#306: Selling Your Writing Business

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, most freelance writers never consider the possibility of eventually selling their business. They go out on their own because they want to run their own show. They want to keep writing, but they don't want to be an employee. They want to have the freedom and flexibility of being self employed. But can a freelance writing business actually be sold? And if so, what would you need to do to make it sellable? How much could you fetch for it? What would that look like? And who might be interested in buying it? Why would they buy it? Well, the answer is basically yes. Yes, you can sell your freelance business, but you need to scale up your operations so it's not fully dependent on you. And you need to be strategic about your business focus and growth. In this episode, I go into a detailed conversation with Alexis Grant, founder of they Got Acquired. Alexis started out as a journalist and transitioned into a freelance writer. She sold her writing business about 10 years ago and then she founded an online content business which she grew and sold in 2020 for a hefty sum in the six figure range, mid six figures. More recently, she launched they Got Acquired, which is a content website that shares stories of companies that sell for $100,000 all the way to $50 million. By not following the Silicon Valley narrative, she and her team of researchers and writers dig into these stories and reveal insights that have led to life changing exits or sales, another word for sales for the founders of those companies. Alexis and I in this conversation get into two specific opportunities for freelance writers. The first, in no particular order, but the first one we discuss is the opportunity to scale up your writing or copywriting business into an asset that has real value for a buyer. What that requires, what's involved, and what an exit from that business can look like. And second, we discuss the opportunity to create and grow an online content business. What's that about? Different ways of monetizing that kind of business and growing it from a just kind of an upstart to a profitable acquisition. As you're going to quickly tell in this conversation, I was very excited to talk with Alexis and she was very, very generous with her advice and insights. She's one of us. You know, she started as a journalist and as a freelance writer. And look, if any of what you hear today sounds interesting, not only do I encourage you to listen to the full episode all the way through, but make sure to subscribe to her newsletter@theygotacquired.com Newsletter Hope you enjoy this conversation with Alexis Grant. Alexis, welcome. Great to have you here.

Thanks. I'm excited to chat.

I am excited to chat with you and I've been wanting to bring you on the show for several months now. So it's finally happened. I'm glad you're here. I want listeners to first get an idea of your background because I feel like you're one of us. You know, you came from our world and I know you were a freelance writer for some time and then kind of evolved from there. So why don't you give us an idea of, you know, what your evolution was like, The Alexis story.

Yeah, I'm definitely a writer at heart. I went got my master's in journalism and then got a reporting job. So for the first, my first six years after J school, I was working as a reporter and I really thought I would always be a reporter. Like, I was not interested in business at that time. I really didn't want to take business classes when I was in school. But eventually I started kind of playing around online with blogging and selling ebooks and I realized that there was another world out there where I could earn a living from doing some of the things I enjoyed without having to work for somebody else. And just I really was into that idea of the autonomy and the freedom and quite frankly, the ability to make more money than I would make as a reporter in a newsroom. So in around 2010, I started a content marketing agency. I really started as a freelancer and then it morphed into a small agency and we managed blogs for other businesses. So this is when, like, content marketing was starting to become a thing and companies wanted to have blogs, but they didn't know how to do it, so they would outsource it to us. I still think this is a huge need, by the way. We can talk more about that if you want. Eventually, I sold that company to one of our clients. So one of our clients was a personal finance media brand called the Penny Hoarder. And we ran that blog in the early days. And Kyle, the founder of the Penny Hoarder, he ended up being buying my blog management agency, my company, and we went in house at the Penny Hoarder. So myself and a Bunch of members of my team. We all became full time employees there and built out the content operation at the Penny Hoarder.

That is really interesting. That's right. That wasn't your intention. Did he just come to you with.

That was never my intent. He was a client for about a year and a half before he bought us. So he didn't, he didn't even broach idea until we'd been working together for about a year and it was never on my radar or anything I was looking to do because I really liked working for myself. So I thought at that point I would never become an employee again. But it just gave me a lot of opportunities that I didn't have on my own. I got to build something alongside him that was much bigger than I would have done on my own. I got to have the experience of working at a fast growth startup. We were bootstrapped but well resourced. So we grew quickly like a VC backed startup might without having to be beholden to investors, which is one of my core values. I am really into the bootstrapped mentality. So yeah, it was a great opportunity and one I hadn't expected. And I stayed there for a few years and I left in 2019 and at that point I went back and picked up a project that I had started years before. It was a website called the Right Life. W R I T E the Right Life. And I had started that on the side of the blog management agency. So when I was running the agency and we were running blogs for other companies, a kind of a light bulb went off for me in those years and I thought, hey, we should be doing this for our own asset. Because if one of our clients leaves us, we've done all this work to build up their blog and they have this great resource and then they're gone and we never earn anything from it again, you know, if we're not continuing to run it for them. So we applied our systems and our people that we were using for our clients to our own asset, which was a website called the Right Life. And that's how I started it.

And when you say our own, was this. So you were not the sole owner of the Right Life?

