Podcast appearances and mentions of syed balkhi

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast.  This week Spencer and Jared discuss the big news related to SEO, small publishers, and Google. They also share updates on their side hustles and more than a few weird niche sites. The big news is that Google might be sanctioned   They talk about severe sanction scenarios  Google responds to the ruling  They discuss the WordPress vs. WP Engine drama  They talk briefly about Automatic's role Syed Balkhi's tweet of support Spencer's weird niche site is Spaghetti Models Jared shares more info about McBroken on Reddit and elsewhere  He also shares his weird sites: Bridesmaid for Hire and Groomsman for Hire Ready to join a niche publishing mastermind, and hear from industry experts each week?  Join the Niche Pursuits Community here: https://community.nichepursuits.com Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links?  Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

IntroductionWPBeginner uses its video membership site to grow its email list.The goal is to help people learn WordPress for free while also reaching a wider audience.Why Choose a Video Membership Site?Videos offer engaging, easy-to-follow educational content.Membership sites foster a sense of community, loyalty, and authority.The online membership industry shows huge growth potential.The MissionWPBeginner aims to make WordPress education accessible to all, regardless of budget.Quote from Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner Founder: He believes WordPress knowledge should be free, and that was the motivation behind starting WPBeginner.How the Membership Site WorksUsers browse free videos or sign up for in-depth WordPress training courses.Creating a free account grants access to the curriculum and adds the user to the WPBeginner newsletter mailing list.Tools Used in the ProcessMemberPress: Powers the membership site functionality (courses, content restriction, etc.) https://memberpress.com/Drip: Handles email marketing automation and personalization. https://www.drip.com/Custom Landing Pages: Designed to highlight the benefits of WPBeginner Academy and convert visitors. https://seedprod.comWPForms: Creates user-friendly signup and login forms. https://wpforms.com/OptinMonster: Lead generation tool for popups. https://optinmonster.com/PushEngage: Tool for push notifications. https://www.pushengage.com/Smash Balloon: For embedding social media feeds. https://smashballoon.com/If you liked this episode, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. Or watch our Podcasts on YouTube. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Episode 553: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Syed Balkhi about the business ideas he would go after if he wasn't already running a unicorn.  Watch Syed's $0 To +$100M story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzHdrQ5pDFo Want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:30) Offshore bookkeeping (6:00) Level it up with reseller and white label (8:30) Sourcing your outsourced talent (12:00) Barnacle on the Whale: Quickbooks plugins (19:00) The most powerful idea of our generation (22:30) X but open source (x= popular platform) (27:30) Creating disproportionate value (31:30) Flavors of capital funds (39:30) Is $10-50M the perfect amount in the bank? (45:30) First you own your things, then they own you (47:30) The true cost of luxury (52:30) Paid marketing vs. acquiring resellers (58:00) Compounding goodwill is the best form of compounding — Links: • Syed Balkhi Twitter - https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi • WPBeginner - https://www.wpbeginner.com/ • Appflowy - https://www.appflowy.io/ • Stability AI - https://stability.ai/ • Cal.com - http://cal.com/ • OSS Capital Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/ynvpmu7j • Automattic - https://automattic.com/ • WooCommerce - https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/ • CleanShot X - https://cleanshot.com/ • GitLab - https://about.gitlab.com/ • Guy Spier - https://www.guyspier.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it's called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Syed Balkhi and Eric Siu discuss the power of compounding and the importance of maintaining friendships with other high performers. Syed shares his philosophy of giving unconditionally and compounding goodwill, emphasizing the need to avoid the frustration coefficient that can hinder progress. He also shares insights on the power of compounding, the challenges of passing on generational wealth, and the value of learning from historical patterns. This conversation provides valuable lessons and perspectives for both aspiring and experienced investors.    Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/O5VhhH0Aky8   Don't forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube!   Check out more of Eric's content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil's videos (Neil Patel YT)   TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) Syed Balkhi defines himself as a blogger who helps people build better websites using WordPress. (01:18) Syed Balkhi discusses the concept of running a profitable business every year to achieve a continuous exit. (02:46) Syed Balkhi shares his belief that most businesses won't hit venture scale and advocates for running profitable businesses. (04:41) Syed Balkhi explains the value of masterminds and peer groups for personal and professional growth. (04:58) Syed Balkhi advises teenagers and young adults to start building a network by following people they admire. (06:03) Syed Balkhi discusses the different benefits he gains from various mastermind groups and forums. (07:58) Eric Siu and Syed Balkhi highlight the importance of persistence and continuous effort in networking and meeting influential people. (08:49) Syed Balkhi introduces the concept of the frustration coefficient and warns about its negative impact on decision-making and relationships. (09:59) Syed Balkhi advises practicing radical candor and addressing frustrations directly to interrupt negative compounding. (13:29) The power of compounding goodwill and giving unconditionally. (14:43) Going deep instead of wide in networking and learning. (16:11) The structure of Awesome Motive as a management company. (17:07) The importance of alignment with founders and minority stake deals. (19:56) The driving forces of incentives and insecurities in human behavior. (20:47) Two driving forces shaping human behavior: insecurities and incentives. (24:59) The importance of empathy and aligning goals with team members. (26:07) Viewing acquisitions as a more lucrative alternative to paid media. Leave Some Feedback:   What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.   Connect with Us:    Single Grain

Syed Balkhi and Eric Siu discuss the power of compounding and the importance of maintaining friendships with other high performers. Syed shares his philosophy of giving unconditionally and compounding goodwill, emphasizing the need to avoid the frustration coefficient that can hinder progress. He also shares insights on the power of compounding, the challenges of passing on generational wealth, and the value of learning from historical patterns. This conversation provides valuable lessons and perspectives for both aspiring and experienced investors. Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/O5VhhH0Aky8  Don't forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) Syed Balkhi defines himself as a blogger who helps people build better websites using WordPress. (01:18) Syed Balkhi discusses the concept of running a profitable business every year to achieve a continuous exit. (04:41) Syed Balkhi explains the value of masterminds and peer groups for personal and professional growth. (04:58) Syed Balkhi advises teenagers and young adults to start building a network by following people they admire. (06:03) Syed Balkhi discusses the different benefits he gains from various mastermind groups and forums. (08:49) Syed Balkhi introduces the concept of the frustration coefficient and warns about its negative impact on decision-making and relationships. (09:59) Syed Balkhi advises practicing radical candor and addressing frustrations directly to interrupt negative compounding. (13:29) The power of compounding goodwill and giving unconditionally. (14:43) Going deep instead of wide in networking and learning. (19:56) The driving forces of incentives and insecurities in human behavior. (20:47) Two driving forces shaping human behavior: insecurities and incentives. (24:59) The importance of empathy and aligning goals with team members. (26:07) Viewing acquisitions as a more lucrative alternative to paid media. (30:46) Being known enough to have influence while maintaining anonymity. (31:05) The story of Syed Balkhi's father working at a gas station. (33:22) Syed bought gas stations as a backup source of income. (36:40) Syed's negotiation philosophy: no emotional attachment. (38:17) Syed emphasizes the importance of staying frugal. (39:46) Syed Balkhi shares his strategy for offsetting new expenses with investments. (45:15) Syed Balkhi shares examples of investments he made to solve problems in his own businesses. (46:31) Eric Siu and Syed Balkhi discuss the potential rise of pay per task pricing models. (47:28) Syed Balkhi and Eric Siu talk about the adoption window for new technologies. (48:40) Syed Balkhi advises against overestimating one's ability to turn around businesses. (52:11) Favorite Mungerisms and Buffettisms. (58:41) Recommended books: "Psychology of Money," "Atomic Habits," "Same as It Ever Was," "Clear Thinking," and the Thompson trilogy. (1:00:02) Lessons from the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families on passing down generational wealth. (1:02:35) Find more about Syed Balkhi online. — What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Leveling Up Eric Siu on Twitter Eric Siu on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brad Wayland from Quiet Light joins the podcast to share his expertise and insights into whether it's best for you to grow a single brand or a portfolio of sites. With over 2 decades of experience in all aspects of the online business world, he offers a TON of value to all site owners. The conversation kicks off describing various ways to own web or digital assets: A solopreneur with one website A solopreneur with a portfolio of sites Having a team for one website Having a team for a portfolio of websites He highlights some of the key perks and pitfalls of each approach, emphasizing that owning a portfolio may not be for everyone. The solopreneur lifestyle allows for complete focus and dedication to one project, which can lead to potential success. However, being a solopreneur also requires managing limited time and responsibilities, which can be challenging. Brad says that successful solopreneurs often have a long-term commitment to their work and prioritize it over other activities - emphasizing the term 'grind' several times. As a result, this model can lead to significant financial success and high levels of achievement. The key though is to resist the ever-present temptation to chase shiny objects. Brad describes how diversification of projects and thus focus can be a pitfall for entrepreneurs, and buying and acquiring multiple businesses without proper management can lead to failure. And Brad shares his personal experience buying businesses in niches he wasn't passionate about and the negative impact it had. He emphasizes the importance of dedicating time and energy to rethinking strategies and staying passionate about the topic. Operating at a high level and achieving long-term success requires a special mindset and creativity. Simply following a checklist of industry trends and best practices is likely not enough to stand out to the best in your niche. In short, Brad recommends doubling down on focus and intentionality in business. He encourages you to prioritize and not spread yourself too thin. If you're an exceptional entrepreneur (such as Syed Balkhi - the example he uses) who can attract excellent people and manage several projects at once - then great! But it's best to reflect honestly on your abilities - and most people will find they're best served focusing on a single project and grinding to the finish line (in the form of a big exit to financial freedom). Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative

Guest Nahuai Badiola Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, Richard and Justin are very excited to have as their guest, Nahuai Badiola, who's a freelance WordPress developer, part of the WordPress Sustainability Initiative, the W3C Sustainability Working Group, and a recent recipient of a fellowship at The Green Web Foundation. Today's discussion covers the importance of sustainability in different contexts, including the environmental, social, and economic aspects. There's a conversation on the efforts being made towards sustainability and the challenges of translating environmental and social issues for the digital space. Also, we'll hear about Nahuai's project called, Doughnut Economics, and his fellowship work with The Green Web Foundation. Download this episode to hear more! [00:02:14] Nahuai is a WordPress developer, so he tells us when he started, and he talks about the three pillars. [00:04:37] He tells us about the WordPress Sustainability Initiative he helped set up and its efforts to create guidelines for building a more sustainable CMS. [00:07:05] We hear about the people who are on the Sustainability Initiative. [00:09:08] Nahuai discusses how they plan to work with plugin developers and hosting services to incentivize sustainable practices and possibly implement a sustainability score for plugins. [00:11:54] The conversation is about the need for sustainability in the WordPress community and the efforts being made towards that goal. They also discuss the importance of buy-in from influential people in the community like Matt Mullenweg and Syed Balkhi at WPBeginner. [00:17:23] Nahuai is part of a working group within the W3C that aims to produce evidence-based guidelines for web sustainability. He tells us there's a draft in progress and the group aims to present it at the W3C TPAC conference in September. [00:21:22] We hear about The Green Web Foundation and their fellowship program and Nahuai being a fellowship recipient working on a project to bring the idea of “Doughnut Economics” to the WordPress community through and interactive workshop. [00:25:39] Nahuai is considering how to adapt the framework of 12 social foundations and 9 ecological ceilings for the WordPress community. [00:28:10] Richard wonders if Nahuai has any thoughts about making that translation itself an easier process for future people to go through. [00:30:13] Find out where you can get involved with Nahuai's projects, learn more about him and his podcast you can check out called, Freelandev. Quotes [00:02:47] “I fell in love with WordPress because of the community.” [00:07:24] “We at WordPress Sustainability Initiative can do small things but have a big impact.” Spotlight [00:32:35] Justin's spotlight is Beginner's Guide for WordPress. [00:32:52] Richard's spotlight is the book, Far from Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds. [00:33:30] Nahuai's spotlight is WordPress. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter (https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Richard Littauer Twitter (https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Richard Littauer Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@richlitt) Justin Dorfman Twitter (https://twitter.com/jdorfman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Nahuai Badiola Twitter (https://twitter.com/nahuaibadiola?lang=en) Nahuai Badiola-The Green Web Foundation (https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/fellowships/nahuai-badiola/) Nahuai Badiola Blog (Spanish) (https://nbadiola.com/) Freelandev Podcast (https://www.freelandev.com/) Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) (https://doughnuteconomics.org/) About Doughnut Economics (https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics) W3C TPAC 2023 (https://www.w3.org/2023/09/TPAC/) Beginner's Guide for WordPress (https://www.wpbeginner.com/) Far from Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds by Michael Brooke (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174181/far-from-land) WordPress (https://wordpress.com/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Nahuai Badiola.

WordPress 6.2 is slated for release on March 28. Among its most impactful new features will be the integration of the Openverse media search. This will allow users to add images, audio, and video that are available via a Creative Commons license.While Openverse integration adds a layer of convenience, there was some debate about how the feature initially worked. As Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports, the first iteration (released in version 15.1 of the Gutenberg plugin) simply hotlinked to images, rather than uploading files to the user's website by default.Users had the option to upload the image via the WordPress Media Library. However, the default hotlinking behavior meant that some users would inevitably leave things as they are. This could run afoul of privacy regulations like GDPR in the European Union.Meanwhile, WordPress core contributor Jeremy Herve created a ticket that called attention to the potential issue. Others have since raised questions regarding usage rights - including the right to crop or otherwise modify media.The debate has led to a change in plans. WordPress contributors reacted swiftly and now the feature will upload Openverse images by default. A fallback has also been implemented that warns users when an image couldn't be uploaded. Check out WP Tavern's follow up for more details on how things evolved.Links You Shouldn't MissThere are more acquisitions to report in the WordPress space. First, Caseproof, makers of the MemberPress plugin, have acquired rival MemberMouse. In the announcement, MemberPress Creator and CEO Blair Williams says both products have different audiences and thus will remain separate offerings.Next up, Syed Balkhi announced that tutorial service WP101 has been acquired by Awesome Motive. Balkhi notes that the acquisition furthers his goal of creating the “best class-room style WordPress training videos to help WordPress grow in enterprise, government agencies, as well as at the school and collegiate level.”The democratization of publishing is a stated goal of WordPress. To see proof of it in action, look no further than the Prison Journalism Project. Sarah Gooding profiled the organization and its use of WordPress to help incarcerated writers to connect with the outside world.From the Grab BagNow it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.The popular All in One SEO plugin recently patched two security vulnerabilities. It's recommended that users upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible. Security firm Wordfence provided further detail on their blog.Back in July 2022, we reported that WordPress blog WPLift was sold to an undisclosed buyer. It's been revealed to The WP Minute that Boston-based agency UnlimitedWP is the new owner.A new proposal aims to display more topic-based meetups in the WordPress News & Events dashboard widget.Take in the sights of the recent WordCamp Asia with BobWP's recap of the event.With so many recent changes to WordPress content creation and theming, web designers need to adjust. Justin Tadlock explored the topic on the WordPress Developer Blog.Speaking of themes, developer Anders Norén announced that his collection of free block themes are now compatible with features added in WordPress 6.1.If you're looking for some inspirational stories, People of WordPress has you covered. Recent profiles Hauwa Abashiya and Daniel Kossmann are worth a read.Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerAmber HindsAbha Thakor ★ Support this podcast ★

Should WordPress move away from Slack and towards the fediverse for project communication? Automattic-sponsored Meta team contributor Alex Kirk thinks so. Kirk has proposed a project to explore switching to the free Matrix open-source federated chat system.The potential benefits are compelling. For one, there's something to be said for open-source projects supporting each other. Beyond that, easier onboarding and a variety of available chat clients were also touted. https://youtu.be/dq23lJBYtpM Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern demonstrated some of these advantages in a recent article. And Kirk's team has also created a Gutenberg block, Chatrix, that embeds a Matrix chat client directly into any WordPress website.Slack, meanwhile, has long been the chosen platform for project communication. A move to Matrix will certainly face both technical and philosophical hurdles. We'll keep you updated as the discussion progresses.Introducing The WP Minute +The WP Minute's goal is to bring you the latest WordPress news in just 5 minutes a week. But we also see the value in going in-depth with newsmakers and discussing important issues.With that in mind, we'd like to introduce you to The WP Minute +. It's our new podcast dedicated to longform content. You'll find exclusive interviews and conversations, bringing you even closer to what's going on with WordPress.To kick things off, we spoke with Awesome Motive's Syed Balkhi regarding the recent acquisition of Thrive Themes.Be sure to add The WP Minute+ to your podcast apps to get 3 additional episodes featuring Miriam Schwab, Chris Badgett, and Chris Lubkert.Links You Shouldn't MissWordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy recently outlined the project's goals for 2023. The list included finishing up Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, which focuses on customization. But what does “concluding” a phase really mean? Haden Chomphosy provided details on the WordPress Briefing podcast.Not every WordPress bug gets resolved in a timely fashion. In fact, there are currently 19 Trac tickets that are over 15 years old. But as WP Tavern reports, a new monthly triage session aims to take on these long standing issues. More insight on the project's goals are available on the Make WordPress blog.WordPress turns 20 this year. As part of the celebration, a collection of commemorative 20th anniversary logos are available to download. Also look for them to appear on special swag that is scheduled for release in February.From the Grab BagNow it's time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.WooCommerce is looking for developer feedback. On February 13, 2023, they'll hold the first of three monthly chats on Slack regarding WooCommerce Blocks Extensibility.On a similar note, the team behind Advanced Custom Fields will hold their first “ACF Chat Friday” session on Friday, February 3, 2023 at 3pm UTC. It's a chance to ask questions and provide feedback regarding the plugin.WordPress developers Aurooba Ahmed and Brian Coords have released the first episode of their viewSource podcast. The episode looks at their experiences with GitHub Copilot.As artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent, its shortcomings are also becoming apparent. A look at how OpenAI's Whisper tool is struggling with an indigenous language is but one example.If you're looking for a job in the WordPress space, Michelle Frechette hosts a weekly Twitter thread of open positions every Wednesday. Check it out and you may find a great opportunity.New Members This WeekCarl Hancock, follow @carlhancock and @GravityFormsIf you're not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.Video of the weekSubscribe at youtube.com/@wpminuteThe WP Minute takes a look at the current state content marketing strategy for WordPress products. https://youtu.be/zyutM-DLUv4 Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:Michelle FrechetteJohn LockeAbha Thakor ★ Support this podcast ★

Be sure to subscribe to all long-form WordPress interviews, The WP Minute+: thewpminute.com/plus Get a weekly dose of your favorite 5 minutes of WordPress news: thewpminute.com/subscribe Stay connected to Matt Report podcast for more "Blue Collar digital worker" content throughout 2023! https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi https://thrivethemes.com/ https://awesomemotive.com/ https://thewpminute.com/support ★ Support this podcast ★

In today's episode, Matt is talking about the new WP Minute+ podcast and why he started it. The WP Minute, which is a five-minute weekly podcast on WordPress news, continues to be produced with the intention of providing busy WordPress professionals with short-form content. The WP Minute+, will feature longer form conversations and interviews, while the original WP Minute will continue to offer short form news. Matt Report will live on, focusing on the career side of the digital workforce, through the lens of "blue collar digital workers" who do good work and want to be paid for it. https://twitter.com/syedbalkhihttps://thrivethemes.com/https://awesomemotive.com/https://thewpminute.com/support ★ Support this podcast ★

https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi https://thrivethemes.com/ https://awesomemotive.com/ https://thewpminute.com/support ★ Support this podcast ★

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 30, 2022 is: scour • SKOW-er • verb Scour means “to search (something) carefully and thoroughly.” Scouring is usually associated with moving quickly. // We retraced our steps and scoured the hiking trail for the missing wedding ring. See the entry > Examples: “Many business owners don't realize that they need to check if their brand name is available before setting it in stone. There are plenty of online tools that will scour the web to find websites and social media profiles that match a brand name you're thinking about.” — Syed Balkhi, Forbes, 22 July 2022 Did you know? It doesn't require much scouring of our website to see that there are two distinct scour verbs in English. One has meanings relating to cleaning and washing away; that scour, which dates back to at least the early 14th century, probably comes from the Late Latin excurare, meaning “to clean off.” (A related noun scour refers to the action of this type of scouring, or to places that have been scoured, as by running water.) The other verb scour appeared a century earlier, and may come from the Old Norse skūr, meaning “shower.” (Skūr is also distantly related to the Old English scūr, the ancestor of our English word shower.) Many different things can be scoured, such as an area (as in “scoured the woods in search of the lost dog”) or publications (as in “scouring magazine and newspaper articles”).

The talk around the WordPress open source and the free rider problem has been discussed by the community since May with strong opinions on both sides of the contributing fence. Josepha Haden Chomphosy wrote an article over on make.wordpress.org about the issue with Open Source (the Tragedy of the Commons) and the Free Riders. Could it be that we are concentrating on multiple things to discuss one single problem? Josepha makes the point that the discussion should be focused on making the software as best as it can be for everyone using it. WebP, an image format developed by Google, which is intended to replace JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats, will soon be generated by default for new JPEG images uploaded in WordPress. WebP conversion is coming to WordPress 6.1 and it doesn't look like there will be a UI-based option to turn this off. Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern writes about the opt-in option in depth and it seems like a ticket for this will remain open to see if this option remains as the default. Gutenberg What happens when a theme registers a pattern with a third-party block? If the user has the block plugin installed, it appears as it should. If you want to read more about how WordPress handles registering patterns in themes with third-party blocks jump over to the Gutenberg Times to read this article by Justin Tadlock. Events WordFest Live is scheduled for November 18, 2022. This is a 24-hour online festival focusing on Wellness for remote workers and sponsored by the Big Orange Heart. Submissions for volunteer speakers are open for the event. The deadline to register to be a speaker is August 15, 2022. WordCamp US will be coming up in a little less than a month. They have Announced the Round 7 speaker panel which is Matt Mullenweg. You can find all the updates on their site. We will be a contributing media partner so look for Raquel (part of the WP Minute team) at WordCamp US. From Our Contributors and Producers Speaking of the value of contributing to WordPress, our WP Minute community member, Sam Munoz wrote an article posted over on Torque that covers her appreciation of WordPress and shows where you can contribute even without knowing code. All contributions matter. If you have missed the exciting topics in the WordPress news space you can catch up on the last three months by listening to the WP Minute Rewind on the WP Minute with Matt Mederios and Daniel Schutzsmith. In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski talk with Syed Balkhi about his experiences blogging and developing plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. Sidenote: It always perplexes me that people outside of the WordPress space don't understand the size of Awesome Motive and the accomplishments that Syed and his team have built under that brand. The latest project updates for the WordPress.org Homepage and Download page are available. These mockups look great and these designs will begin immediately in a new block theme on the WordPress.org website. New Mem

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Syed Balkhi about his experiences blogging and developing plugins in the WordPress ecosytem. Hasura - Sponsor With Hasura, you can get a fully managed, production-ready GraphQL API as a service to help you build modern apps faster. You can get started for free in 30 seconds, or if you want to try out the Standard tier for zero cost, use the code “TryHasura” at this link: hasura.info. We've also got an amazing selection of GraphQL tutorials at hasura.io/learn. Sponsorname - Sponsor Show Notes 00:32 Welcome 01:52 Guest introduction WPBeginner WP Beginner YouTube CSS Tricks Smashing Magazine 04:33 What tips do you have for blogging and audience building? AnswerthePublic 09:09 How do you manage so many people? 13:07 What was your background before this all got big? 13:43 Sponsor: Hasura 15:01 How do you design your products? 18:40 YouTube, TikTok, and video 25:12 Why the WordPress hate? 29:03 What types of websites are being created in WordPress? Easy Digital Downloads WooCommerce MemberPress 34:13 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 35:26 What schools are you building? Balkhi Foundation Pencils of Promise 40:51 Supper Club questions Copyhackers Swiped Uncanny Automator 53:07 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Streaks App Ready Player Two WP Forms AwesomeMotive Tweet us your tasty treats Scott's Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes' Instagram Wes' Twitter Wes' Facebook Scott's Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

Syed Balkhi is incredibly humble, but he has been recognized as the top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by the United Nations. In this interview, we get to learn from his decades of experience building and acquiring tech companies. Syed is on a mission to level the playing field for small businesses. 20+ million websites use his software to grow and compete with the big guys. 100+ million people read his blog posts every year to grow their website traffic, sales, and conversions! As an entrepreneur turned investor, Syed has created and acquired dozens of software companies that have made the Wordpress platform more accessible for millions of users. Your customers are talking-are you listening? Syed is passionate about making technology easier, more accessible and more fun. In order to fulfill his mission and make creative products, he devotes time to reading and considering Facebook posts from users who have struggles and concerns. When he notices a trend in user concerns, he works with his teams to create solutions, ultimately releasing products and updates that his audience loves.  Want to make great things? Go talk to your friends! Despite decades in the software industry, Syed approaches his work with curiosity and open mindedness. Before he launches something, he often asks his friends whether they see any blind spots or areas for improvement. By relying on feedback and support from the people closest to him, Syed knows that he will release programs and plugins that meet the needs of his consumers. How can you be more consistent? One of Syed's favorite ingredients for growth: Consistency! Despite his accomplishments, Syed insists that it is consistent hard work and small daily actions that have actually created the biggest impact in his journey.  By consistently showing up to meet the needs of his user base, Syed Balkhi has set an inspiring example for us as entrepreneurs to follow.  Quotes “Every single investment and acquisition has been user-driven.” “The Wordpress community is awesome. We're all committed to empowering businesses to succeed.” “I read a LOT about the struggles that users are having with Wordpress. I am actively reading the struggles people are having there. You cannot build a product to solve a problem that you do not understand.” “When you know who you are and who you are not, it makes it very easy to say no to things that don't align with your values…and yes to things that do!” “Being proactive and market-leading…that is the secret sauce. And consistency!” “We talk to our customers more than most companies would, in terms of gathering feedback. Then we build better solutions!” “Persistence is a great substitute for talent. I am average at just about everything, but I work harder. And I'm okay with delayed gratification. If you're persistent for a long time, people might eventually say that you're doing great things!” Links mentioned in this episode: Sayed Balkhi is active daily on Twitter with inspiring ideas and quotes.  Follow Syed's personal Instagram for daily inspiration and encouragement. Learn more about Syed and his portfolio on his website.  Check out his company, Awesome Motive, on their website. PLUS: Awesome Motive is Hiring! Apply for a 100% remote position on their hiring page.  Check out The Balkhi Foundation and the work they're doing to fund education on their website!

SaaS Acquisition Stories w/ Syed Balkhi- Founder and CEO of Awesome Motive This is a mini-series within SaaS Acquisitions Stories where we profile the top Private Equity firms and firms acquiring online businesses at scale. Syed Balkhi- https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedbalkhi/ https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi https://awesomemotive.com/ Andrew Gazdecki - https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/ https://twitter.com/agazdecki https://microacquire.com/

In November 2021, we launched The Gamechangers: a video series that deep-dives into WordPress mergers and acquisitions with the leading entrepreneurs, founders, investors, and business mavens responsible for the big moves in our ecosystem. Episode One came out swinging with heavy-hitter Syed Balkhi of Awesome Motive, who was recently at the center of conversation after […]

News Julia Golomb over at make.wordpress.org has posted a new Proposal with Steps to Integrate #WPDiversity into organizing WordPress events. All new WordCamp and meetup organizers would automatically receive an invitation as they are onboarded to make sure the diversity consideration is addressed. Could it be lucky #13 for testing FSE (Full Site Editing)? Anne McCarthy over on make.wordpress.org posted that testers are needed and you can follow the instructions to create a template for author pages and learn how to unlock the UI for blocks. You have until April 21, 2022 to provide feedback. Anne also answers questions from the FSE Outreach Program. The post provides answers gathered through the program that started on March 16th and ended on March 30th. Sarah Gooding over on WPTavern wrote about the most recent changes made on WordPress.com. There were major unannounced pricing changes along with the 500 mb free storage change. It took many by surprise and frustrations were expressed by users on Twitter and other forums. WooFunnels, the popular sales funnel and automation plugin was added to the WPBeginner business through their Growth Fund. Syed Balkhi announced that he will be advising the team on how to expand their WordPress Product business. WooCommerce Beta 1 for the April 2022 release of WooCommerce is available for testing. You can either download it directly from WordPress.org or install it in the WooCommerce Beta Tester Plugin. From Our Contributors and Producers WP Migrate DB Pro is Now WP Migrate. WP Migrate dropped the “DB Pro” in their plugin to better reflect what the product does. The latest release of WP Migrate 2.3 gives you the choice to include or exclude the database. Migrate just the database, just your files, or both. No more workarounds required. David Lockie announced that he has joined the Automattic family as a Web3 Lead in the WooCommerce Transact team. Fast tweeted an announcement that they will be closing their doors. Fast had stood out in the crowded field of one-click checkout startups after it landed a $102 million infusion of cash in a fundraising round last year led by payments giant Stripe. It appears that the product was generating very little revenue. Check out the latest episode of the Matt Report with Joe Howard where we learn you can find someone else to run your business. Joe is stepping aside but is still a majority owner of the business. He is now focused on a new SaaS startup.&n

Syed Balkhi is chief blogger at WPBeginner, and he recently completed a site redesign.When he started WPBeginner in 2009, like most new creators, he changed the website theme design four times in the first three years.Realizing that website redesigns take up a lot of time and resources, he focused on fulfilling our core mission:Help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys through our tools, team, and training.The last redesign of WPBeginner was launched in 2016, and it was finally time for a site redesign that would help move WPBeginner forward.We talked about some design and speed improvements he made to his site during the interview, including some controversial design decisions.Links:WPBeginner v6 – Behind the Scenes of Our New Site Designhttps://www.wpbeginner.com/news/wpbeginner-v6-behind-the-scenes-of-our-new-site-design/How to Properly Change a WordPress Theme (Ultimate Guide)https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-properly-change-a-wordpress-theme/Plugins Mentioned:MonsterInsights Best WordPress Analytics Plugin https://www.monsterinsights.com/ AIOSEO Best WordPress SEO Plugin https://aioseo.com/ SeedProd Best Theme Builder for WordPress https://www.seedprod.com/ SearchWP Best Custom Search for WordPress https://searchwp.com/You can connect with WPBeginner on our website. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

In The News The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 5.9 is now available! Your feedback helps the community check that nothing is missed. Given the tens of thousands of plugins, themes and differences in how millions of people use the software, now is a good time to test. To really understand the year in core, you can dig deeper into contributor data with a lot of numbers and charts over on make.wordpress.org. It is an amazing amount of work that everyone can be proud of. But it should be noted that the data does not include contributions on GitHub repositories like Gutenberg. Anjela Jin shared the proposal for the Block Pattern Directory. It will soon be live and ready to accept custom Block Pattern submissions! In anticipation of this new directory, questions have been raised around the best practices for submitting Block Patterns. Before you submit your block pattern, make sure that you have some basic automated checks in place. If the submitted Block Pattern passes the checks, it will be published immediately or it will be flagged for manual review. You can comment up until January 14, 2022. Did you hear that Yoast is headed to Shopify? There will be an online event held on Thursday, January 20, 2022. It starts at 4:30 pm CET / 1:30 pm EST. Joost de Valk, shares on his blog the business reasons that Yoast was built for Shopify, which is not open source. Events Post Status is having their first-ever Twitter Conference. They are picking up the torch from Hey Pressto and carrying forward with an All-on-Twitter Conference to be held Tuesday, May 24, from 9 am – 4 pm EST. Check the link on how to apply and present in 15 tweets. From Our Contributors and Producers WSForms posted Website Resolutions for 2022. This article is a good reminder to review your current website and make adjustments if you do not have all the innovative things to make it awesome in 2022. If you would like to stay focused in 2022 and need motivation there are several blogs that review the past year. Syed Balkhi shares his year in review that includes many acquisitions in the WordPress space. One data point of note: Awesome Motive is now 200+ team members strong. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackMichelle Frechette Next up: The Creator Clock, with Joe Casabona You can buy me a coffee to support the show or join as a member for $79 for the year to get access to the private Discord server. Become part of our merry band of WordPress newsies and get involved in the weekly WordPress news like everyone I mentioned above. That's it for today's episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media

