic show, which first premiered on television 50 years ago. The podcast also includes interviews with CADL Local History Specialist Heidi Butler and cast member Maggie Lakis from the hit musical Something Rotten! #CADL20 Links: [Mark Crilley](http://opac.cadl.org/search~S15/?searchtype=X&searcharg=mark+crilley&searchscope=15&sortdropdown=-&SORT=DZ&extended=0&SUBMIT=Search&searchlimits=&searchorigarg=Xbryan+popin) [Bryan Popin](http://opac.cadl.org/search~S15/?searchtype=X&searcharg=bryan+popin&searchscope=15&sortdropdown=-&SORT=DZ&extended=0&SUBMIT=Search&searchlimits=&searchorigarg=Xmister+rogers%27+) [Mister Rogers'](http://opac.cadl.org/search/?searchtype=X&SORT=D&searcharg=mister+rogers%27+&searchscope=15) [Local History](http://www.cadl.org/research-and-learn/local-history/forest-parke-library-and-archives-home/) [Something Rotten](http://opac.cadl.org/search/?searchtype=X&SORT=D&searcharg=Something+rotten+cast+recording&searchscope=15)
David Newell is an actor known primarily for his portrayal of the beloved Mr. McFeely, the deliveryman on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Mr. McFeely's most famous catchphrase is "Speedy Delivery!"The post David Newell, Actor-Mr. McFeely – Episode #24 Encore appeared first on Storybeat with Steve Cuden.
David Newell is an actor known primarily for his portrayal of the beloved Mr. McFeely, the deliveryman on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Mr. McFeely's most famous catchphrase is "Speedy Delivery!" He toured the country as Mr. McFeely until 2015, promoting Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.The post David Newell, Actor-Mr. McFeely – Episode #24 appeared first on Storybeat with Steve Cuden.
Adam and Ben had the pleasure of speaking with David Newell, aka Mailman Mr. McFeely from Mister Roger's Neighborhood
You might not be the right type of person to start an ecommerce business from scratch, so maybe you should buy an ecommerce business instead. The amount of time, energy, money and sacrifice it takes to build a business from the ground up can be exhausting (we know first hand), so why not skip all of that and buy an ecommerce business that is already established? To be honest, we never really considered the benefits of buying an already established business, but after talking with David Newell of FE International we've been convinced that buying an ecommerce business might actually be a better option than starting from scratch. In this episode, David will cover the 4 main reasons why you should buy an ecommerce business, including a few reasons we never thought about and now have us considering it. He'll also cover the 6 areas you need to focus your due diligence process on so that you can make sure you're not getting hosed when negotiating with the seller. Oh, and if you're thinking about selling this would be a great episode to listen to so that you know exactly how a buyer is thinking and the steps they're going to take (with the help of their broker) to make sure you business is legit and worth the investment. Key Takeaways from the Show The 4 reasons why you should buy an ecommerce business instead of starting one from scratch. How to know if you're type of person who should be buying The 6 key tenets to robust due diligence when buying an ecommerce business The biggest mistakes most first-time buyers make and how to avoid them How to find financing when you want to buy an ecommerce business Links / Resources FE International David Newell on Twitter David's Advanced Guide to Buying
David Newell is the Head of Brokerage at FEI where they help online business owners sell their businesses ($20K up to $5M) to investors. The niche has become increasingly popular with buyers online and offline in recent years as people discover the benefits of owning an online investment (passive, location-independent etc). David tends to focus on helping buyers understand the marketplace so he is a specialist in valuation, investment ideas and acquisition strategy. He is also the author of 2 e-books, including his NEW and completely FREE “Advanced Guide to Buying an Online Business” (http://feinternational.com/advancedguide) which covers everything from business search to closing the deal. In this episode, David and I talked about: See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Ever wonder how to buy or sell a website? We did, so we talked to David Newell, an experienced business broker. David is Brokerage Director at FE International. Starting out as an banker, he moved online to use his transaction experience for website brokerage. At FEI, he spends his time speaking with buyers, executing deals and working on raising industry standards to encourage more investments. In 2014 he closed more than $6M in sales and wrote a book on buying internet businesses for investors new to the space. Useful links: Buyer Guide: http://feinternational.com/buyerguide/ Advanced Buyer Guide: http://feinternational.com/advancedbuyerguide Valuing businesses: http://feinternational.com/blog/how-do-you-value-an-online-business/