No, I was owner of it.

Okay.

I mean, the company was the owner of it. Yes.

Okay. So that came your company. This was not part of the acquisition by the Penny Order?

No. So this is before I joined the Penny Order, when I was running the blog management company. That's when I started the Right Life. When I sold the blog management company, I Didn't sell the Right life with it.

So you kept that. It was a side hustle and you just kind of maintained it. In 2019, suddenly you're free, you got time, and so what did you do? I mean, was it successful on its own as kind of a part time side hustle?

It was in the early days. It did pretty well, revenue wise. But when I was at the Penny Hoarder, I, in fact, I almost let it die because I really, I had a very demanding job. I had two kids during that time, like two babies. So I had a lot going on. So what I did was I had an editor who was running that blog and I just made sure that we were making enough money for it to run itself. But there was no profit during those years. I just wanted to like keep growing and keep chugging along.

What was the revenue model of the Right Life?

Well, we had a few different forms of revenue to think back to it. One was we sold bundles. So like bundles of courses in flash sales. So basically course sales, but they weren't our own courses, they were other people's. We did have some of our own ebooks which we sold. And we did some affiliate marketing too.

Okay. And the target audience, obviously, that's where I know you from. It was for. Geared toward freelance writers.

Exactly. Yes. And so when I came back to it in 2019, I was trying to figure out what I wanted my next step to be. And I thought I'd kind of play around with that and see if I wanted to grow it. So I spent a lot of time on the SEO, mostly because I had learned a lot about SEO at the Pennywater cause I oversaw our SEO team. We had some real superstars who taught me a lot there. So I wanted to apply that to the right life. And I just, I find SEO to be really fun. It was like a tinkering project for me. And I was able to pretty quickly increase our search traffic there dramatically to about half a million page views a month. Because we had like started way back when. We had a great. An old and age domain. We had tons of great content, but it'd only been optimized a tiny bit. Like I hadn't done it very strategically. So when I started doing that, it made a huge difference. But one thing I realized during that time was I mapped out all the options for. Because the site was bringing in some money, but it wasn't bringing in a lot. It certainly wasn't enough for me to rely on that as my only income. And the question was, do I Want to turn this into my sole focus right now. And when I mapped out all the opportunities for it, I just realized it didn't really interest me. I felt like the topic was who I had been 10 years earlier and I just wanted a new challenge. So I ended up selling that site in 2020.

Interesting. And we don't have to get into too much of the detail. But was it difficult to find a buyer?

No, it was not. Because I had had some people ask me to buy it.

Okay.

That basically the competitors in the space wanted it because of its SEO value and it'd been around for a while and it had a good, high quality brand. I think people respected the content we put out, so it wasn't hard to find a buyer. It was interesting because I had gone through a sale process before when I sold to the penny order, but that was different. That was an aqua hire where they bought myself and my team and our processes to like bring us in house. This was different. Selling in the right life was like an asset sale. So I was transferring an asset to someone entirely and I wasn't going to go with it. So it was a little bit of a different process. And I'm trying to think of. It took a few months, I'd say from beginning to end. And it was mostly smooth that I sold it for mid six figures.

Nice.

Yeah. So it was something that. It was meaningful for my family and it made me feel like, oh, I was glad I held onto it all those years, even though it was a pain in the ass or a pain some of. During some of that time. Sorry. Okay. Come and keep it clean. But it was a little bit like. I'd say it's more of an emotional sale than anything else because it's something I'd worked on for a long time. Like I felt close to it and a big part of selling that was letting go and knowing that the next person might not run it the same way I did. And it was really interesting because I sold it and I felt really good about the deal. And a few months later, another player in the space, like the person I sold it to, they resold it to someone else. So that was interesting to watch that happen because I just, I didn't expect that. And you know, that was their choice and their prerogative. But it's like just was just a real reminder that once you sell something, you got no more control over it.

It's like a house, you gotta let go.

Yeah, yeah, it's out there. Exactly.

But that's where our kids Grew up? Well, yeah, it's somebody else's house now.

Exactly exact.

So I'm assuming that you know, in 2020, so you have that sale and that's when you started thinking through and building. They got acquired, which is your current property or current business? So tell us. Actually, you know what, I'm actually going to start in with a kind of a strange question about they got acquired. I definitely want to hear about how that idea came about. This is probably the most. One of the, one of the questions that I've been dying to ask you the most about they got acquired. So the focus is to showcase companies that have sold for anywhere between a hundred thousand dollars and fifty million dollars. The first thing that struck me when I read that was why the huge range? In my mind, somebody who's interested in, you know, a six figure sale exit is a very different individual in target market than somebody who's shooting for mid eight figures. So what was the reasoning behind that?