Optimizing your WordPress website is a never-ending job.    But that doesn't mean it has to be hard or complicated.    Syed Balkhi, founder and CEO of Awesome Motive joins Loren Baker for a discussion around tools that will make your WordPress SEO simpler.   With a community-first approach, Syed's team was able to solve users' problems, partner with other tools, or build tools for free. The value at the core of their success? If they helped others win, they won as well.    Learn more about the tools they developed, the secrets of their success, and how Awesome Motive and their full suite of WordPress tools became industry leaders.     “We give people the freedom to do the advanced things that they want to do and that's what we've really built before.” - Syed Balkhi, [14:26]   “I remember the early days when WordPress came out, I was telling people I'm going to become a blogger. They said what are you doing? Why? You have to create new content every day? Are you crazy? I said, ‘Let's do it!'” - Loren Baker, [33:36]   “Our goal is to fight inequality through education. This is why everything you see on WP Beginner is free. We don't charge for courses, there are hundreds of videos for free that we create and I believe that helps level the playing field and creates a better tomorrow.” - Syed Balkhi, [48:56]     [00:00] - A look at Syed Balkhi, Awesome Motive, and their impressive WordPress brands [03:44] - Why is on-site search important? [07:09] - What's unique about All In One SEO? [16:25] - Opt-in Monster & other cross-platform tools [18:58] - Does TrustPulse work? [20:04] - What is Sugar Calendar, and how does it work? [22:15] - How Syed describes most of their plugins [23:02] - Using Seed Prod for faster landing pages and sites [24:28] - How WPBeginner began and what Syed learned doing it [33:57] - The “aha!” moment with WP Beginner [35:04] - How Opt-In Monster started [37:41] - How Syed got into analytics and MonsterInsights [42:06] - The core culture of Awesome Motive [42:47] - How does WPBeginner Growth Fund work? [47:53] - How Syed gives back through Pencils of Promise   --- “The beginner tools, we made it beginner-friendly - that was our first goal. But we also have the power tools because it's really built for us the migrating sites and the redirects.” - Syed Balkhi, [13:26]   “Don't try to be everybody to everyone. You might end up drifting away from your core value. That's when business growth starts slowing down.” - Syed Balkhi, [39:56]   “I might not be the smartest person in the room but I'm smart enough to know what I don't know and smart enough to bring people in that know what I don't know, so we can work together and come to a solution at the end of the day.”- Loren Baker, [40:27]   For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal   Looking to keep up with what's current and effective in digital marketing today? Check out https://www.searchenginejournal.com for everything you need to know within the digital marketing space and improve your skills as an internet marketer.   Connect with Syed Balkhi:     The mission of Syed Balkhi is for small businesses to have a level playing field. More than 19 million websites use his software to grow and compete with the big boys. More than 100 million people read his blogs every year to increase their website traffic, sales, and conversions!   Connect with Syed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedbalkhi/ Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi Pencils of Promise: https://pencilsofpromise.org/  Visit: https://awesomemotive.com/about/   Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal: Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

Síguenos en: Hoy traemos un episodio especial de Perspectiva WP donde analizamos, junto con Juan Hernando que ya nos acompañó en el último episodio, las últimas adquisiciones en el ecosistema WordPress. Últimas adquisiciones en la esfera WordPress StellarWP (LiquidWeb) adquiere LearnDash Justin Ferriman proceso de 11 meses - Chris Lema pasa a ser General Manager Así queda la cartera de productos de StellarWP: iThemesThe Events CalendarRestrict Content ProKadence WPGiveWPWP Business Review.IconicWP Awesome Motive adquiere todos los plugins de Sandhills Development Pippin Willianson se retira pero el resto del equipo (27 personas) pasan a formar parte de Awesome Motive (Syed Balkhi): Easy Digital Downloads AffiliateWPSugar CalendarWP Simple PayPayouts Service Así queda la cartera de productos de Awesome Motive: WPBeginnerOptinMonsterWPFormsMonsterInsightsAIOSEOWP Mail SMTPSeedProdRafflePressSmash BalloonPushEngageSearchWP… y más. Unos 17 millones de webs utilizan plugins de Awesome Motive. Un equipo de + de 200 personas localizados en 36 países distintos Motivos de Pippin Comenta que el destino de cualquier negocio será alguno de estos: Un día pasará a otra persona, quizás por herencia familiarDecaerá lenta o rápidamente y en algún momento se cerrará por completoSe venderá a un nuevo propietario por una u otra razón La salud de su padre le hizo reflexionar Se tomó 3 meses de sabático para reflexionar  Dar el salto al siguiente nivel es muy complicado Además había perdido la pasión por crear software para WordPress Una vez decidió que quería vender buscó alguien capaz de asegurar el futuro de sus productos, trabajadores y clientes Conoce a Syed Balkhi desde hace años y confía en que puede asegurarlo Sandhills Development se dedicará principalmente a la preservación de espacios naturales. Pippin dedicará su tiempo a eso y a Sandhills Brewing. Punto en común con Elliot Condon, 10 años y a otra cosa mariposa. Episodio de PerspectivaWP dedicado a Pippin Williamson y Sandhills Development. Episodio de PerspectivaWP dedicado a Elliot Condon y Advanced Custom Fields. Episodio de PerspectivaWP dedicado a iThemes/ Liquid Web Otras grandes adquisiciones recientes WooCommerce adquiere SomewhereWarmACF adquirido por Delicious BrainsYoast adquirido por Newfold Digital Movimientos de talento Brian Gardner vuelve a WP Engine Rich Tabor cambia Go Daddy por Extendify. Todas las adquisiciones de WordPress recogidas en Post Status. Debate Trasvase de datosHay hueco para pequeños negocio en WordPress Is There a Future for Small WordPress Businesses? - WP Mayor (Si quisieras vender un producto/plugin: https://flipwp.co/ de Iain Poulson y Alex Denning + 6 preguntas que hacerte antes de vender tu negocio de WP en el blog de StellarWP) Gracias a: Este episodio está patrocinado por StudioPress, los creadores de Genesis Framework, el entorno de trabajo de temas más popular de WordPress. Ya está disponible Genesis Pro para todo el mundo, 360$ anuales que dan acceso a: Genesis FrameworkChild themes de Genesis de StudioPress1 año de hosting en WP EnginePlugin Genesis Pro (Diseños y secciones, restricción de bloques por usuarios…) y Genesis Custom Blocks Pro.

It's the WP Minute! This episode is brought to you by FooGallery, check out their latest WooCommerce integration to start selling images right through WooCommerce, head on over to Foo.Gallery for more information! You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. News It was a blast keeping up with the breaking news last week and things are still shaking. Alex Denning writes an interesting post about Awesome Motive's marketing machine powering millions of dollars in revenue. He explores how it all works as separate products in a decentralized network. Go check out his take on Awesome Motive's value of products under one umbrella. The Matt Report also has a great interview with Syed Balkhi, to recap his point of view on the acquisition of Sandhills development. All the acquisitions… It was announced that WPLandingKit is joining Themeisle. WPLandingKit is a popular plugin that lets you map domain names to individual WordPress pages within your site. Themeisle will look to incorporate this plugin with their Neve and Otter products to provide a solution for managing landing pages for WordPress. Keep your eyes peeled for new offers coming from them. Keanan Koppenhaver announced on Twitter that he acquired @WP_Pusher and @thisisbranch. In his blog, he talks about why this acquisition is so thrilling to him. WP Pusher is solid, supporting a multitude of workflows. It allows one to deploy to every WordPress host in existence. Keenan states: As a fellow developer, I'm overjoyed at the idea of helping WordPress developers deploy their code more easily, no matter where they're hosted and without having to resort to FTP. All this acquisition talk seems to be causing angst (or not) in the WordPress Community. Mark Zahra covers a lot of what WordPress Entrepreneurs may be feeling in his recent blog post about there being a future for small WordPress businesses. WordPress feels like it is fragmented and it is a good time for larger companies to be buying the smaller ones. Can anyone continue to compete in this situation? Then we get Chris Wiegman's view about what keeps people working in WordPress. It often isn't for the technical power of the product but the communities that keep us connected. Check out his article on the four communities of WordPress and how that ties small business owners together. IF you want to get out there in the WordPress scene you may want the world to know about it. WPMainline has a recent blog post about how the small fry can get the exposure they need by using the website WPHunts. This site, an idea of Ben Townsend, is in the early stages and it will be interesting to see the discussion and support from the community as it gains traction. Events It looks like October is shaping up to be a busy month.

The WordPress acquisition world was rocking this week. If this week were a heavyweight fight between Learn Dash and Sandhills Development, Pippin would certainly be the beloved veteran. You can hear more about his side of the story in this podcast interview. Today I got to sit down with Syed Balkhi, founder of Awesome Motive, to recap his point of view on the acquisition. It hasn't been without some controversy, but hey, that's WordPress for ya ★ Support this podcast ★

The WordPress acquisition world was rocking this week. If this week were a heavyweight fight between Learn Dash and Sandhills Development, Pippin would certainly be the beloved veteran. You can hear more about his side of the story in this podcast interview. Today I got to sit down with Syed Balkhi, founder of Awesome Motive, to recap his point of view on the acquisition. It hasn't been without some controversy, but hey, that's WordPress for ya :) If you enjoy today's episode, please share it with others.

Awesome Motive Acquires Sandhills DevelopmentPost Status CEO Cory Miller chats with Pippin Williamson, the Founder and Managing Director of Sandhills Development, about Awesome Motive's acquisition of his company. Pippin announced today that Awesome Motive has acquired his company — their whole team and plugin portfolio: Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, Sugar Calendar, WP Simple Pay, and the Payouts Service. Syed Balkhi, Founder and CEO of Awesome Motive, outlines the commercial plugins and notes the deal includes several free plugins as well. From Sandhills, Chris Klosowski, Andrew Munro, and Phil Derksen will be joining Awesome Motive as partners, and Chris will continue to lead Easy Digital Downloads. Pippin, however, intends to take a very long break from WordPress and software development.Sitting down with Cory Miller for some reflection on the past and thoughts about the future in the WordPress space, Pippin offered advice to developers and product owners today. He also identified what he sees as the biggest threat emerging for WordPress today.Key Takeaway: "The Biggest Threat We Have Today"

"Understanding who you are and who you are not goes a long way."In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David Bisset talks with Syed Balkhi about the acquisition of SearchWP by Awesome Motive. We get a little behind-the-scenes information about how this deal came to be. Syed shares his thoughts on how SearchWP fits in with Awesome Motive's brand and vision of providing support to small businesses.Also covered in this episode: Syed talks about "plugin developers and entrepreneurs being true" to their mission when it comes to growing and monetizing their products and plugins.Browse our archives, and don't forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Great News for the Castos Team in private podcasting Castos, a leader in podcast hosting and analytics, has successfully closed an investment round of $756,000. With investments by Automattic, Yoast SEO, along with individual investors, Castos will use this additional capital to fuel its advance into the Private Podcasting market. A quote from Craig Hewlett: “On both the individual and corporate investor side I think the investors see the vision that we have for what the Private Podcasting market can mean for Castos and want to help us achieve that potential,” Hewitt said. Big huge large news: I sold @SearchWP! Lots to say but the words can't fit in a tweeter https://t.co/OdfYlZDYXG— Jon Christopher (@jchristopher) July 7, 2021 SearchWP finds a new homeJonathan Christopher tweeted that his product SearchWP has been acquired by Awesome Motive. A quote from Syed Balkhi in the announcement post: “As he wanted to pursue the next chapter of his life, we started discussing the future of the SearchWP plugin. Given our experience running a suite of popular WordPress plugins, SearchWP was a perfect fit for our family of products.” He goes on to state:“A WordPress search plugin that a beginner, non-techy, small business owner can easily set up in less than 10 minutes to grow their business. I sat down with the team, and we have a crystal-clear 12 month plan. A lot of exciting things are coming your way in the coming months.” Also check out the interview with Jonathan Christopher in this article: Finding an awesome home for SearchWP Full Site Editing Testing Call #8 Compared to previous calls for testing for the FSE (Full SIte Editing) Outreach program, this round is intentionally targeting a more developer-centric audience compared to site builders or end users. in order to bring high impact feedback for theme.json, a new tool for extenders. You can read more about what to expect with upcoming efforts on make.WordPress.org site. Events WordFest live is coming up July 23rd. You can go and check out the speaker sessions that you do not want to miss! Grabbag Many of you are familiar with Troy Dean. Well, he was not a part of an acquisi

Post Status founder Brian Krogsgard has sold the remaining half of his ownership of the WordPress media brand to his partner, Cory Miller. Kicking off his his farewell post, A New Era for Post Status, Brian states: “It has been an extreme privilege to create and run this community — and see it blossom into a wonderful entity with its own identity. In the last few years, I’ve worked to bring more voices and more talent into the fold, and I’m confident that I leave Post Status in very able hands.” I had a chance to Interview Cory Miller about the transition, and here’s what he had to say. (Hit play on the podcast, reader!) You can gain more insight from Cory’s announcement on the website and his Draft podcast episode. The Blocksy Theme, was covered on the Tavern recently highlighting all of their investments into the theme + Gutenberg. It’s better for all of WordPress when we see a privately owned theme company growing these days. Stackable Gutenberg page builder founder Benjamin Intal was interviewed on the WP Jukebox podcast delivering his outlook on the now competitive Gutenberg block landscape as compared to his start back in 2018. Note the use of the phrase, “Gutenberg page builder” a noteworthy and intentional title in his pitch about the company. Affiliate Royale has re-branded to EasyAffiliate. You can see the whole new brand and website at EasyAffiliate.com. It’s a CaseProof owned company which includes PrettyLink and MemberPress, both of which owner Blair Williams entered into the Awesome Motive accelerator WP Beginner Growth Accelerator program, a Syed Balkhi owned initiative. Oldies but goodies The Query Block received some enhancements back in the Gutenberg 10.6 update. Pay close attention to the Query Block. I think it’s important to how users experience pulling content out of WordPress and displaying it on the front-end and will be crucial in the full-site editing experience. How do you feel about presenting your vaccination status at the next WordCamp? A proposal including comments from around the community was posted back on May 12th. I interviewed Brian Casel founder of ZipMessage over on The Matt Report podcast. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com

Syed is a Multi-Founder, CEO & an award-winning entrepreneur, recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by the United Nations. He's also been  featured on Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur magazine, Fortune, Fast Company, FOX Business, and The Wall Street Journal.  With over 15+ million websites using the software built by his companies to grow, he's become a thought leader and expert in the WordPress industry. During this interview we cover: 00:00 Contentfy, Your On-Demand Content Team (Sponsor) 01:02 - Intro  02:03 - Syed's Background, Past Ventures & Running Various Companies 03:10 - Founding Optinmonster 05:57 - Focusing on WordPress & the Community  07:48  -  Most Common Mistake Founders on their Websites 10:19 - Conception & Creation of AwesomeMotive 12:33 - Selling Soliloquy & Envira to Only Focus on Growth Tools 16:06 - Best Acquisitions & Passing on Opportunities (Red Flags) 21:38 - On Managing Multiple Companies 23:40 -  Scheduling to be Effective & Productive 25:42 - Current Challenges Syed's Facing in Order to Continue to Grow 26:23 - What Advice Would Syed Give To His 25 Year Old Self? 27:38 - Best Advice to Grow Your Business  30:08 - Best Resources Instrumental to Syed Success 31:10 - What Does Success Means To Syed Today? 32:18 - Future Plans for AwesomeMotive & How To Get In Touch With Him Tools: https://blog.rescuetime.com/time-blocking-101/ (Time Blocks) https://fs.blog/mental-models/ (Mental Models) Mentions: https://awesomemotive.com/ (AwesomeMotive) https://optinmonster.com/ (OptinMonster) https://www.wpbeginner.com/ (WPBeginner) https://wpforms.com/ (WPForms) https://www.cloudflare.com/plans/ (CloudFlare) https://memberpress.com/ (MemberPress)  https://aioseo.com/ (AIOSEO) https://wpmailsmtp.com/ (WPMailSMTP) People: https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/ (Charlie Munger) https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/john-d-rockefeller/367109/ (John D. Rockefeller ) https://fs.blog/ (Shane Parrish) Books: https://www.victorcheng.com/books (Extreme Revenue Growth) Quotes: “Don't give prob;ems energy to expand” - Syed Balkhi “Consistency in more important than intensity” Get In Touch With Syed: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedbalkhi/ (Syed's Linkedin) https://syedbalkhi.com/ (Syed's Website) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast)

On this episode of the Quiet Light podcast, we speak with Dillon Carter about his path to launching a wholesale CRM, why he pivoted to a slighted different business model, and how his company helps their clients succeed. Dillon Carter is one of the founders of Aura, a wholesale CRM that helps you with repricing, managing wholesale suppliers, and growing your Amazon business. Tune in to hear our interesting discussion!   Topics:  How he floundered before finding his true passion. Launching a wholesale-based CRM software, before pivoting into repricing software. Explaining wholesale. Working with an antiquated business model. What happens when everyone is using Aura at the same time. How Aura works.   Resources:  Aura Dillon Carter's Website Quiet Light   Transcription: Joe: Hey folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and the Quiet Light Podcast sponsored by Quiet Light Brokerage, oddly enough. Everybody here is an entrepreneur. We've all built, bought, and sold our own online businesses. I sold my last e-commerce business in 2010. Things have changed a little bit since then. We've got to Dillon Carter on the podcast today. Dillon is one of those changes. He was; well, let's see, 2010, you were still in high school back then, weren't you? Dillon: I graduated in 2010, yeah. Joe: That makes me an old guy or you very good at what you do at such a young age. Probably just that, I'm going to call at Syed Balkhi right now. Syed I think might have just turned 30 years old and referred a client over to me so I was just chatting with him earlier today. Incredibly impressive at a young age and I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile, I'm looking at Vendrive, I'm looking at Aura Repricing and, man, you've got a lot going on in your life. Can you help people that are listening, who you are and what you do and summarize or give more detail to that summary that I just gave? Dillon: Sure. So I started out graduating high school not knowing what in the world I wanted to do, like most entrepreneurs. So, I kind of floundered for about four to five years, just testing a bunch of different things. I found myself being a personal trainer, working ridiculous hours and realizing I did not like a service based business because that's kind of difficult to scale. I realized okay, physical products is something that could theoretically scale in my mind at that time so I started playing around with the Amazon FBA model. Like most people, you get started with retail or online arbitrage, right? Low capital requirement, you could kind of test the waters. I did that and eventually me and the GM of the gym I was training at did not see eye to eye so I decided, you know what, let's go ahead and put myself in a corner and make it work. And so, eventually I decided retail arbitrage, although was better than being able to scale my time so I could not scale in the way that I wanted the business to. So like most FBA sellers, I decided to either go the wholesale or the private label route. I chose wholesale. It made a little bit more sense to me; low capital requirement, I could start paying the bills immediately because it was certainly an issue that I was faced with. I went that route and really spent a handful of years just crafting what wholesale meant to me, how I approached it. At the same time, I decided to go back to school full time for college. So it was one of those lingering aspects of my life where I was like do I really want to be that statistic where you took a few semesters, you kind of dropped out, and never went back. I'm like, no, I'm tripling down on my life at this point, no holds barred, and so that's what I did. And then eventually I met my co-founder, James. We eventually launched www.Vendrive.com, which is wholesale-based CRM software and then pivoted actually funny enough into repricing software. And that's our primary focus at the moment. So I've kind of traversed this world in a few different ways. I launched a podcast or two here and there. I shared all the knowledge that I've gained along the way and the podcast and blog posts and our Facebook group I mean, really just somewhat built an audience just teaching everything for free and I learned a lot from that. It's been a long journey, so to speak, but I feel like I'm just getting started. Joe: That's the way to do it. You help, help, and help some more. Give it all for free and make some friends along the way. It's amazing what you do when you help others, how it comes back to help your own business. In fact, we had Steven Pope on our podcast. I think he's www.MyAmazonGuy.com and so did you and he connected the two of us together. Strangely enough, I told you at the beginning of this call or before we hit record, that I sent a message out to the team that we just don't have enough wholesale guys; men, women, people, individuals, entrepreneurs on the podcast, because we have not historically sold a ton of wholesale businesses. But it's a funny thing, I come from the private label world. I didn't sell on Amazon. When I sold my e-commerce business it really wasn't much focused on Amazon. I did after that, but it was always my own products, always private label and some people look down on wholesale. At this point in my career; not that I'm going to change what I do, but if I were, I might look at wholesale before I look at private label. I might look at an agency before I make a private label. I might do a lot of different things. I might even look at content. But why don't you, for the sake of those that are listening, that are not as versed in it as you are define what wholesale is versus private label and how it works? Dillon: Sure. Wholesale is a very antiquated business model and I don't say that in a negative tone. What I mean by that is you are buying low and you are selling higher. You're literally finding listings on Amazon that are already doing well and you are doing what we call reverse sourcing. So you're finding listings already doing well, finding those brands, those products, and then you are going to the brand to open a wholesale account to purchase in bulk like pallets and stuff like that. It's actually very straightforward. There's nothing crazy to it. The difference here because you made a good point that a lot of people don't view the wholesale business model as a sexy business model. That's not your quote but that's kind of what I hear and you hear it a lot. And I think the reason why you have not sold a whole lot of wholesale Amazon business models is because the multiples are not that great. So, when I went back to school, I actually went to be finance major and so my focus was actually M&A. So doing a lot of valuations, some discounted cash flows, kind of nerdy stuff. But when you look at it, those businesses are easy to replicate. There's not a lot that you're really protecting, right? There's not a lot that I can really build up and get a decent multiple on. And so, I think they're very great in the sense of I can get cash flow positive within 30 days if you kind of know what you're doing and you're being serious about it. Right. Whereas private label is going to take a little bit more time. That's an investment for the future. I view a wholesale business model as a cash flow business where private label is more something you're looking to expand the value of your equity over a long period of time and potentially exit and so, it depends on what you're optimizing for. Joe: There's definitely a difference between the two, because the private label businesses that are growing like crazy, those folks are not taking a whole lot of money out of the business. They're constantly putting it back into inventory to try to keep up. But you said you said sourcing by looking out in the marketplace; Amazon, if that's what we're talking about, to see what other people are selling and then sourcing the product from the brand owner. So, we're talking about brands that have multiple sellers on Amazon in this particular case and you are then going to compete against the other sellers on Amazon as well, correct? Dillon: That's correct. Absolutely. Joe: All right, that doesn't sound very attractive. How do you compete against the others? How do you do a better job on your listings and your ratings and reviews and your pricing and things of this nature? Dillon: This is where it becomes an antiquated business model, in my opinion. And again, not in a negative tone where it comes down to relationships. So, a lot of people are jumping into the Amazon space want that lifestyle business, right. What a lot of people kind of project as this is what it's like to sell on Amazon. The reality of it is it's a lot of phone calls. It's a lot of old school relationship building. It's understanding that… Joe: We all have to do that. Dillon: I know right. Joe: It's now like rocket science. Yeah, it sounds much simpler than trying to figure out the thickness of a corrugated box that you're going to import from China. Dillon: 100%. I've said for the past three or four years that wholesale is simple, not easy. It's simple enough. I mean, we can sketch the entire business model on a napkin, and I've done that. It's not easy because it's a lot more work. Now, that's not a bad thing, right? This is not sending a bunch of emails to manufacturers in China and playing that kind of game. This is actually jumping on the phone and having a real conversation with somebody. What's different about wholesale and why it's uncomfortable for a lot of people is that you are essentially doing a sales job; you are calling a brand to sell them on allowing you to give them your money. It's a bit backwards, right? But that's kind of what it is. And so a lot of people get stuck where they jump into these relationships and they're trying to get these accounts and they're like I keep getting denied. Why won't they take my money? I'm trying to give them money. And what a lot of people have to learn, first and foremost, is the value add that you are bringing to the table is not your money, it's the relationship. What else can you do for that brand? Because what you're not doing is necessarily just jumping on the listing and taking another slice of the pie. You're strategically looking to increase the sales volume here, right? You're looking at running PPC campaigns, you're looking at listing optimization, and you're looking at how can I help my supplier negate other sellers. I keep going below minimum advertised price so, mat price. You're looking at this as a very strategic business model if you're doing it correctly and I think a lot of people view it too simplistically. And again, it is simple, but when you approach it from an operation standpoint as too simple, I think you negate the requirements that enable you to be successful. Does that make sense? Joe: Yeah, they're looking at the wrong things. Dillon: 100%. Joe: They're not looking at the most important thing, which is the relationship. With wholesale accounts, with wholesale clients, you've had friends; I mean, you're in the circles, people that you work with. How many wholesale brand relationships do they have or have to have; sorry, I know this is an unanswerable question with accuracy, in order to really make a good living out of it? Dillon: Sure. If you want to replace a job, the way I source, and the criteria I look for purchasing inventory, which is not super complex by any stretch of the imagination, 10 to 12 SKUs is pretty solid. I think you can get to a point where you're actually replacing job income and at least paying the bills. The cool thing about; so you have the spectrum, right, where private label is going to have like a handful; like a small amount of SKUs, in my opinion. One to two, obviously, you're trying to grow that over time, but if you look at the average it's probably a little bit less. Then on the other end of that spectrum, you have like retail and online arbitrage where it's like thousands upon thousands of SKUs. Wholesale is kind of somewhere in the middle, but leaning more towards the private label route. So a handful of great relationships is enough. You don't need to have 30 plus relationships. I think that's where you get really, really big but you don't really need that. You could do a quarter million in revenue with six to seven SKUs if they're the right kind of SKUs because it is repeatable and scalable. Joe: And what are your margins on that? What's left over for you at the end of the day, if you're doing a quarter million in revenue? Because if it's a private label, that's kind of doing a quarter million in revenue, there's not a lot left over. I guess maybe upwards of 50,000 maybe. But they're taking that money and they're putting it right back in inventory so there's not a lot of cash flow in that situation. Dillon: Yeah, it can vary. I've seen people have some pretty high margins. I've seen people take really, really slim margins. I look for at least 30% in gross margin. Obviously, the business expenses that's kind of going to be situational. But if I could do 30% outside of the business expenses, that's pretty good in my opinion. I think it's scalable. Joe: This is after Amazon fees. Dillon: That's correct. Joe: Okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty solid, actually. What about exclusivity? At what point do you get to be exclusive? Because in my view, that's going to make the business more sellable and have value. So, you're not only building cash flow but you're also building equity. Obviously you got to do better than everybody else and be really important to that relationship. Is that it? Dillon: For the most part, yeah. What's funny is it is that relationship and it's understanding that it just takes time; like any great relationship, it just takes time. So a lot of sellers jump in and say, hey, I just got this account, how do I get exclusive? You wait. You do a great job, you become their biggest buyer, you work with them, you add more value than just your money, and then you start to have that conversation over time. I had a friend, she started her Amazon business, it was doing well, and she followed up every two weeks for a year just to get an account. And not just like, hey, how's everything going? These are in-depth emails of, hey, I noticed this on your listing here's what I would recommend you do and gave them all of that knowledge. And eventually they let you know that that's a lot of work, what would it take for you to do that for us? Give me the account and I want exclusive rights. They go, you know what, let's test it for two weeks and if it if it pans out, we'll absolutely give you the exclusive rights. And she's got it now. Joe: Excellent. Yeah, I know that's the trick. Just again, help them. It is a ton of work so give it all the way and then they realize I really do understand the value of having you do it for me. Let's talk about competing on Amazon for the buy box and what Aura Repricing does because it's so very different than what most people have heard on this podcast because most people are content owners, SaaS owners, private label brand owners. They're not wholesale. Dillon: Yeah, so roughly 82% of organic sales come via the buy box. So that buy box is just that where you go as a consumer and hit one click purchase. That's what we call the buy box. When you're competing with other sellers on the same listing, you're not trying to optimize your listing to beat the other listings. That goes out the door. Now, it's about value. In terms of your price it obviously comes down to your competitive advantage in terms of getting cost lower from your supplier hence relationships matter. It comes down to seller feedback a lot of the times. So what we're having to do is stay competitively priced 24/7. And by the way, these things are changing every few seconds. Private label, you're used to set the price and maybe every now and then we'll change it. Joe: Yeah. Dillon: No, 24/7 here and so some of our larger users that have a few hundred thousand SKUs that are actively repricing, we're doing tens of thousands of price changes per second just for them. So, what we're having to do is say you can't do it yourself, it doesn't scale so let's hand that over to a computer with an algorithm with a set of rules that can say, you know what, the price just changed let's react to that as quickly as possible. And if doing so, we increased the amount of time you're in the buy box, which increases the amount of sales you get. Joe: What happens if you've got three products in the buy box, they're all the same brand, and two out of the three are using Aura Repricing? Dillon: Yes, we get this question a lot; what if everybody's using Aura at the same time? At that point, it comes down to two major things. One, your strategy because you have some control over that. Some people are willing to be more aggressive than others. And then number two, what's really more important, in my opinion, is your cost. A lot of sellers make the assumption that we got the same costs. I know what I paid for so therefore, I theoretically know what you paid for it. That's not true. I could have lower cost because I have a better relationship or I have more capital to play with. So, I'm purchasing in larger quantities, in which case I'm getting quantity breaks on my cost, in which case I can be more aggressive in my price. So, it comes down to those major two things. Joe: Okay, what else can people that are a wholesaler do to improve their rankings, listings, and so on and so forth on Amazon? Dillon: Yeah, one of the things we've seen; forecasting with wholesale is very important, just like it is with private label. However, it's a little bit different. So, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of private label people are purchasing like three months' worth of inventory because you have a lead-time for manufacturing. For us, it's like every two to four weeks we're placing restock orders. So, we're trying to get dense from when the capital goes out of the business to when it comes back with profits as small as possible. Joe: So, it's two to four weeks if you just average to three I mean that's a quarter of the working capital that you need for a private label business. Dillon: 100%. So, we're looking at stuff like that. What's important there was a lot of forecasting won't factor in regional distribution. And what I mean by that is a lot of times you can take a SKU that you're selling on and you have repeat sales and let's say you're moving a hundred units per month like clockwork. You testing increasing that to 200 can actually have a larger distribution in terms of where your SKUs are in the country and now you're starting to get access to what's called a regional buy box and you actually start to see a little bit more sales from that. I didn't believe it at first and then I tested it with a few selling friends, and sure enough, they increased sales by just doing that. So you don't have just the one global buy box, although that's what we're able to focus on as developers. You also have a regional buy box. Joe: And Aura Repricing can have an impact on that? Dillon: That's correct. That comes basically down to where is your inventory today, like right now. Joe: And how do you control that again with Amazon? Dillon: Increased inventory. Joe: Just spend more money and have more inventory and then you're going to… Dillon: Yeah, it's a test for sure. Joe: And you can do that over time, obviously, if you have personal overhead. Dillon: Absolutely. Joe: Okay, tell me about Aura Repricing and when did you launch it? To me, honestly, the development of this must have been crazy. I mean, you did finance and M&A; is your business partner a coder or a developer? Dillon: Yeah, so me and my co-founder, James, met actually via Instagram. So, we were both wholesale sellers, separate of each other and we just started to meet up once a week via Skype back in the day and just, hey, what's going on? What's new? He was kind of helping me scale my business because his was already at seven. Mine was at six figures so he was helping me understand some cash flow stuff that I needed to learn. And eventually he was like, hey, by the way, I'm at UMass and I am an engineering student. I'm already starting to work on some side projects. Do you want to partner up? And that's when we started to launch Vendrive. So, Aura, the beta took roughly eight to nine months of him by himself, because I'm not an engineer. I'm not a coder. I can script some stuff and that's about it. Joe: Yeah. Dillon: So that was him pretty much working 80, 90 hour weeks for eight to nine months, just grinding it out and we got the beta up. We tested with 20 to 30 users just from day one just to get that feedback loop going. Launched my winter break between semesters in December of 2018 and then we launched that and I had 50 users paying and we just started a feedback loop and scaling from there. Joe: And you both finished college? Dillon: We did. Yeah, we both finished college at the same time and now we're actually; we were fully remote. I was in Florida, now we're in Boston and we have our first like large office which you can see back here. We have the walls painted and the whiteboard is up, and we're actually hiring three engineers in the next month or two. Joe: Very cool. That's a great success story, man. Dillon: Yeah, thanks. Joe: I know that you said he was in college and you were in college at same time but developing it in college; doing seven figures in revenue while in college is pretty impressive. So let's say he's doing a million, he's doing maybe 300,000 in cash flow, in profit, even if you divide by two while a student in college, that's pretty damn impressive. Dillon: It's not bad. Yeah, it's definitely not bad. That's the thing about wholesale is I tell people, it can be at whatever scale you want. I think it's difficult to really take a private label brand and just be like, oh, I just kind of want to make a little extra cash. When I started mine again, I went back to school, and I was like if this thing just pay my bills and allows me to focus on school full time and get through that and not take six years to get through, it's kind of a solid win. And to be honest, that's kind of where I got it and I was happy with that. And then once I graduated, it's like cool now, we can go full force. And really I did like two semesters before because Aura started to really scale and outpace itself, which was awesome. But yeah, I think it's cool thing. Joe: Let's get back to the repricing part, because if I'm the wholesale owner, how am I going to work with Aura and Aura Repricing to determine how low it goes? Is this simply a matter of math and numbers and what my relationship is; how does it work? Dillon: So you have two major ways of setting a min max. We always require a minimum and a maximum price. This is the range of which Aura is allowed to play within because we don't want to go too low and not too high and all that good stuff. You can manually set that. Some people have their own formulas, some people just take current buy box price and reduce that by 30%. What I typically recommend is the second option, which is an automated option. So, you can set that based on an ROI. We'll actually import your cost that you give us or you're using a tool like Inventory Lab to store that. So, we'll import those and you'll say a minimum I want 20% ROI. What we'll do is we'll factor in your cost and then the Amazon fees, obviously factoring in that 20% ROI and say, okay, here's your calculated min price. We'll automatically set that for all your SKUs. So we create different strategies and those strategies can be assigned to a group of SKUs, one SKU, your entire account; it's really up to you. And then however you want to set those min max prices, you can definitely do that. Joe: That's pretty impressive. Dillon: Yeah. Joe: When it comes to wholesale, again, I'm a little ignorant on it, because it's probably a well-known brand; I would assume or a well enough known brand are people searching for the brand name and therefore there's not as much sponsored ads or are people doing sponsored advertising as well? Dillon: This is what's interesting, I know ads are very prominent and expensive for private label. What's interesting is when I started testing paid ads on wholesale, they were actually very cheap. And for whatever reason, the brands themselves do not seem to be doing that on Amazon. They don't. They just let the sales happen and they don't progress with it, period. The opportunity is that it's less competitive because from my personal experience, what I've done is I've created ads targeting the brand name and the product name and not the type of product. So the proverbial garlic fresh, right. Joe:  [Inaudible 00:22:36.5]. Dillon: Yeah, but we're going to do as an example, Nike, blah, blah, blah. When you're doing that they're super cheap and very scalable. I had a product that retailed for $329.95, it was costing me an additional $5 per sale via paid ads, and they're already doing 30 to 40 units per month organically. But that netted me $55 net profit so minus the $5 we're still doing 50 bucks. So I'm able to increase my volume. I'm trading five bucks for 50 bucks at this point. Joe: Sure. Dillon:  [inaudible 00:23:11.3] oh, that's expensive, five bucks. I'm like, not really when you do the math on it. Joe: Absolutely, you're paying five bucks and you're getting 50 bucks back. That's a good return. Dillon: Yeah, I'm not even very good at it. That's the important part. Joe: Are you doing any video ads; do you have the options to do whatever you want or can you not do video ads for wholesale? Dillon: I've yet to see any restrictions on that. I haven't done the video ads. There's this weird dichotomy where there's some things you should be willing to do for your brands and then there are some things that are just going to cost too much. It's very ROI driven. So, some brands are going to do that themselves and that's going to help you organically. Some sellers, if you have the right exclusive agreement, it can make sense. It just comes down to the math where it really will... Joe: We just had Judson Morgan on from www.Butter.la and he talked everybody through how to do videos from your iPhone or a Pixel, and it's not a lot of dough. An unboxing, if you will. You're making it natural and normal and he talked about the lighting and all that stuff. That's what I'm talking about. He talked about the bump in conversion rate with videos, either video ads or videos in your listings. I know that with private label, they get six or seven; maybe six to eight images that they're allowed to have and one of them can be video. Normally it's pushed to the very end. Do you do that with wholesale as well, the video, the unboxing, and things of that nature? Dillon: You do to a certain degree. So, part of the value add to the brand, again, is not just your capital. It's looking at where the listing itself can be optimized. A lot of sellers are hesitant to do that stuff because all that work is not just coming back to you. It's coming back to all the other sellers. And so that's where it gets kind of interesting, where there's some growth hacks, so to speak, that are only going to come back to you as the seller. So you're not really increasing competition's volume as well. I'm of the opinion if it raises all boats, I'm still probably willing to do it because I'm still getting a positive ROI on that it just depends on the person. So, I'm a huge fan of a growth strategy that I kind of created actually from Amazon affiliate sites. So, I was looking at different brokers. I'm just looking at what's for sale in the Amazon space. I'd like to keep a look at multiples and what's being sold. I was like, you know what, these Amazon affiliate sites are genius. They're there to make money and move inventory because that's when they get paid. So then I said, well, what happens when I start to reach out to these site owners and say, you know what, I sell a grill thermometer, you have a bestbarbecue.com Amazon affiliate site, what happens when I get you to replace your $200 grill thermometer with my $329 one, does that actually increase sales? And if we can structure the URL correctly, all of the sales are coming straight to me, not just anybody who happens to be in the buy box at the moment. It turns out you can. So, there's some more strategy there in terms of growth but that's where you have to really think through the relationship you have. If it's a very short term seasonal relationship, I may not be willing to go to that extent because it is a lot of work. However, if it's a brand that I want to work with for a long period of time, that's different. And I've always told people to approach it that way. If I don't in my mind think that I can work with a brand for the next 12 plus months, I really don't see the point in it. I'm not opportunistic in the way I approach wholesale. Joe: You're blowing my mind that you're 28 years old, I got to tell you that. Dillon: I appreciate it. Thank you. Joe: All right. So, Aura Repricing, anybody that does any wholesale got to go to Aura Repricing. Check it out and see what Aura repricing could do for them. Let's talk also about the two podcasts; I think you've got two podcasts or is it one? Anything else you want people to know about you and things of that nature before we wrap it up here? Dillon: Sure. So, I kind of got sick of the $3,000 courses. I'm not anti-course by any stretch of the imagination. Joe: We just launched one for $3,000. Dillon: So, I decided I was going to share everything that I knew, which is I'm not an expert in my opinion, but I know some stuff and so I'm willing to share everything that I do know. So if you go to www.Vendrive.com/blog, I've pretty much written some crazy in-depth articles on wholesale in terms of overcoming objections with suppliers, the cash flow management of it; all the fun nitty-gritty stuff. And of course, Wholesale Made Easy, which is the podcast. I'm not running that active anymore. That was structured to be like an evergreen podcast where it's not short-term tactics. It's foundational stuff like we're talking about here that if you listen to it a year from now, it's still going to apply. We do have the new podcast called Welcome to Growth, which is me and my co-host, Jonathan. It's way more casual and it's more just me and him going back and forth every Thursday on different topics. Joe: That's where I heard your first. I'm like I like these guys, they don't have any scripts at all. It's perfect for me. Dillon: We literally show up that morning. We might text the night before and say, hey, here's three topics that I would like to talk about. We'll pick one and just riff on it for about an hour. Joe: Yeah, it's awesome and you're a wealth of knowledge. We need to talk more about wholesale again someday. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it. Dillon: Yeah, thanks for having me.

