The E-commerce Leader

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[00:00:00] And so this winding down period I think is when a lot of people. Make a tragic error and I think they make it cuz they’re exhausted. They got, you know, they’re old, they’re just sworn out and they’re just like, I’m done. Well, you got a patent for something that you sold 50 million worth of. Yeah, but this last year I didn’t really sell much of it.
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[00:02:33] and she said, no. I, she said, I honestly, I’m just, you know, I, I’m done. I’m exhausted. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m at peace of just closing it down. I haven’t really thought about selling it per se. And I just said to her, look, you know, your business is value. I know your business is valuable.
[00:02:48] I know your business cuz she was a co coaching client, consulting client. And so I, I said, there’s value there, there is value there. Like, don’t just shutter it like, you know, you can sell this thing. And so, you know, I said to her, go, go back and do your QuickBooks and get your p and l and your balance sheet tuned up.
[00:03:06] Really look to see what’s happened in the last 12 months in terms of your, your income, your income. And, um, and I explained to her how to sell a business and it, you know, the kind of the pro tips, um, and uh, what I’ve seen people do, what I’ve helped people do, and, um, had some examples that made sense to her cuz they were kind of relatively similar industries.
[00:03:25] And, um, so I said, please, you know, d don’t, I know you’re ready to be done and you’re exhausted, but take the time to do this. And so we set up in a second appoint. She came back and she was so surprised and so upbeat, and so like, almost like, what, what happened? And, and the fact that she did her income statement, got all of her expenses documented, got all of her, you know, sales documented.
[00:03:52] Lo and behold, the business actually was making an income. And so she then had an, uh, you know, evaluation methodology plus the inventory. She. That she could hold, uh, or, or sell onto the new future owner, plus all the other things. Um, the original concept, the unique, uh, products that she had tooled and made the brand itself, the Shopify site, the social media accounts, you know, she had all these things that weren’t that, that were.
[00:04:28] But because it didn’t have a monthly owner’s draw, she didn’t think that it had any income as she could, you know, use as a justification to sell it to somebody else. But, um, doing this process, she realized, oh my goodness. Uh, there, there is actually a value note. Now there are other cases that I’m familiar with where there’s generally no realistically no income, but the people still have inventory on.
[00:04:53] They still have a website, they still have a brand, they still have the brand concept. They still have products that they’ve uh, originally created. They still have customer names. They still have, uh, you know, email addresses and, and on and on tho those businesses are valuable. And you know, Michael, you said at the top of the show that, that there’s no value.
[00:05:15] Of a business that doesn’t have, you know, uh, earnings or income. And that’s just, you know, I mean, I, I know where, I know the sentiment you were saying, which is there’s no calculable value, but there is, if you have a million dollars of inventory, that is not garbage. You know, I mean, like, that’s generally valuable inventory then, then you have a business that is sellable even if you do not have income, the on the income statement.
[00:05:39] And so this winding down period I think is when a lot of people. Make a tragic error and I think they make it cuz they’re exhausted. They got, you know, they’re old, they’re just sworn out and they’re just like, I’m done. Well, you got a patent for something that you sold 50 million worth of. Yeah, but this last year I didn’t really sell much of it.
[00:06:01] They’re like, well, there’s still huge value there. How many customers do you have in your email as well? I only have 46,000 email addresses. Well, there’s value there, you know. You get my point? You get my point that, you know, this is a very tenuous time in the life of a business, but I think it’s a huge mistake to say there’s no value if there’s not.
[00:06:21] Profit on the p and l. Yeah, I read that email that you sent round that really got my attention. I I, that that story that you, you told Well, I mean that, you know, telling the, the truth of your client. Mm-hmm. It reminds me of something else, which I haven’t really related publicly, so I wanna be a bit, sort of careful.
