From Side Business to Exit: How Christopher Sold His Remote Company in 30 Days

Foreign.

I'm here with Chris Schwab, the founder of Inova Local. Chris, how you doing today?

I'm good. How are you, Andrew?

Doing good, thanks. We were chatting before we hit record. You're in Japan, right?

That's right. Right out of. Right. About 20 minutes outside of central Tokyo.

Right on. Before we dive into your story, do you want to give a brief introduction for people that may not know you?

Sure. I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur, mostly in the cleaning industry. Although we're talking about a business today. That's my background. I am a dual citizen of the US and the uk. I grew up in the uk despite the obvious American accent. So that carried with me. Started my first business about 10 years ago now. And yeah, that man. That's the, that's the 22nd intro right there. My whole career is in business from day one. So there's nothing else to add.

Yeah, no, that's great. Let's move into Anova Local. Tell me, what did it do? What problem did it solve? Let's start there. Sure.

If it's okay, just backtrack the origin story which will make Inova Local make sense. So about 10 years ago, I started dating my then girlfriend, now wife over in the. Over in the background here who's Japanese. At that time I was going to university in Washington D.C. unfortunately, Japan and D.C. are quite far, so it was a long distance relationship for most of the time. At that time we had basically this was kind of the digital nomad 2.0 era where you had to be a travel blogger or a web developer or a digital nomad guru to have an online job. It was still fairly unusual. There were people doing it, but it wasn't typical for someone with no experience to have that type of job. So my degree was in psychology, which is not a good degree if you want a remote job. And so it really is pretty much the worst one. So we had a bit of a conundrum about continuing our relationship or not. Were in love and wanted to continue it. So I decided to go down the business route and start a business to have the flexibility to go and live with her over there. So to keep a very long story short, for today's purposes, I started a local house cleaning company that I grew and turned into a remote house cleaning company. I was the kind of the first one to do this model which you kind of see everywhere nowadays. And I started living from Japan and blogging and sharing case studies about how to build this cleaning company. Well, one of the important steps in Building that cleaning company was hiring VAS to manage the day to day for me whilst I was in a very different time zone. So I started blogging about how I hired and trained my own virtual assistants based off of some of Tim Ferriss work. But to manage the daily operations of a cleaning company instead of an e commerce store or a supplement business. Well, a lot of other house cleaning and painting and lawn care owners really liked the idea of this and they started reaching out to me and they started saying, hey Chris, I'm actually exhausted. I haven't taken a vacation in 10 years. Could you train a VA for me too? And you can see where this is going. I hadn't originally thought about starting this as a business, but when, when a swarm of people come to you and they ask you to do something, if you're an entrepreneur, it's impossible to say no. So I started very casually on a beta basis, just training VAs for other people and offering them on a service, on a monthly service. Um, and that turned into what we're talking about today is my recently acquired business Inova Local, which provides virtual admin services for home service business owners.

That's incredible man. You're a trail trailblazer you. Because VAS today, everybody seems to have them. Or I think maybe you know, even just five years ago, hiring remotely, especially for local businesses or startup businesses, was far less common. But it sounds like, you know, you kind of figure out how to do that and you built an entire business around it.

Thank you. And I will add just an interesting data point there. There was a very stark difference between selling our services pre Covid and post Covid. We started in 2017. I hired my first VA in 2016. So people had used VAs for Amazon stores and other purposes before, but no one had really used them for a local business. It was still physical, office, a manager in a seat in front of you. That was kind of the way it was back then. So at this time, 2016, 2017, me selling the VA service, if they had seen the case study, they were sold on it. But if I was selling them for the first time on a sales call, it was a very difficult thing to explain to them how a remote person two states away can run their local cleaning company in Alabama or wherever fully fine without them there. So selling Pre Covid was actually a very difficult thing to do. There was a lot of education and a lot of demos and a lot of this is how it works that you have to do post Covid. Once the Zoom era started and once Everyone started understanding remote. It's the easiest thing in the world to sell. Now people just get it and they know it's possible and they expect it to work. So there is a very clear difference between those two eras in the service that we sell 100%.

I remember at my previous company we had our engineering team outsourced and we had some support individuals in the Philippines and also regions like France. And people, I remember I'd explain it to people and people were like, oh my gosh, like, how do you set that up, how do you do it? Blah blah. It felt much more unique than it is today where, you know, almost every company or business has some portion of their staff remote or in another country. So it's interesting. It sounds like you caught some, some tailwinds towards the end of, you know, Nova local. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, it was, it was, it was kind of right time, right place because we built the foundation pre Covid and then we could kind of ride that wave. So it, it was not intentional, but it was very much welcome. Nice.

