The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] when you buy a business, you’ve got to think about is my skillset documentation and management and have I got the time to do this? And if it is, and you do. Then you could add a lot of value quite easily, but if that’s not you, it’s really important to only shop for businesses where the documentation is cleaner and whether, um, um, you know, the weekly management time is manageable and, and you’re probably going to pay more money for that as well
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[00:02:10] and number six is defensibility. And this is the question of, is there a high quality moat that is going to make this business stand the test of time? And it would likely be either a unique product. Or a unique approach to the niche that is defensible, um, and not easily replicatable.
[00:02:31] What, in essence, what you’re looking for is what some would consider an unfair advantage. You know, it’s legal and it’s ethical, but, you know, do you have almost like a quasi monopoly opportunity or some kind of, you know, real unique thing that the business is built upon that you can then. Continue to manage now, some people have unique defensibility because it’s a personality driven brand.
[00:02:58] You know, like, oh, well, this is, uh, you know, Dr jim’s, you know, remedies or, you know, teachings or whatever. And, you know, uh, defensibility associated with a personality is a real tough 1. Um, but. In other categories, you know, it might be, you know, a manufacturing process. It might be, uh, uh, IP, you know, I mean, it could, it could be a patent, uh, you know, something that you’ve got that is hard for other people to replicate.
[00:03:25] Maybe it’s a manufacturing process that, you know, or you have that no one else. Can do, um, easily, you know, it’s just not an easy thing to do, but this business that you’re looking at has figured it out over the long period. And so much so that they’re the only ones that pretty much do it. You know, those types of opportunities go into this whole idea of, uh, you know, the.
[00:03:45] The defensibility and the quality of the moat. Of course, the reference to moat is Warren Buffett’s phrase. Um, and the power of a business that has a long term durable competitive advantage is his thinking on this. And he loves businesses that have a moat. Yeah, I think it’s really important. I was just thinking about how one actually engineers this for the average sort of Amazon sellers that I know, or, you know, they’re mostly multi channel these days.
[00:04:09] They’re bigger, but it’s not easy because we mostly have contract manufacturers, so we don’t control the manufacturing side. I, again, I would just reference CBD, not to sort of bang that drum too much, but something like that is very awkward. It’s not exactly something you uniquely own, but if there’s an awkward.
[00:04:24] The process to go through, um, to get to the other side of it. I suppose it’s what you call a walled garden. It’s not exactly a moat, but you and a handful of other players are allowed in. So you can still have very strong competitors and that can still be difficult or inadvisable, but at least it sort of limits the competition.
[00:04:40] So I think sometimes. That’s a kind of halfway house that’s worth considering. Yeah. And we’ve done whole podcasts about defensibility in business. Um, I think our list is up to like nine factors of defensibility. Um, and I’ve done whole trainings on that. It is hard to engineer. I mean, that’s why it’s, that’s why those businesses are valuable and they stand the test of time and they’re worth a lot and they are attractive to people.
[00:05:07] And once they are, you know, established, they are not, uh, difficult to sell. Um, and people don’t want to sell them because they know they’ve got the goose that’s laying a golden egg. And, you know, so, I mean, I think that’s a key, key consideration. Now I would just say this, every business has. A degree of defensibility and so just think of it like on a scale of 0 to 10, how defensible is it?
[00:05:35] And if it’s a 6, 7, 8 or 9 or 10, you’re like, wow, this is, you know, this is amazing. Well, if it’s a 1, 2, 3 or 4. You’re like anybody and their brother can start this business and compete with me. There’s no barrier to entry. There’s no novelty. There’s no way in which I can defend this in terms of manufacturing or creation of the item.
[00:05:55] Uh, there’s just a huge amount of risk associated with the defensibility of the business. Um, and fair enough, but there are a lot of companies that thrive. In that kind of climate and, um, you know, you just have to understand it and really think through, uh, you know, what you’re buying, I think what you just said is really, really critical that people, if anyone could compete, there’s no barrier to entry and there’s no novelty.