[00:06:34] I don’t think I’ll identify when by saying this, but it was somebody who wasn’t actually a client and he came in for a one, one off consult for some reason. I must have been offering something about auditing an audit or something. Mm-hmm. And, um, Yeah, he’d got the business that got to seven figures and then it had dropped into sort of several hundred thousand and because he’d allowed the overhead to creep up, you know what, what’s a shoot up to handle the, you know, the needs of the business when the revenue was high, because the revenue had dropped off a lot.
[00:06:59] Then of course it was pushing him into the red. Yeah. But I just looked at it and I thought, well, I said, are you absolutely sure that you don’t want turn this business around? And again, like, you know that that sort of vibe that I got from you is exhausted Fellow with fighting Amazon, which can be horrendous, is anyone who’s done that and it can, it’s like fighting a robot that’s this sort of dyslexic, or I dunno, dysfunctional robot.
[00:07:19] It’s just extraordinary bad when it’s bad, right? Yeah. We’ve all seen that. So we, we’ve experienced it, but. You know, so, um, I kind of got it emotionally. I, I mean, I really got it. I, we’ve all been there, but I just thought, wow, somebody, somebody should be buying this business. Yes, they will buy it for not that much relative to what it would be if it were really a going concern right now.
[00:07:38] Mm-hmm. But if they can turn it around, they can sell it on for a lot of money. So somebody’s gonna buy this. So I put ’em in touch with a business broker I know, and dunno what happened. I mean, it was a strange thing to try and sell. It wouldn’t be easy. It would be a very small market of people who would buy it, but.
[00:07:51] I just thought there is huge value in here. And if you cut, cut, cut on the overhead and you maybe re-engineered the, the, you know, the, the cost of good sold the direct costs. Yeah. Um, I think it could have turned into a business which worth several hundred thousand, maybe a million or something. I mean, maybe he wasn’t the person to do that.
[00:08:07] And therefore the smart thing is to exit yourself. But as you say, not to chuck it in the trash on the way out. Yeah. Because you are feeling bad about it for the last few months. You know, it’s very common. It totally is. And just, you know, as context, I think Cinnamon and I are up to, to 18 businesses we’ve purchased from people.
[00:08:25] So yeah, this isn’t theoretical for me. I mean, I’ve seen a, I’ve seen a lot of these scenarios and those are the ones that we’ve personally purchased. The ones that we’ve, you know, I’ve just consulted with or whatever, you know, there are many more. Um, and so yeah, I, I think a lot of it is tied to a confusion that comes from exhaust.
[00:08:45] That comes from a long duration of just being worn down by your business. Uh, and, and if you have the opportunity to be the buyer of a business like that, and you know, like there’s a good example I can think of right now where I could share the details of basically one of our clients purchased a business.
[00:09:03] Um, I think he paid 6 million for it. Some, something like that. I’m not sure actually the exact valuation, but. [00:09:10] He saw a huge opportunity where there was things that, you know, could be tweaked and changed. Um, other, you know, other clients that you know, know businesses that are being run that because they’re familiar, kind of almost like partners.
[00:09:21] They know they’re being run in ways that are less than ideal. And so, you know, one person’s albatross could certainly be another person’s golden. And that’s the, uh, that’s the idea of understanding that, you know, when people are, are in that position, um, it is hard to try to encourage them to keep their head above water and, and really finish well and, and go out with a bang.
[00:09:46] And, and, and, but if, but if they can do that mm-hmm. Then they end up, you know, successfully. Transitioning their business without it just being shuttered, which sadly many, many thi times that happens, you know, in the us I forget the statistics, but it’s a huge number of businesses that are just shuttered every year.
[00:10:04] Similar in the uk, proportionately. And, and I think, um, I think it’s very interesting reflecting on why this happens, doesn’t it? Cuz what you bought 18 businesses, I mean, you perceive value where other people don’t. I guess wherever, every position where you’ve been a buyer, somebody else was a seller because they perceived that there was less value than the money You gave them more the form.