What was the business model? Was it like a placement service? Was it a monthly subscription fee? What did that look like?

Yeah, we thought about doing a finder's fee early on, but because I've, I've come from the cleaning world where everything is recurring revenue. You want someone who's going to come to your house and clean every week or every month on a regular schedule. It had been ingrained into me to, to when I do a business to make it a recurring monthly revenue type of business. And so you can charge a lot for a finder's fee. You can charge 5, 7, $15,000 for placing a great office manager. But it's a one time thing. So I'd with a small group of people on a beta and I just said, hey, look, happy to train them for you, happy to manage them for you, but in return, I would like to charge you this much per month in a set, set hourly package. So the way that we bill is a little different than you would pay an employee. So an employee, you'd pay them for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week and you'd run payroll. We do it differently and I'll tell you why. So in the home services industry, there's something that we kind of joke about called the Valley of Despair. And what the Valley of Despair is, is when you're running a home service business, sort of between 200 and $500,000 per year in revenue. There's a Valley where you're profitable and you're very busy, but you as the owner are not profitable enough to actually hire a full time office manager. So you're kind of stuck. And a lot of people get stuck in this 20-40k a month rut for years on end because they're busy, they're growing and then they keep dropping the ball and. And then they crash back down and they lose accounts and they repeat the cycle forever sometimes.

So interesting.

I had gone through this cycle myself, which is why I hired vas because we grew faster than I expected and I was just not a good manager of cleaners, to be frank. So I needed someone who could manage them for me. Well, I had approached two ladies in New Jersey with at the time, kind of an unusual proposition. I said, hey look, you've been office managers for decades. How would you feel about managing an office in D.C. from New Jersey of a local cleaning company? Would you be willing to give that a go for. I forget exactly. It was either two or four hours a day at that time. And they didn't miss a beat. They said, sure, let's try it and see how it goes. So. So that actually worked better than you would think. I didn't have a process in place at that time for myself. When I trained it for others, I created one. But. But the way that we bill people is a set monthly hour package deal rather than 40 hours per week. It's nice. You're a small business, maybe you can only afford two hours a day as a support. So we would charge you for 60 hours per month. Right. And that way they can get these essential admin support that they need. But they're not, they're not going down in profitability too much, so they can still pay themselves. So we bill. To make a long story short, based on a set amount of hours per.

Month, that is an amazing business model. I love that. So essentially, would you be able to do. Would you have VAs working for multiple different companies or businesses? Where do I have that? Right?

It depends on the size of the business and their needs. So some businesses have three VAs through us and those VAs are just full time on that business like they're their whole office team.

Right.

Other businesses are doing 20,000amonth and they only need a VA an hour a day. So that in that sense those VAs who have smaller accounts, they can manage two accounts typically and not sacrifice any quality and not have any conflict between those accounts. But we're always concerned about keeping a high level of quality for our clients, but also not over overwhelming our vas. When you're, when you're an office manager for a company, you get to know the owners and the teams and the clients. Right. So if you're doing that for more than two accounts, it's just too much for one person to manage typically. So usually smaller accounts, a VA might have a couple clients, but a bigger account. It's usually just one va. One business.

What an amazing business. I love this. Chris. This is great. Tell me this. So you know you're, you're running the business is profitable. What made you decide to potentially sell the business?

Sure, I think it was a natural progression in what I want out of life rather than any compelling reason. So we're a profitable and growing business. It doesn't take me a long time to run it. I typically spend four to eight hours a week running the business. But last year I'd made the decision to simplify my life a lot because me and my wife are planning a family over the next year and I want to maximize that time. So the way that I've always been as a business owner, Andrew, is very time freedom focused. I've. I've happened to have built some bigger businesses, but it was never an intention. It just happened to be something that I'm grateful to have done. But I've always focused on maximizing my personal time and freedom for my hobbies and my family and my dog and whatever. Right. So. So the way that I built businesses from day one is to be very efficiency focused so that they can manage themselves to a large degree. So last year I was running several different businesses. Three cleaning companies and a VA agency and a consulting agency. And I just. Early on, the idea of being a serial entrepreneur is fun and it's invigorating. But after a few years, your focus is so split on different projects that at least for me, it kind of lost its magic and I found myself being pulled in too many different directions. And so I decided to simplify and sell my cleaning company. Cleaning companies, sorry. And once I did that, I really liked the time and the mental energy it gave me back. And so I started to think about maybe I could just focus on the consulting and start working with people directly for a little while in this next phase of my life. And so this was really the reason behind deciding to sell the VA agency is I felt we're in a good place with a good team and we're growing in profitability and we're engaged. So I just thought it's, it's all the essential pieces for a new owner, a new steward to come in and manage it to the next level are in place and it felt like the right time to sell it. So it's a combination of right place, right time, but also me moving on to a different part of my life.

