#155. Business Exit Strategies: Essential Tips for Successfully Leaving Your eCommerce Venture | Podcast

Vira: 0:40

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, and today I’m joined by a very special guest. Today we will be joined by the guest from Empire Flippers. We’ll talk about Empire Flippers in a bit. This is basically a leading online business brokerage company. So meet Reed, a proud Midwestern from southwestern Ontario— Ohio, sorry, not Ontario, Ohio, who has taken a digital nomad lifestyle to the new heights. And we’ll probably talk about it as well. But basically, you guys— Be ready to get inspired as Reed will share his tips or like his expertise with selling the business, selling e-commerce businesses and exiting businesses basically. Say hi, Reed. We’re super happy to have you here on our podcast today.

Reed: 1:33

Hey, hey, happy to be here. It’s quite the setup though. I hope everybody’s ready.

Vira: 1:39

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s a very interesting, It’s a very interesting topic. A lot of our listeners, they are e-commerce business owners, like majority of them, mostly like Shopify business owners, Shopify business sort of like stores. That’s what they have. And I’m sure it’s always interesting to people to learn about like business exit strategies, what it involves, like how to prepare for that thing, and is it for everyone at all? But before we go there, I have a list of very like informal this or that kind of questions just to get to know you better. So let’s do this. Okay. Some of them will be not topic related at all, but still.

Reed: 2:26

Perfect.

Vira: 2:27

Shopping online or shopping offline?

Reed: 2:30

I’m going to say clothes shopping, not online. Anything else online.

Vira: 2:36

Cool. Okay. Impulse buy or thoughtful purchase?

Reed: 2:39

I’m an impulse buyer. I wish I was a thoughtful purchaser, but I’m an impulse buyer.

Vira: 2:44

Same, same. Sorting by reviews or sorting by price?

Reed: 2:48

Reviews, always.

Vira: 2:50

Same. Okay. Email or SMS?

Reed: 2:52

For, in what context? Like in marketing or what do I prefer to receive?

Vira: 2:56

Yeah, let’s, let’s talk about marketing. Yeah, let’s do marketing. Marketing, email or SMS?

Reed: 3:00

I’m a bigger fan of SMS because I get so many marketing emails that I just filter through them. Um, but with an SMS, I’m actually gonna pay attention to it. So.

Vira: 3:09

Yeah, yeah. I’m kind of like a combination of both kind of girl. I, I believe in like marrying the 2 platforms together.

Reed: 3:15

Yeah.

Vira: 3:15

seen amazing results when you have both SMS and email.

Reed: 3:19

And email. Yeah, for sure.

Vira: 3:20

Okay. Socks with sandals, yay or nay?

Reed: 3:24

Oh, man. I mean, you mentioned the Midwestern bit. This is a staple of my people to have socks with sandals. In general, though, I’m a no. I’m a no on the socks with sandals.

Vira: 3:35

Okay. Ranch dressing or barbecue sauce?

Reed: 3:40

Now, see, That’s an impossible question because they serve such different purposes. I would say if you’re asking me, like, I only get to have one for the rest of my life, it’s going to be ranch.

Vira: 3:51

Yes.

Reed: 3:52

But I love a good barbecue sauce.

Vira: 3:54

Cool. Okay. Very Midwestern of you to pick ranch as the go-to thing. Okay, cool. And the last question, I’m really curious to hear your answer. I’m going to tell what my sort of answer is. at the end. But, uh, Reed, name 3 things that are in your personal Midwest starter pack.

Reed: 4:15

Oh, okay. So I feel like I should preface this with saying that the Midwest is a big region. So it, like, my Ohio Midwestern 3 things is probably going to be different. But I would say, well, to be inclusive, I’ll say you need some kind of, um, college football jersey, not necessarily professional football, but college football jersey of some type. Um, so you can go out to the games.

Vira: 4:38

Any jersey. Okay.