[00:10:20] Well, they, they perceived value. They just were done. I mean, it was just like they were just ready to be, they wanted a fair, they wanted a fair value. Mm. And uh, and right. So to but to your point, yes, I saw, I saw ongoing value, continuous. And I was, we were ready to, you know, keep it going. And, uh, yeah, but they did, they did see value.
[00:10:41] The question is, you know, sometimes people are way over valuing a business in their mind. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. And other times they totally undervalue it. And that’s, I guess that’s my whole point is when you’re at this end of the road, they’ll, you know, sometimes you’re like, I wanna sell this for a million.
[00:10:56] Well, how much revenue did it do last year? $22,000? You know, other times you’re like, I’m done. I just wanna give this business away. Well, how much revenue did it do last year? 110,000. Well, okay, I’ll take it. You know, it’s like, yeah. I mean, it’s like this guy, it was several hundred thousand I think. Uh, I think, um, one of the.
[00:11:15] I was thinking about the, the mental state of the person there and, and I guess what we’re cautioning against is just following that exhaustion and letting it lead you, rather than taking a, a cooler look at the numbers and, and maybe other forms of valuing it. But one of the reasons I think that this guy, for example, I was just reflecting on why he was so firmly done.
[00:11:33] I’m like, you know what? I was thinking there’s so much opportunity. I looked at the books and, you know, in confidence and I said, I can see a lot of opportunity here, but he just didn’t see that. And I think one of the reason is because he’d got used to a certain level of revenue and a certain level of profit, and then the revenue rug had been pulled from under his feet.
[00:11:50] So when you have a a 50% drop in revenues, a lot of people did coming off the, the crazy covid times when everyone was home shopping and then after. Right. And then it’s moved from a healthy profit to a loss. Yeah, I can see why that’s, um, unhelpful. But I think what people do is they. Understandably, emotionally it makes sense as a sort of story or narrative or experience.
[00:12:09] All of those things, they look at their business historically and compare what it is now to what it was, whereas somebody looking at a fresh as a possible opportunity looks at what it is now and what it can be in the future. So I don’t, I know psychologist and I dunno how to change that perspective easily.
[00:12:25] I know that I felt very done with things in past and that’s natural. Well, but it’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s the way you. Can, can we change that? Yeah. It’s the, it’s the same psychology as when a buyer is going through the buying process. You make the decision on emotion and you justify it with logic.
[00:12:45] And when you’re ready to wind down your business, you’ve made a decision on emotion and then you justify it with logic. And a lot of times that logic. Sort of mental math or back of the envelope thinking like, oh, I’m done, I know I’m done and I know this business doesn’t have any value. Oh, well, have you gone through the numbers?
[00:13:08] No, I’m, I’m too, I’m too exhausted. Like, well, well then if you go through the numbers and you’re presented with a counterfactual, you have a problem cuz you already made your decision. You know, you, you already decided you’re done. And so that’s sort of the, the scenario that plays out. It’s like, You know, if you’re done and you don’t think your business is worth anything, cuz you work 70 hours a week and you’re not even making any money.
[00:13:30] Uh, can anyone talk you out of that? No, I don’t. It’s hard. It’s a hard one. You know, so, and this is where, this is where value is really created with new owners who take over things or, you know, can get, can get a deal done where they’re like, wow, this was an amazing business. It just, the person before me had just kind of exhausted themself, banging their head against the.
[00:13:50] I came in and I didn’t bang my head against that. Yeah. I guess being done is relative, isn’t it? You can be done with mm-hmm. Running something and owning something yourself, but that if you can mm-hmm. Find it within your energy to accept it, somebody else might actually find it valuable. Yeah. Counter to, as you say, to the emotional position you’ve taken, which is valueless.
[00:14:11] I hate it, as opposed to, You can kind of come to the strange position of I really dislike running this business, but it has commercial value. Right. If you can kind of separate your personal experience of the business Yeah. And the objective value it has, then, then you are in a better position. Right. And I guess that’s maybe what we are sort of aiming towards, isn’t it?
