Exit Strategies for Entrepreneurial Success

Before you start a business, the old maxim is that you should look for the exits. You should know how you're gonna get out of the business before you get into it, because as so many entrepreneurs will tell you, the years can go by, and if you haven't planned out how you're gonna get out, then you could end up with the business owning you as much as you own the business. My guest today managed to build a business with a co-founder and exit that very successfully after 7 years. He's gonna share with us how he built that business, and some of the key attributes of building a business to sell. But he's launched a new company. And so, he's going to tell us some of the lessons he learned from the first one that he's going to employ in the new one. Delighted to invite and to host Ed Johnson, who's joining us from Notting Hill in London, which is, I guess, a famous film set as well, Ed. So, very glamorous. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, Jim. Really good to be here.

And I don't think I saw Hugh Grant in the background there wandering across the set. So, Ed, you and I will carry on our conversation. Ed, tell us a little bit about you and your story first, and then we're going to talk about the first company that you built and sold.

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely a born entrepreneur, always fascinated with technology. Spent far more time than I should have done on the laptop when I was growing up as a kid, interested in technology more than I was schoolwork. Uh, I was always interested in the internet and how it connected people to one another, and from a very young age, fascinated by the fact that you could build a website, build, uh, content, put it online, and then anybody anywhere in the world could see that. And at the age of 9, that was really interesting to me. I taught myself as a result of that how to code and design websites, not realizing that that would actually be very beneficial for me in my career. Um, and Then continued to do that, built businesses, built websites rather, for local businesses when I was in my teens, when I should have been studying for my exams. And then when I was 17 and Twitter was in its infancy, I tweeted the CEO of a digital marketing agency asking for a job. He came back offering an interview and subsequently a job, not realizing that I was 17 at the time. So Yeah, definitely interested in technology from a very young age and, and business within that. And then progressed on to working for a number of different companies, Oracle and Zoopla, to name a couple of them. And then, and then decided to set up my own business, which became Pushfar, which we'll talk about.

Yeah, we're going to talk about. So it's Pushfar, by the way. So that's push and then far as in to go farther. Ed, let's talk about Pushfar. The business that you built, what it was doing, and some of the lessons that you learned, because you sold that to a private equity firm, which—

Yes.

Really is the gold standard of an exit because the due diligence of private equity is the most ferocious of all buyers, right?

Certainly is.

Tell us a little bit about Pushfar, but obviously we're not buyers. We're interested in the business that you built and what you needed to do in terms of brand awareness. Processes, revenue, to get it to be a company that a private equity company would want to buy?

It was an incredible journey, and one where I learned a lot along the way. I think the main thing that we did very early on was pivot and adapt and evolve what we were developing. Initially, it was set out to be a career progression platform. Now, if you don't know what that means, that's fine, because nobody else did. But we, we coined the phrase career progression platform and added a load of features into what we were developing. So, it was a platform where you could map out your career, you could find jobs, you could network, you could find a mentor, you could attend professional networking events, um, And quickly we realized that there was more interest in the mentoring element to it than anything else. So we adapted and evolved quickly to become a mentoring platform. And I think one of the, one of the key lessons learned there is don't be afraid to change the phrase or the term you're using. Um, most importantly, so everyone can understand what, what it actually is that you're doing. I sort of was reluctant to call us a mentoring platform for a while, and then I realized everyone was searching on Google for mentoring platforms. And actually, if we adapted what we were referring to ourselves as, referring ourselves as, then, uh, then people would find us.

And let's just pick up on that because, you know, Annie Duke wrote the great book Quit. Have you read that book?

Yeah, I haven't.

And she talks about getting to, um, the summit of the, of the Himalayas, you know, of Everest, by 11 o'clock. And if you haven't made the summit, you need to turn back because the chances of mortality on the way down are greater than on the way up. And if you haven't made it by 11 o'clock, you have a greater chance. Yeah, it's the knowing, isn't it? And it's the discipline to know that it's 11, you have to turn back. Yeah. What went through your mind when you decided to focus in on the mentoring? Because it meant that you were not focusing in on what was the broader concept for the business. Because so many of us start a business and a bit like a big lump of rock, you know, you kind of keep chiseling away And it starts to take shape and sometimes you have to decide to hammer out a slightly different sculpture, don't you? So what was the decision-taking process like?