Reed: 4:39

Yeah. But specifically college football, I would say the Buckeyes because they’re the best team in college football, obviously. But, uh, you need some kind of, of jersey to wear for games. You need, I would say, lots of bug spray because the Midwest is a very humid region. And what else? Maybe I’m gonna say a This is a bit of a cop-out, but you need a car because so many activities in the Midwest are like, especially during the summer, you have to be in a car to get there. Or like going to the drive-in, which is my favorite summer activity. Like, it’s literally in your car.

Vira: 5:17

That’s like so random, right? You guys don’t go for a walk. Like, I have friends from the Midwest and they’re like casually, let’s go for a drive. I’m like, why? Let’s go for a walk. It’s like a very Midwestern thing, I guess.

Reed: 5:29

You go for a drive. So if I had a little bit more time, I could probably come up with a more interesting list, but I’m going with bug spray. I think that’s a good one.

Vira: 5:38

Well, my list would be, and again, I’m an outsider. I’m like from Ukraine, lived in Toronto for a bit, but my impression of Midwesterners would be flannel shirt of some sort, friendly wave. You guys wave a lot and you’re super friendly. And also casserole dish. For some reason, this is my association with Yeah. With where you’re from. So, hey, cool.

Reed: 6:00

Here’s the thing. That is the list. You got it. That is the correct list right there.

Vira: 6:04

Pretty much. Awesome. Okay, cool. Let’s talk some juicy e-commerce exit stuff then.

Reed: 6:11

Let’s do it.

Vira: 6:12

So, Reed, a lot of entrepreneurs, they basically don’t think about planning an exit. A lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs, they don’t think about planning an exit until some sort of significant change occurs in their life or some economic changes happen. happen. But I think that planning this, like your exit strategy, gives you like a lot of options when that time comes. So let’s start from the basics. Let’s start from, first of all, what is business exit? And like, is it for everyone in ecommerce?

Reed: 6:48

Yeah. So for the first question, kind of in the most simple terms, a business exit is when you’ve established a business, It is typically going to be a profitable business, and for some reason or another, you no longer want to operate the business. So you choose to sell it and make an exit. You get a cash out that’s based on a multiple, and we can dig into those factors. But again, in the simplest terms, it’s you selling your business for a sum of money. So the second question, is it for everyone? Of course, the answer is no. But it’s for more people than think about it. Like a lot of people, especially that interact with Empire Flippers for the first time, don’t even know that you can sell an online business. So a lot of what we do is just educating people on what that process looks like and the fact that you can actually, you know, make a lot of money for the hard work that you put into it.

Vira: 7:45

Interesting, interesting. But like, why do people sell their businesses, especially if it’s profitable? Isn’t it like killing the goose that lays golden eggs? I mean, this is like the stereotype that exists in the industry. Like, why sell if it’s working? You know what I mean?

Reed: 8:01

Yeah. So there’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all answer. There are people that I would say the most common reason is selling because they, they have some other project or some financial commitment that they want, they want to achieve, like buying a house, investing in another business or retiring.

Vira: 8:25

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 8:25

They, they want a large amount of cash right now instead of waiting and, and saving profits. And sometimes, you know, people are just tired when you’ve been running a business sometimes for 10 years. If you’re an entrepreneur, a lot of times you have that like excited spirit. You want to start something new, you want to get into a new project, and you can’t really do that if you, you’re spending all your time building Or growing the existing business.

Vira: 8:53

Yeah, I know.

Reed: 8:54

Yeah. So it totally makes sense. May have missed part of the question, but that’s, that’s the gist of it. Yeah.

Vira: 8:59

Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty much what we’ve done with my husband when we sold our first business. Uh, it’s basically, we were tired of doing the same thing and we just wanted to do something else and we needed like that big cash sum. Right. So we have like resources to invest in like our new adventure. And I mean, that, that business that we sold, it’s still performing really well. It’s still, I think the buyer is very happy with it. It’s just, we wanted like a new adventure, you know? So that was like our reason behind it anyways. But yeah, I mean, the selling business is like such a complex process, but like how often do buyers actually want to have some kind of like, I don’t know, like the performance-based pay, or is there an option maybe to have like some sort of like a payout structure? venture to build into the deal, or most of your transactions are mostly like cash only, all cash transactions? How does it work?

