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Opt-In Monster Owner Sells Multi-Million Dollar Business through QLB
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:
Transcript
Syed: We were growing … at a very, very good rate. But, at the end of the day, it wasn’t about the dollar value. It was about making sure that the customers are taking care of. We are building a product and focus on it, that we are proud of. Right? If we don’t pay any attention to it, for a year going down, I wouldn’t be proud of it. It wouldn’t look good on our image.
Speaker 2: Welcome to The Quiet Light Podcast with Joe Valley and Mark Daoust. Since 2007, Quiet Light Brokerage has been helping thousands of online entrepreneurs, realize their dream, of buying and selling online businesses. And now, we’re bringing all the knowledge our team has acquired straight to you. No matter your niche or industry, these lessons, tips, and strategies will help you build, grow, acquire, or sell your online businesses better. And now, here’s Joe and Mark.
Mark: Hey Joe. How are you?
Joe: Doing great, Mark. How about you?
Mark: Good, good. I’m excited about this interview, because it’s with Syed, from OptinMonster and WPBeginner and I’m assuming most of our listeners have heard of one or both of these sites, but he was recently a client of ours. Is that right?
Joe: He was, he was. We helped him exit one of his smaller businesses, in December. And the emphasis on smaller is kind of funny because it was still a multimillion-dollar site. But there’s a few things that Syed talks about in this interview that are really important. Number one is, how to choose your buyer. And the principles on which he chose, a non all-cash buyer, over an all-cash buyer here. He had multiple offers. Two are full price. He chose somebody that was making an offer with a seller note, versus an all-cash buyer. He talks about why, really, really important for buyers to listen, as well, because it’s something we talk about all the time. How to compete against cash buyers.
Mark: I think … We talk about this principle a lot. That it’s more than just the money that wins deals. There’s other terms to take into account. At the end of the day, your personality, and how much you care about the person that you’re working with, and whether or not you’re looking after their interests at all … Not that it has to be completely about them, but just being a decent human being, actually makes a big difference, if you’re looking to buy a business that can compete with a cash buyer.
Joe: Yeah. When I have conference calls I always tell the buyer, you want that call to end with the seller going, “Man! I really like Mark. I hope he’s the guy that buys my business.” That’s the ultimate goal, and some people take it to heart and do an amazing job with it. Nathan Sing, a former client of Quiet Light’s, and now the person that bought Syed’s business. And he’ll be on the podcast later in the month. He did exactly that. He connected on the things that were important to Syed. Not through trickery. They were actually really important to Nathan, as well. Plus, they both happened to go to the same school, in Florida. They’re both Gator fans. That might’ve helped a little bit, too.
Mark: That always helps a little bit, but I’ve talked … This is one of those things that you get to learn when you sit on this side of the transaction, the brokering side of the transaction. Because you get to have these conversations with sellers, and they share things with you that they’re not going to share with the buyer. I know in my experience, I’ve got off those first phone calls with buyers, after they received an offer and it looks like we’re doing a deal, and that seller will come to me and just say, “I feel so lucky that I’m working with this person.”
It’s not … the deal, they’re happy about the deal, obviously. But that personal connection really makes a big difference, both in getting you through due diligence, which can be an absolute grind sometimes, and you need that goodwill and that personal affinity between two people, but also in choosing … and, which offer is a seller actually going to choose? I think this is a really good example, a really good deal, to showcase toward this principle.
Joe: Yeah. There’s a lot that we cover in there. You and I always talk about it. Our role as brokers and advisors. The most important part is managing people’s expectations and emotions because it always gets emotional, so you do want to choose the right buyer. Syed talks a little bit about some of the other things, as well, and how important his partnerships have been. How to form the right type of partnership. Syed, through WPBeginner and OptinMonster and List25 … His WordPress programs are downloaded and used on four million sites, around the world. That’s four million.
He is 27 years old. We talked about it. He went to school for anthropology or something like that. He was … nothing to do with business. He did a little entrepreneur program in college and then it took off, but he’s very impressive. Lot of great information on this show.
Mark: Alright. Let’s stop talking because he’s way more successful. So let’s listen to him.
Joe: Absolutely.
Joe: Syed, welcome to The Quiet Light Podcast.
Syed: Thanks for having me, Joe.