What does it take to start a business? Syed Balkhi created his first business when he was only 7 years old. Syed has been doing internet stuff since he was 12. He is an online marketer with design and development experience. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wired Magazine, [...] The post How to Get Over 2 Million Subscribers and 530 Million Views on Youtube appeared first on Small Business Advice Help For Startups and Entrepreneurs.

In episode #1318, we are going to talk about the top marketing geniuses to watch in the 2020. In marketing it is key to surround yourself with those are thinking outside the box, trying out novel ideas, and taking on the most creative approaches to the everyday marketing tasks. Stay tuned to hear our list of who we are following and why they are worth your time. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:25] Today's topic: The Marketing Geniuses That You Need to Pay Attention to in 2020. [00:33] Eric Siu: avid reader with a lot of information to offer. [01:09] Neil Patel: always tries new, unconventional things - choose non-consensus and right. [02:13] Ryan Bonnici: strategies on where marketing is going, the long-term view. [02:59] Syed Balkhi: entrenched in the WordPress ecosystem. [03:50] Brian Dean: tactical approach, testing new ways to grow without producing a lot of concent. [04:21] Yaniv Masjedi: building a good marketing team, and treating them like family. [05:02] Grant Cardone and Gary Vanerhuck: keeping a pulse on the social web. [05:35] Matthew Barby & Kevin Indig: understanding SEO and newsletters. [06:16] Russell Brunson & Ryan Deiss: implementing sales funnels and monetizing email lists. [06:56] Patrick Campbell: creative approach to content creation and customer response. [07:52] Erik Rivera: thinks outside the box with novel ideas. [08:16] To stay updated with events and learn more about our mastermind, go to the Marketing School site for more information. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Ryan Bonnici G2 Syed Balkhi WPBeginner OptinMonster Brian Dean Backlinko Yaniv Masjedi Grant Cardone Gary Vaynerchuck Matthew Barby Traffic Think Tank HubSpot Kevin Indig Russell Brunson Ryan Deiss Patrick Campbell ProfitWell Erik Rivera Honest Paws Leave Some Feedback:   What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.   Connect with Us:  Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

In episode #1318, we are going to talk about the top marketing geniuses to watch in the 2020. In marketing it is key to surround yourself with those are thinking outside the box, trying out novel ideas, and taking on the most creative approaches to the everyday marketing tasks. Stay tuned to hear our list of who we are following and why they are worth your time. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:25] Today’s topic: The Marketing Geniuses That You Need to Pay Attention to in 2020. [00:33] Eric Siu: avid reader with a lot of information to offer. [01:09] Neil Patel: always tries new, unconventional things - choose non-consensus and right. [02:13] Ryan Bonnici: strategies on where marketing is going, the long-term view. [02:59] Syed Balkhi: entrenched in the WordPress ecosystem. [03:50] Brian Dean: tactical approach, testing new ways to grow without producing a lot of concent. [04:21] Yaniv Masjedi: building a good marketing team, and treating them like family. [05:02] Grant Cardone and Gary Vanerhuck: keeping a pulse on the social web. [05:35] Matthew Barby & Kevin Indig: understanding SEO and newsletters. [06:16] Russell Brunson & Ryan Deiss: implementing sales funnels and monetizing email lists. [06:56] Patrick Campbell: creative approach to content creation and customer response. [07:52] Erik Rivera: thinks outside the box with novel ideas. [08:16] To stay updated with events and learn more about our mastermind, go to the Marketing School site for more information. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Ryan Bonnici G2 Syed Balkhi WPBeginner OptinMonster Brian Dean Backlinko Yaniv Masjedi Grant Cardone Gary Vaynerchuck Matthew Barby Traffic Think Tank HubSpot Kevin Indig Russell Brunson Ryan Deiss Patrick Campbell ProfitWell Erik Rivera Honest Paws Leave Some Feedback:   What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.   Connect with Us:  Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

We're back! Stoked that WordPress journalism is making a comeback in 2020. Here I was feeling all down and out over covering WordPress and a few friends of mine are re-investing in the space. Happy to see Cory Miller become a partner at Poststatus and finally get Brian working on the company again. ;) Well-known WP Tavern founder Jeff Chandler is set to reclaim the throne through his new initiative WP Mainline. I'm eager to have someone so dedicated to the WordPress community get back on the podcasting airwaves. Things are moving along with Business 5000 and I'm actually content with the slower pace it's taking at the moment. I want to build something valuable for those involved and rushing things won't help. p.s. I'm looking for more people willing to pitch their ideas and more advisors to judge the pitches. Friend of the show Syed Balkhi of Awesome Motive has acquired the All In One SEO plugin to round out his suite of marketing and conversion tools. This is going to be a big win for his company and especially his customers. I'm predicting an e-commerce product purchase will come soon enough. I recently previewed the powerful Blocksy theme which comes loaded with a unique header/footer builder built in the WordPress customizer. I'm excited to see what they have to offer in their upcoming pro version. My major concern is when product owners compete over "free/fastest/most" and I'll share those thoughts towards the end of the episode, but also highlighted in the video below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llWTmvZUHk4 If you like the episode PLEASE share it with others. ★ Support this podcast ★

Syed Balkhi joins me to discuss the acquisition of AIO SEO.Some of the questions he answers:So who is your target customer with All in One SEO?How is the model structured? You’re directing strategy… is there a Christoff or Atchison in this setup?How does your vision for AIOSEO compare to what you see in Yoast SEO?How do you envision the free/premium divide?What are the first three things you plan to do?How did the conversation w/ Michael start? You approach him? He approach you? Tell me a story.How far do you think you can scale this business model?What do you think about the consolidation we’re seeing in the plugin ecosystem — the consolidation you’re a major player in?Links:Awesome MotiveAIO SEO on WP.orgAcquisition announcement

In episode #1245, we discuss why the best marketers out there are usually more entrepreneurial! Looking at our own experiences coming up in marketing and in particular the example of our friend Syed Balkhi, we can see the links between creativity, innovation, and success. Tune in to get some inspiration for how you can turn your marketing skills into a business! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:25] Today’s topic: Why the Best Marketers are the Most Entrepreneurial.  [00:34] Eric's practices around learning when he started out in the marketing game. [01:29] Why Neil values creativity over all else in marketing. [02:01] The example of Syed Balkhi and his career path in marketing. [03:31] Frugality and creativity; a winning combination. [04:44] Taking your marketing skills and applying them to a business of your own. [05:38] That's it. [05:43] To stay updated with events and learn more about our mastermind, go to the Marketing School site for more information. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Syed Balkhi OptinMonster Awesome Motive WordPress Leave Some Feedback:   What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.   Connect with Us:  Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

In episode #1245, we discuss why the best marketers out there are usually more entrepreneurial! Looking at our own experiences coming up in marketing and in particular the example of our friend Syed Balkhi, we can see the links between creativity, innovation, and success. Tune in to get some inspiration for how you can turn your marketing skills into a business! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:25] Today's topic: Why the Best Marketers are the Most Entrepreneurial.  [00:34] Eric's practices around learning when he started out in the marketing game. [01:29] Why Neil values creativity over all else in marketing. [02:01] The example of Syed Balkhi and his career path in marketing. [03:31] Frugality and creativity; a winning combination. [04:44] Taking your marketing skills and applying them to a business of your own. [05:38] That's it. [05:43] To stay updated with events and learn more about our mastermind, go to the Marketing School site for more information. Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Syed Balkhi OptinMonster Awesome Motive WordPress Leave Some Feedback:   What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review.   Connect with Us:  Neilpatel.com Quick Sprout  Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel  Twitter @ericosiu

Hold on and listen in closely today, as Roland and 28-year old Syed Balkhi talk smart and fast about his progression from problem-solving innovator to Award-winning entrepreneur - honored by the United Nations. 10 million websites use his software, so it’s no wonder he’s been featured in Forbes, Inc, e.t.c Roland asks questions about how he has built his amazing, multi-faceted, 8-figure business from nothing. They quickly move into a conversation regarding how he is ‘boot-strap’ growing his company with smart acquisitions and more. “I learned how to code because I didn’t have the money to pay people to code. I literally opened the source code and started googling. I’m pretty good at reverse engineering…I can 'make crappy' fast!” Syed Balkhi To find out more about Syed and dig a little deeper, visit his site. Listen Today for How Syed started earning money for himself at age 12 - with forum posting. How his determination to play video games in High school drove his creative problem solving, teaching himself how to make a proxy and how to code. How he evolved into making websites for people and hiring people by age 16. How his now 10-year old blog was birthed in order to solve problems for his clients (for free) and this blog turned out to be the foundation for his success. How he built his content purely on user-fed content, and the affiliate marketing revenue and rev shares grew as word of mouth spread. How (and why) he made the leap to a software developer. How his Exit-Intent Popup code changed the game (and he even trade-marked the term) increasing traffic by 600%. How he dealt with people knocking off his work. What he learned from taking OptIn Monster outside his primary ecosystem. Why he stays within the WordPress ecosystem (35% of the web) to double down on his unfair advantage. How to define a success gap! How (and why) Syed is growing his business through Acquisitions. How his reputation for not abusing his user base has opened acquisition doors. How he got connected with his highly successful mentor. His perspective on mentors and paying for them. Syed’s travel hacks for the monthly trips he takes with family. “Look at LeBron James. He has a professional coach for everything. If you’re an entrepreneur you need that network to improve. You can only improve if you’re around people that are smarter than you.” -Syed Balkhi Click to find us on Apple Podcasts and other podcast players

A couple weeks ago, Eric Siu and Neil Patel hosted their first live event for their Marketing School podcast.  There, they welcome guest keynote speakers that are marketing leaders to talk about the latest and greatest in marketing trends.  Today's featured keynote speaker is Syed Balkhi, CEO of Awesome Motive. Tune in to hear Eric sit down with Syed to talk about how you can design your thinking for unstoppable growth!  Click here to watch the full YouTube video  Leave Some Feedback: What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @Ericosiu Instagram @Ericosiu

In episode #1082, we give you the opportunity to hear Eric's conversation with Syed Balkhi from the Marketing School Live event to talk about how to design your thinking for unstoppable growth.  Tune in to hear all about what Syed does and how he runs his business. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:55] Today's Topic: How To Design Your Thinking For Unstoppable Growth [01:15] Syed's company creates Wordpress plugins.  [02:34] They have over 9 Million websites using their software. [04:31] Syed tries to be consistent and do the simple stuff that delivers over time. [05:15] Syed has personal health goals, because he gained a good deal of weight. [05:40] He applied a similar principle here and did the simplest things with consistency.  [07:58] An external success gap is the gap between what the product does and what the customers use the product for. [10:00] An internal success gap is what your product does and what the user thinks it should do. [10:10] Sometimes, there are things that the product can do, but doesn't yet, because the company hasn't anticipated all of the users' needs. [10:43] Affiliate marketing is having a commision-only sales team. [13:05] If someone is ranking for the best article on marketing, you can reach out to them to try out your product. [17:32] Syed got his first customers through his blog that already had a big following. [17:41] He also used influencer marketing. [19:01] Content marketing is still key to success and Syed leverages this to attract more customers. [21:56] Syed has in-house writers, because he needs people with a certain level of expertise. [24:45] Publish Press is a great tool for tracking content. [27:05] Wordpress powers 34% of the web. [27:30] Syed sees it as the operating system of the web. [29:15] Hiring the right people has helped Syed, as is having a physical planner and blocking off his Fridays. [34:56] Syed found that building relationships (strategic partnerships) with other companies has proven successful. [37:40] Streaks has added a lot of value to Syed's life; it's a great accountability tracker. [38:08] The Content Template feature in SEMRush has proven helpful to his company, as well. [38:30] One book Syed recommends is Extreme Revenue Growth. [39:13] That's it for today! [40:00] We are going to take applications for live intensive sessions. Just go to the Marketing School site for more information and to apply. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner, is one of the most recognized WordPress serial entrepreneurs. In our podcast, he tells us about his journey, shares valuable lessons from his acquisitions, and advises to think from the user's point of view​.

In episode #1082, we give you the opportunity to hear Eric’s conversation with Syed Balkhi from the Marketing School Live event to talk about how to design your thinking for unstoppable growth.  Tune in to hear all about what Syed does and how he runs his business. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:55] Today’s Topic: How To Design Your Thinking For Unstoppable Growth [01:15] Syed’s company creates Wordpress plugins.  [02:34] They have over 9 Million websites using their software. [04:31] Syed tries to be consistent and do the simple stuff that delivers over time. [05:15] Syed has personal health goals, because he gained a good deal of weight. [05:40] He applied a similar principle here and did the simplest things with consistency.  [07:58] An external success gap is the gap between what the product does and what the customers use the product for. [10:00] An internal success gap is what your product does and what the user thinks it should do. [10:10] Sometimes, there are things that the product can do, but doesn’t yet, because the company hasn’t anticipated all of the users’ needs. [10:43] Affiliate marketing is having a commision-only sales team. [13:05] If someone is ranking for the best article on marketing, you can reach out to them to try out your product. [17:32] Syed got his first customers through his blog that already had a big following. [17:41] He also used influencer marketing. [19:01] Content marketing is still key to success and Syed leverages this to attract more customers. [21:56] Syed has in-house writers, because he needs people with a certain level of expertise. [24:45] Publish Press is a great tool for tracking content. [27:05] Wordpress powers 34% of the web. [27:30] Syed sees it as the operating system of the web. [29:15] Hiring the right people has helped Syed, as is having a physical planner and blocking off his Fridays. [34:56] Syed found that building relationships (strategic partnerships) with other companies has proven successful. [37:40] Streaks has added a lot of value to Syed’s life; it’s a great accountability tracker. [38:08] The Content Template feature in SEMRush has proven helpful to his company, as well. [38:30] One book Syed recommends is Extreme Revenue Growth. [39:13] That’s it for today! [40:00] We are going to take applications for live intensive sessions. Just go to the Marketing School site for more information and to apply. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