[00:06:17] There’s a lot of risk associated with that business. I think you’re absolutely right. And I think the reason that that’s not blindingly obvious to anyone who’s sold particular on Amazon again, um, but you know, more generally in e commerce and the last decade is really that the markets have grown so fast, particularly up to, you know, really COVID in the year afterwards, only really now that people are beginning to see how dangerous that is.
[00:06:39] I mean, we’ve all experienced, um, you know, launching a product and then somebody else taking over, um, the space and trashing the, The price of it actually. So that’s not really, it’s not really true. Actually. We’ve mostly seen the risk of that, but I think the level of how bad that is, is only becoming clear now as the market grows, slowing down to some degree in certain markets.
[00:06:59] So I think it’s absolutely critical. If you cannot create a barrier, you don’t have to buy it with a barrier wrapped all the way around it. But if you can’t add that fairly quickly, and obviously I think you’re absolutely right. I think you should just walk away. And it’s interesting too, because, um, I was, it is a slightly different context and what we’re talking about what I was listening to the all in podcast recently.
[00:07:20] I love that one. And David Sachs is the master of software as a service investing. He’s a venture capitalist that focuses on that. Uh, industry and we, you know, Michael, we have omni rocket pro tools, uh, for Amazon sellers. So we’re in that space as well. Kyle and I, um, and we bought that business, um, and rebranded it.
[00:07:39] Um, the, but his commentary, the, the, the basic thesis that he was debating with the other show hosts was whether SAS businesses actually are defensible because. And in the age where engineering in, in code coding is becoming a commoditized product, even so much that chat to BT and tools like it can write the code, then the question is, is it marketplaces that are splintered into a million sellers?
[00:08:08] Competing for 1, 000, 000 customers, you’re like, wow, each of us will get one customer, you know, and, uh, so, so that, you know, the question there is, is, is even SAS, our SAS business is defensible and his comment was maybe they’re not, I’ll paraphrase in general, how the conversation went. He, his comment was, yes, true.
[00:08:28] Maybe there is a lot of ability for people to compete. However, when you’re in a business like that, if you do get. Traction in that niche. Uh, power laws take effect and you can become winner take most, uh, it with SAS businesses, you know, you can create the de facto SAS tool for a niche or industry. Um, and if that happens, of course, then that’s the moonshot and you, you know, you get rich.
[00:08:56] Um, but you gotta ask the same questions for the business that you’re looking at. Can it be defensible? Can it be a winner take all or winner take most scenario? And do I have the ability to defend it from others who will try to enter? The space. So you get [00:09:10] the idea there. Um, any final thoughts on that one?
[00:09:12] Yeah, definitely. I think really, although I’m not a SAS business owner, unlike yourself, um, obviously spoken to a ton of the project podcast and I’ve seen over the years what’s happened and I think the same thing applies to physical products. If you have a niche, which is small enough to dominate without being, you know, a conglomerate with incredible amounts of dollars behind you and you dominate it.
[00:09:33] Then you can become very wealthy. So I know Greg Mercer a little bit. I never spoke to money coats, but I know both those guys. So, so jungle scout got sold. Um, I know that helium 10 got sold. Um, and they are the de facto duopoly, a little bit like airbus and Boeing in, in the airliner world, right? There’s the other thing, but not really a significant share of the market.
[00:09:52] And those are the two guys in the space. And so they’ve done very, very well from that. And I think the same thing applies. So the commoditized nature of manufacturing, I think the same thing, actually, although I’ve seen that obviously, um, quite a few years ago with the Amazon game, I guess the commoditization of coding is something I’m less familiar with, obviously not being a developer, but it’s, um, it feels like the same dynamic applies actually.
[00:10:15] Yeah. And what you’re describing there a little bit is this, this concept and defensibility is that you’re looking for a niche that’s so small that you can. Um, be the king of the castle, but it’s a very small castle and that concept I write about it in the e commerce power book. Um, but that’s what you’re looking for.
[00:10:36] You’re looking for a niche that other people who are big players would say. Nah, that’s too small. We don’t want to. We don’t even want to mess with that niche. It’s just to 2 smaller user community. Um, and if the, if the, you know, the total user community for, you know, a certain product or service or SAS.