Joe: It’s good to have you here, man. Good to see you, for a chance. We’ve talked so much. I’m actually physically seeing you. As I said earlier, you’re much younger than I thought you’d been.
Syed: Yeah, I’m only 27 right now. So it’s good that I still look young.
Joe: Incredible success, given your age, really, seriously.
Syed: Thanks.
Joe: So listen, one of the things that we don’t do here at Quiet Light is a formal introduction reading about all of the wonderful things about yourself. We want to hear it from you. The people listening want to hear it from you. So, can you just give us a little bit of background on yourself?
Syed: Yeah. Syed Balkhi here, guys. I’m the founder of WPBeginner, co-founder of OptinMonster … [inaudible 00:05:20] sites, all under the umbrella of Awesome Motive. That’s our umbrella company. Yeah, I have a publishing in software business. Our software powers four million websites. And we build grow tools, and we know our goal is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. That’s what we’re all about.
Joe: We connected because of a referral, but also because you recently wanted to sell one of the businesses that you have. We’ll talk about that in a minute, but a pattern that I’m seeing with you is that, on that business, you had a partner. I think on one of the other businesses we’ve talked about you had a partner. Do you find partnerships to work better than you on your own?
Syed: I’ve been very blessed to have really good partners … in my businesses. Yeah, it tends to work well because you have … I know I’m good at certain things, but I’m not good at everything. Having someone who stands besides you and had the right skill sets and the right kind of personality to help you grow a business, is very important. Say if I have a partner in OptinMoster, Thomas Griffin … He was also my partner in Envira Gallery, and sold … We did two business [inaudible 00:06:33] that we sold, that you guys represented.
I have a partner in WPForms with Jared Atchison, and a partner in MonsterInsights with Chris Christoff. I’ve been very lucky and most of the partners that I have, I’ve gotten to know them over the years before we actually formalized a creative partnership. There was friendship before a partnership happened.
Joe: Did you have the roles and duties of each partner clearly defined before you kicked off the partnership? [crosstalk 00:07:01] on the way.
Syed: It was very … if you’re looking at, “Hey, I’m the marketing business [inaudible 00:07:07” and then there’s always that technical. While I can … I know a little bit of technology stuff, but I’m not the coder these days. That part is very clearly defined, and obviously, the first partnership … It was not as clearly defined, but the latter ones, we knew exactly how everything would work and there were processes and things like that. As you get to learn, over the years.
Joe: Well, it’s good to hear. A lot of folks come to me to sell their business sort of quietly, in general, because the partnerships are failing. But I tell you what. One thing I always see with partnerships are clean financials, for the most part, because everybody’s real meticulous about it. It’s not that they write a lot of personal things off through their business.
And your business, Envira Gallery, Soliloquy … great, great condition … came through. You and I had first talked … I want to know if you recall that first conversation we had. I think you were going to a Gators game. Do you recall that?
Syed: Yeah. I was going to a Gator game against Texas A&M. Actually one of my partners, Jared in WPForms, flew down, as well, because he’s an Aggies fan. We had a great time. We had great seats, as well. We got to go down on the field and watch a quarter down by the sidelines. It was a great experience.
Joe: Awesome. Do you remember the jackass move that I made, when you told me … that you were a Gator fan? You remember what I said?
Syed: No, I try to tune those things out.
Joe: I think I said something, “So you went to … Florida state,” or something like that. And you got really quiet. [inaudible 00:08:39].
Syed: Yeah, I actually do recall it, now … that you said.
Joe: I do.
Syed: But most of the time I tune those things down, “Yeah, okay.” [inaudible 00:08:47].
Joe: In order … the rest of this interview, I’m going to wear … a Gators hat.
Syed: A Gator head? There you go. That looks good.
Joe: [inaudible 00:08:54] First time on my head. But I felt like an idiot because I said, “Oh, yeah, yeah,” and you’re like … oh, dead silence. I’m like … [inaudible 00:09:02] lost this guy. So, here it is. Gators head all the way. Let’s talk about Nathan and your relationship with a buyer of the business. This is a multimillion-dollar transaction, and you had multiple offers. I think we had three … in the first week. Two were, basically, full price. You chose one buyer over the other. Can you talk about the differences between the call itself, that you had with him, and how you chose one over the other and why?