I think it was really bluntly a really clear path to revenue, talking to potential businesses that were saying, well, we'll pay for it if it does this, this, and this. And we went, okay, well, that wasn't our original plan. That wasn't our dream and our vision. But it's a way of making money and there's quite a lot on the line here and quite a lot of businesses are interested. So let's follow that and that makes the most sense.

Okay, and Ed, just a quick question. Did you ask them what they would pay for or did they say, hey Ed, I love this, but honestly, this is what you should do? And this is key because so many entrepreneurs, me included, we're so busy building, we're forgetting to engage and to ask the question that we might be afraid of. Hearing the answer to. So just love to hear how you got that critical piece of feedback.

Have as many conversations as possible, um, and that might sound obvious, but talk to as many potential customers as possible in the build phase. Don't wait until you've built something to then go out and pitch it. So whilst my co-founder was busy developing the, the platform, I was talking to potential customers, or hopefully potential customers for the future, saying, "This is what we're developing." And they would say, "This looks great. What we're really interested in is this element of it." And therefore, actually, we could save ourselves a lot of time by not having to re-engineer what we'd already spent years building, by actually developing something along the way that we knew that there was interest in.

Great. Yeah, I think it's really valuable that people can hear that, that it's, we mustn't get our ego involved in a way, right? We have to be constantly willing to iterate around the core problem rather than necessarily be wedded to the feature set that we're thinking people might need. How did you build Pushfar? It sounds like it was a B2B play. How did you grow the brand so that you were getting the traction that was appealing to this private equity?

Really interestingly, we started it as a B2C play, uh, and actually there was no revenue stream there. There wasn't for the 7 years that we ran it, but that actually helped us to build a far stronger brand, uh, even when there was no revenue on that side of things. So, um, we were both B2B and B2C. The B2C side of things really helped us to build a brand, build advocates, build interest, um, and build authority and leadership in what we were doing in mentoring, because all these individuals had heard of us us in a way that they wouldn't if we were just a B2B proposition. So that was a really valuable lesson in, in how to build brand awareness, I would say. Because I think for, you know, if you're a B2B-only company, you may have 50, 100, 500 clients even, but you've got 500 people who've heard of you. Whereas if you're offering a B2C element, you've got thousands, tens of thousands, or in our case, hundreds of thousands of users not only did it give us great feedback, but it really helped us to build that brand.

And how did you get that brand awareness, Ed Johnson? Because building a B2C brand is harder. And let's face it, if you work in B2B, and I worked, you know, running my own B2B PR agency for 25 years in Asia, you know, it's a relatively small number of people. And these days you can pick those off on LinkedIn, right, by job title. Building a B2C, especially without a budget, is even harder. So how did you accomplish that for Pushfar?

It all came down to content and shouting about it relentlessly as well. So, um, anything you can do to create valuable, interesting, engaging content that people are going to find, whether it's searching on YouTube or searching on Google or any other search engine, um, for whatever you're developing, is going to be really important. I think at the moment PushFar's website now has over 500 articles. So, I was creating in the early days articles every week on things like how to find a mentor or how to become a mentor and anything related to mentoring. I needed to make sure that we were on the first page of Google for that. So, creating lots of content, aligning that with video content so that if people are searching on YouTube or Instagram, they're finding that sort of content as well. It takes time, but it costs nothing to do that, and I think That's where a lot of entrepreneurs in the early days shy away from that. They think, well, we'll raise investment, we'll get an agency to do that. But, you know, an agency is going to charge a lot of money for maybe 5 articles. You need to be posting, I would say, that many articles a week to really generate a content powerhouse.