[00:14:29] We’re sort of groping towards is sort of trying to do that. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? I mean, the big decisions in life really do seem to be driven by emotion. I think Freud said something like that. The greatest decisions in life are always irrational, you know? In other words, they’re not thinking led and the thing’s actually right.
[00:14:44] Who do you decide to marry? When do you decide to sell a business? I, one of the me members of Mastermind who sold a business, it was such a. Every month was a drama for a while. It was like, will he, won’t he, you know, is he gonna sell the business? He’s not gonna sell the business. He is’ he gonna sell the business?
[00:14:57] He’s gonna sell the business. And then he came back and said, oh, I sold it. But admittedly, he got an incredible multiple, so it made sense to sell it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And he’s a great entrepreneur starter, but he doesn’t like building teams. So for him it made sense. Mm-hmm. But it was, it was, um, very touch and go.
[00:15:09] And I think it was led by his feelings rather than, you know, and a mixture of that and the numbers. Yeah. But it was definitely a blend. It was fascinating to observe at close quarters and have conversations with them and help a bit of guidance and yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it, that the big pictures in life, and I think as long as we acknow acknowledge that we are driven by emotion, it’s okay that we can temper that emotion mm-hmm.
[00:15:29] With, uh, some insight. Yeah. And then as you say, you get a much better outcome. Yeah. Let me mention, um, let me mention a third scenario that is a, a common one. That, uh, for, for more maybe what you might call sophisticated and ongoing businesses, they learn these things over time. I guess we’ve learned them over time, certainly in our business.
[00:15:48] And that is, um,
[00:15:49] the financials inside of business that generally are leaned into the, or the, you know, the income statement and the balance sheet and then the cat. You know, the statement n flows like those are three common financial. And they have different uses at different times. And, um, if all you ever do is look at the profit and loss statement, um, you’ll be blind in a scenario that I’m about to describe.
[00:16:11] And that is very common, which is, let’s say that you decide to buy your own building. Well, if you buy your own business or your your own building for your business, then what you’re really doing is putting a asset on a balance. Inventory’s the same way, I guess you could say, you know, for the physical product sellers.
[00:16:29] But, but the, uh, but think of a building. You know, you buy, you buy a building and let’s say you’ve got a monthly payment of whatever it is, two grand a month. So, you know, $24,000 a year plus, you know, utilities and all the other miscellaneous costs, right? So you’re into it. Let’s just say it’s 30 grand a year out the door expense, right off, you know, the top of.
[00:16:51] Your, uh, you know, your p and l, uh, your, your income looks worse, $30,000 every year. But let’s say that business has a appreciation or the, the, the building has an appreciation of whatever, some modest amount, it doesn’t matter, like 4% a year, 5% a year, hold it for 10 years, and let’s say you used a loan when you bought it.
[00:17:13] Then when you sell that building, you’re gonna have. Shockingly good. Theoretically, you know, all things going rightly theoretical, big lumpy payday. And um, and that’s, you know, when we went through that cycle in our business, we were like, okay, this is different. This is different territory. This is not the, we’re not in the land of the profit and loss statement right now.
[00:17:36] We’re on the land of the balance sheet. And you, you gotta know that those are very different things. And um, so I think that’s the third time where you would just say, yes, you would, in that situation, yes you would have the profit and loss statement there, you would understand it, but you would understand that you’re creating, um, what you might call disproportionate value, uh, for a longer term payoff in the future.
[00:17:59] Um, that’s gonna hit ya, you know, at some point. Yeah. And um, so that’s a fun time. And when we went through that, uh, in our business life, um, I guess you could say, I, I’ll say we got lucky. You know, we bought a building when commercial property was not in vogue. Mm. When people were saying nobody wants commercial property and nobody certainly wanted the property we bought.[00:18:20]
[00:18:20] Hmm. And, um, we bought it with an SBA loan and it. Was a bummer for several years. And then it wasn’t a bummer. Right? Yeah. It was a bummer for several years. No, it wasn’t a bummer. I love it. It beautiful tactical, uh, you know, thoughtful strategy there. Yeah. Uh, I was gonna say, um, what you’ve raised as an interesting point that in certain business models or financial models should put it broader than just business.