Yeah, well, on one hand it was kind of arbitrary. It was like, hey, we just got to pick some range and stick within it. And that's what I picked so we could get started and knowing that we could change it later if we wanted to. On the other hand, most of what we cover is I'd say deals in the six and seven figure range. And I'm finding that exactly what you're saying. It's like those have a lot more in common than the $50 million deal. However, I do think there are some things that we can learn from some of the bigger deals and sometimes it makes sense to feature those people. Both because it gives you a sense of what's possible and because there are like tactical things that those types of people are doing that you might want to apply even if you have a smaller sale. But I mean it is sort of arbitrary. In fact, like sometimes we have like I've come across a couple of operators of newsletters that have sold that have been, you know, 80k or 50k and I'm like, you know, right now we're trying to stick within the box we created just to get as we get momentum. But I do ask myself like, oh, should I share that? Because that probably would be helpful to our readers. But I think it's helpful to also just have some cutoff or some minimum so people know like this was legitimate and cause like everyone says, you know, they sold X or Y nowadays and it could have been they sold it for a thousand dollars, which is still a win to a lot of people. And that's how we all start by doing things small and then you build up. But I think having that $100,000 threshold gives us a good starting point.

I couldn't agree more. The 100,000 made perfect sense to me. But then when I saw 50 million, I thought I worked. My last employer was a company, software company that sold for 46 million. And I was comparing it to that. I'm thinking that is a totally different business. Operation, mindset, people, dozens of employees. So anyway, that. Okay, that makes absolute sense. Let's go back then 2020, you've sold the right life. When did you start thinking of they got acquired. And how did that come about?

Well, I wasn't thinking much in 2020 because I had two young children, had no childcare. Yes, it was Covid. So when I left the Pennywater, we moved right after that. So I was managing a move alongside my husband. And then I figured I'd start a new company. But because of COVID I ended up stretching that out really long, that discovery period, because I just didn't have the focus that I had hoped to have. During that time. I did some consulting where I helped companies hire writers, which was interesting because I. There's a real need there. But I realized, personally, I don't want to do it. And I knew I wanted to start another media business, but I wanted it to be in something that was. Had, like some sort of new challenge for me that would, like, help me learn and push me. And so there's two interesting pieces of they got acquired that helped me do that. The first is it's about mergers and acquisitions. And I am not an M and a specialist. I'm kind of our target demographic because I've gone through this twice myself. So I understand the pain points, but I'm not an expert in this. And I'm really having to lean on other experts to populate the site. And of course, I'm kind of becoming. I'm slowly learning about it, and eventually, hopefully, I'll be an expert. But it's funny, when people ask me already, they're asking me, can you give me a talk on how to sell your business? And I can certainly share what I've learned in my experience, what I've seen other people doing, but I still don't consider myself an expert in the field, so I get to learn there. And then also, one of the ways that we're monetizing is new to me. We're building a database of these acquisitions. So what you see on the website is a tiny fraction of what we're tracking in the database and we're slowly building it out. We have thousands of deals in there that meet our criteria. It's all on all online businesses.

Okay.

And my eventual goal is to offer people access to that database so they can look through it and find comps. So like if you're selling your website about running and you want to see other website, other content websites that have sold, you could look in the database and find other ones that are similar to yours and get an idea of what their metrics look like when they sold, basically to help you inform yourself on how much should I sell for? It's also helpful information for people who want to buy a business or invest in a business. So that's kind of the long term vision.

Well, we talked a little bit about your target audience or in terms of the focus, some of what's behind it, some of what you're trying to do. Can you give us maybe the one or two sentence elevator pitch of they got acquired and how you would describe it?

Yeah, yeah. We help entrepreneurs sell their businesses and we tell the stories of people who are building small online businesses who don't want to follow the Silicon Valley model, who want to do it a little bit differently. And many of the people we cover are bootstrapped or they've raised minimal funding. Many have lean teams. So a small group of employees, or even just a solo founder or a solo founder and some contractors, people who don't necessarily want to work themselves into the ground to have a massive, massive sale. But you know, if you sell, if you own all of your company, you bootstrap it, you own all of it and you sell it for $5 million. That's a lot of money for you and your family and it can be really meaningful. So our goal here is to show that you don't have to have one of these crazy huge exits like we see on the media all the time. It's like there's another way to do it that works not just as well, but for many of us it's actually a preferable route.

I love that. And as soon as I saw your site, the launch, I was like, oh my gosh, has finally somebody talking about a segment of the market that, you know, it's completely ignored. I, you know, if you said 5 million, we talked a little bit earlier about six figures. I think a 2, 3, $400,000 exit can be life changing.

Absolutely.

For most people. Okay.

Yep.

And I think that's fascinating and I want everyone to think about that is like, look up until this point, I guess I know for me, I was thinking, hey, this is just the way I make a living. I never thought about, you know, creating some sort of exit plan, creating an asset. I have been, I have been over the past couple years and then when I heard about they got acquired, it really got me thinking. But it doesn't have to be binary. It doesn't have to be, well, you know, this business will die with me or, you know, I have to create a billion dollar business that's there's so many options in between. So that's one of the things I love about your site, is the inspiration that it provides for people like us. Not to get too meta, but can you give us a quick glimpse into your operation because you've created a, you know, you got a team. So what does it look like behind the curtain?