Syed: Yeah, I wanted to … One of the things both Thomas and I wanted when we were selling the business was to make sure that it goes in the right hand, right? We built an amazing reputation in the WordPress ecosystem, and in general, with our customers and I didn’t want … I wanted to make sure that somebody … whoever we find, aligns with the same core values that we had. For me, and as well for Thomas, it wasn’t necessarily about monetary value because the business was very, very profitable and we could have taken a more … [inaudible 00:10:02] equity approach, if we really want … If we were all in for the money, we would like, “Hey, let’s just leave it as is, profit margins are great, let it slowly die and we would be …”
That would be the best return on money, if you were doing it from a very institutional perspective. But we didn’t want that. We wanted to make sure that the product, the customer base, and the team, if that was going to be part of the transaction, is very, very well taken care of. When I went into all the calls … the three calls that we did take, because there were other people that were interested, but we only chatted with the three people on the phone. I was really looking for folks who were product first, right? Customer first. Everything around that aspect. When I chatted with Nathan I felt that from the get-go.
Maybe I was a little biased because he was also a Gator alumni.
Joe: Maybe a little bit.
Syed: Maybe a little bit, but I think the more important part of it was some of the things that Nathan mentioned, right from the get-go. “Well, what are you interested in? Tell me about your background.” And he had a great background. He was like, “Yeah, but I [inaudible 00:11:14].” One of the things was like, “Yeah, I’ve been very focused on building … Everything I’ve done is very customer-centric. I want to make sure I have a customer-centric product, and a customer-centric company.” I was like … that’s it, right? That’s what … that was very, very important for me because that’s how we have created our company, with the people first … thing where we care for our employees and their customers. When he said that aspect in the conversation, how it went down, learning about what he’d done, that piece was the biggest factor.
Joe: One of the things that we always talk about … and I try to talk to buyers about it, pre-first conference call, is that more than anything else … Obviously they’ve got to learn a lot about the business. Right? The written client interview, as you know, is a lot of work. It’s very in-depth. But that first conference call, the objective is to get a better feel for the business owner … and the unspoken one is for them to get a feel for the buyer. I always tell them that the end of the call … we want them to say, “Gosh, I really like Syed. I hope he buys my business.” It sounds like you felt exactly that way about Nathan.
Syed: Right. I definitely felt that way about Nathan. I was, obviously, very objective in the sense that I wanted … every call that I had, I wanted to make sure that I give … I went in with an open mind and had … listen the whole thing out, and after having the three calls, I was like, which would be the person that I would really like to buy, and lead this software and this business? I was like, it’s this guy, and I really wish that we can work it out and … we did. You did a great job in making that happen.
Joe: It was easy with you and Nathan involved, for sure. One thing I want to point out here is that, buyers are always saying, “If the business is so good, why are they selling it?” I want people to really listen to what you have said, which is, for you, you’ve got other businesses that are [inaudible 00:13:22] Beginner, OptinMonster, that are … they make this one look very, very small. Right?
Syed: Right.
Joe: This is a multimillion-dollar deal but it’s tiny compared to your other businesses. It’s not, first and foremost, always about the money. In this situation, you were looking for a clean, smooth transaction with somebody that would take care of your customers and hopefully work really well with your team. Right? Because you cared about both your customers and your team, that would transfer with the business.
Syed: Absolutely. Yeah, because, like you said … going forward with … when we started looking at our five-year picture and one-year plan, kind of thing, and the three-year roadmap style thing that we were looking at, we were like, “Where does these two products fit in our long-term strategy [inaudible 00:14:09]?” And, it didn’t. I knew that if we don’t focus on it, going forward it wouldn’t … I would be doing a disservice to our customers and then … by de facto, going against our number one core value. I couldn’t do that.
That was our biggest motivation for that transaction. And yeah, how do I financially speaking … The business was very, very sound. Some of my PE friends were like, “Dude, why are you selling it? You’re not going to get this kind of cash on cash return on any other investment that you make.” Right? I know some of the peeve. Why don’t you just buy these kind of high profit margin businesses? Let it sit and slow the [inaudible 00:14:54]. Because it doesn’t matter. The cash on cash return is just that much, that good.