I love that logic because what you essentially did is you were able to sell the business when things are going really well. You have things streamlined and automated. It's profitable, it's growing. Those are all things that every buyer wants to see and will pay top valuation for. And I think that's why you were able to successfully get acquired and just have a great acquisition journey. But tell me about that journey. Let's start at the beginning. What was your expectations? You know, you initially go live on acquire.com, what kind of happened in the first couple weeks. Did that meet your expectations? Were you surprised? Were you let down? Like, let me get the short scoop there? Sure.

There's a little backstory that you won't know. Actually, about four years ago, I discovered Microacquire when you were still Micro Acquire. So I created an old profile just to, I was kind of curious what my valuation might be at that point, but I wasn't in selling mode at all. I was just kind of curious like what might we bring in, you know. So I created an old profile in Acquire and something reminded me of it. So this was maybe November, December last year. I started to think more seriously about should I get more funding for this company and really take it to the next level, or am I committed to bringing a little more balance into my life and exiting myself? So I was having this conflict perhaps on which direction to go with it. And I remembered acquire.com and so I just checked out your guys site and found the rebrand and that you're now Acquire. And I logged into my old profile and it was still there. So I, I, I, I just on a whim one day, really with no more thought than that, to be perfectly honest, I updated it and I resubmitted the listing. And one of your senior advisors, Kai, who is a, a fantastic guy, reached out to me to talk about the Guided by Acquire program. And so it was really that stage that I thought a little more seriously about exiting. There's a few people in the industry I respect and know that. We'd had some casual conversations around a potential strategic acquisition, but we weren't that serious about the discussions yet. So it was really impulse one night which pushed me to relist on Acquire. And then once Kai had reached out. We had started to formally talk and start to put together some of the material financial information. To be honest with you, I couldn't give you a specific day, but once that listing had happened, things started to just happen step by step, naturally.

Nice. And tell me about maybe, like, how did Kai help you? What was the experience working with him? Did you lean on him during certain periods? What did. What did that look like?

I feel sorry for him. So if Kai, if you're watching this, just know I appreciate you and I apologize in advance. I leaned on him so much, it was probably unreasonable. I was not the first.

You're not the first to do that.

It's.

It's expected on our end.

Yeah, yeah. And man, Kai was fantastic throughout. I. I was texting him, emailing him every day. I was doing weekly calls with him. I was really putting him through the wringer for what may be perhaps a smaller account. And he showed up every single time, even at some unreasonable times. He really accommodated the time zone difference between us. So I leaned on him. From the listing to the wording, to sending emails to potential buyers. I was asking him to review my wording to make sure I wasn't shooting myself in the foot. So he helped at every stage from the initial listing, even to jumping on a call after the acquisition to wrap up. So the support he provided was genuinely immense.

Guy is the man. He's one of our top acquisition specialists at Acquire, and I'm glad he was able to make this a huge success. That's what we'd like to see. Tell me about the buyers. Were you surprised at the quality buyers or were you non press? Like, what was your thoughts when buyers started signing NDAs, you hopped on those initial buyer calls to meet them and answer questions that they have.