For our first entrepreneur acquisition update episode, we are speaking to Nathan Singh, a buyer who made a purchase through Quiet Light eighteen months back. Nathan is a great example of how a buyer can get a good deal and beat out other buyers just by being personable and investing in the seller. It turns out that it's not always the person who has an all-cash offer on the table that wins the deal. Having a Nathan was more appealing and likable to the seller, won out on a deal, and today we are hearing all about how the acquisition transition has gone for him. Episode Highlights: Nathan tells us all about the two WordPress plugins he bought and what each does. Any regrets regarding the multiple and the use of an SBA loan for the transaction. The company growth rate and any challenges Nathan's faced. Where the growth has come in and what he attributes that growth to. Staff retention and how the transition is going within the staff since the original transition period. Nathan's tips for an easier transition. The importance of involving the customer in order to create a relevant product road map. The biggest challenges and successes of the businesses. Things Nathan has implemented to ignite that growth. Way's Nathan keeps his relaxed disposition. Growth Goals for the next 12-24 months. Nathan's 3P's advice to entrepreneurs looking to strike out and acquire a business. Transcription: Mark: Joe, about a year ago you had Nathan Singh on the podcast. Nathan was a really good example of how a buyer can get a good deal, beat out buyers that maybe have a little bit of a stronger position with their offer or if they're a cash buyer just by being kind and generous and investing more importantly in the person that's selling the business. And I guess it's time for an update from him. Joe: Yeah, Nathan did a great job. His seller was Syed Balkhi. He owns Opt-In Monster. That's not the one we sold but we sold two of his WordPress plugin sites which are essentially SaaS businesses and Nathan beat out a full priced all cash buyer with a full price SBA deal where Syed agreed to carry a 10% seller note which was pretty substantial based upon the size of the business. And it's a story I've told often in the different events that we go to and here on the podcast so sorry for folks hearing it. I'm repeating it but yeah the first podcast we did with Nathan was all about that and the transition and training and things of that nature and we're doing an update. I think this is probably our first entrepreneur acquisition update. And he talks about what it's been like for the last 12 months; some of the wins, some of the losses, some of the challenges, the team and things of that nature. It's a great episode to see what people have done. I think really probably more like 18 months later. I think we sold it to Nathan in the fall of '17. Mark: Yeah, I get asked all the time like do you guys follow up with people that have bought these sites and what does it look like a little bit after. And frankly, we don't do enough update follow up with people who have bought so this is good. I'm glad that we are doing this with somebody we're doing on the podcast live so that people can actually hear how the acquisition has gone a year and a half later. Let's get right into it I want to hear from Nathan. Joe: One more thing I want to just shout out a reminder this new intro that we have, we've got some movie quotes in there. If you can figure out what the movie quote is for the intro go back and rewind, listen to it, put it down in the show notes and we'll give a call out to you in the next episode. Joe: Hey, folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today we have our first ever Quiet Light update or acquisition update. We've got Nathan Singh on the podcast; Nathan, welcome. Nathan: Hey Joe. Joe: Good to be back, good to have you back man. I tell your story often. I share the story that it's not always the person who has an all cash full price offer that wins the deal and that being likable is one of those intangible very, very important factors. And for those that didn't listen to the podcast that we did with Nathan, he … I want to say won a deal where someone was bringing all cash to the table at a full price deal and Nathan came to the table just being more likable. He happened to go to the same school as the seller Syed Balkhi. I know it's the Gators, is that … wait a second, hold on, I'm going to put on the hat because I have it. I have it. There it is. Nathan: There you go. That's the right one. Joe: And I didn't plan this I just happened to have the hat up in the cabin. It's been there since fall of 2017. So it's … I'm going to get it wrong and Syed he should … he sighed so loudly when I got it wrong. Is it Florida State? Nathan: No, I would have sighed again, real loudly. Yes, University of Florida. Joe: I'm sorry. Nathan: [inaudible 00:04:41.8] Joe: There it is. There was obviously a quick connection between you and Syed on the conference calls because you both went to Florida State. Nathan: University of Florida, not Florida State. Joe: Okay. Folks, obviously I don't pay attention to schools in Florida. I'm from the Northeast originally and we don't follow our college teams at all. Now for those watching the video, my hair looks great. Okay, I just took the hat off. You connected with him on the school but you also connected with him in terms of the way that you wanted to keep the staff in place and take care of them and that it becomes a family or an extended family. And that just really resonated with him and he didn't want to call the end with you whereas the all cash buyer it was all about the fact that he was all cash he could do a quick close and these types of things but it was a little rough around the edges. Syed believed in you, trusted in you, and actually took an SBA deal where he had to not be all cash, he got 90% and so he carried a pretty substantial seller note that won't be paid in full for … I don't remember the exact terms of the deal but probably a balloon payment in year five along those lines. Does that sound about right? Nathan: Yeah. Joe: Alright. So you bought Soliloquy and Envira Gallery. Can you tell the audience a little bit about both of those businesses and what they're all about and what they do? Nathan: Yeah sure. So both of those businesses are pretty similar in the sense that they are WordPress plugins. Envira Gallery is basically a gallery plugin. That's a really simplified way to put it but it's really a photo management system. And if you Google best WordPress gallery plugins you're probably going to see that in just about every result you see. Soliloquy same deal. It's a slider plugin. Essentially if you've ever seen sliding pictures and things like that in PDFs and videos that's what Soliloquy does. But essentially it just makes developers and designers lives a lot easier when they're developing this sort of thing. That's not something they really want to get into so it just streamlines the whole process. The whole gallery management system is there. And it can display multiple galleries in pictures and sliders in a very professional way. And especially for photographers, that's a big deal. And that's what Envira Gallery does. Joe: Did you have a lot of experience, direct experience in WordPress and plugins and things of that nature before buying the business? Nathan: Not at all. At least some people actually have worked in WordPress to some extent whether they've blogged or … I've had very minimal. I've looked at the backend years ago at one point I'm like no way. So WordPress has come a long way since then. A lot of people who have … who used WordPress and have been keeping abreast of that news, Gutenberg came out, what it did is essentially went straight for the head of Wix and Shopify and some of the really easy to use platforms for building websites. So Gutenberg is that which is a WordPress site builder. It's built in. It's made by WordPress. So that's the main thing for all users, now you can get in the backend. It makes it a lot easier. But no previous to that I was pretty new to it. I didn't really understand the dynamics and the market but the only thing that I had that was slightly close to that is I developed an app before in iOS. And so it was again it was being a part of this community and having some community standards when you have plugins that are uploaded to the depository. Joe: Okay. So you were an entrepreneur. You did sell a business. I sold it for you prior to buying this one but no WordPress experience. You bought it … this business with an SBA loan and it paid a what I would say is a fair multiple. A lot of folks might say I think it's strong. I won't say it. You're welcome to say if you want to. But do you have any regrets in terms of the multiple and the use of an SBA loan in the purchase of this business? Nathan: No I don't think so. Regarding the multiple, we did pay a strong multiple. I knew that going in but I also knew going in … I've gone through hundreds of business over the past few years, I talked to owner things like that. In order to get those businesses kind of like with Envira Gallery and Soliloquy where the churn was pretty good … it's essentially a SaaS business. It's been well maintained. It comes from a good pedigree by way of Syed Balkhi. So all those things played a huge part in me wanting to go ahead and stretch what I was looking to do in that multiple. But on the same end when you're doing an SBA it made that decision a whole lot easier as well. So given the SBA process, I mean I've talked about that in the last podcast that we did as well it was … it's come a long way. And so for me having gone through the trenches and years and years of trying to get SBA loans for businesses with no assets and getting to that point and seeing it streamlined with a guy like Stephen Speer and kind of what Bank United did, it's just … I mean it was like a dream to go through that really quickly. But yeah I mean we're here year later and I don't regret it. The only thing I will say that I kind of … was a thing I didn't sort of anticipate is how quickly the interest rate did change. And it does change year after year but it wasn't so drastic that it affected the business in any way. But it did increase just a bit there so. Joe: Your loan had a variable interest rate. Nathan: I think it was more as a result to the Fed increasing. Joe: Okay. Nathan: It was something that I was aware of but it was just political things happened and it increased a little bit there. Joe: Okay. Alright so why don't you tell us how things are going? Are you seeing the business … what, we closed in the fall of 2017 so it's been a little over 18 months, have you seen the business grow? Are you challenged by anything or is it growing year over year at this point? Nathan: Yes, so it is growing. It's a pretty healthy double digit growth. Joe: Double digit growth, okay. Nathan: So no complaints there. Challenges are really again coming and yeah I've been pretty much like industry agnostic every business I got into. Like I usually know nothing about it and I prefer it that way in some cases. And so coming in and learning it I've been attending the Word Camp. I went to Word Camp in US. I went to Word Camp Miami and really connecting with the people that are shaping where WordPress is going. And just some quick stats for people that like numbers, WordPress was around like 25% or so in all the websites in the world pretty much and now they're around 33 or 35% and that's continuing to grow. And just about every major web site that you probably visit is on WordPress. So the fact that that market share is growing there's … that's helped a lot with the organic growth as well. Joe: Is that US growth or a combination of US and international? Nathan: I think it's a combination of both it's like it's used in the world but definitely United States I think that WordPress has a pretty solid share there. Joe: You know it's interesting that's not something that we zeroed in on in the client interview with Syed in terms of WordPress growth. Is it something you thought about prior to and during due diligence prior to the LOI and due diligence or is it just worked out that way that you bought essentially a SaaS business on a platform that is growing? Nathan: Yeah, I think it was a little bit of both. So I understood that WordPress was … at that time the numbers haven't been released. The numbers are officially sold on Word Camp US or just before. So the actual numbers I didn't really know at what rate it was growing but I did know that just the nature of the open source WordPress community, the fact that they're building a bond and we talked about … a little about Gutenberg during the acquisition as well but just having seeing the route that they were going in relation to all these other paid sites, and what the paid platforms did to me it made sense that WordPress is going to continue to grow. It's got a foundation to expand on and so it did play a little … not a significant amount in terms of the actual business acquisition. Joe: Excellent. One of the big reasons why you and Syed are working together now was that you were going to bring the staff over, keep everybody involved and you worked remotely from a home office whereas everybody else I think does as well. How has that transition worked out in terms of the staff and you and are you still working together? Nathan: Yeah, great. Yeah, it's been great so we talked a little bit about this again in that previous interview but there was kind of a bumpy ride with the staff. Again full time they've been with the previous company for several years and they were part of a larger outfit. So there were some worry there that it's just going to be us, essentially four folks transferring over to a completely new owner; my smaller company, how is that all going to work out? I think that just … it was a trust thing and I think after a couple of weeks that they saw that I was in the trenches with them and I was really working to make their lives easier, making sure they're taken care of. You know we went on a retreat, we stayed in Austin, we stayed in a big house; an Airbnb together, really got a chance to bond and we're doing it again this year as well. I think those things all sort of helped build that trust. I mean from where we were to point one just like in any transition when you're taking people's livelihoods and basically giving it to this owner that's completely new and they've never met there's always that kind of anxiety and stuff. But we've come a long way in that time and I'm happy to say that pretty much the entire team is still in place. One person did move on to another opportunity but outside of that, the core folks are still there. Joe: Oh, that's great to hear. Syed is probably happy with that as well. As far as the training and transition goes I know that normally it's up to 40 hours over the first 90 days after closing is the standard in the asset purchase agreement, have you needed to reach out to Syed and other folks that are in the upper level management side or were of this business beyond that transition and training period so that you just reached out if you had a quick question that didn't come up in the first 90 days? Nathan: Yeah, I think it was that. It was the first maybe really the first month or two is the bulk of the questions and stuff. Syed was really good about it. We went through training together. Thomas the co-founder was there as well or actually the founder. And so we recorded those conversations, went through each one of the processes and so I had all that. That helped tremendously so if you are selling try doing that. Go through recorded conversations and go through the process of what you do day to day and that really helps for them to not have to ask any questions. They can just look at the video again. Joe: Oh, it's a great idea and we use a Chrome extension called Loom, L-O-O-M on a daily basis when a broker has a question for me or I have a question for someone else they often just record their screen and send that. What software do you use? Nathan: We use Zoom. Joe: Better. Okay. We're on Zoom now and we're recording. Fortunately, as you all will hear in an episode or two I just did a podcast this week. I jokingly said it's the best one I've ever done but I forgot to hit record. So we'll be doing it again next week but I'm sure the guest will bring that up in the podcast for sure. Alright, let's talk about the biggest challenges that you have had since buying the business back in the fall of 2017. Nathan: Yeah, I would say the biggest challenges for me just like with any other business is kind of getting on that horse and riding it. It was just that the day to day stuff, making sure there was no loose ends that I was missing. I think aside from that it was really that there was not a strong product roadmap going forward. So everything would have gone well until up until that point and I think the team was kind of like well we're just fixing stuff how long do we want to just continue just fixing stuff day to day? And so that was just like kind of shaving a product roadmap, again I'm coming in super fresh so there's not a whole lot I can bring to it in terms of this is exactly what we need to do to take us to the next level, right? But the great thing is since I run other businesses and you kind of get a process within yourself that you can apply to these other businesses and for me, it was like let's ask the customers. And that's exactly what we did. We went straight to the customers, put out a survey; short, less than 60 seconds to complete. What are the features you like most, what do you want to see, how are we doing, stuff like that and they let us have it in a good way mostly. Joe: In a good way, okay. Nathan: And so the great thing is that they were happy with this feature set and they provided some stuff that would make them much more happier. And so that is what we're working towards right now. Joe: So they gave you that product roadmap and then your team is working on that. You're not working on it, you're just visionary and they're actually doing the actual work itself, right? Nathan: Yeah, you're right the developers … you know what I did is basically help create prioritize the roadmap. And so the things we have to do first which is we got to rebuild some of our functions and things like that. That's the most important part; to keep … to build on that foundation. And then outside of that, it's going to be basically hitting those priority items and then doing those in truncheons as we move along based on that. Joe: What would you say are your biggest successes or triumphs? Things that maybe they were a challenge but you've overcome them and see that it's maybe something that kept you up at night but it's changed and it's a big part of your business now. Anything like that? Nathan: I think for me it's been a little bit of the marketing, kind of the way to take the market. WordPress is a little bit different in the sense that we have three versions that are on this .org repository. They've got somewhere in the range of 150 to 180,000 active users or active installs, probably more than that with Soliloquy. And so there's not a lot of data we can gather. And up until recently there wasn't a lot of … there's not a funnel that you can put them through to bring them over to the paid versions because again it's actively monitored and it's a lot different than if you have a trial version and you're moving them on to a paid version of the funnel. So I think the challenge was trading out ways to get around that and still playing by the rules. So again opt-ins we've recently put in opt-ins in the free version that wasn't something that we could do previously but things in WordPress community has changed. So that's going to be a huge boom for us. Aside from that kind of marketing directly to the WordPress base, a lot of designer and phyto developers that are used to a certain thing. So one thing they weren't used to was re-occurring payments, annual subscriptions and things like that but honestly, it's become something of paramount importance to anyone that's running plugins that they have to be running a SaaS type program in order to survive or else you won't be able to make it. Joe: Have you changed the payment system with these two products? Have you changed the way that the customers are paying for it? Nathan: The payments have stayed the same. I think a lot of it was showing them the value of continuing that. Joe: Okay. Nathan: Because again WordPress is a little bit tricky because once you pay for it once you basically own it for life. Joe: I got you. Nathan: So here that is really … is bringing in those value added updates and the value added support; the source support is probably like number two on our most celebrated feature of Envira Gallery and Soliloquy. We get it all and we saw it in the survey as well. So making sure that we're doing everything we can for that customer experience just from the support standpoint and not only at the stuff that we're doing as far as updates and things like that. Joe: So you really brought your marketing experience and expertise into the business and that's how you're triumphing in a sense. Is that what it is attributable to the growth that you've seen, the double digit growth or is it that it was going that way and you're just on for the ride and making sure you don't break it. Nathan: Yeah, I think there's a balance between those. So initially … mostly when I go into these types of acquisitions I'm looking for something that's like the first year I'm learning. It's not like I can insert myself and change things at day one like say if you got a content site when essentially you're dealing with software. So it's always very different, the base is different, and then the software base is different in terms of developers and things like that. So for me, it's applying the past knowledge of just making a great intuitive software, changing up the interface to what I believe is just a more … a better user experience, and outside of that applying some of those basic marketing things that just need to be done. In this case a lot of that, the basics have been done, but it's that out of the box stuffs that really needed to get taken care of. Joe: I love that first year just learning approach. I see lots of these businesses that are listed and sold. There's a certain amount of year over year growth and the goal is to at least sustain that. And I had a call this week with someone that blew up the SKU count dramatically and it was his kind of biggest failure but at the same time it turned out to be a little bit of a triumph as well because there are some SKUs that are now generating an awful lot of revenue. But there's also a great deal of loss there as well. So I like that learn in the first year process. And what kind of things are you working on now that were never done before in the business? Nathan: Yeah, so there's a couple of things that have also attributed to the growth outside of just again being a SaaS business with not a terrible churn. And the churn for WordPress businesses I think is probably a little bit above average of what other people see in WordPress. Again you buy one so you can potentially keep it. So outside of that, it's been growing. Our affiliate revenue, that's been increasing pretty tremendously. But we had a lot of articles that had been written that were getting pretty decent on the traffic, didn't have any ads on there, didn't have really any affiliate links things like that. So that's one of the things putting in those affiliate links, building more articles around those really high performing traffic. I think at the time this wasn't taken to do that and sort of nurturing that so that's … I've seen— Joe: Are these affiliate links for other plugins or SaaS products or physical products or a combination of all three? Nathan: So the shoe in for us really became the funnel editing tools. We did a lot of … there's been a lot of [inaudible 00:22:24.1] done, tools such as Photoshop and things like that. And so lot of traffic to that kind of stuff. And it just made sense to start saying hey if you don't have Photoshop and you want to do this stuff that you see in this tutorial here's where you can go. And that's pretty much it. And then building off of that and saying what are those Photoshop competitors are out there well there's Skylum Luminar, there is Capture One, there's all these different types of photo editing tools that are kind of riding on the coattails and maybe on the heels of Photoshop. So writing tutorials for those and the same type of strategy that was used and say hey if you don't have it you can go get it over here. Joe: That seems like such a logical thing to do, slow down and read the article, what are people looking for, what can we … Do you know what you're doing? You're helping the audience. They're reading an article about editing and you're then offering them the best photo editing tools right there within the article and you happen to be making money off of it as well. Nathan: Absolutely. And it wasn't the intention of just skyrocket the affiliate. It just made sense. I was like a rational person would mainly look at that and be like you know what this is already an article at Photoshop so you probably already have it. That's not true. There's a lot of people that wouldn't make something black and white and something color in the black and white picture but they didn't know they needed specifically Photoshop to do it. So they end up going … picking up the Creative Cloud plans 9.99 or 19.99 or whatever a month not three or $400 as it used to be. So it's just a lot more easier and accessible. Joe: How did you find the affiliate platform to use, those affiliate themselves? Nathan: Yeah. So share sell has already been in use in the previous ownerships so that's just one of those things. But in this case, it wasn't really even bad. It's just getting … just registering for the program and dropping them the wings and saying hey I should always focus on this some more too because it looks like to be growing. Joe: Pretty easy stuff then. Nathan: Yeah. Joe: Now you mentioned an e-mail list as well; you've historically had lots of free users, a huge e-mail list. Have you ever done anything with that and if not are you planning to do anything? Nathan: Yeah. So the free versions, there was really no list before because there's no way to collect emails from before. So we've started an opt-in for that which again I think is only … it's been a few couple of short weeks but already we're seeing the results come through. The only … the list that we do have is just essentially people that have paid the pro. But the great thing is we're able to cross sell with Soliloquy because generally if you need something like Envira Gallery you probably need something like Soliloquy. Joe: Yeah. Nathan: So that's continuing churn along as well. Joe: That's fantastic. Nathan you look so happy and relaxed and just chill, are you always this way or is it you're just in a good position in right now that you're running this business and see the trends and whatnot? I mean what's the deal? Let's get simple. Nathan: It's a little bit of both so I would be in positions where things were going absolutely terrible and so the short answer is I meditate every day so that I just accept things as they are so that makes life a lot easier for anyone listening. The second part is I think it is that I paid a higher multiple but I've got the security of if all else fails and I can't figure out what to do it will still follow some level of revenue that was expected. So outside of that, I was just building upon that success that's already sort of continuing as well. Joe: Excellent. What's in the works of … goal eyes what are you looking at in the next 12 to 24 months? Anything that if we come back for the second update in another 12 to 24 months what are you hoping to achieve? Nathan: At a minimum, I'd like to achieve that same double digit year over year growth. But I think again entrepreneurs try to go all triple digit all these different revenue channels. Again I opened up the affiliate revenue more and that's beginning to be more of a significant one. But a couple more like that I think would be interesting and just continued growth man. I mean the main thing is … this is one of the things we discussed earlier. It's just that focus on the customer; making sure they're happy, making sure that we're hitting all those needs and then the business kind of just takes off by itself if you're hitting all those things. Joe: That's it. A clear and simple plan; not too complicated. Focus on the customer makes a lot of sense. Any words of advice from one entrepreneur to others in the audience; people that maybe they're working in the corporate world and want to be the next Nathan Singh. Any advice that you can give in terms of running your own business and overcoming challenges and things of that nature? Nathan: Yeah, I would put it safely into patience, persistence, and presence; those three things. Joe: Alright. Patience I get that. Persistence I get it. Presence … meaning? Nathan: Meaning I think as entrepreneurs what we get into is too much looking around to see what someone else is doing or where they wanted to be in a couple of years and getting super stressed if they don't hit those goals. Remember that is just your perception of where you wanted to be, reality happens different things. And I think that if you're approaching everything in a present moment, I'm not trying to sound like a spiritual guru here. Joe: It's just natural though. I like it. Keep going. Nathan: If you're approaching everything in a present manner you're likely to focus on what you're doing at this point and not be so stressed about all those other stuff. Because essentially that's going to be what's going to mess you up; it is worrying about the future, worrying about how things are not going, things like that. Focus on what the problems are at the current moment and do those things at that minute, at that second and just kind of block everything out. I just feel like everybody is uniquely designed to run their own race. So don't look left and right just do your own thing and you'll get to where you're trying to get to. Joe: I like it. I like it very much. Nathan Singh thank you very much for coming back on and giving us the first ever Quiet Light update. I look forward to doing this again. I wish you the best of success. Nathan: Absolutely. Good talking to you Joe. Joe: You too. Links and Resources: Envira Gallery Solliloquy

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It seems that with certain Quiet Light Brokerage listings, there is just a mad rush of activity as soon as they come out. Most of the listings that we put out will receive at least 100 inquiries right away, but what does it look like when we put out a “hot listing” that garners two times that much interest? Today we are discussing the type of business that gets 9 offers. We go over how many inquiries those types of listings get, how much discussion and conference calls happen around these potential transactions in a short time frame, and just what it takes to get these listings under contract. We hope you enjoy this little case study of how to set up for a successful sale from the seller side and tips for how to act from the buyer side. Being thoroughly prepared and running a real, viable business are keys to success. Episode Highlights: The main characteristics that made this business so attractive. How the pricing decision played into the transaction. The process of selecting the 15 buyers we entertained. The conference call screening process between the seller and potential buyers, facilitated by the broker. How to choose a buyer and deal with disappointing those who lost out. The 4 pillars of success and how this business checked them all. The one intangible thing that took the business to the next level and attracted the buyers. How the packages that Quiet Light puts together tell a story about the listing and the journey of the brand and its seller. Transcription: Mark: It seems that with some Quiet Light Brokerage listings as soon as when they hit the marketplace there is just an absolute mad rush of buying activity towards those listings. Now to be clear most of the listings that we put out at Quiet Light Brokerage, the vast majority, in fact, it could be an exception to the rule is going to receive at least 100 inquiries from buyers and calls right away. So what does it look like when it we come across a “hot listing”? Well, it looks like a lot of conference calls scheduled very, very shortly and just a mad rush of inquiries probably upwards of 200 and 250 within the first 24 hours in some cases. What's the difference between a listing that is not as hot like that that gets on a 100, 150, which is still a lot and something that doubles that? Joe, I know you launched a listing 3 or 4 weeks ago from the time that we're recording this episode that we would definitely throw in that hot category. What were the top line statistics on that? Joe: It was a let's call it a 95 to 98% Amazon business. It was 30 months old. It was in the category of America's fastest growing recreational sports. It was run by a single owner operator that was a stay at home dad that was a CPA by training yet outsourced the bookkeeping to an e-commerce bookkeeper. $440,000 in discretionary earnings and we went out on a 3.3 which is lower than my recommendation. But in this case, the conservative CPA said no I don't want it to be listed for too long. I really like to get it sold let's … can we go out at a three. I suggested a 3.5. Rarely does somebody come back and say can you sell it for less and he did in this case and we ended up [inaudible 00:02:50.9]. Mark: The guy sounds like one of these unbelievably likable guys. How many inquiries did you get within that first 24 hours? Joe: You know I didn't count the first 24 but I know that you and I were … we were in Dallas and on the way to Houston for a meeting and I think we pulled it up and within the first 4 hours, we had something like 185. So within the first 24, I think it probably doubled to close to 400 would be my guess. Mark: That is insane. Now I do remember obviously these are all loaded questions so anyone listening like I know the answers to most of these questions— Joe: No, he doesn't. He forgot them all. He can— Mark: I actually— Joe: Yeah. Mark: I was introduced by the way this is completely outside; a complete diversion here. So sidebar I was introduced at a group of CEO's yesterday. And in front of the entire group of CEO's the guy that introduced me said “And Mark, by the way, took his son, they have seven kids or is it they're expecting their seventh kid. He's got so many kids he forgets their birthdays because he took his son to urgent care the other day and he got his birthday wrong.” I'm like thank you for that. I'm so glad to be known as the guy who forgets his kids' birthdays. Joe: You've got a lot of kids man. Mark: I got the month right. I didn't get the year or day right. I know the answer to this. We were in the car together and your phone was blowing up. We were at a conference. You were trying to schedule out all of these people wanting conference calls and you did this right over the conference itself which maybe we can talk about in just a little bit here. Within that first 24 hours if you would just guess how many conference call requests did you get? Joe: Well, let's keep in mind that that our process requires that the buyer either speak to me first before requesting a conference call or we've spoken in the past. So in this case in the first 24 hours, I had at least 10 requests for conference calls with buyers that I've already spoken to in the past that have looked at prior listings of ours and they wanted to make sure they were on a call with this one. We wound up with a total of 15 on this. As I said the owner of the business, Paul, is a stay at home dad. It's funny and I don't know if they loved this or just love making fun of Paul for this but he's a stay at home dad right? His son is a couple of years old but he takes his son to daycare at eight and picks him up at five. So I'm not sure how stay at home that is. Anyway so … but the beautiful thing is that he maybe … Paul if you're listening I'm sorry, maybe it's nine to four and you expanded it. Either way, you're a great guy and people love you and your business. I am not getting a Christmas card from Paul this year. Mark: I'm sure you are. Joe: Anyway, he was able to clear his calendar which was great. I was getting so inundated and I was at eCommerceFuel and I'm like I can't do these conference calls. And I had said to Paul on the way through eCommerceFuel look I want to bump this launch a week because it's going to get crazy and I'm not to be able to be on this conference calls. He says oh god really? Come on I really want to get it launched and it totally got my heartstrings so we launched it anyway. So I took the two days … it launched on a Wednesday I think and I took Thursday and Friday and all I did was talk to folks and schedule the calls for the following week. Paul cleared his calendar. We set up a link so that people could just grab a link and schedule them. We did a max of three a day separated by at least an hour a piece and we wound up I think by Monday closed the business. We had all 15 slots scheduled. We capped it at 15 which is really five too many. You just don't have to have that many conference calls. Normally we have three to five conference calls and we have at least one acceptable offer. Here we had 15 scheduled and we wound up with nine. Mark: These are 45 minute slots or are they an hour long slots? Joe: They were hour long slots. I go with an hour yeah. Mark: So just to put this in perspective for people that have not been on the sell side, I know I had this with a listing last year that I represented where it was just a really favorable price on the business and so we had that 15 conference call sort of scenario that we were doing in one week. For anyone on the receiving end of that our clients, the sellers, that's exhausting to go from one conference call to the next to the next; an hour where you're being asked the same questions and you're doing the majority of the talking during that time. This might be a little bit beside the fact but how did he hold up throughout all those calls? Joe: He did pretty well. They were spread out which was nice. He usually had … he had a minimum of an hour but usually, it was two or three hours in between. And we had one drop out so it ended up being 14. But he did pretty well. He had to keep moving around the house. That particular week his son was home because he got a fever a couple of days before and he was quite sick so he couldn't take him to daycare. And his mother flew up from Arizona to be with his son while he moved around the house to be in an appropriate place to do the conference calls. Most of the time he was actually in the nursery doing the conference calls from his laptop. Mark: Right. So I want to get into a couple of big topics here. I want to talk about what were the characteristics that made this business and you already talked a little bit about this but what were the characteristics that made this business so attractive? Because I also know that we suggested to Paul going out at a 3.5. He's the one that wanted 3.3 for the asking price on this. That's the multiple that we're asking on the earnings. So I want to go into what was it that made this such a hot listing where people just needed to look at the teaser that we gave and that alone generated 200 plus inquiries within the first 24 hours? So what's going on there and then second I want to go through a little bit more of the process that you went through in selecting the buyers that were going to get those conference calls. Because out of 250 finding 15 you know I know a lot of buyers out there would be like well how would I become one of those 15 if I'm going to be competing against this? And then last I mean this is kind of the darker side now or the bad side I guess of what we have to do when you have a hot listing like this is we have to disappoint a number of people that actually really want this business but lose out in a bid for it. So I want to go over those three categories with you and then obviously Joe you're better at this podcasting thing than I am so if there's something I'm missing let me know. Joe: Can you repeat that last part again, please? Mark: You are better at this podcasting thing than I am but I still have the number one episode thank you. Joe: And two and three, yes you've got them all, but you do the title so I think there's a little trickery going on it. Mark: And I used to do the promotion too so … your podcasts easy for me what with number one. Joe: I mean you talked about the four pillars; risk, growth, transfer ability, and documentation. And when you go through these things Paul's business just checks all of these off and all the subcategories within those checks them all off. He owned his own brand. He developed it himself. It's in a niche that is out there and there are other brands but he picked a … he specifically chose a niche within a larger niche to serve a certain segment of these people to start with. So there's a growth opportunity to go. He picked the sort of beginners in this sport. He didn't go with the top end of the product. He went with a middle of the road product that beginners … a price point that beginners would enjoy. So right away you could say okay well I'm learning this business and now I'm going to take this to the new level and go with the more professional people that play this sport. It's not quite professional but retired professionals can play. So he did a really nice job there in picking the category. It was just by happenstance. He happened to be on vacation visiting his folks in Arizona and saw this game that they are playing and said what the heck is that? Looked it up, studied it, researched it and it started growing like crazy and chose to go in that category. A registered trademark, beautiful brand, beautiful packaging, and again let the business age. We've been talking for probably nine months and it was getting close to the 24 month mark but we got through that Christmas holiday season. This particular business is not fourth quarter heavy seasonal. It's actually better in the spring and summer months. So we got prior to the spring and summer months so that a new one would have a great advantage with an upswing in the summer months. It was clean books, SBA eligible which helps cast a broader net to probably half the offers. I can't say half because they were nine. So four out of the nine offers, five out of the nine were SBA offers. The growth trends were fantastic; 80, 90, 100% year over year, month over month growth. It looked really good comparing month to month and from year to year. Transfer ability; super easy, he owned the brand. He wasn't reselling anything. He had a good relationship with his manufacturers. And the documentation, of course, good SOP's in place. He did it all himself so there weren't VA's that were combing [inaudible 00:11:42.3] anybody else or people that works on his house or anything like that needed to transfer. This sort of intangible thing that I think took this to the next level is the person behind the business. He's not transferring with the business but he is so, so likeable and so trustworthy; just the full story behind him. And I'm not suggesting that everybody goes and becomes a CPA, quits their job, and works from home and be a stay at home dad. But people want to invest in a business and buy something from somebody that they like and they trust. As Mike Jackness said on a call recently you have to be a good human being in order to get the deal done. It needs to work for both parties. And just describing who Paul is and then how he is in the video and how he came across, he's just a good person and people wanted to buy the business from him. Mark: Yeah, I'm looking at the teaser right now. It's cool if I read some of the teaser, right? Joe: Yeah of course. Mark: All right so again I'm just looking at this. I'm … this is selfish on my part, the next listing I put out I want to get 250 inquiries because that's awesome. I mean that's great for our clients. All right so I'm looking through this and look in through the prism of those four pillars of risk, growth, transfer ability, documentation. Risk; Amazon businesses, this is primarily Amazon. The biggest thing that I find and maybe you'd disagree is that it needs to be defensible against competition. In here I see towards the bottom there's a trademark and the brand is brand registered, there we go. There are over 2,000 reviews you are … these are getting harder and harder to fake. So you're speaking towards this … the main risk that people associate with Amazon. Right away people are thinking oh awesome that's great. Growth; this is rapidly growing. You leaved this but this is rapidly growing as one of America's fastest growing sports. So A. this business is growing, B. this niche is growing; two really good things, so growth is checked off pretty easily. You have some other stuff in here. Transfer ability; the owner, single owner, dedicates approximately 15 hours per week running the business. I could do that right? Who can't do 15 hours a week on something? And then lastly documentation; the owner is a former CPA. Do you need to say anything else? I think you checked each of those boxes with a giant red check mark to say everyone looking at this; this thing is going to check all of these boxes and become really valuable. It turned out surprisingly enough to be true. These four pillars work. Joe: Yeah, they do. They do. And one of the pillars is growth but within that is growth opportunities and growth trends. And the opportunities I'll dig into the package itself. I can't quite remember but he had launched new SKUs in 2018 and so we look at the revenue when did he launch those and the revenue by SKU during that time period. And it was clear that some of these SKUs had gained some traction in 2018 but they hadn't been available for the full 12 months. So that's a built in path to growth. So it's one other thing that buyers liked. And then when you … I mean that teaser it obviously checks all of those four pillars but then when you get into the package and we recorded a video, a video interview with him via Xoom like we're doing now. Obviously, people are listening to mostly audio but we do the video as well. And he's in his home you can see the kitchen in the background and he's got the packaging and he holds up the packaging and it's just beautiful. It's a really nice product and this is again hard for people to duplicate but this particular product it's just cool. It's just a cool niche and a cool place to be and he did a really nice job with the packaging. He did everything right as far as I'm concerned and obviously as far as buyers are concerned as well. Mark: Yeah, one thing I want to touch on here because we talked about this a lot for buyers that you want to be likable and come across well to the potential sellers. But it works both ways too right? I mean obviously, somebody who's selling who's a complete jerk probably isn't going to get too far with us because the process is just too difficult. So most of the … most of our clients are great people anyway but there are some people who have just magnetic personalities. And for this deal, you for I think one of the first times we experimented or you experimented by doing more video conferencing between buyers and sellers on that. How did that impact the deal and what should buyers take away from boy these guys want to do a video conference should I turn on my camera or should I, oh no, no I don't really have good lighting for this and a good set up for it. Joe: Do it. One of the best calls we had was with a guy named Noah. And he hadn't planned on doing video because he was on his dad's party boat. I know he's 35 years old but he's helping his father move this big boat from one port to another because it's being sold. And Paul and I are on video and we said the video is optional and said it's recommended but optional. And he said well both of you guys are there and he goes I'm kind of embarrassed. I'm on my dad's boat. I'm on a boat. I'm like we have to see it, turn it on. Mark: It's great. Joe: Yeah. His dad was in the background moving stuff around and he's shooing him out of the frame. It was fantastic. So Noah was like able and memorable and that stuck with Paul. Paul wanted to sell the business to Noah at the end of the call. So that makes a huge difference. Not everybody did it. There were two or three that were in the top three. Yeah, obviously three when the top three but two or three that stuck out. Two of them did a video one of them didn't do video. The very first person that we had a call with he chose not to do video. He made a great offer and he … we came close on having him but we ended up … Paul ended up choosing someone else. But I think you do the video. I'm doing it more and more and if you've got an opportunity as a buyer to do a video if your broker allows that then, by all means, do it. Mark: I think on the sell side this is something just to note. To people listening, we're going to be doing this more and more because it really makes a difference on the sell side as well. Sellers most likely will be doing video. And I love that he was able to just hold up some of the product on the video to be able to show it there directly. I mean how cool is that? Joe: People are … I mean they're buying a business potentially just based on the black and white information that we put in a package. It's worked for years but we moved to doing videos in the interviews and making it part of the full business summary. 24 months ago I remember doing the very first one. It was horrible. I just did audio actually. I recorded it on my phone and it was horrible but beneficial. And now we've moved beyond that to video. You get to look relatively in the likes of someone's eyes and gauge whether you trust them or not and if you're going to put your life savings on the line and buy their business. And I think it just makes a tremendous amount of information. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. That's really cool. And again this is coming from somebody like myself that does not like video … doing video personally. I tend to be one of those shut the camera off types of guys but I'm more and more warming up to it and definitely getting more accustomed to it as well. So that's pretty cool. And also the odd story, by the way, I know our content director Chris Moore and Chris I know you're listening to this you're going to hate this that I'm saying this but some of the most memorable conversations I've had with people have been in the oddest places. The podcast with Chad Annis where he was in his RV and I could see the pine trees out in the background or Andrew from ECF Live, eCommerceFuel, awesome forum, he was in his van holding up a microphone. I'm like this is great. It's this weird background that only entrepreneurs understand. Joe: Exactly it's classic entrepreneur stuff. You know people when I'm having calls with them and valuations and you hear the dog barking in the background oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm like you're an entrepreneur you're going to hear mine any minute. This is the life that we live. It's great. So back to the points, the last point I want to make in terms of what makes a difference … what made a difference for this particular business I think is the images. Paul provided me with great images for the package. And he had them because he had professional photography. And it helped. Obviously, everyone knows that runs an Amazon business what a difference good images make. But he had great images of packaging, of the product being used by human beings having fun and all that stuff. And I was able to litter them throughout the package and it just brought the whole thing to life. And I think it made a bit of a difference too. Mark: Yeah, you know something I've said over the years I've told you Joe and the others here at Quiet Light is that some of the packages that we put together are supposed to tell the story of the business. And I look for that with every business I represent. Like what is the thread that I want to tell you? What is the common thread throughout this? The data and everything else supports a story. And hey people love stories right? That's … we're all drawn to them. Joe: Right. And you said data, I just want to say one more thing I keep looking at the package and I'm like there's another thing. One more thing they gave me was data; data from the outside world that proved that this is one of America's fastest growing recreational sports. So I was able to link to outside magazine articles and newspaper articles and outside sources that backed up what he was saying and what I was saying in the package which is really, really helpful. Mark: Okay, I might regret this question because I don't want to go long on the episode here but you said more than once that he was just a really likable guy. Do you know what made him likeable? It's such a hard question to ask, right? How can somebody be more likable than another person? We've identified when Walker did an acquisition through Quiet Light Brokerage thanking the seller; taking the time to thank our client and saying thank you for agreeing to sell me your business and how much of a difference that made at that point. Was there anything that kind of stood out outside of the video that really made him stand apart? Joe: He was who we described him to be which was a CPA, a stay at home dad, and honest, and uncomfortable in front of the camera, and vulnerable, and real. He never watched the video that I did with him. I told him. He's like I might watch it because I hope that was okay. I was really conscious here and there. I'm like well let's not watch it because you were great. You were human. You were real. And I'm not editing anything out of it and I'm not redoing it because you were great. People are going to love you because you're just normal. And he never watched it. I don't know if he's … I ought to ask him if he's gone back and watched it since we've got it under contract. But he was just real. Just real and honest and he wasn't selling. He was just stating the facts and that's one of the things that we do … I get excited so maybe it feels like selling but stating the facts is what he did. He didn't try to pitch or sell. He was just being himself; likable. Mark: That's … I think I heard that somewhere recently about authenticity among like millennials and I would broaden that out and say among those within internet realm because we've seen so much stuff that it's so easy to colossal or make yourself look bigger or better or more polished than you are. I think people within the internet world we tend to value authenticity a bit more than people might think. And so that vulnerability I think is a key. I'm not saying that you put on a show like oh look at me I'm all vulnerable. Hey, look if you are really confident in what you're doing be confident. Be true to who you are. That comes through. You can tell that in people, right? You can tell when they're being real or when they're trying to make themselves sound better than they actually think they are. Joe: Absolutely, no doubt about it. You want to go on to process and what we do there? Mark: Yeah. I want to know. So 15 conference calls tell me … again mistake that you probably made in this and you told me this, I'm not accusing you of this; launching a listing during two conferences. You were sick that week. You were flying to two different cities, driving to one city with me as well. So how did you manage getting that many inquiries, that many requests for conference calls with everything else going on? Joe: Well, it actually worked out pretty well because I was not feeling well and I was at the conference and I said I am not doing this over the next two days we're going to push it all the next week. And it enabled me to communicate in writing with all the people that inquired, all the people that … look there were a couple of hundred in the first few hours of course but those that I've spoken to before that know the process they reached right out to me. They called me, they texted me, they e-mailed me and said, Joe, I want to talk to this guy. I want to get on a conference call. Because they know that's the process. And so those that have followed our process, looked at as many listings as possible so you know the right fit when it comes along and you can act quickly did just that and reached out to me. And so I just walked it all off and we scheduled the calls. For the process when we had the calls if anyone hasn't been on them, us the broker we talk as little as possible. We make introductions, hand the call over to the buyer to give a little bit of background on themselves and then go right into their calls. We put ourselves on mute and in this case, I took myself off camera as well and we listen and we jump in if we can help out but for the most part we stay quiet until the very end of the call and then we just wrap things up. At the end of each day, I had a quick wrap up call with Paul and I said okay you've had three today, its Monday, you've had three, who do you like the most? And then on Tuesday, I said all right you've had six who are your top two? And the same people kept rising to the surface. Although people near the end of the week very quickly got to the … Noah I think was probably on Wednesday or Thursday. So we ran through the process and I think one mistake I made Mark in hindsight when I look at it, I knew it was going to be a frenzy and as much as people think oh multiple offer situation you going over asking price etcetera. We did. Yes, we had them and yes we did go over asking price because we priced it right. We didn't price it too high or too low; we priced it right. And that gets more increase than anything else buyers know. We chose to go best and final. And I think in hindsight I probably would have had two rounds so that … you know what we did was we told everyone we're going to have a call with every buyer. You may submit offers prior to the following Monday at noon if you wish too but we will not be making a decision until close the business the following Tuesday. You've got to have it in my Monday at noon and we'll make a final decision close the business Tuesday. It gave us a little time to review. Everyone gave it to us in the same exact format that I provided so it was easy. We didn't have to interpret different offers. And most kept it simple which is what I knew Paul was looking for and what I suggested that they do. One made it a little complex but I know them and I know what their goals are. They're raising funds so they've got investors to satisfy. And then tell me what you did? We get a clear deadline of Monday at 12 pm Eastern Standard Time. I got one that came in maybe at 4 o'clock that day and one that came in at 9 o'clock that day, pm, with apologies and a text saying I thought it was midnight. Would you have allowed those offers to be presented or would you've been cold and said no? Mark: I don't … it depends on the situation. That's a tough one especially because of the [inaudible 00:27:08.9] when you said 12, and 12 is I mean you can interpret that both ways. Joe: 12 no we had a total of nine offers. We ended up with 14 conference calls because one fell out. We had nine offers. Mark: No I mean you put your deadline at 12. Joe: Why? I said 12 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Mark: Yeah but I mean you have to think like 12 pm, you think night and you know. Maybe I'm the only one that can read time but— Joe: I don't … I only speak Eastern as I tell everyone else in every other time zone. There's too many time zones and I just say Eastern. I try not to coordinate with their times anyway now we were accommodating. In hindsight I think we probably should've narrowed it down to the top two or three and gone back out to them. But the reality is that when you have a seller that has multiple offers it's hard on the seller. First is that they're on … in this case 14 conference calls that are lasting about an hour each. That's 14 hours. And then he's talking to me for 15 to 20 minutes at the end of each day as well. That's a lot of time in one week. More time than he spends running the business right? 15 hours a week of running it. More time selling it than running it. And then you've got to make a decision based upon we had one offer that was … let's see; it was $150,000 over asking price. Mark: Wow. Joe: A pretty big jump. Mark: Yeah. Joe: That one was an SBA offer. So the benefit there is that not only is it $150,000 over asking price but it's going to take upwards of 60 days longer to close than a cash buyer. So he's going to put another $50,000 in his pocket by waiting an extra two months. I mean just a cash windfall right? Mark: I want to disagree with you on something real quick before we get too far away from this point because it said that— Joe: Is it back to me being the better podcaster or something else? Mark: I'm going to say that to the end after this because I think I'm doing such a stellar job at this interview. Joe: You're doing great. Mark: It's easy when you know the person you're interviewing and you know the story as well. But I'm going to disagree with you on is should you have gone a second round with the offers. Okay, that would be the standard process when you're not expecting multiple offers and when maybe … like if I have a listing that's been sitting around for a month and we narrowed down and we happen to have three buyers that kind of called us around the same time then it makes sense. Because the buyers don't know that they're in a competitive situation but … and I might sound a little harsh here but hey if you're a buyer and you're in a situation where you know it is competitive, and the buyers, in this case, knew it was competitive, that there was a lot of stuff going on. Joe: Yeah. Mark: My guidance has been the same like put in your best and final. There's two sides of that coin; the first … one side is don't try and necessarily get a discount because the market is going to speak. It is going to push that price up necessarily. And two don't over bid what you're comfortable bidding. Find out if I get it at this price I'm going to be happy or satisfied at least? If I go above I'm always going to wonder if I paid too much. Find that, make the offer, and get it done. So I actually think that you did the right thing by doing one round instead of two rounds. I would recommend the two round again if it was kind of a surprise multiple offer situation. Joe: Well, I think … you know I had one person tell me they wish there was a second round. But it was crystal clear in writing in black and white that it was best and final. And so I took his suggestion and constructive criticism in a way that I thought maybe was worthwhile and we could do a second round next time possibly. But when you're in a multiple offer situation it's emotional for the seller. Mark: Yeah. Joe: Believe it or not people it's hard. It's hard for the broker as well. So I just want to reemphasize one thing that you said and that is you don't want people to get … the buyers to get emotional in their offer. We want them to make an offer that they're going to be happy with after they're under letter of intent because we want two happy individuals at closing; the buyer and the seller. It has to be a good transaction for both of them so we don't want them to overbid and so we work really hard to make sure that they're making an offer that they're comfortable with that assuming everything's good in due diligence that we'll get all the way through the closing with. Mark: Yeah and I think if you're a seller out there you're thinking why wouldn't you want to get something above what they're comfortable with? The reason is simple; the offer is the beginning of a longer journey, right? You've got to go through that due diligence, you've got to go through transition, planning, there's a lot of time in there for those cold feet to really, really freeze up a little bit. And for the buyer to say I made a mistake I got caught up in the heat of passion and now yeah. And I want to emphasize one other thing that you said here and that is we think multiple offers is a really good situation and it is but for anyone that hasn't been in that situation before where you have multiple buyers all of whom are very qualified to buy your business and given you good offers. It's really tough to choose because you can't choose five offers. You've got to choose one. Joe: Yeah. Mark: And in your head, you're going to be thinking I've got to get this right because I don't want to go through this again or I don't want to go through this due diligence process and then have to go back and what are people going to think I have to go back. So it's actually really stressful and one of those good problems to have but still a problem. Joe: And that's where I think the video … the folks that did video you know a better connection with Paul little bit although one of the top three didn't do the video but just a super nice guy. I mean I just wanted … we both, Paul wanted him to be able to buy the business. He travels all over the country all the time and has two teenagers that he just doesn't see enough and he wants to work from home. Mark: So there was that personal connection. Joe: Well, it's that personal connection tugging at Paul's emotional heartstrings, at mine. I think he's a great guy. I would love to help him find an amazing business so he spends more time with his family and becomes an entrepreneur which he's not now. He's in the corporate world. Mark: All right we're getting close to the end so let's wrap. I want to get to the end here and talk about— Joe: Sad news. I'm sorry. Sad news having to tell eight people they didn't get it. Mark: Then also I want to know the metrics. Because I know you had recommended to him go out, we should go out at a 3.5 multiple. We covered that the beginning and he said I don't know if we need that you know as … being and Paul sounded like a great guy 3.3 is what it went out at. I'd like to know where the highest and lowest came in and then also the sad news portion having to tell so many people that wanted this business sorry we're going to keep you in mind, we'll keep looking for you. Joe: Yeah, again I wanted it to go at a 3.5. I thought it was worth a push and I let him know it's a bit of a risk. We haven't sold one at 3.5 that's 100% Amazon business with discretionary earnings this “low”. It's still 440,000. We wound up with the highest one being at 3.6, 150,000 over asking and the one that he chose was 50,000 over asking at 3.4, 3.41. And it was an all cash buyer and had the funds on hand. Had had the funds and had the experience and has bought Amazon business before so he looked at the full package. Cash buyer, close in 30 days, hiring Centurica for due diligence but understands Amazon really well and that training and transition was going to be a breeze. It's the full package and that's why he chose that particular buyer. Mark: Yeah, again we've talked before about people winning with lower bids. Not necessarily being the top bidder but still being able to win. And we've also talked about the idea that financial motivation isn't always the sole motivation right? People sell for a variety of reasons and so being able to understand, as a buyer understand some of those secondary goals can really help you out quite a bit. Joe: Let me just jump in, it's not always a cash buyer that wins as well. If everybody remembers the story I've had Syed Balkhi on the podcast and he chose a buyer that was an SBA buyer at full price on his business versus a cash buyer because he just really bonded with that SBA buyer. And he carried a 10% seller note on that particular listing too. So he chose an SBA buyer and a seller note over an all cash buyer. So SBA wasn't necessarily the problem it was just a combination of a number of things and Paul really wanted to get the business sold. And he is kind of a nervous guy a little bit so he didn't want to have to wait upwards of 90 days; 30 was comfortable. Mark: All right what final thing should people know about this particular deal? Because this is a fascinating little case study of just a listing that's going crazy, how to act on the buy side, and also how to set your business up from the sell side. So what final things should we probably round this episode with? Joe: Well I hate to finish it with … you know just because this one sold a 3.4 doesn't mean yours is worth 3.4. This one has all of these little points and metrics to it. I launched one this week Monday at 3.3 and some of those same buyers, those eight buyers a few of them have looked at it and said no. Others are comfortable with the niche and like it and see the upside to it so I think we'll get at or close to asking. But just being prepared running a real business, think about it from a buyer's point of view. They're going to be investing their life savings and if you were them what type of business and what type of person would they want to buy that business from? We want them to succeed. You want them to succeed. And that's really what you need to focus on. Mark: That's fantastic. Hey, thanks for sharing all of this. I know that you always have the best case studies mainly been because you do the most deals at Quiet Light. So thanks for sharing this one. The next one I'm going to write a better teaser than yours and I'm going to try and get like 251 inquiries in the first 24 hours. Joe: You taught me how to do it so I know you can do it. Mark: Well, then I'll make sure that I'll let you know in every podcast. All right cool, hey thanks, Joe. I appreciate all of it. Joe: You bet.     Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ Listen and subscribe on Itunes  