[00:10:56] Okay. Tool or whatever is just not appealing to most people. And no one has installed himself as a king of that small castle, then, yeah, that’s the kind of niche you’re probably looking for, um, because you just, that’s an element of defensibility is would other people just go right past and say, these aren’t the droids we’re looking for, you know, we don’t, we don’t want to go in there.
[00:11:19] Well, great. I’m glad you think that I’m happily in there being the king of the castle or whatever, you know, I would just add the nuance to that. I agree with everything you say. I think dominating an issue is absolutely critical followed by desirable, highly desirable. If you want to get really rich is having a niche that is expanding.
[00:11:38] Back to the Boston consulting group matrix, I’m afraid. It’s just market leadership is a sine qua non. If you don’t have market leadership, you are really asking for trouble. If you buy that business, um, or try and expand that business, if you’re the current owner. If you do have market leadership and you’re in a static niche.
[00:11:54] It’s going to be a cash cow, which is a great thing to have. And it’s quite valuable because it’s not very common in e commerce, all the things we just discussed. But if you have a star business that is, you dominate a small category, but that is growing one day, it may be very, very valuable. This, for example, Jungle Scout, I think when they got started, it was, I think, 2016, 2015.
[00:12:12] And third party selling on Amazon was fairly small. Now there are, I believe, several million people registered with Amazon. And the percentage of those that use Jungle Scout is probably pretty, pretty high. I don’t know what it is. Um, maybe it’s just 10%. It’s, it’s a lot of people, so I think the critical thing is that the niche can be small.
[00:12:30] Yeah. And then hopefully you pick a growing one. Mm-hmm. , but most important is niche leadership. And I think people overlook that every single day of the week. They go on about the absolute value of this, of a niche. And I mm-hmm. , if somebody says, oh look, there’s $5 million a month being made in this niche and Amazon, it’s quite common in the us and I look at their numbers and they’ve got 1% of that market, I’m gonna run for the hills.
[00:12:50] I, I have no interest in that at all. Yeah. I think if you want to go deeper on this topic, the best book that I can think of is, um, Positioning by Al Rees and Jack Trout, and then their other books are, uh, like, uh, uh, the, um, what’s it called? What’s the title? Uh, it’s not Battle for the Mind, but, um, it’s similar to that, but Al Rees and Jack Trout, Positioning is the central book, and then they have others that are similar that help you define the basic core ideas.
[00:13:14] If you’re not number one in your niche, create a new niche. And be number one in the new new niche. So there you go. But anyway, let’s move on. I think we beat that one to death. Yeah, but I think it’s worth beating to death. Everything else goes horribly wrong. I don’t think it’s important. I think it’s the thing, to be honest.
[00:13:31] Yeah, there you go. However, yes, we’ve beaten that to death. So I guess we’re playing the next one already, right? So let’s punch number seven. Yeah, number 7 is risk. Yeah. Uh, and in the idea here is, is the business you’re acquiring got a single point of failure that you can see or. On in your diligence process, uh, find out about, uh, those might be things like legal risks, supplier risk.
[00:13:57] Um, it might be key. Um, um, employee risk, you know, maybe you’re buying a business, got a key employee, they leave and. The whole thing’s down the toilet, you know, those risks are really, really important to think through and there are many such things. Um, but I, I think that’s a really, really important thing.
[00:14:12] Are you buying a steady state business that can be easily continued on? Even at a plateau level where you’re like, well, I’m not ruining it, but I’m not 10 X in it either, but I’m buying it and it’s continuing to work. And that might feel like a victory, you know? Um, and that level of risk that you’re taking on, I think is a real central thing because at the end of the day, what you’re betting on the risk calculation is, can you remove the current owner?
[00:14:38] It’s sort of obvious, but it’s true. Can you remove the current owner insert yourself? And not damage the business, you know, that’s the core question that really risk, uh, you know, uh, hinges on, you know, that’s a big gamble you’re taking and can you give them a lot of money for the opportunity to do that?
[00:14:57] You know, I think that’s an excellent question and it, you’re kind of laughing as you say, as if it’s really obvious, but it’s easy to overlook because somehow unless you’re incredibly experienced at buying businesses, you know, it’s not obvious what it is you’re buying. In fact, it’s a system. That works without a certain person in it.