What was that experience? Sure, I had set a few, maybe guidelines for myself. I wouldn't call them make or break deals per se, but I'd set a few guidelines for myself on what I wanted from buyers, which are sort of intangible. So when I was searching for buyers to connect with, obviously I'm interested in people who could pay the money that, that I wanted. There's a base financial requirement, of course, but what's always been important to me is the teams that I built. When I pass a business on to someone, I'm not just saying, here you go, here's my business, now give me money. And I'm sure this is common with founders. I really want to make sure that the next person coming in is going to be a steward of that team and they're able to do something for the business that I haven't been able to. And so what I was searching for wasn't just someone who would pay me the money and then roll up my team into a bigger organization. I was looking for a strategic buyer who wanted to enter the US market because we're a US based VA agency or someone who had a existing service where a VA service on the back end would complement them well. For example, one of our partners is a well known house cleaning company, CRM Software. Well, they've white labeled our VAs in the past. And so we talked with them, for example, about a potential acquisition because for their audience it would make sense to provide both an automation CRM and a delegation service for them. So we were looking for potential strategic partners where it would naturally be a fit between our two teams, or we were looking for people who wanted to expand the company as an independent unit and they had the necessary skills and experience to do that. So that was kind of the different buyer profiles that I was looking for on who on the surface might be a good fit for us. But there's also an intangible element to it too. Some of the people that I've talked to over the years are great businessmen and I'm sure you've had this experience too. But they're not necessarily great people. They might be lacking in the integrity department, they might be lacking the honesty department. Maybe they get very angry easily and shout at people. You know, there's a personality component which is actually important to me. The way that I try and conduct myself as a leader is always to be very calm, to be in listening mode, to give my team what they need. I'm not a commander. I don't ever command people on my team to do something. It's just not really the way that I'm wired as a person and that's not wired as a business owner. And so I was looking for someone who. Not a carbon copy of me or anything, but I was looking for someone who displayed a similar level of leadership and a similar style of leadership that would be able to take a mature look at how to manage the business properly. So. So there was a personality component to what I was looking for with buyers as well.

That is incredible. I love how just how much thought you put into that, because it's important. Warren Buffett has a really good quote where he says, you can't do a good deal with a bad person. And it's true. You have no idea how many times I'VE seen acquisitions fall apart where, you know, the founder and the buyer just can't get along for one reason or another or they don't see eye to eye on certain things. So I think it's just, it's awesome that you did that. I think that's just great advice to other founders listening, where, you know, one easy thing to do during your acquisition process is get really serious about the type of buyer you're looking for and really search for that and prioritize those types of buyers. For example, I was talking with another founder that recently got acquired. They had a piece of technology for finance professionals. It was pretty technical. But what he's looking for is an individual that had a finance background rather than just a technical background because he thought that would do better for the business. And he prioritized those types of buyers. And the acquisition six months later is doing fantastically well. So kind of similar story where he was looking for a specific type of buyer to really take care of the business because they had a background in it, understood it. So that's great. Tell me a little bit more about the buyer that you ended up actually selling to. You don't have to say their name or anything like that, but I assume they had these qualities that you're describing. Was there anything else that really stood out about them? Was their offer the highest? Did they have great terms? Did you guys just get along really well on the first call? Did you kind of just know, like this buyer just kind of gets it? Like what made this buyer stand out?

I'll add more detail, but actually the answer to everything is yes. So I had done several acquisitions myself, but also sales again in the cleaning industry, but they were always to people who I'd already had a pre existing relationship with. Maybe they were another cleaning coach in the industry or they were a student of mine. There were, there were people that I already knew and could, to a degree, vouchsafe for that they would be responsible owners. So this was my first time selling a company I built to a total stranger. And I was very nervous about that. So Kai will tell you if you ask him. I peppered him with questions about that man. But to answer your question about him specifically the buyer, we jumped on a call and I was, you know, a little interested in him, moderately interested perhaps because of his background. So his background, I'd noticed, was in the staffing industry. And virtual assistants really are a temporary or permanent staffing agency just for the virtual world. And so he'd scaled staffing agency very successfully up as well as several other companies in the past. So he'd had the experience of taking a company from my current size to 20, 30, 40 million a year. So he'd actually had very specific industry experience of doing this just in the IT industry instead of in the virtual assistant agency world. So there was so much overlap. I knew going in he'd understand what we do pretty well, but I wasn't particularly interested in him at first until after our first call, because I'd already spoken to a couple other potential buyers who ran VA agencies specifically. So I was more interested in them at first because the. The surface level match was perfect. But after speaking to him, his way of conducting himself really made me take him more seriously. He is a little bit. I'm 32. He's a little bit older than me. He was kind of bred in the San Francisco Bay Area startup world for a number of decades. But he's very calm. He's very focused on positive psychology. He's very good listener. And he was able to lay out his thoughts and articulate himself very clearly on what he wanted to do with the business. So he had come into me very prepared and with the right attitude. And so after speaking with him, I immediately felt a connection with. With him on. On. This guy would be a really good new owner, having only spoken to him once at that point. So I was immediately after that call. He became my number one almost immediately. And so we talked a few more times about what his plans would be, about why we did what we do, what he sees the future of the company as, why he's interested. And in each of those conversations, my confidence grew such that after just about three weeks, we'd signed an LOI together.