Another one of the top 10 guests of 2018 is returning today to review the SBA process for both buyers and sellers. We'll discuss what's changed and things buyers and sellers need to look out for in 2019. Stephen Speer of ECommerce Lending, based in Florida, is a specialist in eCommerce acquisition deals. He offers a superior financing experience to buyers and sellers. Stephen urges sellers reach out to him to get their game plan ready and advises buyers to get pre-approved in order to get the ball rolling in the right playing field. Episode Highlights: What Stephen looks for in a business when prepping SBA on the seller side. Why co-mingling of multiple business can be problematic for a seller. His recommendations for cleaning up and consolidating financials when preparing to sell. What the the “debt service coverage ratio” (DSCR), also known as “debt coverage ratio” (DCR), is all about. Where the add backs come from and where Stephen's team looks for them. He advises companies to use an external bookkeeping outfit – for a great ROI! How Steve and his group think outside the box when it comes to SBA lending and refinancing in order to make the purchases happen. What he looks for in an SBA financing candidate. Just because you can write a check doesn't mean you don't have to be likeable. Situations or factors that can stop an SBA loan. The importance of reaching out to Stephen before starting to shop for the business that falls into your price range. Stephen reveals his lending sweet spots – the floor, the ceiling, and his averages. All the financing details – down payment, terms, and interest rate. Why sellers and buyers both need to go through the vetting process. Transcription: Mark: Joe last week we aired the episode with Shakil Prasla and we started out the episode with me basically having you fess up to the fact that I have the number one most downloaded and listened to episode. Joe: You're amazing Mark. Let's just say it right now you're incredible. Mark: But you're [inaudible 00:01:07.9] with Stephen Speer and at the risk of becoming a rethread podcast where all we do is bring back our top guests. We are having back one of our top guests this week again. Joe: Stephen Speer that's right. He's an SBA lender which is interesting in that the top two podcasts that we had had been about buying online businesses and we're brokers that sell online businesses. But hey … look you are amazing and you started this company 11 years ago and your focus was education and helping buyers understand the process and helping them as much as the sellers. So it's worked. And the fact that our top two podcasts are about buying online businesses has proven out that theory. We had Stephen back because last year there were a lot of changes in the SBA policies and guidelines. The dollar amounts came down a little bit, seller financing wasn't required on certain deals, and we recapped some of that and we reviewed the process both for if you're a seller what you need to do to get yourself in good shape to be SBA pre-qualified. And if you're a buyer out there looking to build that portfolio of businesses or buy your first one what you need to do in order to connect with someone like Stephen and get yourself in a position that you best be able to act quickly when that perfect business comes along. Mark: So yeah these rules do update on a yearly basis but fortunately this year it doesn't sound like there's a ton of new changes. With that said there's a lot of good information in this podcast because we get these questions over and over and over again about what does it take to qualify. And I think one thing that … I know we talked to Stephen the other day as a company. We had him and a couple of other SBA lenders come into the company and just— Joe: Yup. Bruce from [inaudible 00:02:47.2] bank, yup. Mark: Yup. Bruce from [inaudible 00:02:48.8] bank. You know I think it's important for people to understand that there is SBA guidelines. Yeah, that's one thing, but then outside of the SBA guidelines, there are some individual bank guidelines as well. And to understand that even though these rules and these guidelines that we're going to cover in this episode might be out there they're not hard and fast when it comes to finding an individual lender. Did you cover any of those guidelines from Stephen's group with the podcast? Joe: Yeah, we went over some specific things that he looks for and his firm looks for. He's with Bank One now … or I'm sorry First Home Bank but some of the topics that we touched on on the podcast and even when we talked to him separately and that you and I talked about is why is it important to pre-qualify your business for an SBA loan? Sellers may be thinking well it doesn't matter why should I do that. And the answer is because it casts a broader net and not a broader net of buyers. There are definitely some buyers out there that only want to use SBA funds because that's … they only have 10 or 15% to put down. And then there's another pool of buyers that could stroke a check for one, two, three million dollars but they're building that portfolio like Shakil and using SBA money so they're only putting 10 or 15% down each time. So it's really important from a seller's standpoint to understand the value of clean financials and getting prepared so you're pre-qualified for an SBA loan. And from a buyer's standpoint, it's a great way to go if you're comfortable with that option. Mark: Absolutely. All right let's get into the episode, let's find out what's changed in 2019 and then also recap some of the rules and some of the things that both sellers and buyers should know about SBA loans. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey, folks, it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage, today I have one of our top 10 guests back for 2019 Mr. Stephen Speer. Welcome back Stephen how are you? Stephen: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me Joe I appreciate it. Joe: Awesome. Man, well listen I want to go through all of the SBA lending practices, what it takes to qualify for a business, what buyer's should be looking for, and I also want to get an update on you and your team. I think you made some changes in 2019 … I'm sorry '18 I want to cover those as well. But for those that have not listened to you in the podcast in the past can you give us a little summary, a little background on yourself? Stephen: So I have an e-commerce lending team at First Home Bank. The bank happens to be located in St. Petersburg, Florida. Our team are lending throughout the country. As a matter of fact very few of our loans are actually in Florida but I made a transition months ago with the privilege of being able to grow my e-commerce team and we provide a level of support as we go into the new year. So I'm pretty excited about that. Joe: Yeah, it's exciting and I know that we've done a number of deals together and you've done a lot of work with Quiet Light and some of the other website brokerage firms. How big is your team going to get to? Where are you at now and how big are you going to be compared to where you were before? Stephen: So my team comprises of four people. Myself, a gentleman named Bill [inaudible 00:05:55.9] who is kind of my right hand man along with my underwriter and closing team. So I'm pretty excited about that. I plan to add an additional person in Q1 and another person who I have identified for Q2. So I plan to have three people do what I do. In other words, myself and two more and then stick with my underwriter as well as the closing team. Joe: That's huge. I always worried about you getting hit by a bus. Now you can get hit by a bus and we'll be fine. Stephen: Well yeah, my wife would love to hear that so. Joe: We don't want her listening to the podcast [inaudible 00:06:32.5] buy a bus and start driving around looking for you. That's great man, that's great. One of the things that I want people listening to this to understand is that we've dealt with a lot of SBA lenders over the years and you're a … you're not a banker. You don't come across as a banker. You don't have certain boxes that you must absolutely check every time when you speak our language. And you hang out with e-commerce entrepreneurs which is great. Let's talk a little bit about what it takes to qualify for an SBA loan from the sell side of the business. What do you look for from a business? When I send you a listing and say “Hey Stephen will this qualify?” what things are you looking for? Stephen: Well, first I'd like to … I would say I'd request financials. So first what I look for is what type of business is it? Is it FBA driven, is it 3PL, or do they provide their own fulfillment? So I look at that. If it's a product based business I look at the number of SKU's, type of product. I really do dive into that because one thing I try to avoid is having … trying to finance a single type business that's [inaudible 00:07:45.1]. So that's one thing I look at. So once I get past that I really kind of dive in to the financials. When I mean financials, the holy grail of financials are the tax returns. So for example now that we've entered 2019 I look for tax returns for 2017, maybe 2016 [inaudible 00:08:05.5] year, solid tax return for 2017, and solid year ending financials for 2018, and as we continue down the path of Q1 obviously 2018 tax returns. So basically back to your question a wrap up of … in 2016 of the business, solid year of 2017, and a strong trailing 12 month or strong and the word strong – Joe: Lots of people listening that are on their business will say “Hey that's not a problem. I got tax returns. Everybody files tax returns.” and then they give you a tax return and it's co-mingled with four other businesses that they're selling and they're only selling one … I'm sorry four other businesses that they run and they're only selling one. That's a problem isn't it, the co-mingling of multiple businesses under one tax return? Stephen: That is a problem and unfortunately, it's a problem that seems not to go away despite your best effort and your team's best effort as well as my team's best effort. They just seem not to follow that advice so that is a challenge. Now I do … with that coming up so often I do have a set of things I'm able to put in place, for example, I direct this seller back to his or her accountant and be able to income streams and expenses done in a professional manner. It can't just be Quick Books and I've been able to still get financing for businesses that do have co-mingling within a tax return. Joe: Does it just take a little bit longer to get those worked out and closed? Stephen: It does take longer. Generally, it adds roughly two months to the entire process. Joe: Woah. Stephen: It does take time depending on the responsiveness of the accountant. Especially as we enter Q1 and then start working on returns and start getting buried because [inaudible 00:09:52.5] season. It does take a little bit of time but it's not something that's not doable. The biggest recommendation I have either if you're thinking about selling a portion of your business now is to get on that and have your accountant provide or put together what I call consolidated financials. And basically what we do is we take the tax return and compare it to the consolidated financial which show a delineation of the different businesses and we're able to perform. Joe: Okay so for the sellers out there listening to that and going well I don't have to have an SBA buyer I can just sell to a cash buyer. You're absolutely right, there's a ridiculous amount of money out there in the landscape for people buying online businesses. The reality is though that you want to cast this broad of a net as possible for potential buyers. And we see this over and over again somebody that's from another country that is selling a business if it's a multi-million dollar business but you're not US based, not filing US tax returns. It is more difficult to sell because the buyer pool is not as large. There are buyers out there that I know personally that have the ability to stroke a check for five million dollars but they're smart and they don't want to. They want to keep as much money as they have … as they can and buy multiple businesses and maybe use someone like Stephen and SBA lending and only put down 10 or 15%. So you do cast a broader net if you can do the consolidated financials. If you're just starting off in business your best approach is to have one LOC for that line of product that eventually you may sell. We had Syed Balkhi on the podcast as well and Syed has a number of different businesses and every time he says “okay I'm done with this one” we're able to list it and sell it very, very easily. And the last one I think we did cash … actually, I think we did two SBA loans and it was very easy because he files separate tax returns for each business. That's the ideal situation. How do you feel Stephen about someone selling a business and they're coming to you with Excel spreadsheets for their profit and losses versus Quick Books? You don't really care about that you're looking at the tax returns and a P&L anyway that's in excel format right? Stephen: Primarily if we're talking just a single business, single return, single P&L's yeah that is fine. So that's not a problem at all. Obviously, the more … accounting is all about substance over form, it's kind of an accounting term. That is true but it can't be hand written or something very unprofessional I mean because ultimately underwriters look at that. If that's just kind of run together and it doesn't make much sense it's not done by someone who knows how to do a P&L or a [inaudible 00:12:47.0] but as long as it looks presentable that's fine. Joe: Well, you and your team are betting on the future success of the business. So first you want to see that the business is run properly. And if somebody is not using Quick Books or Xero or some form of accounting software it's an indication that it's not being run in as professional a manner as possible right? So that … okay, and the buyers look at that that way as well. And I could tell you from a brokering standpoint when you're using Excel spreadsheets for your financials and co-mingling it's much more difficult to get maximum value for it because no matter what things are missed. I had a call this morning where there was several thousand dollars that was buried inside of a marketing budget that was actually a personal thing. We had to dig very, very deep to find it. And that times three adds nine, ten thousand dollars up to the value of the business. So ultimately your view is you want to make it a safe investment in financing this loan and make sure there's a success down the road for the future. Is there a … some sort of multiple barrier that is a ceiling for you? Is it … how do you … it's … I can guess you call it debt to income ratios right? Stephen: Debt service coverage. So let's say … okay, so debt service coverage is primarily what we look at. We really don't look at EBIDTA multiple. I mean we do and we don't. The valuation piece definitely we look at that but primarily we look at a debt service coverage. So for example, if the overall loan is the obligation, annual obligation for a loan is $100,000 let's say, the bottom line number on the tax returns needs to reflect at least $115,000. Giving us a debt service coverage of 1.15. Now a lot of sellers run their similar personal expenses through the tax returns. I'm able to add those back so you can't just take a tax return and say okay it's a bottom line of 115,000. You got to take whatever the bottom line number is and then their add backs. Standard add backs would be interest, [inaudible 00:15:02.7], depreciation, amortization, those are primarily some of the add backs. Some of the seller discretionary add backs might be … especially if it's an FBA setup type business where there's run expense, well, the new owner probably will just run it as a home based business, some people add that back. Some people tend to run their car expenses through even though it's a home based business. I'm able to add that back. And any one time expenses, the revamping of a website or other ancillary things or a one time they could add those back. And I take that number and determine the means and debt service coverage. Joe: Do you pull those from our spreadsheets because we have add backs and do you look at those or do you dig into the tax returns for the add backs? Wouldn't it be hard to find them in tax returns? Stephen: Yeah so both, I look at what you provide in terms of your spreadsheet but some of those I'm not able to add back like typically insurance would be really hard. It'd be hard fought to have an underwriter add back insurance expense for example. Joe: It shouldn't be added back. I agree. If it's an expense that's going to carry forward it shouldn't be an add back. Stephen: Yeah and really those … so of your add backs, the ones you reflect typically on your spreadsheet I'm able to add most of those back and those … I use that spreadsheet as a roadmap. But I do go into the tax returns and make sure that the numbers are aligned. And then I'm able to really dig into a tax return and see if there's any other type of add backs that I'm able to find. Joe: Okay, so from a seller's perspective they want to do the best they can not to co-mingle multiple businesses under one tax return. Obviously, have tax returns and a good financial so we can dig into the add backs and make sure that debt to income ratio is going to work, anything else that they should be considering? I think you said obviously you don't want a business that's balanced on just one SKU doing 90% of the revenue. Ultimately the bottom line is you want to make sure that the bank is going to get paid from the person buying the business and it's going to be a success right? Stephen: Yeah and another thing we look at if there's any sort of declining revenue or a blip where … for example I had a client last year that completely lift Chinese new year and didn't have inventory to sell. So there was a blip but I was able to explain that to an underwriter. And obviously with the new buyer who felt that this business [inaudible 00:17:38.3] little bit higher. He was able to avoid any blips in the coming [inaudible 00:17:42.9] for example. So it's also an explanation there. The key for sellers is even if you're not considering selling your business now get these things in place so when you go to sell you're going to get the most amount [inaudible 00:17:58.5] of your business. I had a lot of sellers come to me and it's kind of like they want to list now and their financials are a disaster now. So I recommended that buyers kind of get on the ball. Maybe it's a new year's resolution to fire your current accountant and hire a good one and to really get the financials in place and put certain financial things in place now or pay dividends in the future. Joe: Yeah, I'd refer people to certain e-commerce bookkeepers, two or three of them on a regular basis and have them go back … they'll go back in this case to 2019 and import all the bank statements and vendor invoices and everything and get things updated and accurate. And Quick Books actually helps the CPA do their job better. On a go forward basis, it's the best thing in my experience for a decent sized business to use somebody else. Let them focus on the bookkeeping and you focus on running the business and doing … driving revenue and maximizing profit. I think that's really going to work. Stephen: Oh absolutely. And the return on that investment Joe, I mean you had a podcast recently that— Joe: I'm touched. Stephen: The return on that investment is enormous. Joe: And it's incredible. I've seen it happen firsthand where we've had P&L's in Excel spreadsheets and the deal fell through three or four times and then the guy took the same information, hired a bookkeeper, they put it into Quick Books and we sold the business for 50,000 more of that … I think we had again three or four LOI's and it sold quickly which is fascinating; a fascinating study. Let's talk a little bit Stephen about you. About e-commerce lending and your group and how you think outside the box. Because I want to talk about this a little bit. Not all lenders are created equal. You and I have a transaction going on right now where you had to really think outside the box. And I'm going to summarize it and I want you to then just talk about what your thought process was and how you approached it. We have a buyer at Quiet Light Brokerage that again has the money to stroke a check but he is in a situation where he's building a portfolio of businesses and he's using the SBA lending process. Buyers can take up to what … five million dollars in money right? Stephen: Primarily. Joe: So somebody could buy five … I guess that would be one million dollars I'd then be putting in loans right? They're liable for up to five million. So he's buying multiple businesses— Stephen: One loan or 10 loans it doesn't matter. Joe: Okay perfect. So he has two under a letter of intent with Quiet Light Brokerage now and mine is in the process first. And he's got the wherewithal but I think he had some pretty sizable loans that threw off his overall debt to income ratio. How did you work that out? Stephen: So … and that definitely took a lot of out of the box thinking in the sense that he had … he has an Amazon loan and I can't divulge too much personal information but the monthly payment on the Amazon loan was staggering. It was five figures on a monthly basis. I looked at debt service coverage and throw in a very large five figure monthly payment through all the numbers ROI. Joe: And this is on a separate business that he owns. Stephen: Separate business that he owns. Joe: Right, okay. Stephen: Because it does affect what's called global debt service coverage. So on a separate business that he owns which happens to be an online business. Joe: Right. Stephen: He has very large payment and then he purchased a bunch of inventory and financed it through Amazon. So it threw all the numbers off. So you kind of have to dig deep and say okay how about we refinance at that, take that monkey off his … that large knot off his back and be able to incorporate, be able to reduce that monthly payment and still get the new purchase done. And that's what I'm in the process of doing. His new purchase, his loan on his new business acquisition was just approved and I'm going to process at refinancing his Amazon loan. Joe: Now the Amazon lending loan is very prevalent these days with Amazon based businesses. And you and I have done just for the record content site, SaaS business, all sorts of [inaudible 00:22:00.5] certainly not just Amazon. But in this situation, this particular individual had several hundred thousand dollars in loans and the money gets withdrawn out of their Amazon deposits. Do you recall what the interest rate was then? What his payments were? What the interest rate was and compare it to what you're going to be able to do for him? I just want to emphasize you thinking outside the box and how much money you're going to save this guy on a monthly basis. Because he's thrilled right now I got to tell you he's thrilled. Stephen: So his monthly knot with Amazon was 48,700 and something. Joe: Holy cow, okay. Stephen: It's going to be a couple of grand. Joe: No way 48,000 down to $2,000 … that's amazing. Thank you for thinking outside the box. You're helping him and you're helping a couple of the sellers of the businesses that were doing deals on now. That's fantastic. Stephen: Yeah, and you touched on something really important now. I do have a fair amount of buyers out there, actually, currently 347 buyers out there looking for businesses to buy. And quite a few of them can easily [inaudible 00:23:03.5] for a two three million dollar business but they're building a portfolio. So back to your comment about portfolios a lot of buyers out there right now are building portfolios. They want to buy two, three, four different businesses … online businesses for the course of the next two or three years. And they don't want to use up all their cash. And the fact remains is that when you're trying to scale a business cash is king. You need cash to scale a business. You need to buy additional inventory. You need to grow it. And if you're cash strapped it's really hard to grow an online business. So I'm helping several of those buyers accomplish that. So an SBA loan is not just for the person who needs a little bit lower barrier to entry. An SBA loan is also for the person that could easily pay cash but chooses not to, to stay in line with his or her business goals Joe: Absolutely. Well, let's talk about the buyers a little bit and what you look for in a buyer? You and I have never had a situation where we brought a buyer and you said yes and then it turned out they weren't qualified. But I had a situation a few years ago where I had a couple of Harvard MBA graduates. They literally just graduated a month before from Harvard. They got their Master's in business and they decided to partner on an investment in an online business. And they had some funds. One of the graduates had some funds from a parent. It went through the process. They're pre-approved from a different lender and then underwriting said these guys have absolutely no real world experience we're not betting … I think the deal was two million dollars. We're not betting two million dollars on these guys. Yeah, their pedigree is good, their education fantastic but no and the deal fell apart. What do you look for? Are you looking for real world experience? Is there a certain asset value that they need to have? How do you handle it when somebody comes to you? What do you look for? Stephen: So first I look at … I try to determine and I do interview my buyers. So once you refer them to me I do interview them as you know and one of the first things I really touch on is experience; so first determining if they have direct experience or indirect experience. And then as I mentioned in a previous podcast it's almost like going for a job interview, even if you don't have direct experience you need to make the person real comfortable with hiring you. The same goes with a loan is that even if you don't have direct experience what business … what skill sets do you have that's transferrable and also who's going to fill the void of having direct … let's say SEO experience or direct experience in the space? So those two things I look at. So if the person has direct experience, pretty much a no brainer. A person that doesn't have direct experience it's putting together the narrative like paying underwriter even though here she doesn't have direct experience but indirect experience in these categories. And additionally, they're going to have support via an employee or a contracted employee that that fill a void. Joe: I got you. Stephen: So I'm able to … I've never … honestly, I've never had a deal where an underwriter has said gosh that's great they went to Harvard but they have no direct experience. Joe: We had a situation … I'm going to name a name here but I'm only going to use their first name; a guy named Rocky. Rocky was I think he was in his 60's. He retired and ran a General Manager for some car dealership something … somewhere in the country. I loved the guy. I thought he was amazing. Just as a broker, as a lender you just … you connect with somebody like I want to help this guy. I want to find him the ideal business. Although let me say I told him he's crazy. He didn't need to buy a business. He was retired. What for? You have plenty of money I'm like you're crazy just go play golf or something. But he ended up buying something from us and he didn't have any direct online experience. He was a GM for dealerships that yeah they had websites but he didn't run them himself. I find there are a lot of people in the corporate world that are putting in 60 hours a week that look at the e-commerce entrepreneurs that are selling a business when they're working 20 hours a week and they're making more money and they want to live that life. They want to spend more time with their family, with their kids, travel. Are a lot of the folks that come to you these types of people, and is that in direct experience still okay? Stephen: Yeah so to answer your question yes a lot are. Be it Rocky or any other, they don't have direct experience. So the thing about Rocky is that … first, off he is incredibly likable, incredibly well spoken, and have a very strong resume. The guy was successful in his professional career. Joe: Yeah. Stephen: And then unlike somebody working at a low skill job the guy ran the car dealerships which he was 60 hours. Or he was probably working 90 hours a week now but with a transferable skill set. And also he filled that void of not having direct experience in running an online business but was able to fill that void by bringing somebody in. So we felt very comfortable with that and he ultimately was approved. And the last time I talked to him he's doing very well. Joe: Yeah, I think he bought a business from Amanda. I didn't have one for him at the time but Quiet Light, in general, had one. And I think Amanda loved working with him as much as you did. So the likability factor that Rocky had, when buyers come to you is that important? Do you have to like them to do business or? Stephen: Well not like … I think— Joe: Make a difference with human right? Does it make it a better—? Stephen: They are human. So an underwriter is human and if they have a good dialogue with the buyer, for example, Nathan was incredible as well. Joe: Yeah. Stephen: One of the reasons Nathan's loan sailed through is because he was very well spoken and had the incredible background to be successful. So yeah it does. Joe: Okay so we're going to just touch on that thing that everybody knows but they don't talk about and that is if somebody comes to me, if somebody comes to you and they want to buy a business we want to sell you a business. But if you are 10 times more difficult than the next person and they also want to buy a business, my client … my seller is going to say okay well I've got an offer from each which one do you like more Joe, talk about the plus and minuses. And we've got to do that. And in your case you just said you've got something like 354 buyers on your list. They're looking for a business, they're not buying it from you, they're buying it from the likes of Quiet Light Brokerage. Stephen: Right. Joe: But you still have to work with them on a regular basis and you still have to go through the process with them and be likable. Simple thing guys, everybody listening just be likable. Just because you've got the ability to stroke a check doesn't mean that you can push a guy like Stephen around. There's lots of people that are trying to buy a business, lots of people that are trying to sell businesses and being likable is so-so key because this is an online world. We're not sitting across the table from each other and it makes a huge difference being likeable in the process. Stephen: We've kind of touched on that. I was recently … I have a buyer who's been looking for a year and a half. Not to scare new buyers out there but sometimes it does take a while. But he's not likable. Joe: Okay. Stephen: And he was on a phone call … I was on it as well with the seller and he was beating up the seller on the phone in front of me like I wasn't on the call. I don't know but … and the seller chose another buyer. Joe: It's not hard. I'll talk from personal experience. When I sold my business I remember being on one of these buyer conference calls. I had three or four. Jason Yellowitz here at Quiet Light sold my business way back in 2010. And I had three or four calls with potential buyers before it went under contract and sold it. But I remember sitting … I was in the car on a call and I'm sitting in a parking lot and I've got this guy just belittling my business and talking about all the negative things and I'm just to all I can do to end the call. It's you know … to not end the call and to be polite and it was really hard. And even if he made me a full price offer … all cash, full price offer I have to take into account, sellers have to take into account how difficult that particular type of buyer is going to be in due diligence and in the training and transition period. There's a cording, a relationship it's … it ends at a certain period but you're going to be in a relationship with that person and you want to make that as pleasant and as enjoyable as possible. So being likable is critical without a doubt. Stephen: Absolutely. Joe: What are the top two or three qualities that you look for aside from good financials from the buyer? Like, do they have to have a certain debt to income ratio? Do they have to have certain assets in order to buy a business? Stephen: As I would say assets it's more present driven unlike buying a house. I think we definitely look at what's called post-closing liquidity. For example, when all the dust settles is it broke after closing or still has a fair amount of cushion. So we definitely look at that. Is there outside income? Does [inaudible 00:32:09.5] have a … what I call a day job to … for outside income? That's another thing we look at. So those are two very important variables. Credit score is important but it's not like buying a home where you get to really perfect your lending terms. It's pretty much either get a loan or you don't get a loan in the SBA world. A recent issue … if the person is being down with a ton of personal debt that's something that we look at. Generally, that's a character … it's the ones living beyond their means that's generally not liked. So those are just some of the variables. And also what I look at is does this person have the skill set to be able to scale a business or is the business going to go stagnant as it transitions over to him or her. So that's another thing we look at but [inaudible 00:33:00.5] just some of the variables. Joe: So when someone comes to you and says I want to buy a business part of what you do is you look at their financials. You look at all those variables and you say okay great you qualify to buy a business up to a certain amount. Is that the process? Do you say okay … do you give him a guide as in terms of you can buy something up to a million or two million [inaudible 00:33:19.8] like that? Stephen: Yes and a lot of the determining factor is based on their … is it direct, do they have direct experience or indirect experience? So that is going to move— Joe: Noted. Okay. Stephen: Secondly, post-closing liquidity that's really what I focus on. If the person is trying to buy a million dollar business he has to inject or put down a hundred grand and he has 110,000 in the bank that's not going to work. So we kind of have to move the needle down. Joe: And in that situation, they wouldn't … it's not that they don't qualify to buy a business but in that situation, they wouldn't qualify for a million dollar business maybe a half a million dollar business. Stephen: Right, it would move the target price down a little bit. Joe: Okay so just let me clarify that so that somebody has a $110,000 and they want to buy an SBA business and put 10% down, for those listening that's generally the number 10 to 15% down, 110,000 you're going to be left with 10 grand; not going to work. So you got to look at a half a million dollar business. Stephen: Or 800, 750 something like that. Joe: Yeah and then you look at their debt, what they have, what they need to live off of and that smaller business is not going to cash flow as high especially after the debt service from your loan. So you look at all of that and help them with what they're capable of buying first and foremost right? Stephen: Yeah, most of my buyers have what I call a day job so most of their … in most cases their day job covers their personal debt so that's rarely a real factor. Now I do have an individual recently who didn't have a day job and had tons of personal debts so that kind of blew her out of the water. But generally we do look at that. So again back to post-closing liquidity what I do is … so for all of you out there once Joe refers a client to me for pre-qualification I'm able to have an interview with that person on a scheduled call and ask some questions and also they provide me what's called a financial statement. And then I'm able to in most cases issue a pre-qualification and give them a target amount. In the case … in the example that was well over 800,000 for example. And then that person goes back to Joe and says okay I'm pre-qualified with Stephen, he told me to look at businesses around 800,000 let's go. Joe: And then they have a path which is the most important thing. Somebody that doesn't know what they're looking for, doesn't know what they're buying capabilities are is less qualified from our view. So one of the things we want you to do folks if you're out there as a buyer reach out to someone like Stephen and get pre-qualified so that it will help you narrow your focus. And then the next step is to look at as many listings as possible from the online world and figure out what you like and don't like about the business. When you find the right one if it's a great business you want to be in a position where you're already prequalified to act quickly. Because if it's a great business guess what other people are going to be looking at it and making offers as well, really important there. Stephen: Absolutely especially since there are a lot of buyers out there and if you snooze you're going to lose. So you need to kind of get your house in order before looking. Joe: Absolutely, I agree 1000%. So let's talk quickly about the qualifications of the buyer. Do they have to be a US citizen? Stephen: They could be either a green card holder or a US citizen living in the United States. Joe: That green card holder or US citizen living in the United States, the business itself does it have to be a US citizen or a green card holder filing US tax returns? Stephen: In most cases yes depending on the structure of the business. Joe: Okay, there's always a sort of gray area in the situation. Stephen: Yes, it depends on the structure, you kind of different components as in the past few company on the foreign entity— Joe: Right. Stephen: Things that does affect that answer. Joe: Right. Okay and then your business and the size of loans that you guys generally do, are we're looking at you're looking for a half a million and up two, three million, where is your sweet spot in terms of lending? Stephen: So generally my personal loan floor let's call it is half a million dollars. But obviously, if it's a client I've been working with and happens to just look at $800,000 businesses I would grant one for 400,000 on that person. My average loan amount is about a one and a half million dollar range. So … and you know looking at my 2018 numbers that's close to 60 million, 40 transactions, that's about that number. Joe: I got you. I think we have 38 of them that were directed at me I think right? No, I'm kidding. Stephen: 41. Joe: So you're loaning on the value of the business. And what about if it's an inventory based business are you loaning for the value of the inventory as well? And then working capital … does somebody, do you always loan … give working capital money so that they— Stephen: Always. So a very good topic here so obviously I'm going to finance the business itself. I'm also … if the purchase price of the business does not include inventory I finance the inventory, the on-hand inventory. And what I do is I work with you Joe in determining what that number is going to be at closing. So I finance that. I also include working capital. And that working capital I generally work it into a loan in a sense that I'm able to include it in your market … not directly your market, so okay of that 100,000 working capital 50 is going to be for additional inventory above and beyond what's being purchased with the business. And the other 50 is going to be marketing campaign or advertising campaign, it could be for hiring support staff. Joe: Okay and then lastly I want to talk about the term of the loans. We're talking five years, 10 years, 30 years, what are we looking at? Stephen: It's a 10 year loan and of all those components, by the way, it ends up being all in one loan. It's not where you have separate loans for each. So it's all incorporated into a 10 year SBA loan. Joe: Okay and 5, 6%interest rate somewhere in that range; five to seven? Stephen: Base prime plus two and three quarters, right now it's 8.25. Joe: Prime plus two and three quarters. Okay so for those that want to run their own numbers 10% down, 10 year note, prime plus two and three quarters, do the math on that. Stephen: Yeah. Joe: The seller note in 2017 and prior to that in most of the transactions that we did or did together you required some sort of seller note. And that changed in 2018 so for … got a business that's a million and a half and somebody wants to put down 15% are you requiring a seller note on a deal of that size or are you not anymore? Stephen: So up to 2017 a seller note was required by the SBA and not by the invidual lender. Joe: Okay. Stephen: So typically it was 10% down payment let's call it from the buyer, 15 from the seller or vice versa in terms of the seller note for a total of 25% down payment rejection. Joe: Okay. Stephen: In '18 the barrier to entry was lower. The overall requirement paying on a deal is the minimum 10%. In terms of what lenders require, some lenders require a seller note. We do not. Sometimes I incorporate a seller note to strengthen the loan especially if the buyer does not have direct online experience. So it gives kind of the underwriter warm fuzzies in the sense that the transition will most likely go smoother. The seller has a little bit of skin on the game. So there are situations where I do incorporate a seller note for approval purposes. Joe: So for buyers, sellers, even other brokers listening to this, this is you know you're hearing Stephen say I incorporate this or I incorporate that to help the underwriter feel better about the loan and make sure it goes through. What I do personally is when I have a deal that's pre-qualified by Stephen or someone like Stephen when I get an offer on the business A) I want to know if Stephen knows who they are and if they're working with him and how they look qualification wise. But B) I really like to send the deal structure to you Stephen and say this is the deal structure is this going to float with your underwriters? And I think that's critical to the ultimate success of the loan and the transaction process. Because the last thing that we want … it's happened once or twice and I don't recall if it was with you or not but … where you've … actually no it was with you where the underwriter looked at something and they had to tweak it just a little bit, had to increase the seller note by 5% or something like that. That's not what we want to do so now I run everything by you prior to having a letter of intent signed. I recommend everybody to do that if they're going to do an SBA loan through Stephen and e-commerce lending. Stephen: Absolutely, so that's a very good point as we continue down the path of e-commerce lending I am constantly tweaking the way I do things. And that's one thing I do is I bet really hard upfront so there aren't changes on the backend. Fortunately some of my buyers don't [inaudible 00:42:26.4] the businesses that they're looking at prior to signing a letter of intent. It's kind of an after they do that they come to me and say hey I just bought this business and here's the deal structure I want you [inaudible 00:42:38.3] well that's not going to work. Joe: Yup they don't do that with Quiet Light they have to [crosstalk 00:42:41.7] so the whole process we require that conference call. Because we … it's not, we don't want people to go under a letter of intent just to tie it up and then make a decision. We want them to make the decision, go under letter of intent, and close and go through that process. It just saves everybody a lot of time and hassle. Stephen: It really does. Joe: Okay, any last thoughts about … you want to share with the buyers or sellers that are listening to the podcast today? Stephen: Yeah in terms of sellers even if you're not selling a business now please reach out to me in general and have us put together a game plan for future sale. It's really, really important and again it will be dividends on the backend. And then for you buyers out there reach out to me. I'm more than happy to pre-qualify you for a business. You can reach me at stephen@ecommercelending.com and the first name is spelled ph or call me at 813-766-4524. Joe: Thanks. I will put that on the show notes as well. The last thing I want to say is just to reiterate what you're talking about there with the sellers and it's called choose your pain. Go through the pain of getting your financials in good shape now and having a great transaction and a sale or don't do it and you're choosing your pain later because it's going to be difficult. You're going to be … you're bank account is going to be in pain because you're not going to get as much value for your business. So make the choice and hopefully you'll choose that first one. It's not fun, it's not exciting but it's the right thing to do. Do some valuation exit planning, reach out to Stephen; reach out to anybody at Quiet Light. Go to inquiries@quietlightbrokerage.com myself, Mark, anybody on the team is happy to help you even if you're not planning to sell your business for another two, three, four years. That's what we're here for. Stephen, you're awesome as always. Thanks so much for your time. I look forward to a great 2019 with you. Stephen: Absolutely, Joe. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. Joe: All right man, talk to you soon.   Links and Resources: ECommerce Lending Email Stephen Call Stephen 1-813-766-4524  