Yeah, sure. I mean, we're bootstrapped, so I really am kind of building what I want to have for myself. Yes, I have a small team of contractors, about 10 contractors, and almost all those are working on the content side of the operation. Reporters and writers, researchers. I have a designer, a podcast producer and an operations coordinator who helps kind of across the business. But we're very much lean and bootstrapped. And for me, that's one of the things I really love about starting something new. But it was also a real challenge. It has been a challenge for me coming from a place like the Penny Hoarder, where we are very well resourced. I ran a team of 60 on the content side of the business and I had lots of resources and we could move really quickly on things. And so now I'm always having to keep myself in check, like, okay, what's truly realistic with the team you have now and the money that you want to put into it?

Yeah, that's great. It's, you know, constraints can be a blessing, so. But it forces you to make better decisions. That's really cool. So there are a couple of areas that I'd like to address as I think about me, as I think about my audience, because I am, you know, in my audience opportunities in terms of if you're a freelance writer, copywriter, marketing strategist, or some combination of that is building an asset such as a scaling up to a mini agency or an agency of some sort, content agency, and the opportunity there. And then the other one would be creating a content site like you did with the right life and like you're doing right now with they got acquired. So let's start with the first one. Do you feel that there's an opportunity for writers and copywriters to scale up their solo freelance operation into something that could be sold at some point?

Yeah, for sure. The basic pieces of that are you have to have something that can run without you so you have enough support and people in place that can run without you. Or you could pass. You have systems in place and you've documented how you do things so that you could pass that along to someone else if they bought it. We actually ran a story recently about that even surprised me. It was a guy who had a small design services agency. It was really mostly like him doing the services. It wasn't really even built to scale necessarily, or built without him, but. And he sold that, and he sold his client list and was able to exit that business instead of just winding it down. So that surprised me because it's. I think it's hard to imagine sometimes how you would sell an asset that does revolve around you, and it is difficult to do that. But even in those cases, sometimes it's possible.

Was it a strategic acquisition where it's.

Yeah, it was someone who wanted to have the same kind of clients that he had or wanted to branch into that area, and they already provided similar services.

Yeah. In fact, can you speak a little bit to that? You know, in terms of the types of acquisitions and what the motivation might be for someone to acquire your content agency? Let's say yes.

So there's generally two types of acquirers. There's something called a financial acquirer who's buying the business because they want to kind of replicate what you've done. They may see something they could do better than you. And that's always the goal is like, how can I pour gasoline on this and make this bigger and better? And then there's some slightly different type of buyer called a strategic buyer. And a strategic buyer usually has even more of a strategic reason for buying your business. So they. Maybe they. In the agency world, I'm just making this up, but like, say there was an agency that performed a certain type of services and they wanted to add an arm onto their agency that provided a different set of services. And so by adding that arm, they could probably offer those new services to their old clients. So in that instance, like combining those two or making that acquisition, one plus one doesn't equal two, it equals three. Because the company that's buying it, they basically have something else they can layer on top of what you have already to make even more money than you would make doing your thing.

Got it.

That's a real layman's way of explaining it. And I'm sure someone in the M and A space would use much bigger terminology.

No, that makes sense. I like it. I like it. So one example might be, let's say that you do a lot of original research work for clients and maybe even have a couple of people who help you as contractors, because these are big, complex projects and this agency in town, maybe you've worked with them, maybe they hired you, they brought you in to help write an original research report and project for a client, and they really like your work and the way you operate. They see a huge opportunity and they offer to buy you because they want to really scale that up. They want to start offering that it's of strategic value to them. So something along those lines.

Yeah, exactly. The tricky part, and what we see in a lot of acquihires, is often the buyer wants to bring the CEO of that company or whoever's running it in house as well, at least for a longer transition period. Because often in agencies, not all the time, but often, you know, the founder is integral either in the marketing and bringing in new clients or maybe in the serving how they serve their clients. So the trick is really doing as much as you can to make that your agency run without you before you sell. And that way you'll have the option of whether you want to go along with it or not, depending on what the buyer wants.

Got it. So, yeah, some good things to think about there. It's, you know, would you want to be an employee for, you know, a couple of years or can you start setting it up so that, you know, maybe that is not as essential because you're not as critical a piece of your business. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. We featured a woman called Jodi Cook on our website. She ran a social media agency, but she managed to sell it without having an earn out. An earnout is like when you'd stay on after the transaction for a certain period of time and you earn some of your money during that time by helping them make the transition. And she managed to avoid an earn out because she had systemized her business so well, so it is possible, but I think it's. My impression is it's rather uncommon.

Yeah, yeah. It's still for. In most cases that what I've seen is you're still as a CEO, a critical part of. Of the business. You know, even if it's not on the.