[00:15:15] And obviously the key employee risk for a lot of small businesses, certainly the ones i’ve seen change hands Um is simple like the key employee is the owner Slash operator of the business and the question is not so much Can you operate day to day because amazon particularly does a lot for you shopify does quite a bit for you Depending on how your 3pl set up and so forth.
[00:15:34] We all use a lot of third party services, right one way or the other but um If the owner of the business is the person who comes up with the product roadmap and understanding of the consumer, and you don’t have that, and you don’t have a way of recreating that your business is not to your point of steady state.
[00:15:49] I don’t think there’s such a thing in Amazon. I think it’s going to shrink as other people take over the market and it’s going to shrink and die. So I think that key employee risk. Is really about who’s going to drive the growth factors of the business. And, and, um, it’s easy to overlook that because an Amazon business does not have the value in the product.
[00:16:06] It really has value in somebody who can come up with the next product and set up the whole painful process of getting suppliers and getting the, the first terrible, um, sample and the second sample that’s okay, but disappointing. And the third sample that’s good. And then iterating, you know, that that’s a huge skillset.
[00:16:23] And if you have that, okay. And if you don’t, again, I just don’t think you can buy the business and make it work. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s fair enough. I think I don’t remember who to attribute the quote to, but somebody, I remember saying, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. There is no, there is no real plateauing.
[00:16:41] It’s you are either, you know, declining or you’re advancing. Um, and so when you buy that business, that’s going to be the big question. Is it going to, is it going to decline, decline, decline? Maybe slowly, but nonetheless, or is it going to increase in advance and that’s the, you’re betting on yourself in a way.
[00:16:59] Yeah, I think that’s the risk you’re taking is the risk of your skill and ability at the end of the day, you know, married, married to this new thing. The only nuance I’d add to that is that you may, as part of your acquisition process, have a team of people or have handpicked somebody to put in as a general manager who has got maybe 20 years experience of growing fast moving consumer goods and importing from China or something, and in which case, They are key employee risk, not the current employees, but a new one.
[00:17:26] So you’re going to make sure that they’re really tied in, that they’re really good, that you’re going to incentivize them properly. Maybe they give them a percentage of the equity or so forth. So that’s another way of looking at it. We’ll only really work with a bigger business. That’s got enough profit to pay for that.
[00:17:39] But that that’s another option. Totally right. Okay. So we’ve got two left to go, so let’s get into them. So the eighth idea is management requirement. And the question here is, um. Can you own it and manage it at a high level, or do you have to actually operate in it day to day as the technician baking the cake, you know, cutting the flowers, packaging the whatever, you know, are you buying an asset that you can own and operate as a legit, you know, kind of business level owner, or are you buying a job?
[00:18:14] Um, and that is a huge question. Yeah, it is. A lot of people don’t think about this. And I think that there’s [00:18:20] nothing wrong with buying a job, but it’s really important to recognize. You’re probably buying a full time job, which if you’ve already got some part time work, you’re doing, even if you sold a business, but you’re doing some other stuff.
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[00:19:18] I know you might have real estate interests. A lot of people do, you know, property You’ve really got to be realistic about how much work it will take and related to that is how well documented is the business. Now, this is another, I like your cut versus uncut diamonds idea a lot because it kind of clarifies the two different markets, I guess, right?
[00:19:35] I don’t deal in diamonds, but I would expect to spend, you know, two or 3, 000 or whatever upwards for a diamond ring. That’s cut, that’s set, that’s whatever it is, but an uncut diamond, I guess, works in different, different types of metrics. And the same is true for an undocumented business. You can add a lot of value to a business by documenting it, cleaning it up and getting good employees in place, but you’ve got to recognize the amount of work that will be.
[00:19:57] And again, when you buy a business, you’ve got to think about is my skillset documentation and management and have I got the time to do this? And if it is, and you do. Then you could add a lot of value quite easily, but if that’s not you, it’s really important to only shop for businesses where the documentation is cleaner and whether, um, um, you know, the weekly management time is manageable and, and you’re probably going to pay more money for that as well because it’s a cut diamond, not an uncut one.