Matt Medeiros continues Season 8 with the roundtable format asking the question is there change in the WordPress ecosystem?  John Turner and Phil Derksen are the special guests that share what significant changes they have made in their careers and what they see in the  WordPress ecosystem. Listen to this episode: Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Why exiting solopreneurship is the right move Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 00:47:53 Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:47:53 John Turner joined Awesome Motive through their customer accelerator portal to help his company grow. Syed Balkhi, Awesome Motive's owner,  suggested that John join the company as a partner since his product and strategy aligned with Awesome Motive. (3:10) Phil Derksen recently joined Sandhills Development LLC after running a one-man shop company called WP Simple Pay, which is a stripe payment and subscription program.  Sandhills Development, LLC  has a whole suite of products that was founded by Pippin Williamson. (4:20) What you will learn in this Episode: Startups in the WordPress economy were easy to start as a fully bootstrapped business. It can be a roller coaster ride of going solo and joining a company, then trying to go solo again. (6:48) John – Worked for 6 or 7 years and did not feel like he was continually growing. When the opportunity became available with Syed and Awesome Motive John decided to give it a try and take the growth to the next level. It was difficult where the uncertainty and change is concerned, but he is excited to be a part of the company.  (7:48) Phil – Phil had many happy customers with his product and support. Although he had a level of comfort with his company, he did not feel like he could release the features that customers were requesting. For example, EDD could offer many things that his product couldn't do. Phil had one product to focus on, but it was distracting to jump from being a developer, then marketing and support. It is exciting to work with a team and see the growth of the products. (11:11) Product Growth – Marketing or the Product Alone? Phil – Product features and planning for the future is critical. Then the focus needs to change to marketing to get the word out to the customers. (11:59) John– Marketing is the most important focus and the lesson to learn. You can have an awesome product, but you need to have the time and focus on marketing. (12:23) Matt – For people to scale their business they need to market their product successfully and make more money. It takes a lot of time and money to do marketing correctly.  (13:41) Marketing John – There is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. When you find out what is working you need to concentrate on it. When your business is small, you don't have a lot of money to spend on marketing. You need to focus on one or two channels (like Facebook and Content Marketing) and focus on what is working for you. It could take awhile. (15:19) Phil – Phil has recently spent money and time on content marketing. Finding what works and knowing that changes over time are important. It is tough to get noticed with new plugins or themes on WordPress.org. Sandhills Development has a marketing team that reaches out and promotes products. (17:19) Matt – Some businesses try a blanket approach with marketing and cover too much. The person in the WordPress Community that is doing marketing well seems to be Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains. His company does a great job with their brand and content marketing. Pagely is another company that does a great job with their quality and material. Phil: Chris Badgett at LifterLMS does a great job with content marketing and his podcast concentrating around learning systems. John: LifterLMS has very focused content with their brand and audience. The material has intent. Content Marketing Focus: Matt – Content Marketing is very expensive and very hard to do as a business owner. If you are preparing webinars and podcasts, it takes a lot of time when launching a podcast. It can be hard to produce quality content consistently. (19:54) John – To test the market in the WordPress space getting on WordPress.org is the best place to start and get some eyes on your product. It is essential to focus on the product name and reviews. You need to start somewhere and then figure out how to rank it. (21:03) Phil  – Some people go to the content route first without a free version of their product. Phil likes the podcast/YouTube style. Joe Howard has started the WPMRR Podcast and focuses on monthly revenue. When you find something that is working, you can double down on it.  While you are adjusting your approach, you should be concentrating on your email list. (22:09) John – Many niches are very competitive in the WordPress space. You need to build up the business and take baby steps slowly. It is not easy. (22:53) Matt – There are two sides to this. You can try to rank in WordPress. org. But as competition starts to grow, some new business owners find they start too late with the ideas for marketing. One great idea is to leverage customer stories with a podcast and repurpose the content.  (24:21) Forecasting the Future of WordPress: Matt – WordPress is becoming more competitive, and pricing in the marketing is still a challenge.  How is pricing changing in the WordPress space? (26:07) John – Many themes and plugins have gone to automatic subscription. Many customers are renewing without a discount in subsequent years (especially with hosting or SaaS products) (26:46) Phil – Larger companies can adapt to charge more because they have a reputation and support behind the product. The customer can count on them with staying power. (28:04) Matt – Prices in the space are tiered for support for products. Customers seem to value the product and as an end user, they see the value. (28:50) John  – Customers are buying the products and making money. There was a positive response from his customers with his joining a larger company. Phil – There were no complaints coming from customers when features were released and annual subscriptions were occurring. SaaS products seem to do this annually. Phil got a great response from his customers when he joined Sandhills Development. They were excited with the partnership and the solutions that can be offered. (30:32) Balancing User Requests and Feedback: John:  He would produce a yearly survey to stay on pace with his customers including the feedback that he received over the year. Every feature that you include will be a support burden down the line. (33:16) Phil – Sent out a survey as well as tracking support requests that looked like new features. Phil collected responses all year and weighed those requests with what it would take to develop and support. Phil was very cautious about adding features while trying to not take any feature away. (33:59) Monetization with Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 John – Waiting to see what happens after the release. There seems to be a lot of opinions about what will happen with the newest release. (35:47) Phil – Is expecting support to be overwhelmed after the release. Documents and videos will help people with the release. WP Simple Pay will not be that impacted. The page builder and themes could be impacted but uncertain by how much and in what way. (36:36) Matt – There are a lot of folks jumping into the opportunity around Gutenberg with an opportunity to sell to customers. The release seems to be a way to create a SaaS around WordPress.org. With Jetpack enabled you will be able to remind the customer about what is coming and create upsells. (38:45) To Keep in Touch: John Turner: Hooked on Products Podcast Twitter – @johnturner seedprod.com Phil Derksen: Twitter – @philderksen Phil Derksen   Episode Resources: Awesome Motive MemberPress Formidable Forms Syed Balkhi Sandhills Development, LLC EDD Affiliate WP Restrict Content Pro Sugar Calendar Delicious Brains Pagely LifterLMS LMSCast WPMRR Jetpack To Stay in Touch: Watch the panel discussion on Matt's YouTube channel. To stay connected with the Matt Report, head on over to mattreport.com/subscribe. If you like the show, please leave a 5 Star review over on the Matt Report on iTunes. ★ Support this podcast ★

New to the US from Pakistan, Syed Balkhi was a lonely and isolated 12-year-old. Unable to speak English fluently, he took to communicating with new friends—computers—and quickly found comfort interacting with these non-human companions. Soon Balkhi was learning how to code and build websites, and that very same year he made his first dollar from a website he created. Now 27, Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the first and largest WordPress resource website in the world, and co-founder of many accompanying businesses. He was also named a top entrepreneur under the age of 30 by the United Nations, his websites receive millions of monthly pageviews each month, and his software runs on nearly 8 million sites serving billions of monthly impressions. Listen in as Balkhi takes you through the early years of his entrepreneurial journey and how, brick by brick, he built his empire. Key Takeaways How Balkhi decides which versions of existing software to acquire and improve Why managing four products independently helps his team increase focus and output How to build a business, one small step at a time The key factor behind his companies' explosive growth