Reed: 10:03

Yeah, so this is a really interesting topic that’s kind of evolved pretty significantly over the course of the last 3 years. Because you, you, with an exit, or when you’re selling a business, you have 2 ways that it can go. It can be an outright or all outright cash transaction, which The basic way that you calculate, you know, the value is going to be your, most of the time, your profit or SDE times a given multiple. So a lot of times that’s paid out just in one fell swoop. But as most people can probably imagine, the larger the business, the less likely you’re going to get all of that money upfront. And like you mentioned, there’s going to be some kind of payout structure. Those structures are often split into 2 kind of categories. You have what could be called an earnout, which means that there’s some kind of performance linked to it. It’s either going to be like total revenue or total revenue growth in the subsequent years or fixed payments. Sometimes you have someone who wants to buy a business and for whatever reason, they don’t want to put up all the cash upfront, but it’s fixed installments regardless of the performance of the business. Those are less common, but those are kind of the two, the two structures you see. And to your, to answer your, your actual question, like what’s common or what’s happening, 3 years ago, you know, when COVID happened and there was this huge boom of online business, a lot more money was being spent upfront. So it wasn’t uncommon at all to see even$600,000 and$700,000 businesses sell with entirely cash upfront, no earnout.

Vira: 11:41

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 11:41

But the reality is that the market looks different now. So things are a little bit more stressed and we’re still seeing solid multiples. We’re still seeing businesses sell, but the buyers are taking a more risk-averse approach and tend now to spend less money upfront and structure more deals with the seller financing or some kind of earnout.

Vira: 12:05

I see. I see. From your experience, and this is a bit off topic, but like what businesses are the sexiest right now? What do you see people want to buy the most? What are buyers looking to buy in 2023?

Reed: 12:22

Yeah, so in this year, if you’re talking about business types, most of the businesses that we’ve sold have been shifting more towards content. So like heavy content-driven businesses are actually doing really well this year. But if you’re talking about like e-commerce and Amazon, which are still seeing good sales, Mm-hmm. It becomes much more like niche-specific because right now people want security. So if you have a business that’s selling products for babies, for instance, or gardening or the home niche, like you’re selling kitchen products, anything that people are going to use for an indefinite period of time, like it’s not really dependent on trends, those are the kinds of businesses that are selling for high multiples right now. So doesn’t mean there’s other kinds of businesses that aren’t selling, but that’s what people are looking for.

Vira: 13:19

That’s so interesting. Let’s talk a bit more about that whole like selling process. Under what circumstances does it make sense for business, especially let’s focus on like ecommerce businesses. Under what circumstances does it make sense for them to sell through brokerage like Empire Flippers, through platform like Empire Flippers versus doing it themselves?

Reed: 13:42

Yeah. So of course this is going to be a bit of a biased opinion, but my, my expert opinion on this is that in almost every case, working with a broker is going to be the best call because it’s very much like selling a house.

Vira: 13:58

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 13:58

You can sell your house on your own without a real estate agent, but the chances that you’re going to maximize your profit from that sale and you’re going to know how to negotiate every step of the process with inspections, and, you know, issues that arise and transferring of, of the entity, like it’s just low. So unless you are already an expert in the field and you really know how to negotiate a complex legal contract, it’s going to be better to work with a broker.

Vira: 14:31

Right.

Reed: 14:31

The only exception I would say to that is if your business is, you know, very small, for instance, like you have a very small e-commerce business. that’s maybe pre-revenue or, or very low profit, but you get a really high valuation from a direct buyer that wants to invest. In that case, maybe again, I would, I would not recommend doing it without some kind of advisor unless you’re an expert in the field. But pretty much in most cases, a broker should net you 20 to 25% more than you would make on your own. which should cover their fees and still make you more money.