[00:20:23] Yeah, yeah, it’s a, it’s a great thing to think through and, you know, to your point, it’s not bad or wrong to buy a job. That job better look like senior leadership though. You know, and, uh, or, or else, um, you know, you’re buying something just smaller and any, but the question is then how do you grow it to the point where you’re, uh, the leader and you’re doing the hardest things, what’s the highest and best use of your time.
[00:20:48] I would say the highest things in a business are usually the financial and legal related. Uh, product design related, maybe those 3 areas people usually nerd out, um, get really good operators that I’ve seen that are the best are either insanely great product makers and Elon Musk even says he spends 80% of his time across all his companies on tough engineering challenges, which is product.
[00:21:11] Design by the way, it’s amazing that he really should spend probably 95% of his time on that and leave the PR to somebody else. In the example, he’s a genius, clearly and wealthy, but nevertheless, an example recently of sticking to what you’re really good at is a good plan. So if you’re a product guy, then you probably should be hiring somebody to do PR and equally, if, if like me, you’re attracted to the deal and the sort of financial analysis, I’m not claiming to be amazingly good at that, but I, it attracts me.
[00:21:39] I’m hungry to learn more. I’m talking about passion, whereas I’m not hungry to develop more private label products. I’ve done that. I know some of what’s involved and therefore I’d, I’d know that it’s a really critical job that it’s really hard that I’d have to pay somebody decent money for it, but that’s definitely something I would want to find somebody to grow the business and yet to your point, you need to be super clear about the costs as well as the upside of that.
[00:22:03] Yeah, totally. If the business can’t afford to pay for that person, but it’s critical and it’s not you, then I wouldn’t buy that business. You know? Yeah, totally. Right. Um, okay. Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay. The, the last one is a number nine is, is it financeable or financeability? Now this question is, I think, central for a lot of aspects of the, uh, the, the concept of buying the business.
[00:22:27] The first one being, can you actually get a loan to buy this business? Or, um, or not, would the seller finance it to you? I guess that’s a form of finance ability if they’re willing to finance the sale. Um, but will it, would a banker, uh, you know, or a lender look at the business on it, on its merits, on its financials and say, yep.
[00:22:47] Here’s the pile of money because this makes a ton of sense. Um, or would they say, no, this has got real, real red flags and problems. And I think it’s important to find out about that and go through that process. Even like, even, even for example, if, uh, if you could buy it with cash. Or you could buy it in the, and the seller would finance it.
[00:23:10] I think it’s valuable to go through the process of the, you know, having it evaluated by a banker, maybe try to get an SBA loan or something like that, because the, the, that process will reveal to you information that that’s a third party vetting and validation it’s third party voice. So you can get out of your head and not just talk yourself into a bad deal.
[00:23:30] You know, if you have somebody who’s a, the loan officer say. Uh, here’s the three problems that we had. So we’re declining the loan. Yeah. That’ll tell you something, you know, and I think that’s really helpful. So the trouble with the whole, um, business opportunity thing, and I’m totally, you know, a victim of this is that, uh, the sort of people that want to run a business want to be the boss, but the trouble with having no bosses, you know, who, who watches the watches.
[00:23:53] I mean, the answer is often nobody, and that’s often not good. So to your point, you’re basically getting free. Business coaching, it’s pretty tough. I can tell you from some conversations with lenders, they can be pretty blunt and they’re very fact based. So it can be even more kind of painful because it’s a bit cold dissection rather than a blunt fight, which can kind of be fun in a way that you can learn love to hate, or you can have a very gentle, loving kind of rejection by your coach that normally say, yeah, this, we don’t learn on this kind of business because this type of risk, this type of risk, this type of risk, and you go away going, oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that.
[00:24:25] So it’s really valuable. I, I hundred percent back what you’re saying. If you can’t get financing for something, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy it, but it does mean you should deep dive into the things they’ve kindly red flag for you, in my opinion, because people ignore risk. Like, you know, being aware of risk is somehow amateurish or not entrepreneurial.