I've seen Ezra Firestone speak at events, online, and in his “how to” courses. But until I got to chat with him one on one for 30 minutes about work/life balance, did I realize he's the next Tony Robbins (OK, of the ecommerce world, and without the banana hands.) No kidding, Ezra is inspiring and full of passion. And he does what he does (rock 30 million a year in revenues without breaking a sweat) while giving back to others, focusing on family, and taking care of his health. If you're are a corporate exec wanting to live the ecommerce lifestyle, Ezra's approach is spot on. If you are an ecommerce owner and want to be the “navigator” of your business instead of the jack of all trades, listen and try to really hear what Ezra is saying. It will make a difference in your business, your bank account and your family life. Episode Highlights: Highlights from Ezra's unique upbringing and how he grew up with e-commerce. We follow the journey of his professional life from poker to yoga to where he is today, earning thirty million per year in revenue. Ways the apprenticeship model can be beneficial to young entrepreneurs. Ezra reveals the pivotal moment where he understood the freedom he could achieve from acquiring a skill and mastering it. How Ezra found his “mastery” in e-commerce after trying several things. Every type of e-commerce business requires the same kind of marketing. All the marketing that goes with the product: before, during and after is what smart marketers need to focus on. The easiest business to run at scale is the physical product in e-commerce. The importance of going premium in e-commerce. There are buyers for every level of the market. Why Ezra chose not to sell on the subscription model. Using consistent ongoing marketing content in customer communication can generate revenue by sending the customers back to the website over and over. Ezra describes how he made the transition from driver to navigator. The importance of setting boundaries. Work will fill the time that you give it but it is necessary to scale in order to create balance. Balance as an entrepreneurial leader allows you to give the autonomy to those around you to step into roles that they can be motivated to succeed at. Ezra runs his business based on the practice of permaculture. Serve the world unselfishly and profit, that is his philosophy. Transcription: Mark: I saw an ad on Facebook the other day Joe and it made me think of our guest today. The ad was for anyone … any guy who has just a regular hairdo like I do and it was a man bun attachment. You could actually buy a man bun attachment to put on the top of your head if you wanted to have a man bun. Joe: Don't say his name now, don't say his name. Mark: I want a minute here and think who in the industry … in the world of marketing is known for his man bun? Joe: You know when we had Syed Balkhi on the podcast I actually went out and bought myself a Florida gator hat to wear during part of the podcast. I seriously thought about going on Amazon and ordering a man bun and putting it on for this podcast. That's what I wanted to do. But you know what I don't know the guest well enough. I've seen him at events and we were a host, we're not a sponsor on his last event. Today we're on this podcast is the first time I really got to sit down and talk with him for 30 minutes or so. I guess we can say is name now is Ezra Firestone. If you don't know his name where the hell have you been? Because essentially he is … in my view he's the Tony Robbins of the e-commerce world without the banana hands if you've ever seen Shallow Hal. He's very impressive. When he starts talking you just sit back and listen and you go “What? Really, wow that's incredible. That's incredible.” He's so full of energy and so passionate about what he does that you would think that he works all the time. And that's kind of the takeaway from this podcast for me. There are lots of great insights to how to run a more effective e-commerce business in different channels and philosophies that someone like Ezra applies. And look he's doing 30 million dollars a year in revenue growing month over month and does incredible things. He does not get out of bed … well, I shouldn't say bed; he does not start his day until 10 o'clock in the morning. And that doesn't mean he works until 10 o'clock at night. He works maybe till 5 o'clock unless he's out doing events; like he's going to be at Blue Ribbon Mastermind next week which is just incredible … doing 30 million a year in revenue and not working 40 hours a week; a really impressive guy. Mark: Absolutely you know I have a confession to make. You know these courses, these e-courses online that are super expensive, I usually look at these and I'm like yeah who in the world would ever pay for this? So my confession is this, I've actually bought one before and it was one of Ezra's. It was on Facebook Marketing which is a little bit off from what you're talking about. But I can honestly say it was worth every single penny. I think those who have actually gone to Ezra's events and listened to his advice bought one of his courses and have followed him. He's big. He's known because he's a real deal. Starting work at 10 AM is an awesome testament to the idea of this work life balance and making sure that we're working so that we can live our lives. We're not living so that we can work our lives. That's awesome. I want to hear this because right now I'm working so much and Joe I know you are too. So hopefully you did pull away a few things from this as well. Joe: I did. I did and people don't want to hear you and I anymore so let's just go to Ezra. Mark: Let's go. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley from the Quiet Light Podcast and today I have Ezra Firestone on the line with me. Hey Ezra how are you doing? Ezra: Happy to be here man. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I love doing stuff like this. Joe: So so glad to have you here. You and I have … we've been to a couple of events together, I've been to your Smart Marketer and Blue Ribbon Mastermind but we've never had a half hour to talk to each other so I'm loving the fact that I got your crew to schedule this. So thank you first and foremost, I know you're a busy guy. As I mentioned earlier we don't do a fancy introduction so for those that don't know who you are if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your background that'd be fantastic. Ezra: Sure. Thanks. I am currently sitting in a presidential cabinet room, so that's my current location in the world. Joe: For those listening and not watching, get online and look. Ezra: Yeah get up take a look. This is actually an off … my wife and I bought 76 acres of land about 20 minutes from here that we're intending to sort of develop and build a home on and have kids on and stuff. We're renting this home and the person who lived here before was like some kind of a lawyer or something. And this room … it's all cabinets and for me for some reason that is confronting. Like I don't know why but I walk into this [inaudible 00:05:02.0] in my office and I love … I love it. I love that I have a space where I can work but all the cabinetry it kind of freaks me out because it's very not … much not my vibe. So I'm like putting in plants, I've got like a skateboard over here. You know I'm kind of trying to make it feel a little less intense. Anyways a little bit about me business wise is I never went to college. I went straight from high school to New York City to play poker for a living which I did really well as a teenager and into my early 20's. I was really fun but eventually, I sort of came across the concept of not trading time for money and began looking at building systems to generate revenue and resource for me without my direct time input all the time and sort of fell into e-commerce. Because you know e-commerce was really coming up in society at that time. We're talking 2004, 2005, 2006. It was my first years in e-commerce and I've been fortunate enough to grow up in this industry. And this was a time before events and before podcast and before this industry was … everyone, when you said you were an Internet marketer they thought you were into porn or gambling. Joe: That's right. Ezra: It was not looked at as a good thing. And so long story short is I've been doing e-commerce full time for about 13 years. I have grown and sold several companies. I currently have four different brands that generate about 25 million a year in revenue and 70 employees on my team around the country. And I'm just a guy. I'm just some random guy who loves this stuff. I really really love it and I think timing wise I came into it at the right time and fell in love with it at the right time and have been putting my full energy and attention in the direction of online businesses and e-commerce in particular physical products. Although I do have other business models e-commerce is my most successful model over the last decade. Joe: That's impressive. First and foremost the fact that you didn't go to college and you went right to life and you're a professional poker player. I don't tell my kids this, as I mentioned before I've got two boys, 14 … oh almost 15 and 17, some of the most successful people I know didn't go to college. One of the guys I worked with up in Portland Maine, Rob Graham if you're listening, absolutely one of the most successful people I know and he just … he got it. He worked hard, he was smart, he used common sense and intelligence which you have to have a combination of so kudos to you. Ezra: Thanks, man. By the way, you can't give me too much credit for that decision. There were no colleges that would take me with my problem. I just didn't fit the mold. I sort of always had this idea, you know I haven't … I had an alternative lifestyle. I grew up in an intentional community in the Bay Area of California with flower children hippie parents and so I kind of had some alternative views on life from my upbringing. And one of them was that the school system really felt like a system that was farming me into a model … into a workforce that I didn't want to join. You know sitting at a desk for eight hours a day and then you'll be trained to go sit in the cubicle eight hours a day. And I believe that in life you get what you want from people who have it. That's how … you find someone like you Joe and you learn about how to sell businesses from someone who is doing that. And I have always sort of believed in that apprenticeship model. And you know I looked around at college, I mean I attempted to get in, nobody would take me but there was like nothing there for me you know. The teachers didn't have anything that I wanted. I couldn't really see a future for myself there and I was a very good hustler. I always had little businesses and I was the guy at school … I almost had, I would have to go on to those stories but I always had something going on to make money because we weren't rich. We grew up without much means and I always had this goal of generating resource so that I could use it for causes that I found noble like taking care of my family and taking care of my community and participating in the world in ways that you can only do when you have access to resources. So I always kind of had my attention on that and yeah I fell in to entrepreneurship sort of because of that. Joe: So if people are reading in between the lines and the threads and lines here, we've got somebody that … you used the word hustle, you know I think the harder you work the luckier you get. You take from people who have it, in other words, you associate from … or with people that they can help you and you're in turn helping them it's never a one sided- Ezra: Totally. Joe: -you would think. And the noble cause is giving back. I have to ask though when you give the visual of 76 acres that you and your wife have bought, you're going to build a home and when … I just what state are we talking about? I keep hearing New York and Hawaii but I think you're up in New York. Ezra: Yeah so I live in upstate New York now, about two hours north of the city and I grew up in Hawaii and California. Moved to New York at 18 to play poker and just fell in love with the East Coast. I met my wife when I was 20 and this is kind of where our life is and where our community is and our friends are and just sort of I'm a big fan. I love it, it's a really really good place and yeah we got our problems, we got ticks and we've got the winter and like there are things you know. But it's like anywhere you go there's going to be stuff. Joe: Well you can have your events in the southern regions of the country so that you can get out of New York when it's 10 degrees and 18 inches of snow out there. Talk to me about that transition that you had from okay online poker or playing poker up in New York is not cutting it and you wanted to step into the e-commerce world, did you … was there a day, a moment, a person that you met that made a difference and you said okay this is the path I think I'm going to try it? Ezra: Totally. I think that entrepreneurs, in general, are chasing some form of freedom; financial freedom, location freedom, freedom of where they can spend their time and they're running away from pain in general. And then you kind of reach different levels of entrepreneurship that I'll talk about in a minute as I've gone through all the phases of like I started … my wife didn't like the idea of me being out all night sleeping all day under fluorescent lights with a bunch of degenerates just eating Butterfingers and just being like a New York City underground poker scene guy. I mean that is not an attractive package so she wasn't to excited about that so I took what I call a square job where it was one of my first ever jobs where I actually worked for someone else running this yoga studio in Manhattan. And this was at a time when Bikram Yoga was still in its heyday. It just kind of like we're talking 2007, I was running this studio. It was the biggest Bikram Yoga studio in Manhattan. I was the manager, the youngest manager. I was 21. I ran the whole thing and this was before everyone found out that Bikram was a creep and a rapist and the whole kind of Bikram thing fell apart. It was sort of as yoga was going main stream in society and that was a really fun gig being in service that … you know in the world service running a studio. But man I would be there 60 hours a week and I didn't like not having the … not being able to have choice in where my time was spent. And so that was the initial sort of pain point that pushed me towards man the poker gig was better than this because I had more flexibility of where I've got to put my attention. And I think that in life what you put your attention on grows and what you ignore gets smaller. You put your attention on your health it gets better, if you ignore your health it gets worse. If you put your attention on your relationship it gets better. If you ignore it, it gets worse like … just where you're directing your attention is everything. And I think that really as a human being the skillset you want to develop is the skillset of mastery which is simply the willingness to put your attention in one area consistently over time. Pick up the instrument for 30 minutes a day after a month you're better at it. It's a willingness to place attention and direct it consistently over time and I think that … so I kind of was playing poker for a living and I met a guy. Now, this guy was a really fascinating guy and he was a coach and a coach of coaches before coaching was mainstream. So now you know about relationship coaches, health coaches, life coaches, business coaches, coaching has really penetrated society as a mainstream concept. Back in '04, '05, '06 it really was not that big and this guy was an early life coach. He'd started the International Coaching Federation one of these things he started that was a life coaching sort of governing body. And the thing about coaching is there is no real governing body, any schmoe off the street can call themselves a coach and start charging. And that is both good and bad, right? You end up with access and to opportunity for people but also some people are you know schmucks and not so good at it or they're selling you stuff … you know they're not qualified. Anyways long story short this guy … we're talking '05, he was selling business opportunity information products, e-books, digitally delivered courses, DVD sets, and these were how to become a life coach, how to start a life coaching business, how to make your own money and have a practice as a life coach. And the way that he generated visibility for this offer was with the search engine optimization which was the traffic source of the day for internet businesses. You would rank on Google and you would buy query based traffic from Google Ad Words when someone typed in a search query like how to make money he would show up. And so I taught him how to play poker and he taught me search engine optimization. And that was like my first foray into … you know this guy worked from his laptop, he was making a bunch of money and I was like men his life and his production cycle is a much more effective production cycle than mine. If we're looking at like we both have the goal of generating wealth, the way he is doing it is far more appealing than the way I'm doing it sitting behind a desk selling people water and coconut water and being yelled at about how we don't have any towels. It was like your hustle is smarter man you got to teach me this. So I taught him how to play poker he taught me search engine optimization. I ended up taking over his business and running this life coaching information product business, learning about things like landing page optimization and conversion rate optimization, sales webinars, and product launches, and upsells, and just like traditional direct response internet marketing as it relates to the sale of information. And this was really where I cut my teeth as a marketer and I love that business. It was a lot of fun. And ultimately once I had developed the skill set of the ability to generate visibility for an offer which was not that hard back then, it was buying Ad Words and doing article marketing, link building, and SEO, I thought to myself man selling information is wonderful but it's got a couple of downsides which is you're reliant on a single influencer. You are only as … you only have as much value as the next month's cash, it's not … you can't sell the thing. It's not an asset, it's a cash flow business by its very nature because it's built around, in general, a particular persona and you can't ever sell that. And there's a number of reasons why I wanted a different model and I tried a whole bunch of them. You know I had a seven figure services agency. I currently run a multi seven figure software as a service business. I did coaching and consulting. I did development for people. I've done all kinds of models and e-commerce appeals to me as the number one model and has been my most successful model and the model that I've enjoyed most for a number of reasons and I'll go through those now. I don't even know if this is the answer to your question. I'm kind of rambling. Can I tell you about why I like e-commerce? Joe: Keep going, please I love this. Ezra: So if you look at the three main areas that result in a business's success … now I will determine a business at scale as a business that's doing between half a million and a million dollars a year and has at least three employees and consistent processes. I'm going to label that as “scale”, so being someone who has run probably 10 different business models, you know affiliate marketing … I've done everything in the last 15 years or so. At scale, e-commerce is my favorite for a number of reasons. When you look at what I believe to be the three things that you've got to have in place to scale a business there's … the first one is product. You need supply chain; you need the ability to produce this product at scale in a way that is not going to take over your life. So if you look at e-commerce, I literally sell tubs of goo. Okay this is not a tub of goo this is a stick of goo but basically, it's a plastic stick there's some goo in it. I mean and you can see here on the visual this is very very good goo, it's handmade goo. Joe: It's like fantastic all natural goo. Ezra: Yeah, it's really really good but it's like I got a tub and I got some goo and I got some labels right? At scale I buy more tubs, I mix more goo and I have more labels. Now let's look at product and supply chain at scale for software as a service which are also sold at scale. Software as a service I need front end engineers, back end engineers, QA's, I need to actually be creating new code and updating the product and integrations all the time. Like the product is morphing every single week; it's not the same product. It changes every week and then whatever I change breaks and then once I develop the product I have to document what I did for the people who are actually using it. And then I have to train and now we move into the second pillar; support. So you have a product you want to ask me something about that product? Joe: I want to point out that the products that you have in your hand also they get used up and reordered and auto shipped so it's a key differentiator between selling a water bottle [inaudible 00:18:06.6]- Ezra: Hey smart marketer all right. Joe: -versus a tub of goo. Ezra: [inaudible 00:18:12.7] is I mean obviously subscription based revenue things that are consumed is really really phenomenonal. If you look at information marketing the beauty of the product side of selling information is you create it once and then you don't have any more cost of goods. Every time I need to buy another one of these it cost me six bucks. When I create an informational course, I create it once and I can continue to sell it but the product goes bad after about six months to a year because it's outdated information. It's not self-help. I mean I sell very specific here's how you run Facebook ads that might need to be updated every six months. So it's very hard to keep that product up to date. Services, I struggled with the product side of setting boundaries. I had a multi seven figure consulting agency doing advertising for e-commerce businesses back in '09 and my problem was always around where does the service end? People would ask me for more. I would then do it like I just didn't have a … I wasn't good at boundaries and so I found that product very hard to fulfill on and as much as I had a very hard time. And this is maybe not other people's issues, I had boundary issues and it's therefore I failed as a services agency and I did well but like the model was not super profitable because I could not figure how to set boundaries. So as far as the product goes e-commerce has been the easiest one to scale without my direct involvement. And I'm looking for the ability to generate wealth and resource and have the most pleasurable model possible. And when you look at the most pleasurable models to run for me it's e-commerce. Let's talk about the support side because as your business scales you have to engage with and support your customers. And with software as a service, those support people need to be very high level. They need to understand the software, the highest level and be able to talk to customers about it. It's way more intense than support for e-commerce where it's like what's in the product, can I get a refund? You know I mean like the support is not anywhere near as high level for e-commerce. So if you look at I have a 1.5 million dollar a year in annual recurring revenue software as a service business that I launched about 24 months ago it will be about 2 million this year and 20 something but the point is that business at 2 million dollars a year has double the amount of employees that BOOM! does at 20 million dollars a year. Double the amount of employees at only 2 million a year because I need people for the product; i.e. front end, back end, engineers, QA people, project managers, I need more support people for the number of customers than I do for BOOM!. So support is something that you have to figure out and support on the agency's side if you're running an agency is very difficult because you got to get on the phone. You got to talk to people; you got to show them results, you're the punching bag when things don't go well. It's very difficult to be … do services well and on the support side it can be really tough. So support for e-commerce is easiest for me in my experience of every model that I've been involved in. And then the one thing that e-commerce requires is marketing. Every other model requires marketing as well, that's sort of the third pillar right? Product, supply chain, support, and marketing; I mean really this is like what we are doing at the end of the day. I mean there's other stuff but like everything kind of is an offshoot of one of those. So the marketing side which is storytelling, sales funnels, content, copywriting, social media, all this kind of stuff is what I excel at; that's my real specialty. It's one of the reasons why every model that I've engaged in I've done some kind of well at because I understand how to comment on a collective experience. And so this is my frame for it. I feel like every business that I have is serving a particular group of people who are having a collective experience and my goal as a marketer is to comment on that experience in a way that resonates with that particular group of people who's having that experience and then push them in the direction of my products ultimately. And so the example you know this product line is sold to women over 50 who are all having the experience of aging and everyone telling them that that is wrong. That's the group of people and that's the collective experience they're having and then I comment on that with my marketing. And so that for me is the same with every business. Every business requires the same kind of marketing; creating videos, amplifying them via advertising, creating sales funnels and technology stacks that push people through a 60 to 90 day sales cycle with retargeting, and then once they buy having content marketing and engagement to keep their attention and then up sells and cross sells after they've consumed with constant content post purchase all of that stuff. And so since that is what I excel at is the marketing side and then I'm looking for okay you know and some people struggle with that but that just happens to be my particular skillset. The model that I am most in love with and I think is the easiest to run at scale is physical product e-commerce because the supply chain is easy and the support is easy and marketing is the same level of difficulty as any other business at scale. Joe: That's a good point. You know I never thought of it. I was at a Mastermind a year and a half ago, someone got up on stage, talked about importing from China and she went into such detail about how important it is to determine the thickness of the corrugated box when you're importing from China. For when it's on that container ship, when it gets to UPS, when it gets to the fulfillment center and all of it … I got to tell you I practically fell asleep and said to myself I never ever want to own any physical products e-commerce business again. Ezra: Don't import from China. I don't. Joe: Don't import from China. I didn't. I had nutritional supplements and it's all US based. So I think it's the ideal business model if you're an e-commerce is something with a consumable product recurring revenue that is manufactured here in the United States. Ezra: I would agree and I would also argue that if you look at e-commerce you might as well go premium because there's buyers for every level of the market. Let's say you have supplements that cost $10 a bottle versus supplements that cost $90 a bottle. I'm always going to sell the $90 a bottle. The reason is it's about the same level of difficulty to generate the sale. And if you go premium you have much more margin that you can then reinvest back in to better product, better score, and better marketing. And so I fall more and more … and you look at the companies that are scaling, Purple Mattress like a lot of these companies have discovered all birds shoes for example by $90 … $5 a pair, it cost them like 10 bucks, they got $80 of margin to spend on growing the brand. So I really believe in premium, consumable … and it doesn't have to necessarily be consumable but line expansion, so if you are selling water bottles also have water bottle coolers and you know what I mean like [crosstalk 00:24:25.2] expand the line but- Joe: And an expansion of that line that is something that can be shipped on a continuity basis. Ezra: Yeah, ideally for sure. I mean listen I don't sell subscription. There's no subscription in my brand though 40% of my revenue comes from repeat customers. Joe: So why the choice not to sell subscription? Ezra: Well, you don't necessarily need to actually have someone on a credit card ding every month to have a high level of repeat business. All you have to have is really good marketing. And my particular demographic is afraid of subscription. And as much as they've experienced a whole bunch of people not letting them off subscription when they get on subscription … so I get all questions every day like is this subscription? Can I cancel my subscription? People don't want to feel obligated, they want to come back and buy when they want to buy. And my view point is that you can have … and my experience is that you can have a recurring business model without actually having people on subscription programs like I do with this product if your products are worth it. Joe: And the product in your hand and this is from experience, not everyone's going to go through that product in the same amount of time. And so that 30 day renewing charge to the credit card is going to be too quick for some, just right for others and too long for others. So you're an expert at reaching out to them and giving them what they need is hey it's time to reorder at click, reorder … that's your … instead of auto shipment you're reaching out to them with I would assume an automated email campaign or through a messenger or something like that. Ezra: Well, we do consistent ongoing content. So we're always sending out videos and articles and so we could generate a lot of revenue just from sending people back to our website. Joe: You mean you're helping customers? Ezra: Yeah, we're adding value to their lives by commenting on the conversations that they're already having. Joe: So to the newbies out there listen to that, adding value to their lives by helping them with the information that they have and making their lives better. That's ideal marketing right there. Ezra: And every six weeks we run a sale event. And I would say about 70% of our revenue from repeats comes from those sale events every six weeks with those sale events and 30% comes from just the random content emails. Those sale events work a lot better when the audience is engaged in ongoing content. So then when we do ask them to buy something, they've been hearing from us, they've been engaged with our content, they've seen our videos on Facebook and their feeds that are just interesting fun videos that are about beauty and help and stuff like that. And then they see this oh they're having a sale, I like these people, I know these people, I engage with their content every now and again. So the ongoing content strategy actually acts as a supporter of our ongoing sales. And when you do the sales every six weeks without the ongoing content they don't work anywhere near as well. Joe: You know it's almost like you just said how do I help more people not how do I sell more product. Ezra: I want to do both but yes. Joe: By doing the first you're doing the second. So it's more of a mature, seasoned approach to growing a brand where you're helping more people and generating more revenue. That's the end result and I'm saying this in a way that sometimes I see businesses from all shapes and sizes, we're doing four to five valuations a week and there's a team of eight of us here at Quiet Light and so we see a lot of different variations of businesses. And the toughest ones to sell are those that are just trying to make a quick buck. They've built a little … slapped their brand on it and they're to get it out there and they're going to get eaten up alive by guys like you in time. They can make a little dent but it's not going to last. What you're doing is something that I think is going to last and eventually will build a much bigger value and someday have a lifetime … if you ever choose to a lifetime event sale where you can say okay I'm done. I don't really ever need to work again but it sounds like you're full of passion, you'd probably be working for a long time. Ezra: Yeah, I feel like if you like what you're doing and you're enjoying it and you have a nice balance … because the problem that most entrepreneurs experience at some point and I can recognize this from across the room at an event and everyone goes through it at some point in the entrepreneurial journey or at least my experience has been like everyone I've talked to and I've talked to thousands of entrepreneurs that have gotten to this place at some point which is burn out. Joe: Yeah. Ezra: They're overwhelmed, overstimulated, they've taken on too much responsibility, and they feel at the mercy shackled to their production cycle … shackled to their business operation. And you know my big transformation in the last two years has been going from driver to navigator. So you know I spent my career driving on the road, taking turns, doing everything and as I've scaled I've seen that really like my most valuable skillset is that of the person who navigates the ship. If you're on the road making the turn you can't see the mountains in the distance. And so at some point you have to make the transition or at least part time the transition to a person who is setting strategy, who is reviewing what's going on, who's going out and meeting new people and bringing in deal flow, who's actually like holding the container and the vision for the operation. And then reviewing what the team is doing and delegating responsibility and giving autonomy and freedom to the people around you to step up in the roles like lead copywriter or lead advertiser or lead project manager or you know all the stuff that you might be doing yourself. And I think that when you are able to do that it affords you the ability to relax a little bit and kind of have a little bit more space for your business. The other thing I will say that people don't do enough of is set real clear boundaries around their work life. Because as an entrepreneur, particularly as an internet entrepreneur your business is with you at all times. I've got my cellphone on my hand but if you … you know it's like your wallet, just always with you and so you don't end up with separation between your life and your business. And when you look at the people who are burned out you find that oh they've been ignoring their bodies and their health. Oh, they've been ignoring their relationships and their intimacy and their connection and their social life and their hobbies. Oh, they've been ignoring like the home front. Like it's … the burnout stems from lack of balance between production cycle and other cycles. And work will fill the time that you give it, it really will. It will fill whatever time that you give it. So I don't actually put my attention on work until about 10 AM and I stop around 5:30 or 6, that's my time frame. I wake up, I move my body, I meditate, I hang out my wife, we have breakfast, we do our little morning thing. It's super fun. A couple of hours in the morning where I'm just partying and having fun and then I start out my work day and I'll work for a couple hours and then I'll have lunch. I'll put in a couple more hours and then I'll stop and that'll be it. And I'll enjoy my evening and my … I do that four solid days a week, sometimes five, and sometimes I don't work at all Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, sometimes I do and it's like you might think oh like my business is to crazy I can't actually do that. I promise you if you do not start working until 10 and you stop at 6 everything that important to get done you will get done. And that's so much working time that is your whole life man, 10 to 6, four days a week it's like you are asking too much of yourself if you're trying to put more of that in your production cycle. And then look I understand that sometimes you've got to run 14 hours a day for four weeks in a row because you're doing a product launch. It's like okay … cool but that … it's a marathon, not a sprint. [inaudible 00:31:25.8] explain this thing you're going to fail. And I can tell you that as someone who has gone through the stages of entrepreneurship from working off the couch with a full time job moonlighting the business to now running an eight figure set of brands with 70 members and a lifestyle that I really really enjoy. I've been there and you really … if you don't set the boundaries and don't set the container it will not exist and the work will permeate your entire existence and you will have no separation from it and you have no relaxation and no space. And a lot of times your best ideas come when you're not working. When you have space and you're enjoying yourself. It's like it is necessary to scale to set constraints around your work life. And people are unwilling to do this because they feel it will be a detriment to their success. But actually in my experience and the experience of everyone who has done this that I know it works the opposite. Joe: And a lot of folks that come from the corporate world when they're putting in 50, 60 hours a week traveling all over the world and they just want to get out of the rat race and they want to be an entrepreneur. And they buy an online e-commerce business and they feel like they need to put in 40, 50, 60 hours a week. And I said look the guy that you're buying it from has been working 15 hours a week, you've got some learning to do so just maybe cap it at 25. But don't work to the point where you're trying to fix things that are not broken, just learn. Go to events, go to Smart Marketer and things like that. You just don't have to work that much and you've worked so hard that it's time to take care of your own health and wellness as well. Ezra: And I think that totally and like hey go for it put in a full eight hour day or 10 hours a day multi work weeks as you're getting in to the game but like at least have the goal of setting some boundaries and containers around your work life because you will be a happier person. And like what is the point of all of this? Is the point just wealth creation because mine certainly is not. I would love to generate as much resource and I'm using resource as a lingo word to describe generating wealth so that I can then direct that resource towards causes that I find noble. Take care of my community where I grew up, take care of my family, provide a lifestyle for my wife that she's really excited about and our family, do other things that are … that have meaning to me like saving lands and all kinds of stuff. So not a lot of people have figured out how to generate resource, everyone is failing at this. Everyone thinks that success is the goal and they're running in the direction of success and most people are failing at it and most people are miserable. And it's like the goal … fun is a much less popular but more fulfilling goal than success. So if you can figure out how to have fun and enjoy yourself which means setting fucking boundaries around your work life and having hobbies and having a social life and taking care of your body you will have more success. You're guaranteed to be a winner if you're chasing a good time and fun. You're not guaranteed to have fun if you chase success. So it's like what the hell is the point? What are you doing person? I want to grab you by the shoulders and smack you around and say listen, stop it. Focus on enjoying your life. And yes but obviously focus on the production cycle and the success. Joe: We're not talking about being poor and happy we're talking about a combination of both [inaudible 00:34:37.5] which are successful businesses with recurring revenue models and a very happy and healthy home life. I think it's amazing that you really generally don't start work until 10 unless you're out at an event to a sponsorship or something like that and then you're walking away. Do you actually put that device down and walk away; that phone that's in your hand? Ezra: Oh yeah. There's no phones in the bedroom dude. Turn off the computers, get off the digital medium. I mean you're shackled to it, man. You're on it all day every day, give yourself a freaking break and all of a sudden you feel better and life is better. And you hop on in the morning and you respond to the emails and the slacks and then you start creating. I kind of use my morning time for my creation, strategy, content you know I create a lot in the mornings and then like throughout the rest of the day I'll be … I'm at a place in my business now where I have a lot of reviewing and talking to people about what's going on. And my job is a lot of like sort of directing, hey okay yeah this is good let's move it over here. I'm doing a lot of like kind of holding and sort of directing things and if you don't have the visual of my hands [inaudible 00:35:39.8] but … and that I find is so easy to do in the later parts of the day. And in the early parts of the day, I do my creation. Joe: Creation as in … you like, what does that mean you're? Ezra: Well creation as in like for me- Joe: Like creating content? What is it? Ezra: Yeah. Well for me it's like thinking about marketing campaigns, looking at strategy, thinking about what we should be doing, thinking … anything that involves thinking of new stuff or doing new stuff or like you know I do a lot of … for my SaaS business and my information marketing business I do a lot of content creation and blog videos and webinars and sales videos and writing scripts. And I do a lot of creating things and also creating strategies. And I find that that is easiest for me in the early parts of the day and then in the later parts of the day reviewing stuff that other people did, talking to them about it, directing things just a little bit. I know it doesn't require as much focus. I mean it's still focused but it's not like I don't have to be fully locked in I could kind of be doing other stuff and you know. Joe: I got you. Hey, you mentioned the word meditation I want to jump right in to that if you don't mind. Just are you up and meditating every day? Did you read a number of books? You've been doing it for a lifetime; I would imagine based upon the way you grew up. Ezra: Yeah I mean you know this hippie commune that I grew up on was not what you think of. It wasn't like crunchy granola, everyone meditated and you know we didn't have animals. It's very different than what you think. It wasn't one of these places where you had to subscribe to some ideology to be a part of it. A lot of these intentional communities in order to get in them you have to be a … you have to hold a certain set of viewpoints. I describe the difference between an intentional community and a cult in these ways because a lot of people are like oh you grew up in a cult like the group of … any time you get a group of people living somewhere with different viewpoints people call it a cult right? So let's just let me give you my description for this, from my perspective a cult is something that is easy to join and hard to leave. An intentional community is something that is very hard to join and very easy to leave. It's like hard to get in to the party and then if you want to go at any time you could get out of here. That's sort of the difference between those two models. And particularly in the place I grew up it wasn't like built around a hey you must believe these things to live here. It was like a bunch of hippies who sort of wanted to step away from traditional mainstream society and focus on how to live pleasurably in a group and do cool things like run charities. And yeah I mean there was definitely some alternative viewpoints and they definitely teach courses on things like communication and relationships and all kinds of stuff. It's a really really cool place but meditation was not like a part of my life as a kid. I was just like … I went to normal, I went to high school normal school. I was a normal kid. I just went home to a different place than most people and I didn't go home to the suburbs. So you know I kind of came across meditation through my wife. She was a yoga teacher when I met her. And she was all into this sort of Eastern philosophies and stuff. And we go through phases where we will be meditating 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night and then we won't do it for a couple months. We kind of like … I think that people think that they're failing if they don't stick to their routines. And it's like routines are meant to be broken. Part of the fun of having a routine is breaking it and coming back to it. It's like the goal is not to just do the same thing all the time. You notice if you work out and you do the same work out over and over your body gets used to it. So we go through phases where we'll do it a lot and we won't do it that much. I do find that when we are doing it I feel better. I feel clear and I like it. And you know when we restart we'll start with just like 10 minutes in the morning, and then maybe like 15 minutes, and then we're like 20 minutes, and I actually found this really cool meditation seats on Amazon. They're like a tiny little plank with a cushion on it and two short little legs and you kneel on them. And man they've been awesome because they keep you upright. But yeah I like meditation; I'm a fan of it. And I think that really it's less about the specific formula that you subscribe to and more about the intention to take time for yourself and take care of yourself. Have a bath in the evening, pay attention to what you're putting into your body, move your body. It's like … it's more about the intention of wellness rather than the particular formula that you are subscribing to for wellness has been my experience with it. Joe: Yeah. Ezra: Because … different strokes for different folks man. Different shit works for different people. Joe: Absolutely. We're running a little short on time but I can talk to you for another hour and a half but I want to talk quickly about the helping that you do in terms of the Smart Marketer. Because the people out there listening they've heard you mention a few different things. I first met you at the Smart Marketer conference in Austin last year, I was just at Blue Ribbon with you in Denver which is your Mastermind group and then I think you're going to Capitalism next week in Austin as well? Ezra: Brand Builders, are you coming? Joe: Brand Builders, yes we'll be there as well. Ezra: Hey, maybe we could actually talk to each other in person. Joe: I know, how about that? That'd be awesome wouldn't it? But you know with Smart Marketer Mark actually bought your Facebook program but you know I'm constantly talking to people about what they're doing within their e-commerce businesses and where to go what resources to look at. Can you just talk briefly in terms of what you do and what programs you have in there and what resources are available for those people that are listening that are e-commerce folks that want to grow their businesses but at the same time do it in a shorter day like yours is. Ezra: For sure let me introduce to you the concept of permaculture. Are you familiar with that concept? Permaculture, it's a farming term. Joe: No. Ezra: What it means generally … what kind of the high level meaning is to reuse all of your resources to their greatest benefit; so capture the rain water, water the garden, take the chicken shit use it for your compost. Reuse of resources. So I spend all of my time with my focus on innovation in the direction of e-commerce and I do a really good job at it. And then with Smart Marketer I document whatever is working and I share that with my community of business owners through my free blog and through educational courses where I have how we run Facebook ads or how we do conversion optimization on our website or how we run project management for our brand or how we run social media for our brand or whatever. I have all these different courses but what they are is they're a direct documentation of what's worked for me and my brands. I then take the money that I make from Smart Marketer and I reinvest back into the e-commerce businesses. And in my e-commerce businesses I'm also developing software. I'm developing things to make them function better. So anything that works really well I open source that and share it with my community of business owners in the form of software as a service. Any money that software as a service brand makes I dump back in to e-commerce. So all of these things sort of work together. The e-commerce is the heart that pumps the blood to the information which then takes revenue and puts it back into e-commerce which then lets me do developments which then I use for my software as a service brands so kind of all works together and Smart Marketer, in particular, is do and then document. And I only have two products, I have digitally delivered courses … digitally delivered educational courses in the forms of videos, PDF's, and handwritten notes on what they are that teach you the things that I have found to be most effective. Paid amplification, how to run Google traffic and Facebook traffic to your website, project management, how to run your e-commerce business with systems and processes at scale and hire people, social media, how to have ongoing content and engagement for people who bought from you in the past. I have all these different courses and they're on my website but I have digitally delivered educational courses and I have a Mastermind. A Mastermind is only for million dollars sellers basically. If you're doing 500 grand minimum most people are doing five million, 10 million, etcetera … then this group is for the high achievers; the people who have really made it. It's a more intimate intense program where it's like very high level 100 people all really kicking butt. So I have that Mastermind and I have the digitally delivered courses. And that's all Smart Marketer is. It's just my personal journey being documented and open sourced for business owners and thankfully for me, I think again timing was a big issue … a big thing here. I was the first you know. I was the kind of first e-commerce influencer and as much as I started a blog about my e-commerce journey before people were doing it really really and it got real popular early on. And I've kind of continued to put energy towards it because I love doing it and I feel really fortunate that people care about what I have to say. It was like really awesome that people want to hear this stuff because for me it's like you have to be a total nerd to be interested in this. It's like kind of dry content, it's not like … it's not dry but it's like if you're not into internet businesses you're not going to be interested in this blog. I mean yeah I talk about relationships and lifestyle and stuff like that too and that's fun but I think that like the real sort of core to base of subscribers are internet business owners and e-commerce business owners, and so that's that model. Joe: That's fantastic. I'm always impressed when you speak. I'm always impressed with your energy, your enthusiasm, and the fact you'd really really trying to help people more than anything else. And it comes back to you. It's not like you're doing it for free and whatnot. Then you're not trying to earn a living for you and your family and whatnot. Obviously, you are but you do it in a manner that is beneficial to others that comes back to you which I commend you for. Ezra: Serve the world unselfishly and profit; that's my motto in business. Joe: And you came on here not even knowing fully what we were going to talk about. It wasn't a pitched Smart Marketer or any of your services. Really it was to talk about work life balance which you laid out very very well. I loved your journey. I love your approach. I love your philosophy. And I'm really hoping that people go back and listen to this again and actually read the article that will be produced from it as well so that can really hone in on what you do and focus on it to, maybe get out to see you at some of these events that you put on and get to Smart Marketer and get better at what they do. Ezra: Thanks man, and I would totally share this. Let me know when it comes out I'll put it out. Joe: Absolutely. Thank you for that. We'll put it down and I'll put all the details on how to reach you and how to reach your courses and whatnot down on the show notes. And I will reach you when we get it wrapped up and ready for the world. Listen to it and watch it and thanks for your time, Ezra. I appreciate it. Ezra: Thanks man, talk to you later. Links: Smartmarketer.com Free Facebook Video Ad Training Full Course Selection Blue Ribbon Mastermind Ezra on Twitter Ezra on LinkedIn

On this podcast episode, I have my good friend Syed Balkhi in to discuss the necessary strategies to scale up your WordPress business. Syed Balkhi is a hugely successful and award-winning entrepreneur running several 8-figure online businesses. He is the founder of WPBeginners, List25, OptinMonster, EnviraGallery, and many others. He started his entrepreneurial journey at 9 with a small snack shop in his neighborhood and has since become one of the most notable online entrepreneurs.  What are you going to learn in this podcast? How Syed started WPBeginners. How to find a partner for your business. How to come up with new product ideas (real-life experiences). Should you purchase an existing company or build something from scratch? Should you stop working on your blog after launching your product? Important tips on managing and growing partnerships. And a lot of other great insights that you can only hear on this ShoutMeLoud podcast. Show Notes 1:22 – Syed remembers how he started WPBeginner as an answer to all the questions his existing clients had. 3:05 – Syed received 80,000 unique visitors from Digg when he first started blogging. 3.24 – Syed talks about launching his products like OptinMonster while running his blog. 4:42 – “Your blog is your media.” 5:49 – Benefits of running your affiliate program on an affiliate marketplace rather than having your own affiliate program. 7:17 – Syed’s ideas behind purchasing a company rather than starting one from scratch. 12:57 – What should be the exit strategy in a partnership firm? 13:24 – Syed’s message to all the bloggers who are starting out and who want to scale up fast. Key Takeaway Know your audience completely. Always solve a problem for your readers. Don’t just create a product because others are doing it. Links and Resources Mentioned OptinMonster WPForms MonsterInsights Envira Gallery WPBeginners.com Subscribe and Comment Love this podcast?  Follow The ShoutMeLoud Podcast on PodBean to stay updated!Rate us on iTunes and leave a review!Subscribe to us on iTunes to receive podcast updates in your email. Follow us on YouTube to stay up-to-date with the latest SML stuff! Do share this podcast with others as it will help them learn more about how to do online business right. Join me at: Website: www.shoutmeloud.comFacebook Facebook.com/ShoutMeLoudTwitter: Twitter.com/denharsh

Syed Balkhi is the Co-Founder of Opt-In Monster, WPBeginner, List25, WPForms and is the President of Awesome Motive, Inc. His philosophy is “People First” and he proudly wears a t-shirt stating this very fact during our Podcast. Syed recently sold a multi-million dollar business and made what many would deem an “odd choice”. He chose a buyer that required a 10% seller note over an all-cash buyer. Both offers were for full price. Why? He explains in detail what his buyer did during the initial conference call that swayed him to choose an offer with a seller note over all cash. Syed, at the age of 27 years old, seems to have the wisdom and experience of someone twice his age. He talks about how partnerships have helped in grow his businesses to heights he could never have gotten to on his own. And how critical hiring the right team and taking great care of them allows one to live more freely and grow their business beyond expectations. Syed's various software and plugins are installed in over 4,000,000 website worldwide. That's FOUR MILLION (just to be clear). He's building an empire the right way with good people, the right corporate structure (for an easy exit) and in an environment that astounds many. He does this with 100% remote employees and works from a home based office. Oh yeah, and he's a Gators fan. Episode Highlights: What the process of selling a multi-million dollar business is like. Why the right buyer is better than the all cash one. Why it is NOT always about the money. How to setup your portfolio of businesses for an easy exit. How to build a better empire with partnerships that last. Why using remote employees and a home office works for Syed. How to use influencers to launch a great product. Links: EnviraGallery.com Soliloquywp.com Optinmonster.com Wpbeginner.com List25.com

In this episode of PressThis, we interview mega WordPress personality Syed Balkhi about lessons he's learned buying and selling multi-million dollar plugin businesses. Syed gained notoriety in part due to WP Beginner, but since those "humble" beginnings, Syed has gone on to purchase and grow popular plugins like Monster Insights WP Forms, build and grow his own plugin Optin Monster, and sell popular plugins he owned which didn't align with the purpose of his business. In total, Syed's plugins are run on 4 millions sites! We'll be talking to Syed about what went right, what went wrong, and how he sees the role his products play in supporting his customers' businesses. If you own a plugin or are looking to create a plugin business, you can't miss this episode of PressThis. Listen now!