That is incredible. I think the lesson there, maybe for other buyers that might be listening or other founders, be on the lookout for the buyer that's really prepared, the one that has really good questions that are really digging into the materials where it's clear they've spent time reviewing this opportunity before you hop on a call. In my experience, through a ton of acquisitions, typically when we come across a buyer that's really prepared on the initial calls, it speaks volume. It really does. It shows that they're interested in the business, they're experienced most of the time, they're extremely interested in the opportunity, and they've just done their homework, which just moves things along faster. And, you know, in acquisitions, speed really does make acquisitions happen. So that's great. Tell me about this part. So you sign the letter of intent, you and the buyer on the same page, you move into due diligence. What did that process look like? How long was it? Any speed bumps? Any big learnings that maybe you'd give to another founder? What did, what did the due diligence process look like?

Sure. If I could just add one more comment from the previous question real quick because I think it might be a good thing to share. You want to make sure that your timelines for an acquisition line up too. So I actually had another, really a perfect buyer, someone I've known for a long time and worked within the industry. But they were looking at an acquisition end of year, beginning of 2026, which is very different than what I was looking for. So the buyer that I ended up going with, we talked about our timelines, and those timelines had matched up perfectly. It was somewhere between the next two to six months. In reality, after the LOI, we closed in less than 30 days. But. But we, our timelines had matched up very well. So I just wanted to mention that that can really be a deciding factor too. If you have two or three buyers, those smaller things can really matter. So just wanted to mention that. So. So you asked about due diligence, which.

Is the fun part and what you're just saying too. I completely agree as well. Because if the timing is not there, the last thing you want to do is get, you know, deep in conversations with one buyer where it's just the timing is not right. And then you neglect conversations with other buyers and the deal can sometimes fall through when that happens.

Yeah.

But yeah, tell me about due diligence. How did that go?

Painful, I would say, but good. I'm closed. Right. So I had done basic due diligence before, so I kind of knew what to expect, but I'd never done it at this level before. So just. Just to give a little background, the person who bought it owns a fund of other companies, so his experience is extremely professional. He's not just a guy with some money buying the business. He was coming at it from a private fund perspective. So there was an intense amount of due diligence. So at least from my perspective. So he had a list of very long list of specific requests that were very granular contracts for clients who'd left years ago so he could review those to make sure there was no pending obligations. Right. So it wasn't just financial, financial due diligence of your profit and loss statements and preparing those. It was legal due diligence. It was making sure that I'm a US citizen, which I have been My whole life, but because I live abroad, you have to do a certificate of non alien. I think it's called a finra, which is a certificate of not being a non resident. Right. So. So there was all these small due diligence parts that you had to do, which I was not prepared for because they seemed fairly non standard. So I will be honest with you, that was, that was a tough month. April 1st is when we started due diligence diligence and April 30th is when we ended it and closed. So that, that four week period was a lot of late nights with my bookkeepers, a lot of talks with sell side legal, a lot of scrambling to get minor documents from Delaware State, like old franchise tax documents. So it was a lot. We had a checklist that we worked through together progressively. But it was. I wish I could give some advice on this part, but the only advice is just get everything ahead of time. Right?

Yeah, that's typically the best advice. The best advice you can give is just prepare ahead of time because that'll make due diligence just that much smoother. It's just having all of your key documents prepared in advance and we can help with this as well. But also just expect at least a month.

A few weeks is typically on the.

Fast end from what I see for, especially for deals of your size. But sometimes it can go into, you know, six weeks or eight weeks or 10 weeks. I've seen longer than that as well. But it's just something I got to go through. If you want to go through an acquisition, you got to go through due diligence. My biggest piece of advice going due diligence is to communicate the timelines. You had mentioned this previously, but just ask your buyer, how long do you think due diligence is going to take? Do you have an outline of what I can expect in due diligence? For example, what are we going to do the first week? And it can be really simple. It can be, oh, we're going to review financials and then I'm going to review the product with you. And then week three we're going to talk more specifically about XYZ and it's going to take about 30 days. Just so you both have expectations. So you don't go in and you know the buyer needs to line up bank financing and that wasn't communicated. And then the timeline is way longer than you expected. That's where I've seen most issues happen in due diligence. Most people think it's the time where something A surprise pops up, but it's generally just timelines. There's a mismatch in expectations. But the next piece of advice is.