[00:24:44] I entirely disagree. You take someone like Richard Branson, who is the quintessential entrepreneur in Britain. He started so many businesses and he’s always, when you, when you’re hearing talk, he’s not even a particularly loud kind of guy. He’s quite nerdy and analytical and he looks for ways to de risk the deal.
[00:24:59] All the time. For example, when he started Virgin Atlantic, he leased the planes. He didn’t buy them that he was going to use from Boeing such that if it didn’t work out, he’d just hand them back as opposed to have an extremely expensive asset now declining in value that he’d have to get rid of. So that’s an example.
[00:25:14] So I think it’s just professional to look at the issues. And come up with solutions and, uh, you’re right. Finances are great at doing that. Yeah, totally. Um, and I, you know, I think this, this is helpful on the ideas associated with buying a business. It’s also, um, I think revealing in terms of your ability to potentially sell it on.
[00:25:34] In the future, you know, can you sell it to somebody else? Because the way in which you buy it is probably the way in which you’ll have to sell it. If you buy a business, then the only way you’re going to get the deal done is if you give all cash for it, then, you know, is the question is, then why, why was that required?
[00:25:50] Um, and will that be the same set of facts when you want to be the one selling it in the future? Um, and so I think it’s an interesting question, you know, um, if you were going to sell it in 3 years or 5 years or 10 years, would you have to finance it? Would a bank say no? If another seller was another buyer was going to come in and try to buy it from you, you know, what would materially have changed?
[00:26:13] Um, and so you want to think through that because you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re like, gosh, I can’t get rid of this thing. Yeah, so 2 points to that. I mean, 1 is that it’s even more important that it’s possible when you sell it, because hopefully the whole idea, I guess, is that you would buy it in order to grow the value and sell it for a higher valuation.
[00:26:30] The higher the valuation, the more likely there’s going to be finance involved at some point. I mean, even billionaires don’t tend to have a lot of cash in the bank because it’s not a very good asset class. Um, so they often borrow money as well, let alone, you know, more smaller buyers. So that’s really important.
[00:26:47] The other way I would flip that on its head instead of saying, will this be financeable in future? I would work on the business to engineer it such that it is financeable. So if it hasn’t got any hard assets, there could be a case, for example, for buying some property through the business in order to have an asset class within the business that makes it financeable because that will make it so much easier to sell.
[00:27:07] Plus it means the book value is a bit more solid. So if your inventory suddenly all goes out of date because you can’t sell it for love or money, you still got something in the business that gives it some book value and means you can get some loans as well. So I think there’s, there’s a lot to be said for educating yourself about the balance sheet side of life.
[00:27:23] Um, particularly if you deal with digital assets, um, I guess one is very profit and loss focused. If you [00:27:30] buy and sell physical goods, you really should think about. The assets and the cashflow, but when it comes to loans, um, lenders, again, talking to your point about getting a different view of things from the lender’s side of things, lenders are obsessed with assets and balance sheets.
[00:27:44] I’ve noticed that. So that way of engineering a business with a strong balance sheet for the future, such that it can be financed. You know, you know, in order to acquire it is a really great objective to have. I think. Yeah. Love it. Okay, man, this is such a great conversation. I really think this, um, marries up well to the episode we did previous to this one, all about the KPIs financial metrics associated with buying a business.
[00:28:09] I think between the two, you’ve got a really, really holistic list of things to look into as you’re thinking about buying a business. And, uh, it’s fun to work through the list. You’re actively working on. Uh, deal opportunities cinnamon and I are actively working on deal opportunities and it’s just a great set of, uh, of questions to ask ourselves so that we do good deals and, uh, make wise choices in the process and don’t put ourself in a position to have.
[00:28:36] A lot of regrets. I’ll say the only, you know, deal making stuff that I want to regret is the one that got away. I never want to have a regret about the one that I actually did. That was a real huge mistake. Yes. Well, that’s the thing. I, I was talking to somebody, um, yesterday who’s interesting. I sort of basically an accounting type background, although he’s got a lot of different strings to his bow.
[00:28:57] And he said that a friend of his. This is a warning of where it can go wrongly. A friend of his basically had a kind of country estate. They used to get down to the formula one races and the helicopter. They had quite a rich lifestyle and that all went away because he acquired a business that the accountant had basically said there was some tax write offs.