So what would be your advice then for somebody that doesn't feel as confident with the writing? I was just working with a, with a young entrepreneur next door who actually has some social anxiety. And, you know, he's really struggling with the meeting people and the articulating his vision. Part of why I'm, I'm trying to produce this show is to help people like that, to connect with people like you and get the story. How would you advise people that are maybe not so confident or comfortable with writing to to do that content creation?

I think with writing nowadays, it's a lot easier than it was 5 years ago. You've got things like ChatGPT, you've got AI that will do a lot of it, but you can't rely on that. So use that to build a basis or build a framework for an article and then start adapting that article as a result of it. Don't worry about— and this maybe sounds terrible to say this, but don't worry about things like typos or grammatical errors. There are plenty of articles, probably on New Routine, on New Venture even, that have typos ways. Um, I think the main thing is getting the content out there. Um, and, um, you know, no one's looking for perfection. They want really interesting, engaging content. So, uh, you know, if it's not the most articulate of articles, then, then that's fine, as long as it's got interesting insights and content within it.

Um, yeah, and I think that's really important you said that, that it's, it's the interest level and the authenticity that's so important. And ironically enough, I think in this age of AI, people are going to be reading articles with typos, and that'll be reassuring because it's going to show that it actually was written by a person. And I'm wondering whether you should go through now on Grammarly and even put in typos sort of on purpose. You know, every now and again I'd like to have a grammatic error. But, but Ed, you know, Let's just think then. So you've got the written content, the video content. You say the tools are much, much easier to use now, really liberating, aren't they? What did you do to scale? Because if you're doing B2B, those directors or CMOs, CFOs, they may or may not be reading your blogs. What did you do to overcome their concern that you were a small business, that they were going to entrust you with their human resources, right, the human capital, and there you are, a startup. There's all sorts of issues about trust, about engagement, let alone GDPR. How did you overcome the credibility issue that big companies look for in small suppliers?

I think there are a couple of angles to it. I think the first one was in the early days, and it goes back to how we pivoted and worked out what mentor— that mentoring was really useful is be really honest and open and say, look, we're developing this, we're really interested in getting your feedback on it, and not selling the product to them, or not selling the proposition to them, but asking them for their advice and their expertise. So, in our case, we were talking to learning and development and HR managers and people leaders. And I didn't have a background in HR, far from it. I didn't really know much about HR other than payroll, which I think is what a lot of people perceive it to be. But there's so much more to it. And talking to those individuals and finding out what their challenges are, and, and getting their advice and guidance is, is going to be so important because it then means they, they know that you're small, you're not trying to pretend that you're anything other than what you are, and people genuinely want to help. I think a lot of people want to give advice and guidance. People love sharing advice and, and guidance, and, um, and then actually they feel part of it. And before I knew it, we then had a pe— a number of individuals, a number of people saying to us well, actually, this looks really interesting. I don't just want to give advice about it, I'd like this in our business. How can we, how can we buy this, or how can we get a copy of it? Um, so having those conversations is going to be really key. I think again, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about content, is if you do have a lot of content, if you do have a lot of articles, if you do have videos, um, you do start to become a thought leader naturally over time anyway. And that, that builds authority, that builds, um, a sense of reassurance to a potential buyer. They may, you know, understand fully that you're only a team of 2, 3, 4 people, but that you're knowledge experts and they want to work with you. So, I think those two things are really important in the early days.

And did you also engage in speaking engagements? I say engage with engagements, but did you take part in conferences? You talk about thought leadership. Were you out and about as well in the latter years?

I wish I'd done more of it to begin with. I was probably quite nervous and apprehensive of doing that. Um, I was, I was fine in front of a camera, but I— and actually in the early days it was sort of the pandemic anyway, so it had to be a camera. Um, but, uh, yeah, I wish I'd done more, uh, in the early days and, and faced my fears and just got on with it. I think that It might not be very good for the first few talks that you give or do, but that's how you're going to get better.

