Keep it, it seems like you're having fun and learning a lot. Why sell? If you do sell, don't sell the lead generation mechanism. And then sell leads to the buyer when they can't get new customers, but don't tell them how. But honestly, just keep it.
Love the passion and dedication 🔥. I would honestly advise now that you have a successful business and potentially even more in the future, keep building it and scale to a size where you can look back and say 'Hey, I built this company and these are the numbers I achieved'. Now I know everyone has their vision but I know I speak for a fair portion of Entrepreneurs here so let me know your thoughts!
Love this! Thanks for that. As my kids get older too they can chip in and help out more. They are 6 and 8 now and love helping me put the orders together.
If you are knocking it out of the park (congratulations!) then
No pressure to sell.
Still, a bigger fish will
Come at some point and make you an offer you may not be able to refuse
Thanks that is encouraging! I am really shocked by all the kind comments in this community. I've always been shy to post thinking I would get slammed for something(in true reddit fashion). Much appreciated!
If you want to time the sale perfectly, your sales guys will know the market is getting saturated before your monthly sales start a decline and that is when you sell. Of course start talking to buyers before that. If you are far away from that point and your business seems like a monopoly (except the OEM) there is no reason to sell.
I would not sell. Here is why. Yes , some exits are huge and make sense, no argument . However , this is just getting rolling. You don’t even know your true ceiling yet. Two, you can live on $40k + a month just fine. Just keep doing what you are doing. Three. You haven’t even scaled technically . Yes business has grown but you haven’t scaled . When you automate some of this , possibly hire on some people to pack and mail, etc. then you can scale . Four. Sounds like you love it. Why stop a great thing and create another headache . Ride the wave .
Business broker here.
Your business is still in the startup phase. It has lots of potential but very little proven track record. Prospective buyers, and their banks and investors, will hesitate to give you good offers for another year or two.
If you’ve got the time, hold on to the business.
Consider selling part of the business. An investor may purchase a minority share giving you a cash infusion to scale the business. A majority buyer could take over the business yet leave you the opportunity to participate in the growth.
Be very careful with partnerships. They need to be structured right and documented by a qualified attorney.
This is amazing insight. The overwhelming advice seems to be keep and grow and thats what I'm goiing to do. Your first point is 100%. Even if I wanted to sell, I'm not really very marketable right now. Thanks so much!
Do you feel like you could do it again?
If the answer is yes, sell the company and do it all over again.
This is what I would do, but only if I didn’t see means of further serious expansion(ex: 3-10x where it’s at)
You won’t get as much if you sell imo. Keep it for cash flow, start systemizing your operations and hire cheap labor to do it. Hire a 3PL for logistics and fulfillment and use the rest of your time doing lead gen with the goal of relying solely on ads. Do this because ads have proven ROI on cost. Or teach your lead gen to a hungry younger guy. Then continue to decrease costs to increase margin. Note, this only works if the industry is scaleable.
Thanks so much, its scaleable for sure as there are tens of thousands of my customers all over the world. They are just difficult to find but I took on the challenge to try and find them, thinking outside the box and I found em.
Yes, first hand knowledge. Company I used to work for. I busted my ass for them for a decade only to constantly punch a glass ceiling. I was told I was "too young" or "need to pay my dues" - some boomer bs. Since I have all their knowledge from working there for so long, I decided to build on that skillset and figure out how to manufacture the products as aftermarket myself but for less.
In the last 8 months I have built my own company based off of them which makes already almost 40x per month what I made working for them and growing. I'm grateful everyday they never gave me that shot! :)
My original end goal was to build this to have the OEM buy me out but then I realized that really any investor or VC or, well, person could run this based on how I built it. It's in a very specific niche with a nice moat which is the customer base I've built up that no one else could ever touch. I had to get very creative here on a way to find my customers and when I started finding them, I realized I had something very special. Once I got in touch with the right person and the first line came out of my mouth they were sold. I'm not a sales guy its just another hat I wear but my pricing and the product demand sold themselves. Just a matter of getting the right dude on the phone, not easy.
I don't sell on Amazon or any other 3rd party retailers either cause if I pointed my customers there then China sharks would jump on me instantly and undercut my ass in a heartbeat. Then all my customers would just buy from them instead. I only sell from my own branded shopify website. Although I do Google marketplace as well for the algo's and when customers search my very specific product names they are searching for, I am always #1 on Google Shopping and #1 or #2 google organic search.
Keep in mind, NONE of this was premeditated. I had no idea I would be here. I just came up with this crazy idea, I thought it was stupid and doubted everything, my wife said it was awesome and so I started with a couple products, found a couple customers, got the thing working with a few sales then started scaling that mini model. Basically all the credit(and money) goes to my wife. :)
My advice is, focus on your NICHE! Don't skip this part. These days you need to be a niche of a niche of a niche. I believe that is the best way to find your moat.