Recently, I ran into one of these deal killers. The website owner did a shady thing--He did a marketing push as we were in negotiations and Escrow. I and my partners were buying the company, but allowing the seller to keep some ownership, so the seller's marketing push eroded mine and my partner's trust in our soon-to-be partner. We walked away from the deal. The seller lost $90,000 in cash trying to make a quick $5-10,000 on his business before finalizing the sale. Yep, I'm a business buying junkie. This article exposes some common "deal killers." So, if you are considering buying a website, I would recommend it. It is the best investment one can buy. FEinternational: David Newell is Brokerage Director at FE International. Starting out as an investment banker, he moved online to use his transaction experience for website brokerage. At FE, he spends his time speaking with buyers, executing deals and working on raising industry standards to encourage more investments. In 2014 he closed more than $6m in sales and wrote a book on buying internet businesses for investors new to the space Thanks, David! --SamT
We’ve all heard, “This is the new thing…” But, it’s true–no one is doing what I do. Everyone in the online marketing world is constantly talking about Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) and providing value to your platform. I’m doing both with a new twist. I found a way to provide value by creating a niche: ReallyGoodReads. What? Read on–I explain. I am launching the ReallyGoodReads Podcast: Where Incredible Writing Makes Amazing Audio. I find Blogs, Articles, and Emails that provide Incredible Value, and I turn them into Amazing Audio for easy consumption and your convenience. The Podcast concentrates on the Business and Lifestyle space. Yes, there are already a ton of Podcasts out there providing awesome value, but both writers and listeners will benefit from this medium in a different way: 1. For the Listener: It is Totally Different, Easily Consumable, and Valuable 2. For the Writer: ReallyGoodReads does the work–the writing has already been done. We just make it into Amazing Audio. Featured Authors On the ReallyGoodReads Podcast Launch: Michael Hyatt: Michaelhyatt.com Pat Flynn: SmartPassiveIncome.com Kate Erickson: Entrepreneuronfire.com (She guest posts on the episode–It’s awesome!) Jon Nastor: Hacktheentrepreneur.com AJ Harbinger: Theartofcharm.com John Corcoran: Smartbusinessrevolution.com Ace Chapman: The Ace Formula (I am turning Ace’s Book into a separate Podcast AudioBook!!) Conrad Wadowski: UseFedora.com James Morrish, David Newell, and Thomas Smale: FEinternational.com If you want to be a part of creating ReallyGoodReads shoot me an email @ read@reallygoodreads.co. Say hi, and include a URL of a ReallyGoodRead that you would like seen turned into audio. Can’t wait to hear from you. When you leave this page and submit a good email address in the leadbox, you will be signed up for my Newsletter and get an Audio Chapter of Ace Chapman’s The Ace Formula. ReallyGoodReads is awesome, and you can be a part of making this a great podcast. Share this post! And, look for ReallyGoodReads on iTunes soon. Tweet me @SamTLeslie or Shoot an email to read@reallygoodreads.co --SamT About SamT: He is a father of 5, and husband of one wonderful woman. He is a serial entrepreneur and has a short attention span for boring things. He buys, grows, and sells small businesses and helps others do the same. Also, he likes to help people reach their dreams by connecting people with the right resources and mentors. Hopefully, you enjoy his new venture: ReallyGoodReads.
Gena Asher interviews David Newell, the actor known to several generations for his role of Mr. McFeely, the delivery man on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Episode #102 of On Screen & Beyond - To millions of people, young and old, David Newell is known as Mr McFeely the delivery man from "Mister Roger's Neighborhood". This week he is our guest! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/on-screen-and-beyond/message
Mister Rogers! The team takes a look at the much maligned, but very important and wonderful children's television personality. We discuss his Supreme Court appearance, his contribution to TV and the VCR, his great guests (Bruce Haack) and his neighborhood friends (Chuck Aber, Robert Trow, Betty Aberlin, Don Brockett, John Costa, Keith David, David Newell, Joe Negri) and more!
We spoke with David Newell, better known as Mr. McFeely, the friendly "Speedy Delivery" man on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The mp3 podcast conversation can be downloaded here and can be enjoyed on your personal computer or loaded onto your personal mp3 player for on-the-go listening. You can also subscribe to our monthly podcasts via iTunes by clicking here.Mister Rogers' Neighborhood has been a hallmark of educational public television for 40 years. The program still airs on WPT at 12:30 p.m. weekdays. Throughout the show's ongoing run, Newell has been along for the ride. In addition to playing Mr. McFeely -- a role he continues to occupy during numerous public appearances each year -- he is also the public relations director for the show's production company, Family Communications Inc. The company has kept working toward the program's child development mission since Rogers' death in 2003.In our interview, Newell talks about his experiences on the long-running show, the legacy of Fred Rogers and some special outreach work that is planned in celebration of what would have been Rogers' 80th birthday on March 20. On that day, Newell is inviting everyone to wear a sweater in memory of Rogers and the good work that he accomplished. To find out more about "Good Neighbor Days," visit the Family Communications Web site.