[00:29:13] It was a somewhat distressed business that had a lot of debts. And it turned out that of course, um, in the end to, to boil it down. To a nutshell, which is a terrible mix of metaphors that the guy became personally liable for the very more substantial debts. And he’d realized that this business and he lost his country estate and the helicopter rise and so forth.
[00:29:32] I had to rebuild. So that’s a bit of a, that’s a bit of a scary one. And another one I’ve come across an actor that I used to work with back in the days when I was a musician, I’ve coached him on the piano for a TV series. It was a very strange job. But anyway, cause he, you know, celebrities know some rich people sometimes.
[00:29:48] And he knew a guy, he bought a premier league football club, which is like the top of the soccer league here that got relegated. In other words, it was no longer top of the league. And he went from being worth plus 60 million pounds. So what about 75 million bucks to minus 15 because he had so much money.
[00:30:04] So buying a soccer school, buying a soccer club is probably a bad idea. Well, Ryan Reynolds just bought the ones that were are the one Rexim. That was relegated already. And then he turned to Netflix.
[00:30:19] I suppose what I’m saying is that risk mitigation is always important for all entrepreneurs, but when you’re buying a business, it’s really, really important. And I think. Again, it’s not about being negative. That’s just a naive way of looking at it. In my opinion, the people that make really great money are incredibly street smart and believe in the potential for growth, otherwise they wouldn’t buy a business.
[00:30:39] So I think it’s, it’s both, it’s not being scared. It’s having a mindset of growth, but nevertheless, by avoiding landmines, you can get to where you want. And so, uh, yeah, I think this is really important way of, of thinking that I don’t think it’s that common either. So hopefully we’ve woken people up to a few things.
[00:30:56] Yeah. I’ve got a 10th one that I’m not going to add, but I’ll tease it out like this. Uh, contact us through, uh, our. Contact forms on the e commerce leader. com or for me, omni rocket. com and ask me about the 10th, uh, non financial factor for evaluating. There’s a huge one. Uh, that, that, that is a big deal.
[00:31:14] And I’ll just leave it as a tease. If anybody wants to ask me privately, and there’s a reason I don’t want to share it publicly as well. Cause it’ll. It’s a little bit too revealing, but I’m happy to share it with people one on one. I know that’s a tease, but happy to chat with you because if you’re into buying businesses or building your business, we want to talk to you anyway about our, uh, consulting and done for you services, et cetera, et cetera, at OmniRocket.
[00:31:35] So I’ll leave that as sort of a. A hanging offer there. Nice tease. I like it. Um, if you are, um, considering selling your own Amazon business or you’re considering buying one, which isn’t so common, but people are starting to approach you for that, you can go to my amazonaudit. com and book in a chat to me.
[00:31:52] If you want to have a look specifically Amazon based ones, because that’s what I know about, um, not saying you should limit your hunting to that, but that’s where I can help us. This has been fun. Um, this is, uh, it’s just. I find what’s great about this is intellectually a fascinating game. There are so many things to consider and balance out.
[00:32:08] And it is also very personal. I think, you know, what is so interesting talking off camera, as it were to you, the way you look at it, the way you buy is quite different to me. Um, and that’s, that’s rightly so. Cause everyone has their own skillsets and their own mindset. So it’s a fun game. I would encourage everyone to really educate themselves about it.
[00:32:27] Absolutely. All right. Let me wrap up with just a final summary of the nine things. Number one, passion. Number two, durability. Number three, niche strength. Number four, brand power. Number five, opportunity. Number six, defensibility. Number seven, risk. Number eight, management requirement. And number nine, financeability.
[00:32:44] There you have it. Quick recap. And thanks so much, man, for great conversation this time, as always, if you’re liking the Podcast. Be sure to check us out on your player of choice and leave us your highest review and rating in whatever form they allow. Those are really helpful on Apple. It’s a proper review, uh, Apple podcasts on Spotify.
[00:33:05] Things just like a star or whatever, but in any format, we’d appreciate your feedback that helps us get better and better at helping you be an awesome e commerce leader, which is the goal of the show. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.
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