Vira: 15:10

Yeah, I like that analogy with the house. Although me and my husband, we sold our house through Facebook Marketplace, so we are not a good audience. Seriously, we’ve done the entire open house, and my husband, he took these beautiful pictures because he loves photography. So everything. And he was in real estate development, so he was kind of from that world. But I feel like there’s There’s not a lot of resources on the internet about selling the business. It’s easier to sell the house compared to selling the business. It’s a very, very complex process. Honestly, I was very impressed with the structure that you guys provided when we were selling the business. But let’s talk about it in depth. Can you provide a quick overview of the process of selling an ecommerce business with a broker like you guys and what steps are involved? Yeah. pretend that I have this, I don’t know, like socks business. It’s selling like$500,000 or like a million bucks per month. That’s a big socks company. But yeah, let’s imagine I have, it does. I mean, I’m a big socks person. So I’m probably responsible for the portion of the revenue of my favorite brand. So yeah, yeah, let’s walk us through the process. Yeah.

Reed: 16:25

So I would say there’s a good amount and maybe this is another topic to talk about as well. There’s a good amount that happens before you actually sell and turn of preparation. But let’s say you’re prepared for the sale, you’re ready to go. Empire Flippers is a bit unique in that we are a full-service brokerage and marketplace. Sometimes when you get a broker, what they’re essentially doing is just connecting you with a buyer, making the introduction, letting it go. But with Empire Flippers, what we do is first you’ll have a vetting and onboarding, which is where we’re going to do a deep dive into all of your finances, When you sell a business, usually your books need to be an accrual versus cash basis. So that change needs to be made a lot of the time with ecommerce. We’ll do an in-depth dive on social media accounts, make sure that we truly understand the brand and the strength of what they’re doing.

Vira: 17:18

Interesting.

Reed: 17:19

Obviously, if it’s a million-dollar-a-month sock business, I would assume that they’ve got a pretty good brand identity. So that’s going to factor into it. And then at the end of that process, we come up with a valuation. And that’s, of course, our expert valuation based on experience, based on where the market is at. But it’s very much, again, to use the house analogy, like when your realtor suggests a price, we say, hey, this is what we think we can achieve. So if we agree on that, let’s go ahead and get you listed. Once you’re on the marketplace, you’ve gotten your valuation, we’ve agreed to it, your business is ready and prepped. Once you’re listed, at that point, you start interacting with buyers, you start the process of explaining, they have questions, maybe Maybe you wanna meet some of their team to, to see if it’s a good fit. And then assuming you find a buyer that’s a right fit to take over the business, most of the time, especially on a million-dollar-a-month business, you’re gonna have maybe 30 to 45 days of due diligence, of usually exclusive due diligence where they’re again checking the numbers, checking your, your costs and, and things of that nature. Once all that’s done and you’ve finalized the due diligence portion, if there’s any renegotiation that needs to happen, that’ll take place. But usually at that point, you’re concluded with the initial sale process. You have a signed contract and it’s time to transfer the business over to the new owners. They’ll put the money into escrow and our company actually handles that entire migration process as well. So the transfer of, you know, your Seller Central account or your Shopify account, whatever it may be, That transfer process takes place with us and our dedicated team to handle it. And then again, since we talked already a bit about earnouts and things like that, um, on this size of business, you would expect at least a portion of it is gonna be paid over time. So a good broker should help you manage that earnout process as well. They should be involved in every step. Um, and you shouldn’t pay them until you’re actually getting paid. But that’s the high level. Right.

Vira: 19:21

What about like smaller businesses? What about like smaller businesses, say I’m making, I don’t know, like$10,000 a month or like$5,000 a month in sales. Also like socks company,$5,000 or $10,000 per month. How do I know how much is my business worth? Like how is the value of business determined? And like what factors do you guys consider when you evaluate the business?