Be honest, be truthful.

If there's parts of your business that have bumps and bruises on it, which there are, just flag those up front just so you can avoid any surprises.

You know, that actually does make me think of a couple things that are worth adding there. There were two things that did help me a lot during the DD process. One was actually acquires resources. So I hope. I don't know if this is private to guided by acquire or not, if it is edited out. But. But during the process of a guided by choir, part of what you guys do is you provide templates for everything. Provide templates for responses, for a data room, for what due diligence things might be on the checklist that you can prepare ahead of time. That was very helpful. It ended up being much more thorough than standard. So there was a lot more for me to do. But I didn't come totally unprepared. I had done everything that would normally be expected ahead of time. There was just a lot of extra requests. So that was very helpful in preparing going in. But the other thing was really helpful that impressed the buyer, and this might be a small tip for others, is to also start preparing post acquisition stuff before you close and then share it with the buyer. So what I'd started doing was I started preparing a separate asset transfer room where I recorded loom videos and written SOPs on how to do different tasks for the owner. And then I actually shared those tasks and sops with the owner so he could see all the preparation that was being done ahead of time for a smooth post purchase transfer of ownership. So one thing you can do if you're feeling really strongly about this buyer as you progress is actually start to prepare the post stuff and then share it with them before so that you can kind of rope them in to the whole big picture.

That's massive. And the first point, the templates and the due diligence guides, those are available to everyone. So if anyone's listening to this and you want to check those out, feel free to email us at Acquire. But the second part is amazing advice.

Yeah.

Like, you know, you're in sales when you're selling your business, so it's really important, if you can, to paint that, you know, picture with light at the end of the tunnel and get the buyer excited about, you know, what closing is going to look like and helping them understand how are they going to operate this business post close. That's a great piece of advice. Anything that you can do to essentially derail risk the acquisition for a buyer, I highly recommend doing this. So putting together, you know, standard SOPs or looms like you had mentioned, or just outlining things to a bit more than what's asked just gets a buyer more comfortable, gets them excited about acquiring the business even more and just increases your, your chances of the deal successfully closing and having a successful acquisition. There's very minimal downside to putting items like this together.

Yep, agreed.

So tell me this. We move past due diligence, you take a big breath, you move into closing and the money is successfully wired to you. You've successfully sold your business. It's a huge accomplishment. Did you do anything to celebrate? Did you buy a new house, new car? What did you do?

I will be. Let me tell you the closing day story though. It's not always a story.

There's always a story.

It's not that big, but it was, it was, it was nerve wracking day. Not because of the, the transfer that I was sure was going to go through actually. We were all operating on different time zones. So the buyer was in, I think he just flown to Italy at that time. So he was in time zone 1. His sell side legal was in another time zone in California. My sell side legal was in North Carolina and I was in Japan and then my team were in eastern time zone. So all of us, and he'd spoken to the team before, a couple days before the closing. So all of us were operating on five different time zones on closing day.

Oh my gosh.

And this was kind of crazy, but my sell side legal, he told me this ahead of time. So we had a bit of a deadline. His holiday started on closing day. So him and me were exchanging emails at my 2am, 3am, 4am to to successfully get the last few words of the contract put together and just finalized. Right. So. So we were exchanging very early morning hours and very late hours those, those last couple days up to and including closing to try and get it done before he was on the plane. But we'd actually done the transfer and the signing while he was on the plane. Yeah, so it was, it was intense in that sense of just managing time zones. But anyway, to answer your question, the actual closing process and the wire, that all went very smoothly. It was just stressful because of all the juggling. Post acquisition has been very smooth. I'm a very organized guy. So I had really put everything in the aspect transfer room for him account login details, how to manage everything, how to do payroll, how to build clients, how to manage the teams, how to hire an off board people. So, so everything that was needed, that was essential was handed over to him immediately after the money arrived, basically like within 30 minutes. And then him and I scheduled a series of training sessions to cover live how to do each task. And right before I jumped on with you, Andrew, I just finished the final training session with him, like for you, and I jumped on. So. Yeah, so, so we, we're just, we're starting to wrap up everything now. The big things have wrapped up. We've got a couple weeks to, to hang out and do post support, but, but we've just wrapped up the last training session. So he's now stepping up fully as the new owner and I'm now stepping back and just kind of being Q and A support for a little bit. So, so that is, that's where we're at now. Now you asked about celebration. We are going to celebrate. We've intended for some time to buy some land here in Japan and build our own house. So I have another source of income with my consulting business to cover day expenses. But, but the intent for a few months now has been to take the money from the business sale and invest it into a cash buy of the land instead of a mortgage. So we're going to go and purchase some land and build our family there.