Yeah, well, and plainly you've got a great natural skill set when it comes to being articulate and engaging, Ed. So you'd have been— well, I'm sure you are now getting out and about, but you managed to get out and about enough for private equity to be interested. Was that something that you were looking for? Is that something that came to you? Because obviously the dynamic is different. I'd love hear about the approach. And obviously you can't talk about the numbers, um, but you can give us some idea on the communication side of how you manage that process.

It was a very conscious decision for my co-founder and I. I think as entrepreneurs, um, we loved building and creating things, and in Pushfar we, we felt we'd done that. And my role evolved to being a role of customer support and sales. And as much as I loved our customers, there were only so many times in the day that I wanted to be resetting passwords. Um, and, uh, and my co-founder, his role was— had been to develop this incredible forward-thinking, innovative product. His role became tech support. And so our roles had evolved, as they often do when, when a business becomes successful, and we realized that actually what we really loved and what we were missing was creating things. Our roles had become a lot more process-driven, so we consciously made the decision, um, that we wanted to exit. We had two options really. The first one was to raise more investment, and we sort of thought, well, that doesn't really get us out of doing what we're doing. In fact, it ties us in even further. Um, or we capitalize on, on what we're doing. We look to sell the business in a really good position that it was in, and in a high growth phase, which I would say is probably the best time to be selling the business. You don't want to be selling a business when it's going the other way. Um, And we went out to the market with the support of an M&A advisory firm to look at potential buyers. And we had a few interested parties and went from there. But it was a really conscious decision. I think that's really important. It has to be a conscious decision.

Conscious decision. And also a couple of things in there. One is that, you know, you and your partner were both aligned in terms of the need for an exit. The other is that you employed an M&A advisor. Yeah. What led to that decision? Because often founders try and do it themselves to save money, actually, is often the reason. So what led to the decision to actually go out and spend some of the revenue, I would imagine, on fees?

A few things. I suppose the first one being that it was the first time looking at selling a business. I didn't know what I didn't know, and there's a whole host of things involved in selling a business. Um, you mentioned earlier the sort of compliance and audit process. That's, that's, you know, one piece of the puzzle. There's the legal side of things. There's, there's a whole host of things that I just didn't really know about. Um, so it made sense to get an expert involved in, in helping us. The second thing was, having spoken to a few different M&A advisory firms, it became very clear very quickly that they were going to most likely get us a better value, uh, and a better price than if we'd gone out and done it ourselves. So they would more than, uh, more than make up the, you know, the percentage success fee. And often it is based on a success fee, so if they don't find you a buyer, you haven't lost anything. Um, so, and then the third thing was, as a result of that, they also can be that middle party that can handle the negotiations in a way that, that is more challenging if you're talking directly to a potential buyer. They can create effective tension, bidding wars, all these sorts of things that are, that are very valuable, uh, in that process.

That's great, Ed, and, and a, and a mature decision as well, uh, because often people then think they can do it themselves, and actually the distraction of selling can actually reduce the value of the business because they're not functioning inside the company in the way that they were before, right?

Exactly. We still had to run a very full-on business with hundreds of clients, and, and it, it— there were long 14, 15-hour days for about 6 months going through that process. And that was with an M&A advisory firm. So I dread to think what it would have been like if it was just my co-founder and me doing it.

Yeah, so that's a great case study there of being intentional about finding an exit and then finding someone to do it and paying professionals to do the work that they need to do. Ed, you and your partner managed to exit And you're calling me from Notting Hill, not from the Bahamas or Monaco, not because you didn't have a successful exit, but because you've got an appetite for a new business. So let's just talk, Ed, about the new business, what you're starting and the way that you are bootstrapping again with some of the lessons that you learned from Pushfar. So tell us about the new business and how you're building this brand. Because that's a really interesting story.