Yeah, yeah. If you talk about a content site, it's a totally different deal, which is One of the reasons I think there's a huge opportunity still for small content agencies. Tons of, I mean, I say to my husband all the time, if we got in a pinch, I would spin up a content agency because I think you can make a lot of money doing it. If you're willing to manage people and deal with clients rather than just doing writing or whatever work you do, you have to be willing to change what you actually do because you still have a job, but other people are doing the work you were doing before and now you're doing something else. You're running the business. But I think there's still, even today, huge need for content agencies because more and more everyone wants to do content. I mean even within Covid, this became bigger and bigger. It's like people can't reach their, or companies can't reach people in person, so they want to reach people online. So there's just so much demand out there for great content.

Absolutely. Especially if you've got, you need that hook, right? You need some sort of specialization, something that makes you unique. You know, we focus on this market or we focus on this type of work, or there's something really specialized that we do. And if you can then have the operational wisdom to really run it like a well oiled machine where it's not dependent on you, then there you go. So yeah, I've seen it many times and it's a great model. So let's shift gears into the second one. Content websites. Kind of a media company, media business. First, why don't you define that for us? Everyone is on the same page here.

Yeah, I think the words are used interchangeably like a content or a media business. I think of it as any company that's publishing content that's valuable to people and somehow makes money off of that content. There's lots of different ways you can monetize. You can monetize through affiliate, you can monetize through advertising and sponsorships. Some people monetize with events, digital products and courses. So there's lots of different ways to do it. But I, this is like what I love. And I love it in part because I do think it's more scalable. I don't love dealing with clients, so. So for me it gets me away from doing that. I mean if you're building something online, you still have to, you still have to talk to people and deal with people. Cause you're going to somebody's your customer. Whether it's your reader or your sponsor, somebody's your customer. But it still is a little bit different level of customer service you have to provide than if you're working directly with a client.

Yeah, I think that's an important point is, look, there's no free lunch. Right, Right. It's like, oh, yeah, I don't like dealing with clients either. Yeah. But there's gonna be things you have to deal with, the content business that you don't have to deal with if you're building an agency. So I think there's some trade offs and you just have to decide what set of problems are you willing to deal with.

Yes, exactly.

Right. Because you mentioned SEO earlier. I mean, when I was listening to you talk about that, I feel the exact opposite as you do. Like, my energy just goes down. The blood drains out of my face. Like the thought of having to spend time on SEO. But, you know, that's one thing you have to really focus on.

Yeah. And oh my gosh, I wish. I feel like SEO shot its own self in the foot by getting this terrible rap with writers and because I work with artists all the time and a lot of them are really either scared of it or just don't even want to think about it because they've had all these terrible experiences with it. But the truth is, it's like a real great tool for bringing traffic and it can be really fun and super satisfying. What I love about it, it's almost mathematical and it doesn't always work. It's not always this linear. But you make a change and you see a result from it. And there's just not that many other things in the content space that are that direct or immediate. I mean, it takes a while for it to kick in, but I just find it so satisfying because it feels more. It's so execution focused.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, I get it. It's just initially when I first hear about it, it's. It's not the first thing I gravitate to, you know, just that thought. But let's tell me a little bit about who would be better suited because we started talking about this. Who would be better suited for launching and building and growing a content property content site? Like what kind of person you think does?

Well, I've never thought about it that way before. I mean, I think this probably applies to anybody doing anything on their own, but you have to be able to motivate yourself and set your own deadlines and figure out what are you doing, what's your roadmap look like. Like in my early days of running my own business, I used to say, oh, Everyone should do this. It's great. But then I realized not everyone thinks about it that way. And some people really do work better in a team environment where they're not having to figure out what they have to do every day. And some people learn it too. I know some people who struggle with that initially and then they eventually got there. But I think that's one hard piece is you have to determine the roadmap yourself and you have to be willing to stick through the hard parts even if no one else is telling you. Good job.

Yeah. Yeah. So the reason I'm focusing in this conversation on like a marketing agency or content agency and content sites is, I think is pretty obvious. Right. As writers, we have something especially bringing that skill set into a content website where, gosh, that's a huge piece of the business and many founders don't have that. They have to hire that out. So you have an advantage, a huge advantage by having that skill, at least to start.

Yeah, definitely. However, I think that's like a tiny fraction of what you really need to have run a successful content site.

Because tell us what else you need.

In addition to the writing chops, which are important. You have to be able to. Well, two of the main things. One is monetize it. So just because you do great writing doesn't mean someone's going to come and read it. You've got to monetize it. How are you going to make money off of the content? And that's the hardest thing for content entrepreneurs. I find people that come from the content side. We all really value high quality content and a great user experience. But then you also have to layer on top of that business. And even I struggle with that. Sometimes I find myself spending more time on making it a high quality content than I do on, oh, I've got to actually monetize this piece. And like, I should really spend more time on the revenue because if you don't bring in revenue, you can't. It's not sustainable. You can't keep doing it. So that's one piece is like thinking about how is it actually going to make money. And the second piece is marketing, because I almost think that, like, the writing is the product is maybe a third of this, the business is maybe a third and marketing is a third. Or I didn't really break that up. Well, I want marketing to be more than, more than the rest of it.