That is exciting. I'm, I'm so happy for you, Chris. I'm. This, this whole podcast is incredible. Just the breadth of advice and just the business that you built. It's, it's a huge accomplishment to kind of summarize this whole podcast, if you had to give three pieces of advice to another founder looking to sell their business, what do you think those three pieces would be?

Sure, I think the first one would be. It may sound a little paradoxical perhaps, but you want to simplify things while still keeping them detailed. When you sell a business, there are literally 1001 to do's that you have to do at every stage of the process. There's so many emails that have to exchange, there's so many little things you have to compile. So what's helpful is at each new stage of the process is to create a checklist of all the things, big and little that you have to do and then simplify that list, but keep notes for each section. This is something that I did where I could simplify the process so I always know where I stood without dropping the ball on anything. But I had notes to remind myself. So this, this may be a little bit hard to articulate, but you want to simplify as much as you can for you and the buyer so that you're not overwhelming them, but you want to make sure that nothing is really slipping through the cracks. So if you can find that balance between simple and detailed, that will serve you well throughout the acquisition process. So you don't go crazy and you don't scare the buyer away because it can be very easy to be too detailed and you overwhelm the buyer and then they just go, no, thanks, I don't want to deal with this mess. So there's a real balance of what information you give them versus what you don't or when or when you give information over to them. So. So be clear and concise in, in each stage of the process without making sure that you're overwhelming someone. So I think that would be the first, perhaps, piece of advice. I think the second one would perhaps be around meaning we build businesses for a reason. Sometimes it's to build a big business and that's the gratification itself. For me personally, I have never started a business just to start a business and grow it. I respect that a lot and many of my friends have been successful in business and I'm so happy for them. But emotionally, I don't connect with that at all. Andrew I build businesses for a reason or as a service to other people. My businesses have to have meaning in my life and to me, and they have to support my life. So the second piece of advice I would give you is what is the meaning behind your business, number one? And what's the meaning in your life after the business? I actually would. It's fine to decompress and chill for a while before going on to the next thing. But I would urge someone, there can be feelings of meaninglessness or burnout or not sure what to do next post acquisition. I would urge someone to think about what they're going to do with their life after, because if they can get clear on that, it's much easier to transition into that thing than to just kind of languish and not sure what to do next. So. So I think my next be around meaning.

That's great advice.

Yeah, it's. It's become increasingly big to me each year. I'll tell you one thing, if I might go on a small tangent for one minute.

Don't worry.

I had, early on in my entrepreneurial career, became genuinely obsessed with automating my business as much as I can, and I happened to be quite successful at that. I got running my cleaning company down to less than five minutes a day and my VA company to about an hour a day, sometimes less.

Wow.

Early on, that was gratifying. But very soon after that, I found that I was very lazy. I didn't do anything with my days. My business is stalled, and it's because I'd lost an immediate meaning in my businesses. I'd automated them, they're profitable, and I was collecting a paycheck, which sounds like the dream. And in many ways that is. But in another sense, when you take away your own role in your company, you don't know what to do anymore unless you tell yourself very clearly what your role is going to be moving forward. So I had a period of about a year and a half or two years where all my companies were stable, but they were not growing and they were not progressing in any way. And neither was I as a business owner because I didn't get clear on what I wanted to do. And when I realized that happening, I was able to redefine what these businesses meant to me going forward. The original goal was to provide me income to be with my wife in Japan. Once I'd achieved that goal, I didn't set a new goal for a long time. So when you achieve a big goal in your business or acquisition, make sure you set a new goal and meaning for yourself. So that would be the second piece of advice. I think the third one would just be make sure that the other people are happy. When you're selling, of course, you as the seller, have to be happy, and of course the buyer has to be happy. But the other people in the equation, it's their own lives and their income that matters. To my managers in my company, my VAs, my clients, they all matter too. It's not just a sale and money exchanged and then done. You have to make sure that the other people in the equation who have built this business with you also are happy for this acquisition to go through. I think you have a duty as an owner and as a person and as a leader to make sure that as many people as happier are as happy as possible. Some people will not be. You can't make everyone happy. You shouldn't try, but you should make sure that everyone is on the same page, everyone feels good about this and that there's goodwill that you're leaving. So I think that would be the third thing.