Yeah, I'm probably mad not taking some time off. I did have a couple of weeks holiday recently, so, uh, but I am diving straight into the next venture now. Um, so the next venture, the new venture that we're setting up and co-founding is called uRoutine. It's all focused on accountability and creating routine and structure. And what I saw over the last 2-3 years was individuals were looking for support more and more around around their structure, around their goals. The world seems to become more and more ambitious as every day goes on, and that's fantastic. It's exciting to see that. But actually, helping people to achieve more is really at the core of what we want to do. So, that idea that if you tell yourself you're going to do something, you might, and certain people are more disciplined than others, so they're more likely to. But if you start telling other people what you want to achieve, you're a lot more likely to, because that really healthy pressure on. So, we're building a platform that really tries to, or aims to, encapsulate that, helping people to share their routines, their goals, their structures. People can copy and follow one another's goals and objectives, um, and share knowledge around those as well. Um, as I say, with the idea of helping people to achieve more. So that's the, that's the basic premise of it.

Um, that sounds amazing and, and really helpful. Is it meant for a particular age group or a particular demographic?

No, one of the great things about it is it really can apply to, to anyone of any age. I've spoken to a couple of individuals who are in their, in their mid-60s, you know, saying, oh, you know, I'd love to be more disciplined at going to the gym or learning languages or, um, whatever it is, whatever someone's goals or objectives, they can, they can, you know, use this platform in that way. And that's what is one of the really exciting things about it, is it's got such a far and wide reach. It's also one of the daunting things about it because it's sort of, well, where do I begin and where do I get started? Um, One of the things that we're deliberately doing this time round that we didn't with Pushfar is we're deliberately carving this out as both a B2B and a B2C play because of the value I saw in both, both of those in parallel and what I learned from that with Pushfar from brand awareness and, and also from, from faster revenue.

Um, when you say doing B2C and B2B simultaneously. Or are you building out one before the other? Because from a branding point of view, from a positioning point of view, pricing, you know, one is selling to many at maybe a low price subscription. The other is selling to one person who then deploys it across multiple users. There's difference even to your passwords. There's even just a difference in terms of user and permissions, isn't there? So is this the decision to do it simultaneously or in sequence?

So we're developing the technology, um, in a staggered approach. Um, and the reason for that is we're building the consumer side of things first, because that consumer side of things, we can take that same technology and apply it into a business context anyway. Uh, and then what we'll do is over the top of that in phase 2, add in a business admin panel and, and B2B proposition within that. Um, so the technology is a phased approach. The marketing is both angles straight away. So if you go on to the uRoutine website, I've already got articles that are aimed at individuals. So I think one of the, one of the best performing articles at the moment is 10 celebrity routines to follow. So that's definitely a consumer piece. We've also then got some business articles and business targeted content. So employee routines and structures. And so that balance of both in parallel straight away is going to be important.

Great. For anyone that is going to the YouTube channel, you can actually see a screen share. It's uroutine— that's just the letter U— routine.com. We've got Taylor Swift on there as well, side of things. So I guess, um, if you want to follow the rock stars, but also you've got here for, for mere mortals like me, you know, how to get your routine, daily routine weekly routine, presumably, Ed, work and play there as well.

Yes.

Ed, what's going to be the strategy in terms of marketing? You've talked about doing both. You've got some articles. Is that lending itself to your SEO strategy? Is that where this is really starting?

It certainly is. Yeah, we're already seeing an uptick in traffic and this is, you know, we're 4 weeks in, but creating good content still works really well. It's still extremely valuable even in this day and age of AI when there's so much content out there, good content that's relevant to what you're building is going to be really important. And the other thing off the back of creating good content on, in terms of articles, is it doesn't only benefit SEO, but it suddenly gives you a bank of, a bank of resources you can start sharing on social media. You can start creating social media posts about those articles, linking back to the website, and it all becomes very relevant very quickly and extremely valuable. So that's one of the angles we're taking. We're also looking at an ambassador and advisory board that'll be on a voluntary basis. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, people love getting involved with things. They love, you know, championing new things, trying out new technologies, um, and, uh, and we're excited to, to get people involved and bring them along on this journey. And I think, you know, pre-launch, that's a really exciting place for hopefully people that have already volunteered and signed up to get involved to be.