Because Maybe marketing is 50% and then 25.

25, exactly.

I'm with you because you need volume, you know, with the agency let's. Let's compare, right, with the agency. I got to deal with clients, but you don't need hundreds or thousands of customers.

Exactly.

You just need a few. Right. With this. Now you're talking volume. So that's.

You are, but you are. But you don't always have to do a content site in that way. And a lot of content sites have built massive lists, and that's how they make money. But there's lots of tiny niche ones who have really niche, lucrative communities that you can make a lot of money off of with a small list. So you don't have to have a huge list. If you have a small engaged list and you're providing a service that's worth.

It to them, what would be an example of that? I'm curious, because that sounds really interesting.

I mean, what I'm doing right now isn't a perfect example of that. It's like we serve entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who want to sell their business. Those types of people can be worth a lot to the right sponsor. Like, for example, if there's an advisor or a broker who wants to help someone sell their business, and I help connect those two people, that broker is going to make a lot of money off of helping that entrepreneur sell their business. They both make money, but that one person is worth a lot to the broker, which means they're worth a lot to me if I can make that connection. So when I started, when I went into doing this site, I thought a lot about this because I think I'll be careful about how I say this because your audience is all writers. When I served a writing community, I don't think serving writers is like the most lucrative audience. And no, and that's fair. There certainly are ways to do it. There's lots of ways to do it and make great money. But it's tougher than some other audiences because in my experience, some writers don't want to spend a lot of money or they don't have money to spend. It's easier to make money off of an audience that has money. And that sounds almost brash to say it that way, but it is one thing that I thought about when I went to start over and like, okay, I can do anything. Let's make sure it also ticks this box. It's like, I want to be in a niche where the people I serve, I can make money off of them. And I say off of them. I mean alongside them. I'm helping them. I'm not, like, taking advantage of the situation, but just thinking about it from a business perspective, you want to pick.

A good market, you almost have to think of it in terms of concentric circles and you got to go out a couple of rings. Meaning, like you thought of it strategically. This is my interpretation. You said, okay, if I'm going to monetize this, I want to. One of the criteria should be that the end sale, whether it's through a sponsor or an affiliate or we're monetizing it ourselves through a course or whatever, is going to be high $. And in a B2B setting, even better because that tends to everything else being equal. Be bigger. As opposed to a content site where, let's say it's like a keto diet and then the revenue model is selling a lot of small ticket products like snack bars and, you know, food products. Right. That's a B2C kind of play where you need a lot of volume there to make it worthwhile. So in your situation, like you don't need a list of a hundred thousand people, you could get away with much less. Because even if a few of those convert into buying something from your sponsors, those are huge, huge deals for your sponsors. Is kind of a long way of describing what I heard you say.

Yeah, and same way with the agency. I mean, in an agency, you only need 10 great clients and you're good to go. So it just depends on how much money you're making from each client or each person or customer.

One in terms of, you know, if this content site idea is resonating with you, like, do you feel that one way to brainstorm would be, hey, what are my interests? What am I really into? Or does that not really matter? And you should really approach it the other way. It's like, what's hot right now? And I don't care what it is, I'm going to kind of look at it from that side and make sure that it's hot and could do well?

I mean, I would come at it as, what am I interested in personally? Because you've got to be able to stick with it for a long time and if you don't enjoy it, then you're not going to stick with it. But once you come up with things you're interested in, then you can say, can I make money off of this? And some of those you'll be able to tick off as probably won't work. I think can I make money off of it? Is a good second layer. I would come at it with the passion layer first, but I mean, there are people who do it the Opposite way we covered an entrepreneur who sold a content site on soap operas. He knew nothing. Yes, he knew nothing about soap operas and he built the site into this huge operation. And sometimes I think people who have the business acumen, and I don't want to say he cared less about the content, but maybe he did. Sometimes they have an advantage because, you know, they're not as tied to like, is this sentence perfect? And yes, sometimes it works to let go of the content just a little bit to move ahead on the business front.

Not to get too much in the weeds, but I've been curious about this. With content sites, have you seen successful exits when somebody, instead of taking the traditional content building approach, which requires a lot of SEO work, for example, and just building a huge list on your own, doing it through Substack, the platform Substack, where you know, you kind of have a ready made platform and you can go in there and build on that.

Yeah, Lots of people make a living that way. I think of that though as more of a. Well, so what happens on Substack is you pay, you can have a free list, but then you can also pay for a subscription fee to access someone's writing, basically. And I think of that as a great model for an individual who wants to make money off of their writing and thinks that they can do that. And a lot of writers who don't want to deal with the business, they do make money that way because all they have to do is write. They have to market as well, which is tricky. And Substack's starting to do things to help a little bit with that. But the whole business piece is generally taken away. You don't have to think about that because you're just selling subscriptions. So you have to worry about creating great content and getting people to it. I think it's less. There are some media companies that use Substack, but I think it's a less optimal route if you are more than an individual creator.