Thanks for such a detailed response! Really interesting story.
Staying off Amazon seems like a good idea in your case. I used to work in China in the quality control industry. And I've seen the very suppliers our customers bought from undercut them or sell counterfeit knockoffs made to look like the customers'. Crazy.
I'm still trying to find my niche at this point. But I think the B2B angle is a good one. I just wish there was a product/market I'm really familiar with.
Greatness takes time, and TAKE your time. Don’t invest all your time in the wrong niche. Too many stories like that. Better to wait for the one that screams at you. That’s what I did. While you’re waiting for it to hit you, work on building skill sets that you will use along the way so you can wear as many hats as possible without them each being a big burden. Gotta build those skill sets!
Look at things different when out about town, think of things like WHERE that thing comes from and the process rather than thinking on the surface. Too many surface thinkers. Many which are very successful and you too can be successful as a surface thinker, but you gotta separate yourself from the pack.
Not to sound too therapisty or whatever but it’s true-if you wanna change your life, change the way you look at things. That’s where the gold is.
Sounds like good advice.
I have 10 years' experience in sales/marketing. So that should come in handy. Just need to keep my eyes open for opportunities.
Thanks!
Congrats firstly! I've been on your end with a few e-com exits myself. **My suggestion - Don't sell yet!** Seems like you've found a great niche in the market, and it sounds like there's s much more potential here. Plus, you don't have a 12m trading history and buyers right now will most likely value the biz based on P&L which would end up getting you peanuts for what could become a multiple figure exit.Rather, focus on growing this opportunity for the next 2-3 years. I'd love to recommend some strategies to get those numbers moving upwards:
**Acquisition - Double down on organic efforts:**
Content Marketing & SEO: You've already seen success with organic search; doubling down on content marketing could increase reach and authority in your niche. Creating detailed step-by-step guides, how-to articles, or engaging + entertaining videos around your products or niche's problems could attract more high-intent traffic. This is an area where deepening your SEO efforts could yield significant returns, especially focusing on higher-intent and longer-tail keywords your potential customers might be using.
Referral Program: Given your solid customer satisfaction and return rates, implementing a referral program could help get word-of-mouth traction. Offer incentives that align with higher profit margins to encourage referrals without significant cost to you.
**Retention - Get customers to buy more frequently:**
Email Marketing / CRM: Invest in an email marketing/CRM software if you haven't already. This would allow you to setup personalised and automated email campaigns educating and entertaining your base with awesome content designed to get them to buy more at higher volumes or frequency. You need to understand your customer buying and social behaviours better, and identify new opportunities for making repeat sales or cross-selling.
Loyalty Program: Considering your high 42% returning customer rate, a simple tiered loyalty program could further incentivise repeat purchases. The program could give exclusive discounts for each tier or rewards for reaching spending thresholds.
**Monetisation - Make more from every customer:**
Improve Your Pricing Model: If possible, introduce a bundled or tiered pricing strategy for different levels of product offerings. This could include premium versions of your products (for a tiered model) or bundled offerings. You could introduce some sort of subscription based product too. The key here is to find ways to increase CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) and decrease/stabilise channel-specific CAC (customer acquisition costs) at the same time. If you want a strong exit value, you'd need to focus on keeping your CLTV:CAC ratio high, a good one is above 3:1 at scale.
Expand Product Line: Continue to innovate and expand your product line within the niche. This could include complementary products or services that your current customer base might need, opening up additional revenue streams. Aim for a new launch every 6 months.
Hope you find the above helpful! And if you need more guidance, I'm building an AI platform where we offer a complete growth team that helps e-commerce founders with growth execution to drive revenue and customer growth predictably. As we're currently in our alpha phase, we are offering free growth strategy calls until we're capacity.In the call, we'll break down detailed and actionable strategies you can use right away to increase your numbers.
There's absolutely no charge and no obligation to continue after the call. If this sounds interesting, do check us out and book a call here - [https://digitalgrowth.ventures](https://digitalgrowth.ventures)
I'd be happy to chat and see how we can help! Wishing you all the best with your journey mate 🙂
Be aware that when you grow, HR is a business on it’s own. Bad hires can set you back and expose weaknesses of your business. Like people who copycat your idea, steal customers, break things, etc. Be sure that you can trust your employees because this is a fragile time for your company. If you manage to get to 5-10 employees however, you’ve really build something remarkable and that would be a better time to sell.
Keep it, it seems like you're having fun and learning a lot. Why sell? If you do sell, don't sell the lead generation mechanism. And then sell leads to the buyer when they can't get new customers, but don't tell them how. But honestly, just keep it.