Reed: 19:45

So the main driving factors when it comes to the value of a business, regardless of size, are going to be the age of the business. Um, the trend, meaning is it growing? Yes. Age is actually really important.

Vira: 20:00

Interesting.

Reed: 20:01

Um, because for instance, if you have a business that is 1 year old and is doing$10,000 a month or$5,000 a month, that’s still a very different business than something that’s doing$5,000 to $10,000 a month, but is 5 years old. And what kind of factors in there is also the trend, because if you’re a 1-year-old business, you don’t have year-over-year numbers.

Vira: 20:25

Right.

Reed: 20:25

There’s no way to measure how it’s actually going to perform over time because you don’t, you don’t have the numbers to compare it to. Whereas if it’s a 5-year-old business and it’s been steadily growing over the course of that 5 years to the point where now it’s at that $5K to$10K per month, you’re going to command a higher price for a business that’s making the same amount of money because it’s a more secure asset or a more secure investment. Now, There’s a caveat with kind of a diminishing return where a business that, for instance, is 5 years old is not going to be worth way less than a business that’s 25 years old, because after a certain point, it just is a well-established business. But the trend of the business, the age, and the profitability are kind of the 3 main drivers. So again, if you’re, let’s say you’re making$10K a month with the sock business in revenue, but your profit’s only$1,000, that’s a very different business. than $10,000 in revenue with$3,000 in net profit.

Vira: 21:25

I see. I see.

Reed: 21:27

Yeah.

Vira: 21:27

So the formula that we kind of use is, I mean, the net profit times multiple equals valuation. And I think this is just like a generic sort of like formula for everyone, but that like multiple, it might be different for different businesses. Am I right? Like for different types of businesses, depending on like diversity of their traffic, their supply chain, the trends, maybe like the growth trends and stuff like that. So what would you say are the current like multiple averages for Shopify-based businesses, if that’s even a thing, like the multiple average?

Reed: 22:04

So I’d say for an e-commerce business right now, it really depends on the size. Smaller businesses tend to have slightly smaller multiples. Larger businesses tend to have larger multiples. But in terms of a monthly, I would expect that if you have like a tip-top perfect e-commerce business, you could expect to have a valuation that’s anywhere between like a high 30s and a mid-40s monthly multiple. So if you’re making $10K a month, maybe your business is worth between$375,000 to$450,000, somewhere kind of in that range.

Vira: 22:41

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 22:42

And then the way that translates, if people sometimes are more familiar with an annual multiple, that’s maybe between like a 3.2 and a 3.7 annual multiple on your net profit.

Vira: 22:54

Interesting. Interesting. Are there any, like, I don’t know, like strategies for improving the attractiveness of an ecommerce business for buyer? Say if I plan to exit in like a few years or like in a year or 2 years, what can I do now to make my business more attractive for future buyers?

Reed: 23:12

Yeah. So I would say you have to separate it into 2 groups based on timeline. So if you’re looking at selling in less than a year, then the advice that I would give is essentially to make the business as hands-off as possible.

Vira: 23:32

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 23:32

So if you have a team in place, make sure that they’re a strong team, delegate as much as you can, because doing things like changing your ad strategy or changing and adding new products, those kind of things take usually at least a year to really see meaningful changes.

Vira: 23:49

Yeah.

Reed: 23:51

Which is why in that year it’s more about just getting your business as clear as possible and as hands-off as possible. Whereas if you have more time, like let’s say you’re looking to exit in 2 or 3 years, I would say focus on growth, get your business to grow as much as possible.

Vira: 24:08

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 24:09

And lean into whatever your strengths are as an entrepreneur. So if you know that you’re great at advertising, maybe focus more heavily on advertising. And even if you’re spending more in the short term, if there’s business growth, that’s gonna be good 2 or 3 years down the line. But if you know nothing about advertising and everything about product development, For instance, or supply chain optimization. Lean into your strengths when you’re looking to make an exit. And if there’s faults in your business or places where you know that you’re not doing a great job, see if you can bring in outside help to make that happen, to again, just make the business as attractive as possible.