Joe: Right. For those not fully understanding it, what we often say, we try to lay everything out for the people like you that are looking at selling the business. In some cases, we say, “Look, your business is not trending down, obviously.” But a business that’s trending down slightly, or to the point where it is trending down, and the owner of it doesn’t have the skills or expertise or time or money or energy, to reverse those trends, it’s often better to just hold it … Take care of the customers but let it slowly dwindle down. You’re going to make more money that way than you are, actually, selling the business. Not your situation but … [crosstalk 00:15:37].
Easily do that math, but again, run against your core values.
Syed: Right and in our case, we were growing at a very, very good rate. But at the end of the day it wasn’t about the dollar value. It was about making sure that the customers are taken care of. We are building a product and focus on it, that we are proud of. Right? If we don’t pay any attention to it, for a year going down, I wouldn’t be proud of it. It wouldn’t look good on our image.
Joe: Now let’s talk about your buyer in the situation. I was actually at Rhodium Weekend in October out in Vegas, and I got the call from you … at, what was like, 7, 7:30 pacific time and you said, “Joe, I want to go with Nathan.” I don’t know, I said, “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” This is a multimillion-dollar deal. You’ve got a cash buyer making a full price all-cash offer and then you chose the person that was a Gator fan … alumni. Maybe that didn’t have much play, but you chose the person who really struck a chord with you in terms of customer-centric, taking care of your team and all that. You’re taking a 10% note on a multimillion-dollar deal.
Am I the only one that made you second guess that to make sure or did your wife or friends or business partner say, “Look, are you absolutely sure? Why not take all-cash?”
Syed: Yeah, I think … You are not the only one. My lawyer said the same thing. Because it’s always preferred. “Hey, can you have the cash upfront?” But I didn’t want to wake up a month from now or three months from now and have that regret … I want Envira and Soliloquy to be the company in three years down the road where I’ll be proud of and say, “Hey, look, that was one of our thing and we made a great decision in finding the right leader for that product.”
That’s not to discredit the other buyers that were in place. They were both excellent folks but I felt, personally, that Nathan aligned very well with our values and it was not about the money for us, right? I really believe in the business so it’s like, okay, we can carry the note. This is a solid product. If that makes sense. My primary goal was our customers are very, very well taken care of. Because in our space there had been precedent where people rushed and made the sale to the first person, or to the highest bidder and then they actually turned out to be a bad decision.
Joe: That’s right.
Syed: And then they’re like, “Oh, if I could go back and do it again, I would be more diligent in this.” So we were very intentional in this process, and when you told me, “Hey, are you sure?” There was no doubt in my mind, or in our mind, both Thomas and I, there was no doubt in our mind, that we were going to go with this deal.
Joe: Well, I think one of the key things there you said is rushing the letter of intent. We try to never rush the letter of intent. It’s a smart thing for all buyers and sellers to do, regardless of the situation. You want to pick the right buyer so that you get all the way through to closing. Things get emotional at one point or another regardless of who the buyer and seller is and you want to be in a good situation, where you like each other.
Syed: Absolutely.
Joe: Really critical. Tell me about your other businesses and how you’ve really gotten them to grow to the size they’re at with the partners or the relationships. You’re a marketing expert. You took something in Soliloquy and Envira Gallery and made it into something most people dream of and you’re selling it because it’s not really about the money. People are going, “Who the hell is this guy? I want to meet him.”
But you’ve got other businesses that have blown up. How did you make that happen?
Syed: We have OptinMonster … It’s a conversion opt-in [inaudible 00:19:36] platform, that helps you turn any abandoning visitor … or any kind of website visitor into subscriber and then shortly after, a customer. Launched that out of our own needs. I had a bunch of websites like WPBeginner.com, which is a WordPress tutorial site, and List25, entertainment site, and several other affiliate sites. I realized that, when you look at [relics 00:19:57], there’s a good percentage of people that are new visitors and a small percentage of people that are returning visitors. And why is that happening?
Because people leave and they never come back. What can I do to capture those people and doing my email list … because once they’re in my email list, they’re returning customers, or returning visitors. I built OptinMonster and at that point there was nothing like it. I would say, even now, there’s nothing that comes close to the power of OptinMonster.
