Andres Gonzalez and Jordan Calderón started a design agency in 2022 offering conversion optimization for e-commerce sites at $4,000 per month. They got scammed by a $5,600 consultant who promised clients but delivered nothing, then built the business anyway, achieving conversion lifts up to 633% before selling it in December 2023.
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I sold my design agency, Rethink Design, in December of 2023. And in this video, I'm gonna share why I sold my design agency, how I did it, and what I'm doing now. The short answer, I'm becoming Batman. First, why I sold the design agency. For context, I started Rethink Design in January of 2022 with my co-founder Jordan Calderón, or sometimes who I call my sidekick, AKA Robin. You're Batman.
No, I'm not.
What did we offer exactly? Like, what did we sell to clients? So for about $4,000 a month, we'd create A/B tests to increase conversion rates for Shopify e-commerce sites. Now I know what you're thinking. I don't know what you just said. Don't worry. Basically, we're saving Gotham from bad design. No, but seriously, we were just helping clients increase their conversion rates. So when a visitor lands on their e-commerce site, they're more likely to make a purchase. This service was commonly called conversion rate optimization, and it's just a fancy word for we make money go vroom. And of course, like a lot of my entrepreneurial projects, I had a rough start. So we decided to hire a business consultant for about $5,600 before we had any clients or any sort of revenue. I know, very smart idea.
I am smart. S-M-A-R-T. I mean, S-M-A-R-T.
But he guaranteed that we can make $30,000 per month by following his program or our money back. Sounded a little bit too good to be true, right? Well, you guessed it. It was. So almost 4 months into the program, we had zero clients and $0 in sales. And this guy didn't want to honor his guarantee and give us our money back. So we were pretty pissed. And at the time I was so angry, I really was questioning whether or not we should have kept going with the business. But, uh, Batman never gives up. So instead of wasting our time trying to sue or fight to get our money back, we decided to continue on the path. This time we'd use our own strategies. Jordan would focus on marketing and sales, and I would focus on design and operations. And surprisingly, a month later, it paid off. We actually got our first client in May. I know you're probably thinking, okay, what does this have to do with why I sold the design agency? Well, I'm giving you a little bit of context, so just bear with me here a little bit, and I'll get to exactly why I sold agency. Once we got our first client, it was game time. And, uh, to be honest, I was kind of nervous because I have never done any sort of A/B testing work before, but I knew that I can learn on the job. I started doing research on YouTube and going into different rabbit holes to figure out a general process that I could follow for A/B testing. First, I'd complete a UX audit to figure out what parts of their site wasn't working. Then I would create an A/B test on Google Optimize based on what I saw on their Google Analytics, Hotjar, or some other research tool that I might have installed onto their site. Then I'd let Google Optimize do its thing and I'd wait for the results. 9,354 sessions and 29 days later, the results of our first test were in. Our variant was 22.74% better than the original, but these results weren't great. To be honest, the client was not very satisfied, so we needed to do better. And my next test failed miserably. 73.53% worse, to be precise. The next test after that was a huge hit. Increase in conversions compared to the original. And the next one after that was also a success, 42.11% increase. And the next one after that saw a 633% increase in conversions. Absolutely nuts. And as we were working on this project for this one client, we were getting another client and another one and another one. So our marketing side of things and our sales side of things was actually working really well. So things were finally looking great. I mean, why then did I sell the business if it was so successful? At the time, I was actually thinking, this is going to be how I build Gonzales Enterprises. Enterprises, you know, this is how I'm going to build my billion-dollar company. But there was a huge underlying problem, and everything was not as great as it seemed. On top of my work with Rethink Design, I was also working with other freelance clients. I was designing a health platform, creating YouTube videos, websites, and other personal projects. And my co-founder was also running a whole separate agency as well. It became obvious that we were doing way too much because our work quality started to suffer and we were losing clients because of it. Despite showing a clear increase in conversions with our A/B test, it wasn't enough. Almost all of our clients decided to cancel or not renew their contracts. To get a little bit personal here, a relationship of 10 years ended and I was extremely, extremely in such a dark place at the time. It also completely made sense to me that I wasn't focused on work. I was constantly grieving and yeah, I was just— I was not doing well. Kind of realized that something needed to change and I couldn't stay in this dark place. So I decided that instead of doing 10 projects at once, I would do a few projects but do them very well. And that meant having a tough— or what I thought at the time was really tough— conversation with my co-founder that I wanted to close down the business, let it rest in peace and bury it and sayonara and, you know, and have a funeral for for it. But Jordan said something completely genius. He said, bro, why would we close the business?
Why don't we just sell it instead? I've sold a company before. I know how to do it. Let's find someone that wants to continue to grow the business.
Jordan had sold a clothing business before, so he was somewhat familiar with the process, and he listed our agency on acquire.com. All we had to do is submit financial documents like a profit and loss statement and legal paperwork. And then once we got those documents reviewed and approved by the Acquire.com team, we would be listed in their marketplace. And once we're on their marketplace, then potential buyers can view our company and make an offer. So we got like 5 offers to buy the agency, which was completely surprising to me because I was like, I don't really know how much this thing is even worth. But once we decided to accept their offer, we had to sign an asset purchase agreement. An APA. We then had to go into escrow and then finally close at the end of December of 2023. Which brings us to the most important question. What am I doing now? So I'm going to try and listen to my own advice and do fewer projects and do them well. Specifically, I want to double down on digital products and create more videos. It's actually what I love doing the most. I love creating websites. I love creating digital interfaces. And little transitions and animations. I love that stuff, and I know there's tons of you that like that stuff too. So I'm thinking I could probably create a whole bunch of different Figma templates, Framer templates. And I'm also creating a course as well, the UX Designer Freelance Masterclass, where I teach you how to get clients as a UX designer. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to have a whole bunch of different lessons on not just how to learn UX design, but how to actually get clients as a UX designer. So everything that I know from marketing and sales is going to be in this So it's going to be pretty awesome. If you want to get notified when that's ready and when that's out, the link is going to be in the description. If not, don't worry. I'm making a whole bunch of free content anyway on YouTube and follow me on Instagram. That's where I'm most active and I'm most likely to respond to you guys. So come say hi on Instagram. Say, what's up? As always, I love you. I am vengeance. God bless you.