Got it. Because it's, it's mostly like your personality than what you've seen instead of, you know, a brand name and you just happen to be the main writer at first.

Exactly. There are some brands that use it, but in my opinion also like they haven't. I don't think that they've. They're up there with SEO, for example. So like I wouldn't want to host a website on Substack that I wanted to do great that where if I wanted an SEO to be a primary driver of traffic, because I'd rather be on WordPress where I can be in charge of that and get more SEO traffic. So there's things like that that I don't think they're optimum for. If you want to build a media brand that has lots of not only people who write for it, but also has other revenue streams. But if you're a writer who wants to focus on your writing and you feel confident that you can build an audience for it, that's the hardest part. Then I think substack is a good spot.

And there's still a possibility that you could sell that business. I mean, maybe not as high.

Yeah, you can. Absolutely. I've seen some writers who write on substack either sell or be. More often an acquihire is a more common structure there where a company might buy the newsletter, but they also buy you to keep writing it for them. So, like, then you just. You go in house at that company and you continue writing that newsletter. Sometimes that's appealing to writers who really want to focus on their craft and not worrying about the business because someone else is taking about the worrying about the business piece.

Got it. It makes sense. So as we start kind of wrapping up our conversation, and you've shared some great ideas here, but if you had to sum it up and there's someone listening right now who's interested in scaling their business or starting something new, they want to go beyond what they're doing right now or just writing for clients, and that's it. And with the purpose of being able to have an exit that you know, for a meaningful sum of money that would make a difference in their finances and their family. What advice would you give them? Like, where do you start? It just seems like such an overwhelming initiative.

Well, that does sound overwhelming to me. Even the way you just described it. I think, like, thinking about what can you experiment with, what can you put out there and see how it does? Like, I think too many people get caught up in coming up with a perfect offer or perfect anything and instead just start dripping things out there and see what people to respond to, because you'll be surprised. Like something you think might do really well, might not, and vice versa. Sometimes there's something that you don't have high hopes for that leads to something really big. So I would say just try to think about how you can start running small experiments to get your stuff out there and see what you like doing, and then it'll give you ideas of what you can build on.

And it seems to me that there's never been an easier Time to just test an idea, right? Simple WordPress site and just, you know, put it out there, start putting some content. Of course, like you said, marketing is probably at least 50% of the trick. You know, like if you were to start something like that, how do you then drive or create the breadcrumb trails to your site if you're starting from scratch?

It's hard. It's really hard. I mean, I think it gets harder every day because like a lot of the ways that used to work don't work as much anymore. Even if you spin up a new site now, it's hard with SEO because you old domains just work way better for SEO Social. I think you can use social media to start driving people to things, but it's harder than it used to be. And a lot of people don't like spending time on social media, which I totally get that. The biggest thing I would focus on is just building your email list. It's the number one asset for any media company is if you have an email list. Those are people whose email they call it owned media. You obviously don't own those people, but you have the email list and you can market to it however you like instead of having to pay somebody else to send them a note about it or instead of having to pay Facebook to try and reach them. So anything you start, I would just immediately start collecting emails. And I did that with. They got acquired. Even before we had a website, we had a landing page and it was built using a website builder that I love. It's called Card C A R R.

D. Oh yeah, it's like a one page site thing.

Oh my gosh, it's so good. There's a little bit of a learning curve and figuring out how to build it, but they have lots of templates if you want to do something simple. So what I did initially when they got acquired was I got a quick logo made. I put a website up using carrd and I started collecting email addresses on that website. And I just set up like three short paragraphs about what we were doing, what we were building, and asked people to give their email address and I let them know when we launched. And that did a couple of things. One is it helped me figure out that people actually wanted it because we collected about a thousand email addresses before we started.

Wow. How did you drive traffic to it? I mean, you put it up, which is great, but then you got to get people to that site, to that page.

Yeah, well, two things. One is anytime I saw a way organically to mention it like sometimes on Twitter, I'd be part of a conversation and say, someone would say, what are you doing next? Or someone might be talking about selling a business and I would have a place to share it. Whereas if I hadn't put that up, I wouldn't have a way to collect those leads. It would have just. I would have participated in the conversation, but then I wouldn't have collected anything that I could hold onto. But then I also made a lot of effort to share it in places that I thought would help us generate signups. So, for example. Well, there's. I was in a lot of Facebook groups where it felt like an organic way to tell people what I was up to. I used a website called Kernel K E R N A L. It's a place where you can share startup ideas and people will give you feedback on it. So I posted the idea there and a lot of people upvoted it and I got some good feedback there, and a lot of people turned into our early subscribers there. I also used my Twitter following, and I did have a starting point there. But this is kind of funny is like, I used to do Twitter a lot in like, 2010 maybe. So most I had, like, when I came back to Twitter a year ago, I had about 10,000 followers, but most of them were writers. They had nothing to do with what I was doing now. So it helped because it looked like I had a following. So people were more likely to follow me, I think, because it looked like I had a following. But in reality, a lot of people that were following me were not my target market for this new project. So I've had to slowly build that over time. But Twitter has been a good source of email subscribers. I also shared it with. I have my own list@alexisgrant.com I very rarely blog there anymore, but sometimes I do, and when I do, I'll send a note out to my list. So I sent a note to them saying, hey, I have. I'm working on this other project. So a few people floated over to that. But obviously not everyone on my old list cares about selling online businesses. So it was really just like a little bit here and there, a lot of boots on the ground trying to get literally one subscriber at a time. We're still doing that. We have about 3,500 subscribers now. Good for you. Thanks. I mean, it's moving, but it's moving slowly. And it still feels very much like, you know, adding one interested person at a time.