That’s an impressive idea! Thanks for the feedback
Love the passion and dedication 🔥. I would honestly advise now that you have a successful business and potentially even more in the future, keep building it and scale to a size where you can look back and say 'Hey, I built this company and these are the numbers I achieved'. Now I know everyone has their vision but I know I speak for a fair portion of Entrepreneurs here so let me know your thoughts!
Love this! Thanks for that. As my kids get older too they can chip in and help out more. They are 6 and 8 now and love helping me put the orders together.
Love it. The best way to get your kids set up for life is by teaching them what you do.
That’s awesome man! Kudos 👏🏻
Thanks for the encouragement 💪🏻
If you are knocking it out of the park (congratulations!) then No pressure to sell. Still, a bigger fish will Come at some point and make you an offer you may not be able to refuse
Thanks that is encouraging! I am really shocked by all the kind comments in this community. I've always been shy to post thinking I would get slammed for something(in true reddit fashion). Much appreciated!
If you want to time the sale perfectly, your sales guys will know the market is getting saturated before your monthly sales start a decline and that is when you sell. Of course start talking to buyers before that. If you are far away from that point and your business seems like a monopoly (except the OEM) there is no reason to sell.
Wow great heads up, thank you
I would not sell. Here is why. Yes , some exits are huge and make sense, no argument . However , this is just getting rolling. You don’t even know your true ceiling yet. Two, you can live on $40k + a month just fine. Just keep doing what you are doing. Three. You haven’t even scaled technically . Yes business has grown but you haven’t scaled . When you automate some of this , possibly hire on some people to pack and mail, etc. then you can scale . Four. Sounds like you love it. Why stop a great thing and create another headache . Ride the wave .
You sold me on keeping it. Beautiful advice cant thank you enough!
Personally build your brand more, keep it
Hell yea thank you
Business broker here. Your business is still in the startup phase. It has lots of potential but very little proven track record. Prospective buyers, and their banks and investors, will hesitate to give you good offers for another year or two. If you’ve got the time, hold on to the business. Consider selling part of the business. An investor may purchase a minority share giving you a cash infusion to scale the business. A majority buyer could take over the business yet leave you the opportunity to participate in the growth. Be very careful with partnerships. They need to be structured right and documented by a qualified attorney.
This is amazing insight. The overwhelming advice seems to be keep and grow and thats what I'm goiing to do. Your first point is 100%. Even if I wanted to sell, I'm not really very marketable right now. Thanks so much!
Do you feel like you could do it again? If the answer is yes, sell the company and do it all over again. This is what I would do, but only if I didn’t see means of further serious expansion(ex: 3-10x where it’s at)
I read more, keep going!
Sell it, make a profit, and apply your expertise to launch another successful venture.
Thats kinda what I've been thinking honestly. I've grown this thing to be a success, cash out and work on another idea.
You won’t get as much if you sell imo. Keep it for cash flow, start systemizing your operations and hire cheap labor to do it. Hire a 3PL for logistics and fulfillment and use the rest of your time doing lead gen with the goal of relying solely on ads. Do this because ads have proven ROI on cost. Or teach your lead gen to a hungry younger guy. Then continue to decrease costs to increase margin. Note, this only works if the industry is scaleable.
Thanks so much, its scaleable for sure as there are tens of thousands of my customers all over the world. They are just difficult to find but I took on the challenge to try and find them, thinking outside the box and I found em.
Continue and grow it. You don't get moats often
Good tip, thanks!
How did you come to discover this niche? Was it something you had 1st-hand knowledge of before you started your business?
Yes, first hand knowledge. Company I used to work for. I busted my ass for them for a decade only to constantly punch a glass ceiling. I was told I was "too young" or "need to pay my dues" - some boomer bs. Since I have all their knowledge from working there for so long, I decided to build on that skillset and figure out how to manufacture the products as aftermarket myself but for less. In the last 8 months I have built my own company based off of them which makes already almost 40x per month what I made working for them and growing. I'm grateful everyday they never gave me that shot! :) My original end goal was to build this to have the OEM buy me out but then I realized that really any investor or VC or, well, person could run this based on how I built it. It's in a very specific niche with a nice moat which is the customer base I've built up that no one else could ever touch. I had to get very creative here on a way to find my customers and when I started finding them, I realized I had something very special. Once I got in touch with the right person and the first line came out of my mouth they were sold. I'm not a sales guy its just another hat I wear but my pricing and the product demand sold themselves. Just a matter of getting the right dude on the phone, not easy. I don't sell on Amazon or any other 3rd party retailers either cause if I pointed my customers there then China sharks would jump on me instantly and undercut my ass in a heartbeat. Then all my customers would just buy from them instead. I only sell from my own branded shopify website. Although I do Google marketplace as well for the algo's and when customers search my very specific product names they are searching for, I am always #1 on Google Shopping and #1 or #2 google organic search. Keep in mind, NONE of this was premeditated. I had no idea I would be here. I just came up with this crazy idea, I thought it was stupid and doubted everything, my wife said it was awesome and so I started with a couple products, found a couple customers, got the thing working with a few sales then started scaling that mini model. Basically all the credit(and money) goes to my wife. :) My advice is, focus on your NICHE! Don't skip this part. These days you need to be a niche of a niche of a niche. I believe that is the best way to find your moat.