Vira: 24:50

Interesting.

Reed: 24:50

Yeah.

Vira: 24:51

Interesting. So basically, just like to sum up what you said, if you say plan to exit in like a year, focus on optimizing all of the processes to make it as clean as possible, like your books, your processes, maybe having some automations in place and stuff like that. But if you plan to exit in a few years, focus on growth, right? Focus on growth. So that’s sort of like a strategy that you guys recommend. Interesting. Interesting. You’ve been working with a ton of different businesses and I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of things that businesses are doing wrong or like What are some common mistakes you’re seeing? What are some common mistakes to avoid when preparing for the exit?

Reed: 26:30

So I know this, this answer is going to be a little bit broad, but in general, spending too much money, whether that is on advertising or agencies that don’t actually provide a net value to you. And then over or under purchasing on inventory is a big thing. Like if you have stockouts, that’s, that’s an issue for a lot of buyers. But to be honest, it’s more a case of like what people are doing wrong is kind of choosing like the wrong niche to begin with or choosing a product that’s too based on trends. Like obviously a business that’s selling face masks It was going gangbusters in 2020. Right now it’s not.

Vira: 27:13

Right.

Reed: 27:14

So I would say again, lean into your strengths when it comes to, to building a business. Like if you’re not a good bookkeeper, hire a bookkeeper, like get, get your finances specifically in order because that’s the, I guess maybe that’s a better answer. The number one place where people have issues is in their, in their finances and spending too much money.

Vira: 27:37

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 27:37

And not having really, really clear books. Because my, a lot of my initial conversations that I’ll have with sellers who are looking to make an exit, we talk about expectations. How much do you want to sell this business for? And if there’s a misalignment in expectations between what you think your business is worth and what it’s actually worth, it usually comes down to the seller thinking that they’re making more money than they’re actually netting.

Vira: 28:01

Than they actually. Yeah.

Reed: 28:04

Which is an easy problem to solve. Most of the time, but it’s not, it’s never a fun conversation to have.

Vira: 28:11

I mean, it’s, it’s the part that we spend most time on preparing for exiting the business, like cleaning up all of the books, like organizing our finances and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s definitely a thing worth investing in if, if you can do it yourself. Okay. So how soon in advance do people need to start preparing for the exit? Is there such thing as like too soon? Like, how much time on average do you think businesses need to prepare to be ready to be listed on Empire Flippers?

Reed: 28:46

So I think that everyone who’s an entrepreneur, if you have even a little bit of an idea that you may want to exit someday, it’s never too soon to start thinking about that. And not to say if you want to sell and like you’re starting a business on day 1 and, you know, you don’t want to sell until you’re 5 or 6 years in, that doesn’t mean that you’re actively preparing for that sale in 5 or 6 years in terms of adjusting your strategies for growth or anything of that nature. But it’s never too soon to start thinking about it because what a lot of people don’t realize is the average sales cycle for a business. Even like, I’ll just say like a mid-six-figure business with plus or minus for larger or smaller, you’re looking at at least 3 to 6 months from the day that you decide you’re ready to sell until you’re actually closing.

Vira: 29:40

Yeah. At least. That’s true.

Reed: 29:42

At least. So when you’re talking about how much time do you need to prepare, it depends on how prepared you already are. Like, again, one of the biggest pain points that we come up with when we’re doing the vetting is the conversion of people’s books. People use a cash basis, they have to change it to accrual. If you have a good bookkeeper, it’s not actually something that takes very much time. But if you do it on your own, it can be very, very time intensive. And the preparation process can take longer, in my opinion, than it needs to. But to give a more concise answer, I think if you decide today, like, hey, I think in the next year I want to sell, what I would do is get with a broker.