This is phenomenal advice, Chris. I think to me, if I had to summarize this Advice is just put a lot of thought in your acquisition. You know, I love the advice around, you know, what is. What is your role in the business? What does it mean to you? And really thinking about what, what is that going to look like post acquisition? Because it does surprise a lot of entrepreneurs. You go from this stacked day back to back calls. Team needs you to, you know, sometimes being the least important person in the company. And then I also agree with you in terms of, you know, really thinking through how does this impact your team and, you know, at a minimum, communicate these things to the buyer that these are your expectations and that can also work into which buyer you ultimately select to work with and acquire your business. But I think just the amount of thought and preparation that you put into your acquisition is what we love to see at acquire, and I think that's why you had such a successful acquisition. I think this detail was also baked into your business and really is why you built such an amazing company and why I was growing so fast and why it was so profitable and why you have so many happy customers. So I'm just stoked. Chris, I'm happy for you. A huge congrats. You know, you accomplish what, you know, really every entrepreneur dreams of. I guess my final question is, you know, what's next for you?

What are you?

What are you building next? Are you. Is it time to relax for Chris?

Thank you, man. Just one last thing on the advice. Make sure you celebrate your team, too. Don't just celebrate yourself with a nice glass of wine. Celebrate your team because they built the business more than you did. As the owner, we all, as the owners, we put in hard work. But I think most of us know our team does the hard work every day, so. So just make sure you celebrate your team in this. There's a few things that are next for me. This might sound strange, but I'll explain it anyway. Two things, or three, rather. Number one, I still have my consulting business. So I was kind of the pioneer way back in 2016 of what's called the remote local cleaning business model. Now I still teach people how to do that. It's a very common thing. Now if you go on YouTube, there's a bunch of people teaching it, so it's nothing special anymore, but I teach it in a very specific way for people, and I help them get unstuck. So for me, I'm going to continue consulting for the time being because I love what I do, and what I do is not actually teach people how to build a remote business, although that is what I do on the surface, what I really teach people how to do and what I actually care about is teaching people how to build a balanced business and a balanced life. Many of us get obsessed with the next KPI we were tracking or an extra zero on our monthly revenue or whatever business goal that we have. But those are sub goals in greater goals in our life. And usually I'd actually say perhaps most business owners build their businesses to support their lives, but most people that we see talking online, whether it's Gary V. Or someone else, are talking about growing the business. They're not talking about balance in your business. And so what I'm actually passionate about sharing is how people can build a balanced business that works for them and their team and their life. And so what's next for me is expanding that offering to be more all encompassing. That's, that's the first thing. Second thing is obviously family. Yeah. So that's what's next for me.

So family is, is number two and three or was there a third?

There is a third, yeah. It's more personal. So before, way before I had started my first business, my cleaning company, I was on track to study psychology. I've always been interested in it and I still am. So originally I was going to go on to clinical psychology, but there's no English taught clinical psychology programs in Japan. So it was something that was put on the back burner naturally, just for a while, out of necessity. So, you know, family is more important than any career, I think so. So I put that on the back burner for a few years for me. We live here in Japan, but I have British citizenship. I grew up there. And so me and my wife will be moving back to the UK in a few years to settle down there. So when we move back, long term I'm actually going to return to clinical psychology. So nothing to do with business at all. But, but long term, that is my plan is to return to that. So.

Yeah. All right, Chris. Well, it's been a pleasure hearing your story and hearing your advice on acquisitions and just how you think about building businesses and the preparation you spend with just making this a huge success. So congrats again on the acquisition. I hope to see you again in the future. For those that want to hear more about your story online or reach out to you, where can they find you?

LinkedIn is a good place. If you search my name, I'll come up and you connect, connect me through there if you're, if you want to connect with me more directly. Just local businessmba.com you can email me, Chris, @localbusinessmba.com that's just my coaching email, but that's the one that I happen to give out to people. So it's not a pitch. It's just that's the easiest way to contact me. Those two are the best ways to reach out to me. There's other sites, but. But those are the easiest direct contact methods.

Sounds good. I'll put those in the show notes for anyone that wants to reach out. All right, Chris, thanks again for coming on. And congrats again on the acquisition.

Thank you very much. Andrew, it's been a pleasure. I appreciate what you and the team have done.

Thank you. All right, cheer.