[00:18:43] Like includes investing and blue chip companies, property or real estate. Um, Certain ways of thinking are very, very common. And in other words, they’re not common. And I really think it’s very healthy for anyone to have a bit of a taste of different things like real estate if they work in an e-commerce or a business, because there’s a lot of things that are very obvious when you’re buying a property on with a loan that it’s about the cash flow and the asset value.
[00:19:06] So the balance sheet and the cash flow statements are critical that they. Mostly choose not to bring over to their e-commerce business, but when they do, my goodness, it changes things. Mm-hmm. So for example, I just, um, and I’ll last, um, ask my meeting, but one I said to the, the guy was saying about the, he’d identified the biggest constraint to growth of his cash in his business.
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[00:20:12] well, Cal Supreme, that’s just mostly two for most businesses in e-commerce with physical products. And I said, okay, so go back to your supplier and negotiate. To overcome that, then you don’t need a bank loan, you don’t need to invest, get some credit from your supplier. Particularly in China, they, they get lend money by the, the state and, you know, basically it’s, it’s not very commercial terms.
[00:20:31] So they, in other words, they’ve got money to splash around in a rather not commercial way that if you tried to get it from British or or American lender, they’d say no. And true enough, you came back with an extra 70,000, um, in credit or something, which is basically sort of, I dunno, 80 days worth of credit.
[00:20:44] And that really, that that won’t show up at his p and l. For a while, but that will fuel the growth. And that’s a cash flow play. And that’s, yeah. Something that in the property world or e-commerce in the. You know, real estate world is probably pretty common. I mean, I certainly think about these things a lot.
[00:21:00] I mean, so I think that the balance sheet and cash flow management, to your point, are, this is a more sophisticated error, but just to be too focused on the profit and loss statement and aware of those numbers when you’re ignoring your balance sheet and, and the cash flow is Yeah. Can actually lead you to the worst canal.
[00:21:17] Sorry, which is when you think you know what you’re doing, but you’re driving blind and that’s a dangerous combo. It’s interesting because actually this whole third thing that we’re talking about, which is creating balance sheet value. Hmm. That’s actually also true when you’re setting up your business gen.
[00:21:36] I’m just literally the legal entity, the url, the brand, like those things, the difference between real estate and those things is real estate is relatively, uh, value. Valuable. Like you, you can value it. It’s like easily valued. Uh, you know, how, how much is a brand worth? That’s a lot harder question to answer, you know?
[00:21:59] But you’re still doing the same thing. You know, if you set up a URL and a cool brand idea and get a logo and all that, um, that could be a billion dollar brand. Concept. I mean, literally could be worth a billion dollars if it has the right revenue bolted onto and all that. Um, so, but, but you’re, so you’re doing the same thing.
[00:22:13] You just, you have a harder time or it’s a bit more my mystery. Uh, in terms of what the values of those items are. Um, but anyway, it’s the same idea really. I think you make a really, really important point, which is a lot of people in, in physical products worlds are positive, materialist, which is to say, if I can’t see it’s smell or touch it, it doesn’t exist.
[00:22:30] Right? Yes. My wife’s a bit like that, so I can relate to that, but, but actually intellectual property, there’s a thing called Goodwill. My dad was a, a lawyer in the uk so he, he was used to what they call goodwill in UK law. I’m not sure what the, the phrase might be saying in the us Yeah, same idea. Yeah.
[00:22:43] Yeah. So in other words, it’s a difference between the, the value of the company, Tangible assets. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, you’ve gotta kind of account for that. What does that even mean? It’s the fact that the, the business as a going concern has a value because it has a reputation, it has assets. There’s other things like intellectual property like patents, which can be, you know, uh, amor size over the cost 20 years.