That just blew up because of the sheer value proposition … in the tool. A lot of times, it’s not just about building the tools. It’s about knowing the why behind the tool. Why are you building it? Developers can build just fine. If you’re an excellent engineer you can build anything. But if you don’t know why you’re building it, if you don’t know who you’re building it for, you don’t understand the [youth 00:20:43] case.
It’s not just code, it’s actually making it strategic and very purposeful and making the product work the way you need it to work. That’s what gave us an advantage, and again, there’s tons of copycats that came out and went away. They fizzled out, or didn’t get to … get the brand name like we were able to do because of the product.
And yes, that’s one of our solutions and then we also bought an analytics software. Yoast Analytics, it used to be called. Now it’s called MonsterInsights. That’s the largest Google Analytics integration, in the world, I would say. About 1.9 million websites use it. Then I also created a forms plug-in. It’s a drag & drop form builder for a WordPress market, called WPForms that’s running on over 800,000 websites. We were really, really focused on the growth tools. If you noticed, conversion optimization, analytics, forms, all focused on growth … and going forward.
The new tools that’s in the new things that we wanted to do, were all growth-centric and we had these two products that Thomas, my business partner, had started before he met me, actually. There’s a story behind that, as well … When we first met, before he was ready to start Soliloquy, [inaudible 00:21:52]. These were two things that he had started prior to us joining, so that when we joined forces in OptinMonster, these products came into the umbrella. But they didn’t really fit. As we started growing and our team started growing, we had to clearly define our vision, where we’re going … What is our goal in the next five years, right? These didn’t fit in the thing, so we’re like, “Okay, this is a great photography suite, but we’re trying to build growth tools. We’re not trying to build a photography suite.” So we should find someone who is.
Joe: Right, and along came Nathan. On, let’s say, OptinMonster, you built that out of your own need. Like you said, there’s a lot of great developers. How did you take it from … “Now we’ve built this great tool and it works great for us”, to having it used by four million websites around the world?
Syed: Collectively, our software is used by four million websites. That includes MonsterInsights, WPForms, and OptinMonster. How did we take it and grew it? Well I happened to have a very good marketing platform in WPBeginner. It’s a free resource site that had amassed a massive following over the years. Over the years I built a pretty good brand around me and with public speaking. Made very good friends, in the marketing space. So when I did launch this, OptinMonster, I had a lot of the influencers.
People that are referred with influencers, were my friends. They had all started using OptinMonster, started promoting OptinMonster, through their audiences, and that combined with having a good product … that delivers result. Ended up just blowing up.
Joe: If someone has a great product, but not the influencer relationships, any advice for them on how they would get it started? How they would launch them?
Syed: Build an influencer relationship. Build influencer relationship. As a matter of fact, I created a … I partnered in a new software. It’s called OutreachPlus. It helps you do just that. It helps you with email outreach. It’s called OutreachPlus.com. And what that helps you do is, build those relationships with influencers so when you’re ready to launch, you have a list of influencers who are willing to support you.
Joe: That’s a good way to do it. That sounds great. Do you have any advice for anyone that is selling a business? You’ve been in a situation where you just sold a multimillion-dollar business. You did it very quickly, it was pretty seamless. By the way, for people listening, it was an SBA buyer. The person that bought the business. It wasn’t cash. Bought it with SBA, 90% came from him and the SBA, the rest, Syed’s carrying a note for.
So it’s definitely doable on these larger businesses, but, working up to it … Do you have any advice for anybody that’s getting prepared to sell their business, either in terms of details or mindset?
Syed: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that really, really helped us was our team finances. This part of thing, is so important. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, when you have multiple products, you tend to run every single thing through a single entity. Worst decision you could make. If you ever want to sell one of the products, your books are so messy. There’s no way to simplify.
One of the good, legal advice and financial advice that I got several years back, was to separate everything out. Right? Because you just don’t know when you’re going to sell one [inaudible 00:25:15]. That’s what we did. When we were ready to sell, we had all the documents that a buyer would need, in separate tax returns, separate financials, even we had separate merchant accounts. We didn’t really have to say, “Well, how are we going to move subscription?” They were from our single account. We’re like, “Hey, here’s the merchant account.” Right?
We just hand everything over like that, so it made the process so, so, so much easier. And I think, thinking about an exit, when you’re starting, is something most entrepreneurs don’t do. It’s a critical exercise to do. No business lasts forever. If you’ve gone into business.