In this episode of PressThis, we interview mega WordPress personality Syed Balkhi about lessons he's learned buying and selling multi-million dollar plugin businesses. Syed gained notoriety in part due to WP Beginner, but since those "humble" beginnings, Syed has gone on to purchase and grow popular plugins like Monster Insights WP Forms, build and grow his own plugin Optin Monster, and sell popular plugins he owned which didn't align with the purpose of his business. In total, Syed's plugins are run on 4 millions sites! We'll be talking to Syed about what went right, what went wrong, and how he sees the role his products play in supporting his customers' businesses. If you own a plugin or are looking to create a plugin business, you can't miss this episode of PressThis. Listen now!

Syed Balkhi is one of the hardest working, smartest, and most successful entrepreneurs I have had the pleasure of speaking to. He was born in Pakistan and immigrated to the United States at the age of 12. Without a social life due to his lack of English skills, he turned to the Internet and entrepreneurship. Today, at 25 years old, Syed Balkhi is an award-winning entrepreneur and has been recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30. He is the owner of several 7-figure online businesses, and over 400 million people visit his websites annually. Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the world’s largest free WordPress resource site, and the co-founder of List25, OptinMonster, SoliloquyWP, ThemeLab, Envira Gallery, and WPForms. Now, let’s hack… Syed Balkhi In this 36-minute episode Syed Balkhi and I discuss: Creating written checklists and processes in order to be a better delegator How Syed recognized the need for a beginner-friendly WordPress resource site and transitioned from service-based to product-based business Finding the right partner, setting up equity, and not being greedy in the process Using customer feedback to help guide important changes in your business The Show Notes AwesomeMotive.com SyedBalkhi.com WPbeginner.com OptinMonster.com Syed on Twitter Jon on Twitter Show Sponsor:Fiverr: Join the already millions of entrepreneurs who have built their business using Fiverr. Visit Fiverr.com/HTE and use the promo code HTE20 for 20% off your Fiverr purchase. Squarespace:  Ready to start your new business? Make it stand it out. Get started with Squarespace. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch, use the offer code HACK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Dig this episode? Wait until you hear these... Making a Positive Dent in the World | Jeremy Choi | WPUP Becoming a Software Entrepreneur | Hani Mourra | Simple Press Plugins Building Something Out of Nothing | Carrie Dils

This week, we dive in and discuss SEO-friendly tips that will make your WordPress site faster. And you don t have to take my word for it. Today s episode is based on a blog post over at Copyblogger by Loren Baker, the founder of Search Engine Journal. Listen to Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes Important links from this episode: Try StudioPress Sites Sites Weekly Newsletter Subscribe to Sites on Apple Podcasts @JerodMorris on Twitter 6 SEO Friendly Tips to Improve Site Speed on WordPress Blogs The Transcript Jerod Morris: Welcome to Sites, a podcast by the teams at StudioPress and Copyblogger. In this show, we deliver time-tested insight on the four pillars of a successful WordPress website: content, design, technology, and strategy. We want to help you get a little bit closer to reaching your online goals, one episode at a time. I m your host Jerod Morris. Sites is brought to you by StudioPress Sites — the complete hosted solution that makes WordPress fast, secure, and easy without sacrificing power or flexibility. For example, you can upload your own WordPress theme, or, you can use one of the 20 beautiful StudioPress themes that are included and just one click away. Explore all the amazing things you can do with a StudioPress Site, and you ll understand why this is way more than traditional WordPress hosting. No matter how you ll be using your site, we have a plan to fit your needs — and your budget. To learn more, visit studiopress.com/sites. That s studiopress.com/sites. Welcome back for another episode of Sites, and another week of adding a strategy to your toolbox that will help you create a powerful and successful WordPress website. Last week we discussed content — specifically, the persuasive power of analogy, and I challenged you to make your best attempt at working an analogy somewhere into your website or email copy. I hope that went well. This week, we re going to roll design, technology, and strategy all into one by discussing some proven tips that will help you improve the speed of your WordPress website. As an important bonus, these tips are all SEO-friendly. And that s important. The last thing you want to do is make an enhancement in one area of your site that has negative side effects in another area. And it makes sense — we would expect most site speed improvements to help out with SEO, because better speed leads to a better user experience, and because of the increasing importance that site speed and performance have as indicators that search engines look at. So let s dive in and discuss these SEO-friendly tips that will make your WordPress site faster. And you don t have to take my word for it. Today s episode is based on a blog post over at Copyblogger by Loren Baker, the founder of Search Engine Journal and the Vice President of Foundation Digital, an SEO & digital marketing agency. Loren was one of the early pioneers in online SEO education, and he really knows his stuff. So make sure you earmark at least one of these tips for immediate implementation on your website. Hint, hint. Call to action. Okay, without further ado, here is my reading of Loren Baker s blog post 6 SEO Friendly Tips to Improve Site Speed on WordPress Blogs. —– In the world of SEO, user experience on websites has always been a factor, as has the time it takes for a site to load. However, with the use of mobile devices surpassing desktop use (in most consumer-facing industries) and the wide adoption of broadband, people expect sites to load instantly. Long gone are the days of waiting 10 seconds for a site to load. If a page takes more than a couple of seconds to load, users will instantly hit the back button and move on to the next result. Accordingly, Google officially started paying attention to site speed and declared its importance as a factor in rankings. In order to keep up with Google s site-ranking measures, WordPress blog users need to know exactly what they can do to improve their own site speed. Remember when Google rolled out AMP (accelerated mobile pages)? They now serve up publisher content in a simplified Google-hosted experience that renders superfast. I like AMP from a user perspective because I know that AMP content will load incredibly fast on my mobile device, but as a publisher: I d rather speed up my blog and attract traffic directly to my site than have users stay on Google. If you use StudioPress Sites or the Rainmaker Platform, your site will already load quickly. However, adding ad scripts, featured images, tracking codes, 301 redirects, etc. will slow down the loading of a site and increase demand on your server/hosting company. Here are six simple tips I recommend since we used them to dramatically speed up the Search Engine Journal (SEJ) load time it s at 1.8 seconds! 1. Use a content delivery network A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of servers that deliver web pages and other content according to the location of the user, the webpage origin, and its server. It can handle heavy traffic and speeds up the delivery of content to different users. For WordPress blogs looking to improve site speed, Cloudflare is a great tool to consider. Cloudflare offers a free content delivery network that speeds up the performance of your site and optimizes it for efficiency on any device. It also offers security services that help protect websites from crawlers, bots, and other attackers. 2. Compress your images Another effective way to reduce page-load time and increase site speed is by compressing your images. A CDN will help with this, but it doesn t take care of 100 percent of the job. There are several different plugins available that compress all the images on your website and even compress new images as you upload them as well. ShortPixel is a WordPress plugin that allows you to compress both new and old images on your blog. We use it on SEJ and various other sites, and absolutely love it. It allows you to quickly compress images in batches for greater convenience, reduces the time it takes to do backups, and ensures all your processed files are kept safe and secure. The best part about it is that your image quality stays the same, regardless of the size of the image. Other image-compression plugins also maintain the quality of your pictures and improve site speed. 3. Prevent ad scripts and pop-ups from slowing down the user experience Many web pages today contain some form of third-party script that either runs ads for revenue or uses pop-ups to promote conversion. You want to build your audience and get more customers of course, but balance is key here. Although it s difficult to completely get rid of them to improve your site speed, you can tame their performance impact while keeping them on your website to provide their intended benefits. The trick is to first identify the third-party scripts that run on your site, where they come from, and how they impact your blog. You can use different real-time monitoring tools that track and identify which scripts delay your site-loading time and affect your site metrics. One of my favorite tools to do this is Pingdom s Website Speed Test, because it breaks down each file and script, and tells you which takes the most time to load. The same rule applies for pop-up plugins that you add on to your site. Knowing which ones work best to improve conversions and bring in email signups allows you to gauge which plugins to keep and which ones to uninstall. One of the fastest pop-up plugins on the market is OptinMonster (a StudioPress partner). Its founder, Syed Balkhi, is a WordPress expert who stays on top of factors like site speed and overall user experience. So those are the first three SEO-friendly tips for improving the speed of your WordPress website: Use a content delivery network Compress your images Prevent ad scripts and pop-ups from slowing down the user experience Next, we ll discuss numbers 4-6. 4. Install a caching plugin Another effective way to reduce site-loading time is by installing caching plugins onto your WordPress blog. Caching plugins work by creating a static version of your WordPress blog and delivering it to your site users and visitors, which conveniently cuts your page-loading time in half. Several cache plugins work best for WordPress, such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. These plugins are easy to install and can be disabled anytime. They allow you to select certain pages on your blog (or all of them) to cache, and offer many other content compression settings that you can turn on or off. WordPress supports many other plugins that allow you to optimize your blog to get rid of any latency in page-load time. It is important to test out these plugins to find the one that works best for you. 5. Disable plugins you don t use Tons of WordPress plugins can also make your site super slow, especially ones you don t need. It is important to review the plugins you have installed in the past and disable those that offer no significant value. Many WordPress users install different plugins when they first create their blogs to enhance how they look, but realize over time that great-looking blogs don t always attract traffic, especially if your page-loading time is slow. Also, I would highly recommend making sure your plugins are updated. This may help improve page-load speed, but more importantly, it makes your site more secure. We discussed this topic in more depth back in episode 15 of Sites. 6. Add one more layer of media optimization One thing we realized at SEJ when speeding up the site was that even after optimizing images, ad scripts, and caching, there were still multiple forms of media that slowed down load time. The internal fixes we implemented did not help with third-party media load times, such as embedded Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram content, or infographics from other sites. One solution we found to assist with that is BJ Lazy Load. Essentially, this lazy-load plugin renders all written content first, then as the user scrolls down the page, images and other forms of media load. This way, the user doesn t have to wait for tons of media to load before reading the main content. What I really like about BJ Lazy Load is that in addition to images, it also lazy loads all embeds, iFrames, and YouTube videos. For a WordPress blog that uses a lot of embeds, it was ideal for us. Bonus tip: ask your web host for help If you run a WordPress blog or WordPress-powered site, then you should work with a hosting company that specializes in WordPress, such as WP Engine, Presslabs, or StudioPress Sites. I ve worked with all three, and one thing I can absolutely tell you is that if you contact them and ask how your site can be sped up, they will help you because the faster your site is, the less the load is on their servers. As more and more people turn to mobile devices to access the internet, it is essential to optimize your blogs for mobile use and find ways to minimize page-loading time. Remember, bounce rates increase when your page-load time is slow, which impacts whether or not your content gets read or skipped for other sites that load pages faster. Okay, one more time, here are Loren Baker s six SEO-friendly steps to a better performing WordPress website: Use a content delivery network Compress your images Prevent ad scripts and pop-ups from slowing down the user experience Install a caching plugin Disable plugins you don t use Add one more layer of media optimization Bonus tip: ask your web host for help Now, stick around for this week s hyper-specific call to action. Call to action Simple CTA this week: pick one of the six, actually seven, tips and just do it. Maybe you sign up with a content delivery network. Maybe you add a plugin to compress your images. Perhaps you just email your host and ask them for tips on how to optimize your site. But take a step toward a faster site. The benefits really are endless, because, as Loren said, a faster site leads to a better user experience, which leads to fewer bounces and longer time on site, which leads to better search rankings, which leads to more visitors who are having a good experience and on and on. This is like a gift to your audience that keeps on giving — which makes it like a gift to yourself too. Okay, that s it for this week. Stay tuned for our next episode. I ll have a special guest with a special announcement about the future of the Sites podcast. In the meantime … Subscribe to Sites Weekly If you haven t yet, please take this opportunity to activate your free subscription to our curated weekly email newsletter, Sites Weekly. Each week, I find four links about content, design, technology, and strategy that you don t want to miss, and then I send them out via email on Wednesday afternoon. Reading this newsletter will help you make your website more powerful and successful. Go to studiopress.com/news and sign up in one step right there at the top of the page. That s studiopress.com/news. Rate and Review Sites on Apple Podcasts And finally, if you enjoy the Sites podcast, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts (formerly known as iTunes), and consider giving us a rating or a review over there as well. One quick tip on that: to make the best use of your review, let me know something in particular you like about the show. That feedback is really important. To find us in Apple Podcasts, search for StudioPress Sites and look for the striking purple logo that was designed by Rafal Tomal. Or you can also go to the URL sites.fm/apple and it will redirect you to our Apple Podcasts page. And with that, we come to the close of another episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Sites. I appreciate you being here. Join me next time, and let s keep building powerful, successful WordPress websites together. This episode of sites was brought to you by StudioPress Sites, which was awarded Fastest WordPress Hosting of 2017 in an independent speed test . If you want to make WordPress fast, secure, and easy — and, I mean, why wouldn t you — visit studiopress.com/sites today and see which plan fits your needs. That s studiopress.com/sites.

Some business owners relish the spotlight. They’re prominent figureheads on their website or immortalized in the brand itself. Syed Balkhi plays it low-key. The fact of the matter is, he’s been pulling strings from behind-the-scenes as an entrepreneur since age 12. From a comfortable distance between himself and the consumer, he’s able to crush it — as he puts it — from the systems side of OptinMonster. On this episode of MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR, Landon traces the signposts of becoming a CEO under 30 as Syed shares the digital growth hacks that’ll carry your business to six figures and beyond.

Jeff sits down with Syed Balkhi from WPBeginner.com to discuss how WordPress can be used as a communication tool for teachers and parents, as well as how it can be used as a powerful digital portfolio tool. About WPBeginnerWPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site for Beginners. WPBeginner was founded in July 2009 by Syed Balkhi. The main goal of this site is to provide quality tips, tricks, hacks, and other WordPress resources that allows WordPress beginners to improve their site(s). Links of Interesthttp://www.wpbeginner.com (http://www.wpbeginner.com) http://youtube.com/wpbeginner (WPBeginner Youtube) http://www.twitter.com/wpbeginner (@WPBeginner) http://www.twitter.com/syedbalkhi (@syedbalkhi) About our GuestSyed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner. He is known for his aggressive marketing skills, creative designs, and expertise in SEO. Syed has been in the industry for over eight years, and he has worked with some of the top brands in the industry. He is known as “the WordPress Ninja” among our clients because he is a total WordPress Geek. He used to blog at http://www.balkhis.com (Balkhis.com). Check it out, and follow him on http://twitter.com/syedbalkhi (twitter). Recorded in 2015

Special guest Syed Balkhi, Co-Founder of OptinMonster, joins the experts to discuss how to generate more website sales. Listen to learn six growth hacks you can deploy at the bottom of your sales funnel to increase your conversions and, thus, your profit, so you can outspend your competitors and dominate your market. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: The biggest mistake you can make when trying to generate customers online (« and how you can avoid this). The strategy you can use to reduce cart abandonment, overcome a customer’s objections, and generate subscribers and customers («Hint: You do this by removing one option and replacing it with another). How to use the “Magic Recovery Email” campaign to recover 55% of lost revenue. LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Retain Churn Buster CartHook Jilt Press and hold link to visit the page Show Page Notes Thanks so much for joining us this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave us a review on iTunes!

Link Building Tip - Generate Hundreds of Links for Your Blog in 5 Minutes a Day In today’s lesson, you are going to learn a simple technique that has generated 100 new links for my blogs in the last month. This technique is fairly simple, and it only takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to do it. Yet, this technique is quite powerful. Incoming links to your blog are important because they drive traffic to your site from other parts of the web, and they also help you to rank higher in search engines like Google. Higher rankings also lead to more traffic. So, if you want more traffic and a bigger profile in the search engines this episode is for you. Further Resources on How to Generate Hundreds of Links for Your Blog in 5 Minutes a Day The Simple Tip That Gained Us Over 200 Backlinks WPBeginner Find Readers for Your Blog Through Commenting and Relationships 5 Mistakes Bloggers Make with SEO and What To Do About Them Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to episode 159 of the ProBlogger podcast. I’m your host, Darren Rowse, the founder of problogger.com, a blog, podcast, event, job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help bloggers to grow their audience and make money from their blogs. If you want to know more about ProBlogger, you can check it out at problogger.com. In today’s lesson, you’re going to learn a simple technique that has generated 100 new links for my blogs in the last month. It only takes me about five to ten minutes a day to do it so it’s fairly simple and yet it’s quite powerful. Incoming links to your blog are important because they drive traffic to your site from other blogs, other parts of the web. They also help you to rank higher in search engines, Google in particular, which again leads to more traffic. If you want more traffic and a bigger profile in the search engines, this episode is for you. Let’s get into the tip for the day. Today’s tip is really quite simple. It’s not rocket science at all yet it’s incredibly effective as I mentioned in my introduction today. I first came across this one from our friends over at BuzzSumo. I’ll link to the blogpost because it is a few weeks old now, actually it’s probably a couple of months old now. They in turn got the idea from Syed Balkhi from WPBeginner. The tip is really simple and in essence it is to look for mentions of your blog or keywords that are relevant to your blog and articles on your blog on other people’s blogs and to reach out to those bloggers to see if there’s an opportunity for them to link to you. As I said, this is not rocket science but it really does work and I want to walk you through the little system that I’ve built, the workflow I guess that I’ve built to do it. This is something that I think many bloggers probably have done once or twice but what I want to suggest to you is that it’s useful to put aside five or ten minutes a day, longer if you’ve got it, to do this because it really is quite effective. I use a tool called BuzzSumo. I use the paid version but there’s a 14-day trial as well so you can see if it suits you. There are other tools around that do similar types of things. For example over at Mars, they also have a tool as well. I think there is this called Link Opportunities. It doesn’t really matter what tool you use, but I use BuzzSumo so that’s what I will refer to in this episode. I’ve got no affiliation with them whatsoever, it’s just a tool I like and it is a tool that has other features as well. What I do with BuzzSumo, they have a little monitoring tab and in that monitoring tab I plug in a few things. I’m monitoring a few different words. Firstly, I’m monitoring my brand names, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. And then I’m also plugging in some keywords that are relevant to my niche. As I’ve said before,

How does a high school kid who speaks no English immigrate to America, overcome racial tensions, graduate from college and go on to earn millions with WordPress (among other things)? That is just part of the amazing story of Syed Balkhi. I had the honor of meeting Syed two different times in 2015. He joins me on today's podcast to talk about his impressive entrepreneurial journey. Syed is a 25- year-old, award-winning entrepreneur with several 7-figure online businesses. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by the United Nations. Today, Syed is a partner in numerous companies, including WPBeginner, OptinMonster, ThemeLab, SoliloquyWP, Envira Gallery and WPForms.

In this episode I interview Syed Balkhi, founder of OptinMonster where he talks about generating quality Leads, Conversion Rate Optimisation, 'dirty' pop-ups and a whole lot more. A big focus of the interview is on OptinMonster, an all-in-one onsite lead generation tool - http://optinmonster.com/. OptinMonster started as a wordpress plugin years ago but now works on any website with just a few small steps. Syed is a true online entrepreneur and has been featured in Forbes, Wired, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc and countless other main stream media sites. Syed's story is also a very inspirational one. Syed arrived in the US as a 12 year old immigrant. Fast forward to today, Syed is the proud founder of a number of seven-figure online businesses - all at the age of 25. I also chat to Syed about his motivations and what drives him. Links: http://optinmonster.com/ http://awesomemotive.com/ (where you'll find links to some of Syed's projects) http://www.wpbeginner.com/ Syed's personal blog: https://syedbalkhi.com/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/optinmonster/ Like the episode? Let Syed know on the below links: Social Links: https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi https://twitter.com/optinmonster

Syed Balkhi is the creator of WPBeginner, the world's largest WordPress resource site, and in 2013 he launched his product OptinMonster. OptinMonster helps businesses grow their email list and has over six billion impressions per month. You can find Syed on Twitter @syedbalkhi.   EPISODE While using a pop-up or opt-in box can be a great way to grow your list, the majority don't convert very well. Syed Balkhi explains how to convert your website visitors into subscribers with irresistible offers and perfectly timed pop-ups. We Discuss: The mistakes you may be making, and how to fix them. How to create a content upgrade to see your subscriber rates skyrocket. How to get around ad blockers. The WordPress tips that will make your life easier.   For complete shownotes and more, please head over to www.marketingspeak.com/syed   LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED WPBeginner OptinMonster Syed Balkhi YouTube Channel The Optimized Geek The Pomodoro Technique Travis Ketchum on Marketing Speak 14-Point Blog Post Checklist to Use Before You Hit Publish Rev.com OnlineJobs.ph Stellar Life LeadPages David Vogelpohl on Marketing Speak Compact Archives Edit Flow Syed on Clarity.fm SyedBalkhi.com   STEP UP YOUR MARKETING GAME! 1) Use additional offers with your content upgrade to boost interest. For instance, an article on 73 types of blog posts that are proven to work could have a bonus of a download with 50 catchy headlines formulas. 2) Check Google Analytics for the 10 pages on your website that get the most visitors. Disregard the home and about page, and then create personalized pop-ups for the others. 3) Try OptinMonster to start converting your visitors into subscribers today-They have a no question asked money-back guarantee for 14 days.   THANK YOU FOR LISTENING! As always, thank you for tuning in. Please feel free to drop by the website to contact me or leave a comment. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it! -Stephan STAY CONNECTED 10 Point Facebook Ads Checklist - Free eBook | Twitter

Syed Balkhi is the Founder of WPBeginner, a WordPress resource site that helps beginners for FREE. He's also launched List25, that offers curated lists of information on a different subjects.  Syed also serves as a writer for The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur, where he has authored several articles.We discuss; We deep dive into his products WPBeginner.com, List25.com and Optin Monster. Which is meant to get you started and or see how easy it is to launch. The downside to being a serial entrepreneur Biggest lessons learned on his entrepreneurial journey Some of his business failures and what it's meant to move forward. Tools (outside of his) that he thinks are game changers and much more!.....

In this episode, I interview Syed Balkhi Creator of WPBeginner, List25 and OptinMonster. List 25 has videos with 120 million views. His work has been featured in NYTimes, Wired, Yahoo, Mashable, Business Insider and more. A fantastic story of a

Syed Balkhi is an award-winning 24-year-old entrepreneur with several 7-figure online businesses. He was recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by the United Nations. His businesses include WPBeginner, which is the largest free WordPress resource on the planet and OptinMonster a popular lead generation SaaS product that you see on so many sites around the web. Links, Resources & People Mentioned OptinMonster WPBeginner List25 Syed Balkhi Envato Tutsplus Infusionsoft Ontraport Matt Mickiewicz - @MattMickiewicz Syed Balkhi - @syedbalkhi Omer Khan - @omerkhan Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to the podcast Leave a rating and review Follow Omer on Twitter Need help with your SaaS? Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support. Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue. Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.

Syed Balkhi is an award-winning 24-year-old entrepreneur with several 7-figure online businesses. He was recognized as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by the United Nations. His businesses include WPBeginner, which is the largest free WordPress resource on the planet and OptinMonster a popular lead generation SaaS product that you see on so many sites around the web.Links, Resources & People MentionedOptinMonsterWPBeginnerList25Syed BalkhiEnvatoTutsplusInfusionsoftOntraportMatt Mickiewicz - @MattMickiewiczSyed Balkhi - @syedbalkhiOmer Khan - @omerkhanEnjoyed this episode?Subscribe to the podcastLeave a rating and reviewFollow Omer on TwitterNeed help with your SaaS?Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support.Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue.Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.

Syed is the Founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners, and List25, which is a popular site of curated lists of lesser-known intriguing information on a variety of subjects. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Business Insider, Mashable, and more. Below are two free resources to IGNITE your Entrepreneurial journey!FreePodcastCourse.com: A free 15-day course that will teach you how to create, grow, and monetize YOUR Podcast!TheWebinarCourse.com: A free 10-day course that will teach you how to create and present Webinars that convert!

It’s been some time, but I’ve been catching up on re-podcasting some of my conference and WordCamp presentations. This one was originally done at WordCamp Orlando in 2014. I want to thank Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner for last minute inspiration on adding a question to my presentation that is often asked in regards to making Related posts: Podcast Presentation: Making Money With WordPress

Syed is an entrepreneur who has been working online since the age of 12. He has a strong marketing background and is the mind behind WPBeginner.com, List25.com, and OptInMonster among others.

  In this episode of the WP Elevation podcast Thomas Griffin, the man behind Soliloquy Slider and Optin Monster shares with us how important networking is, whether you are a consultant selling website services or a WordPress product company. The success of his WordPress plugins has largely been due to the fact that some of his earliest customers were well-connected influencers like Jared Atchison, Bill Erickson and Syed Balkhi. It was his network that also got him consulting work in the early days for companies such as Wendy's and HBO. The post Episode #34 – Thomas Griffin appeared first on WP Elevation.

WordPress isn't just a blogging platform, it's a publishing platform.    And with the right plugins, you can multiply the reach and power of your WordPress website and blog.   However, many small businesses don't know which WordPress plugins are worthwhile and helpful. That's why we asked Syed Balkhi, web marketer and tech guru in this week's episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast.   http://www.themarketingagents.com/35

After a month of post production it's finally here! Wondering what the WordPress startup community is up to? Check out these 4 new startups and join in to hear the judges rate their pitch and business model. Listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Episode 1: WordPress Startup Challenge Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window [tabs] [tab title=”Why donate?”] [one_half][/one_half][one_half_last] [/one_half_last] What's this all about? If you didn't catch the original post, I've been working on a Shark Tank or a Demo Day like show for young WordPress startups. Along with coaching and consulting WordPress startups, I receive a lot of pitches for new ideas and business models. So why not create another piece of great Matt Report content? Enter the WordPress Startup Challenge! I invited 4 early stage WordPress startups to pitch to a panel of veteran WordPress entrepreneurs. In the pitch, they tell us what their product or service is all about, what pain points their solving and how they plan on growing. The judges provide their feedback about the pitch and pick their favorite at the end. The pilot episode (I feel) was amazing. It was great to have 4 contestants share their ideas and business plan along with the judges providing excellent actionable feedback. Everyone did an amazing job and I can't thank them enough for working through the pilot episode with me. That said, there's a lot of logistics and time spent to put together a show like this and it's why I'm opening it up for “donations” and sponsorship. Just 5 bucks (or name your price) If you're a fan of the show and you want to see it continue, that's all I'm asking for. What will that $5 score you? In the credits of the next episode Membership access to the uncut version of the pilot episode Access to the the contestants “biggest challenge” questions and the judges response Sponsorship Want to sponsor the next episode? Contribute $200 for… Same access as above a 140 character ad read in the episode Banner placement on the show page Questions? Contact me. [/tab] [tab title=”Episode 1 The Pilot”] The Judges: Bill Erickson (interview) Syed Balkhi (interview) Eric Hamm (interview) The Startups: Angie Meeker of YourCrimeSite.com Ben Sibley of SupportDash.com Dan Norris of WPCurve.com Jonathan Kay of WPStageCoach.com   [/tab] [/tabs] ★ Support this podcast ★

Syed is the Founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners, and List25, which is a popular site of curated lists of lesser-known intriguing information on a variety of subjects. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Business Insider, Mashable, and more.

I can't believe it took 51 episodes to get the guy who puts the hustle in being a WordPress entrepreneur. Meet Syed Balkhi the man behind WPBeginner.com, one of the world's largest free WordPress resources. How does he manage this publication, monetize and build a team around it? He's also spearheading a new SaaS app built on WordPress and managing two other web properties that he's managed to monetize and become profitable with. Tune in to find out the full story from a true WordPress entrepreneur! Interview with Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.com Listen to the audio version Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Episode 51: A true WordPress entrepreneur Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window The art of hustle Syed shares some great insights for those of us looking to land that next opportunity. “It's not rocket science, just go out and do it.” He once called Robert Scoble's phone to talk about his WordPress site. Shocked that Robert actually picked up the phone, but it worked! I've talked about not attending a WordCamp to find your next client and this rings true for Syed as well. Spend time where your clients are and not just networking for the sake of networking. Don't be afraid to approach folks and be approachable at the same time. The OptinMonster SaaS app & giveaway! When we recorded this, his SaaS app OptinMonster was right around the corner. We'll talk about the benefits of running a SaaS service on WordPress and what that means to the bottom line. The giveaway! Leave a comment below about how using OptinMonster could benefit your business and we'll chose a winner! What you will win: A free “Basic” version of OptinMonster good for your site, unlimited forms and 1-year of support. My very own Minimize Pro theme great for powering your blog or next WordPress project. Example: “If I had OptinMonster, I could capture leads for my __________ business!” So what are you waiting for? Comment below and enjoy the show! ★ Support this podcast ★

Yes, I jumped Jeff of WPTavern ahead of the line! The orignal WordPress media man has been all in the news lately. One fascinating thing about Jeff is, he never fancied himself an entrepreneur. Like many of us, he stumbled upon WordPress and started using it on his own. He fell in love with writing about tech and then that passion transitioned over to WordPress. Continue on to the show to learn more about his adventure from the ground level to now working for Matt Mullenweg! Interview with Jeff Chandler of WPTavern.com Watch on YouTube Matt Report - A WordPress podcast for digital business owners Episode 39: Accidental Entrepreneur Jeff Chandler of WPTavern.com Play Episode Pause Episode Mute/Unmute Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / Subscribe Share RSS Feed Share Link Embed Download file | Play in new window Is there money in WordPress news? Are you sick of hearing it yet? On my other show, Week in WordPress, I invited Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.com and Adam Warner of Foo Plugins to dive into this topic a bit more. #DramaPress perhaps — but listen to what Jeff has to say. It's not easy and starting 5+ years ago is certainly no easy feat. I really enjoyed learning about Jeff's journey and I hope you do too. See, he didn't set out with an end game in mind. Times got tough — real tough — but his perseverance pulled through in the end. What do you think of WordPress media? Here to stay, just getting geting started or ready to fizzle out? Discuss! ★ Support this podcast ★