Well, it is a niche market where, you know, it's not a mass kind of thing you're not going to get on cnn, you know, or you might, you know, who knows? But you're not necessarily trying to get, like I said, the 100,000 subscribers. So a couple of things, very tactical. One is, is there an SEO course or resource out there that you found to be like, wow, if you do one thing, do this. Most people I've talked to said, well, it's been a combination of things over the years. But have you found one place where, you know, gosh, if I had to pick one, it would be it?

I don't really have a good source for it. Sorry. I have a really good person I like working with that I always hire for an audit. Whenever I start a new project or working on an old project, I'll hire this person for an audit and they put together like first, best first steps, like an action plan. Because with SEO it's. So there's a million things you could do. You could spend your whole life working on something. But what are the top, you know, six things right now? Exactly. So if anyone wants a recommendation for that person, I'm happy to share with them.

Cool, Cool. And then the other thing, going back to your business, I know you recently put out a report, a very detailed report on content businesses that have sold. It's kind of like the way I saw it was like with homes comps, where you kind of get to see, hey, what was the business like? When was it founded, who they sell to, how much did they sell to, all that stuff. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, yeah. It's called 25 Media and Content Businesses that Sold. And I mean, talking about experiments here, this is like our first time putting out a report that people have to pay to access. So it's really an experiment for us to see. Will people actually buy this? What are they interested in? How could we have done it better? There is a one full version that has all 25, but there's also what we call a light version that's free and it has just five content companies in there. So if anyone in your audience wants to download that, it will.

Where can they go?

Yeah, it's@theygotacquired.com reports and there's a bunch of them there. But you'll see the content one there. But that'll give you a good sense of like five different businesses and what they look like when they sold.

Very cool. And that's a mini version of then the full one. So if you like that, then you would love the 25. Okay.

Yes. Yep.

Very cool. So obviously you just gave us the website too, to check out what you've got. I think I subscribed when you were just at that one page. A coaching client told me about you and I, like, I recognize the name and told me about the site. I was like, oh man, this sounds fantastic. This is something. It's a 2023 project for me, but it's. I've been itching to start something new. So I've been very interested and been reading as many of the case studies that you publish, which, by the way, are excellent, very inspirational, gives me a lot of ideas and you put great stuff out once or twice a week, which is just about right, I feel.

So, yeah, they got. If anyone wants to follow it, it's theygotacquired.com newsletter. So just like I recommend to you, get your email list going. That's our main way of staying in touch with everybody.

And please subscribe. I'm telling you guys, it's, you know, I'm not just doing this because you spent this time with me, but I really believe in what you're putting out there. I think it's fantastic. And keep doing what you're doing. I'm glad you're out there doing this work. So thanks so much. Enjoyed our conversation.

Yes, it's fun.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher.com.

There's also what we call a light version that's free and it has just five content companies in there. So if anyone in your audience wants to download that, it will.

Where can they go?

Yeah, it's@theygot acquired.com reports and there's a bunch of them there. But you'll see the content one there. But that'll give you a good sense of like five different businesses and what they look like when they sold.

Very cool. And that's a mini version of then the full one. So if you like that, then you would love the 25. Okay.

Yes. Yep.

Very cool. So obviously you just gave us the website too, to check out what you've got. I think I subscribed when you were just at that one page. A coaching client told me about you and I like, I recognize the name and told me about the site. I was like, oh man, this sounds fantastic. This is something. It's a 2023 project for me, but it's. I've been itching to start something new, so I've been very interested and have been reading as many of the case studies that you publish which by the way are excellent, very inspirational, gives me a lot of ideas and you put great stuff out once or twice a week which is just about right I feel.

So yeah, they got if anyone wants to follow it it's theygotacquired.com newsletter. So just like I recommend to you, get your email list going. That's our main way of staying in touch with everybody and please subscribe.

I'm telling you guys it's, you know I'm not just doing this because you spent this time with me, but I really believe in what you're putting out there. I think it's fantastic and keep doing what you're doing. I'm glad you're out there doing this work. So thanks so much. Enjoyed our conversation.

Yes, it's fun.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.