[00:23:00] And they can be incredibly valuable. I mean, the, the most valuable brands in the world often are based around the value of the ip, like Starbucks famously. Makes no money in the u uk and maybe in the US in in profit, but it pays a lot of money to its Luxembourg, um, holding company, um, for the rights, the intellectual property.
[00:23:16] Now that’s kind of a tax dodge, but it goes to show that that actually IP has a lot of value. Cuz if you drank Starbucks coffee without the Starbucks logo, you just think, what is this? I mean, I, I’m not a fan, excuse my excuse and offending anyone. He loves Starbucks. But, um, Yeah. And you know, they spend more money on the logo than they do in the coffee, which explains a lot.
[00:23:33] Yeah. But anyway, all of which is to say, I guess, you know, without getting two abstracts and obs stress, I think that it’s important to educate yourself over time without sort of plunging from never using a profit and loss statement to all of this obscure staff is to go there in stages, but to use.
[00:23:47] Professionals to educate you. So intellectual property lawyers should be part of your life, I think mm-hmm. Earlier than most people think. Um, and so should your accountant and your bookkeeper, and I think all of which is to say that the more you educate yourself about these tools, um, I would say this delightful insight is that I’m getting is to that businesses in this several million, um, dollar a year range, often very unsophisticated in their use of the balance sheet, which means it’s so easy to get ’em big wins.
[00:24:11] I mean, like the, the thing I mentioned is just one of many examples. Where there is money to be got out of your business without all the stress of launching a new product line without going for a loan to your bank and begging and then worrying about the repayments supplier credit is one of the most beautiful ways of managing a balance sheet, but that’s far, far from the only thing.
[00:24:28] And so the, the payoff from educating ourself about relatively simple versions of this, I think is fantastically. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, I think we’ve covered it, man. This is a great conversation. Hopefully I peaked everybody’s interest with the idea and then now it’s clear, uh, just how to think about the exceptional times.
[00:24:49] When the profit and law statement really isn’t the only thing to think about. Yeah. Um, we’ve got a resource that’s free, uh, profit Habits Workbook, and I think you’ll gonna, we’ll plug that and mention it, uh, in the post credits of the show to make sure people know how to get that. Uh, but it is, uh, it’s a resource that it’s got 17 habits of highly Profitable Business Owners.
[00:25:08] I wrote it, uh, two years ago during Covid time and, uh, love to get that in the hands of people for free. Is it just a, a gift for listening to the. And I think it’ll point out many other ideas beyond the ideas related to a profit and law statement, uh, as it relates to how to get good at managing profits within a business.
[00:25:26] And, uh, I uh, I think it’s a really powerful booking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a good one. It’s, uh, it’s, it’ll peak people’s curiosity and also really give solid ideas for how to improve income in a business over time. So, Michael, as. Great conversation, man. Just to back that up, I was gonna say just more call to action for your beautiful book, not to undersell.
[00:25:46] It is beautifully produced and it’s got really powerful, simple ideas. So you have a great knack, uh, I think Jason, for reducing things to a simple graspable, um, version, which is really powerful and it’s, it’s a beautifully produced book and you can get it at the e-commerce leader.com/profit habits. Sorry, I couldn’t resist putting a direct call to action in there.
[00:26:05] Sorry to I. No, no, no. That’s great. Awesome. All right, well, uh, to recap if you want me to do that, there are times when a profit and loss statement is not the only thing you can look at, including when you’re in the startup phase, when you’re in the wind down disposition, you know, ending of your business.
[00:26:25] And when you’re building balance sheet assets. Those three times in particular are times when just focusing. The profit and loss statement or income statement is not sufficient. Uh, and it will be a mistake. So that’s a simple idea and hopefully have everybody enjoyed listening and Michael, it’s always a great time with these conversations.
[00:26:44] Really appreciate the chance to nerd out over this stuff with you. Yeah, it’s great fun. I do enjoy it. Yeah. Good times. Thanks everybody for listening.
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