Joe: Or the passion for it. Right?
Syed: Or the passion for it. Building something that, with the thought of an exit, is important, not like, “Hey, I’m building two exits.” But have a little thought about it. It’s very important. In terms of mindset, that’s a tricky thing. Because it’s your baby. It’s something that you’ve worked so hard on. That’s why it’s even more important in being intentional and just taking your time to make a decision about who the right buyer will be. Because you don’t want your baby to go in the hand of someone that you are not going to be happy about, two years down the road.
I say, it’s very important to have not just one interview with the buyer. Have multiple calls. Really dive deep about the personal stuff, because you want to sell to someone who you know will make you proud … in the next two years, three years.
Joe: Awesome. Getting deep and personal … It’s business transaction, but there’s always something personal in it. You already have these things in place and that is other businesses, other streams of income. But the third thing that I would add, to an entrepreneur that’s building a business … Like you said, clean, separate financials. Especially if you’re going to build multiple product lines or multiple companies … so that you can sell it as easily and cleanly as we were able to do with your business.
Second, that exit plan in mind. But, the third thing is, having a stream of income when it’s gone. You don’t want to live off of the proceeds of a business sell. Unless it’s a lifetime event sell and you never have to work again for the rest of your life. So having some sort of a plan in place, I think, would be the other, third thing that I would suggest. What do you think of that?
Syed: Absolutely, yeah. That was something that never really crossed our minds because this wasn’t our bread and butter. This was a great asset that was [inaudible 00:28:03] cash. That definitely helped. We didn’t have to worry about, “Oh, after we sell what are we going to do?” We were selling because we had a lot to do and we were neglecting this one piece of the business. I think that that plays an important role and if you were selling and you had nothing else going on, don’t go pull out all the cash. Don’t have a big party.
Joe: Yeah, keep the money tight and don’t ever get to the position where you have to go get a job, because once you’re an entrepreneur it’s incredibly hard to go back. I’ve never done it. It’s been 20 plus years for me and I don’t think I’ll ever go back. I can’t imagine you ever …
You probably … [inaudible 00:28:45] ever have a job from graduating from college to where you are today?
Syed: Nope, not a one. I have a job [inaudible 00:28:51]
Joe: I know. Tell me about the work environment, real quick. We got a couple of more minutes left, but the work environment for you is what? Do you work from a home office? Do you have a remote staff? Do you go to an office? What’s your situation?
Syed: Right, so we’re in my home office right now. Our entire team is remote, which is kind of not normal for a lot of people. Everybody’s remote, 70% is United States, 30% is overseas in a variety of countries. I’m not sure if my son’s … those screams is getting picked up on [crosstalk 00:29:24].
Joe: I can hear it. [crosstalk 00:29:25] You haven’t heard my dogs yet. My kids are in school, so …
Syed: I have a 15 month old. I’m in a home office. It works really well. I’ve never really worked out of an office, before. Although, I’m going to try this year. We’re getting moving into a building that I bought a few months ago, end of this week. It’ll be a new experience, new challenges, I’m sure.
Joe: You’re doing it because you feel grown-up and that’s what you think you should do, but you’ll go back to the home office. Trust me. I’ve done the same thing. Well, listen, Syed, I appreciate the process that we went through last Fall. I think you made a great decision in terms of building the business, picking your buyer, and setting it up so you had the choice between multiple buyers. And you were a pro the entire way through. I think anybody that’s listening to this podcast can be inspired by what you’ve talked about. Either building a business, or selling a business, and doing the right thing … by the costumers, and your employees, as well. Can you tell me … Stand up just for a moment. I want to see what it says on your shirt and I want to read it for those people that can’t see us, but I believe it says, “People first. Awesome …” I can’t see that part. Awesome.
Syed: Awesome Motive.
Joe: Awesome Motive. That’s the name of the business.
Syed: Right.
Joe: Listen, it’s been great. Thank you, so much, for your time. I look forward to chatting with you again, and let’s stay in touch. I will keep this Gator … at any and all times. Alright?
Syed: Awesome. Thank you, Joe.
Joe: Alright, thanks, man.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to another episode of The Quiet Light Podcast. For more resources from this episode, head over to quietlight.com. If you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating and review on iTunes. This helps share the messages from the show with more business owners like you.