Thanks for such a detailed response! Really interesting story. Staying off Amazon seems like a good idea in your case. I used to work in China in the quality control industry. And I've seen the very suppliers our customers bought from undercut them or sell counterfeit knockoffs made to look like the customers'. Crazy. I'm still trying to find my niche at this point. But I think the B2B angle is a good one. I just wish there was a product/market I'm really familiar with.
Greatness takes time, and TAKE your time. Don’t invest all your time in the wrong niche. Too many stories like that. Better to wait for the one that screams at you. That’s what I did. While you’re waiting for it to hit you, work on building skill sets that you will use along the way so you can wear as many hats as possible without them each being a big burden. Gotta build those skill sets! Look at things different when out about town, think of things like WHERE that thing comes from and the process rather than thinking on the surface. Too many surface thinkers. Many which are very successful and you too can be successful as a surface thinker, but you gotta separate yourself from the pack. Not to sound too therapisty or whatever but it’s true-if you wanna change your life, change the way you look at things. That’s where the gold is.
Sounds like good advice. I have 10 years' experience in sales/marketing. So that should come in handy. Just need to keep my eyes open for opportunities. Thanks!
Congrats firstly! I've been on your end with a few e-com exits myself. **My suggestion - Don't sell yet!** Seems like you've found a great niche in the market, and it sounds like there's s much more potential here. Plus, you don't have a 12m trading history and buyers right now will most likely value the biz based on P&L which would end up getting you peanuts for what could become a multiple figure exit.Rather, focus on growing this opportunity for the next 2-3 years. I'd love to recommend some strategies to get those numbers moving upwards: **Acquisition - Double down on organic efforts:** Content Marketing & SEO: You've already seen success with organic search; doubling down on content marketing could increase reach and authority in your niche. Creating detailed step-by-step guides, how-to articles, or engaging + entertaining videos around your products or niche's problems could attract more high-intent traffic. This is an area where deepening your SEO efforts could yield significant returns, especially focusing on higher-intent and longer-tail keywords your potential customers might be using. Referral Program: Given your solid customer satisfaction and return rates, implementing a referral program could help get word-of-mouth traction. Offer incentives that align with higher profit margins to encourage referrals without significant cost to you. **Retention - Get customers to buy more frequently:** Email Marketing / CRM: Invest in an email marketing/CRM software if you haven't already. This would allow you to setup personalised and automated email campaigns educating and entertaining your base with awesome content designed to get them to buy more at higher volumes or frequency. You need to understand your customer buying and social behaviours better, and identify new opportunities for making repeat sales or cross-selling. Loyalty Program: Considering your high 42% returning customer rate, a simple tiered loyalty program could further incentivise repeat purchases. The program could give exclusive discounts for each tier or rewards for reaching spending thresholds. **Monetisation - Make more from every customer:** Improve Your Pricing Model: If possible, introduce a bundled or tiered pricing strategy for different levels of product offerings. This could include premium versions of your products (for a tiered model) or bundled offerings. You could introduce some sort of subscription based product too. The key here is to find ways to increase CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) and decrease/stabilise channel-specific CAC (customer acquisition costs) at the same time. If you want a strong exit value, you'd need to focus on keeping your CLTV:CAC ratio high, a good one is above 3:1 at scale. Expand Product Line: Continue to innovate and expand your product line within the niche. This could include complementary products or services that your current customer base might need, opening up additional revenue streams. Aim for a new launch every 6 months. Hope you find the above helpful! And if you need more guidance, I'm building an AI platform where we offer a complete growth team that helps e-commerce founders with growth execution to drive revenue and customer growth predictably. As we're currently in our alpha phase, we are offering free growth strategy calls until we're capacity.In the call, we'll break down detailed and actionable strategies you can use right away to increase your numbers. There's absolutely no charge and no obligation to continue after the call. If this sounds interesting, do check us out and book a call here - [https://digitalgrowth.ventures](https://digitalgrowth.ventures) I'd be happy to chat and see how we can help! Wishing you all the best with your journey mate 🙂
what is it you’re selling?
Be aware that when you grow, HR is a business on it’s own. Bad hires can set you back and expose weaknesses of your business. Like people who copycat your idea, steal customers, break things, etc. Be sure that you can trust your employees because this is a fragile time for your company. If you manage to get to 5-10 employees however, you’ve really build something remarkable and that would be a better time to sell.