Vira: 30:24

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 30:25

To kind of develop a strategy, figure out what your goal is for a sales price so you can have realistic expectations set before you’re even on the marketplace. And then once you’re ready to go, go, like get the process started. Because again, it’s going to take time. And a lot of times people don’t realize, even if the average sale time of being on the market is, you know, 45 or 60 days, you’ve got—

Vira: 30:51

Mm-hmm.

Reed: 30:51

Time embedding, you’ve got time migrating the business, and then maybe even an earnout after that. So just giving yourself— sorry, I want to give you a more concise answer. But if you’re considering a sale, the amount of time that I think you need to prepare is dependent on you. But the easy answer is, or before you’re actually on a marketplace, maybe give yourself a couple months to get your books in order, get your business in order. And then obviously, if you have issues that you need to address, address those before you Before you go through the sale process.

Vira: 31:20

Right, right. And I might be wrong, but I think on your website, you guys have the evaluation tool or something where you can kind of evaluate how much your business is worth. So you at least know what to expect. And I think it’s always a good idea just to hop on a quick call, just to brainstorm some strategies for the exit. I mean, that’s what we’ve done and it worked well for us. So yeah.

Reed: 31:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Vira: 31:44

Gosh. Where can people learn more about what you guys do and say, if I want to sell my business, like, what would be my next step?

Reed: 31:54

Yeah. So if you’re ready to sell, I think, as you mentioned, we have a valuation tool that can be really useful. It’ll give you a pretty wide range, to be transparent, but a wide range that kind of puts into perspective where you might be. But the first step that I think you should take is go to our website. You can just go to empireflippers.com, but I’ll make sure that we provide a link for everybody where you can kind of get access to the information. Schedule a call with someone on our team just to kind of see what your options are. And then if you’re in the very early stages where you know you’re not going to exit for maybe 3 or 4 years because you’re just not ready, we have a really robust blog with lots of free information on how to optimize your supply chain and how to prepare your finances and what to think about when you’re preparing for an exit. So I would, I would encourage everyone to explore some of those articles and learn as much as you can. And if you’re within 1 year of looking for an exit, definitely hop on a call with someone from our team.

Vira: 32:59

Awesome. Thank you so much, you guys. As always, all of the links that we mentioned in the podcast, they will be listed in the description box. So just scroll down and you’ll find all of the links that we discussed. Thank you so much, Reed. It was really interesting to learn about all things business exit. I’m sure we can talk more about this.

Reed: 33:20

Absolutely.

Vira: 33:20

It’s a big topic, obviously, but I feel like that was a great intro. Honestly, that’s something that I didn’t realize is how easy it is to sell the business. at the same time, how much work goes into it. But once you sort of like have the game plan, it’s like possible, which is amazing. So yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time.

Reed: 33:46

Of course, thank you for having me. And if anybody has any questions, my role, I work more with our strategic partnerships. So more institutional level partners that want to do like marketing campaigns or refer us business, things of that nature. But anyone is welcome to reach out to me directly if they have questions and I can and get them in touch with the right person to take care. So my final piece of advice is don’t be afraid of an exit. Don’t be afraid of the amount of work that it’s going to take because it can be a life-changing amount of money for a lot of people.

Vira: 34:17

Absolutely.

Reed: 34:17

And yeah, get after it, people. Go out there and live your dreams.

Vira: 34:23

Thank you so much. It was fun having you on this podcast, Reed. I hope to have you back on our podcast someday. And who knows, maybe in a year or two, we’ll be talking about like selling my next business with Empire Flippers. Who knows?

Reed: 34:37

I look forward to it, Vira.

Vira: 34:39

Cool. Thank you so much. You guys, thank you so much for listening. As always, if you like what we do, please leave us a review and don’t forget to screenshot your review and send us a screenshot, email us your screenshot and we’ll send you some nice Flowium merch. So thank you so much. And we hope to have you guys back here next Tuesday. So we’ll talk soon. Take care.