To be involved. And Ed, what's your threshold in terms of going live? How many users do you want before it actually goes live, or are you going live with whoever's coming through the door?

We'll go live with whoever's coming through the door. And what we want and what we're aiming for is, you know, one or two people that love it rather than 1,000 people that like it. Because one or two people that love it are going to tell their friends, they're going to then get them involved and get them on board. And yes, this is all about social accountability, but actually that can be done with one or two people. And so start small, have, you know, two or three people that are following each other's goals and objectives, and scale it out from there. That's the objective.

Okay, that's nice. And following the kind of path of— there are sites like Polar Steps, aren't there, where you share your travel and it's really grown organically, uh, where people are sharing one at a time as opposed to trying to become ubiquitous overnight. So as you say, a few loyal fans first and build it out and then get it to scale. Ed, you're on your second company. Can you say, has there been maybe one marketing mistep from the first, or you routine probably haven't had time to make any mistakes yet, but anything that you learned from Pushfar that you think would be useful to share with me and my fellow unnoticed entrepreneur?

Certainly, I think the main thing that we made a mistake in very early on was spending quite a lot of money on a PR agency. Without really having a clear directive as to what our objective for that was, um, convincing ourselves that that would get us onto the front page of national press, um, and not, yeah, not really understanding it. So we spent quite a bit of money, didn't get the results that we, that we were expecting, um, unrealistically. Um, and, uh, yeah, being more intentional as a result, as a result of that's really important. Really understanding. I think as a startup you can spend so much money on so many things and get no results, and actually being really careful about that is vital.

And something— yeah, very— and I think so, spending money on something that is maybe important, but later on as well— PR can help, you know. I ran a PR agency for 25 years, but a company has to be at the right phase of its life to invest in media relations. It's that people sometimes think that it'll be the the spinnaker that'll pull the boat through, but you can't launch a spinnaker until you've got pace on the vessel itself. Ed, if there's a number one tip— if there's— sorry, I used a bit of a sailing analogy there. I don't know where that came from. Ed, if there's one piece of advice, one tip— we sort of mentioned something that you wouldn't suggest— one thing you would suggest, what would that be?

If you're starting a business, And you're trying to gain traction, even if it's in very early phases of development, there is so much you can already be doing to promote and market and shout about it. You know, there could be the temptation for us, as an example, with uRoutine, to not even have a website or just to have a coming soon page that has nothing else, with no social channels until the product is ready. But actually, there's so much you can already be doing early on to build awareness, to build a brand, to shout about it. And you might think, well, that's kind counterintuitive. There's nothing they can do. But actually, you're building the search, you're building the SEO engine, you're building brand awareness, you're gaining traction, you're getting excitement about it, you're building an advisory board and an ambassador scheme. Just get started on all of that, um, and do that as early on as you can, um, so that once the product's ready to launch, you've already got interest, you've already got people who are following your social channels, um, and you're then, you're then ready to, ready to go.

Ed Johnson, that's great advice. Start small. And the other thing is psychologically, if you have your own website, it makes you feel like you're in business too, right? That's great. Ed Johnson in Notting Hill, if you have a weekend or some time over in the evening, maybe in a wine bar or over a coffee, what would you read or listen to?

So if we're talking about a wine bar or a weekend, I would really— people, I've spoken to a few students over the years about kind of book recommendations, and I always say spend your working time working and your free time reading books that you enjoy that are separate from work. So, I'd always go for fiction, actually, rather than a business book. Authors like William Boyd create these incredible stories and this incredible fiction that gets you out of your sort of business mind, your business head. So, I'd be reading fiction, probably a William Boyd book. He's a fantastic novelist. And if we're talking about business, then, you know, read Zero to One and then read it again every 5 years. That's valuable. Maybe a bit of a cliché, but it's a good book.

No, that's great. I think the idea of giving your mind a break and what you can learn from fiction is also fantastic. Le Carré, for example, is one of my favorites. Ed Johnson, if you want to find out more about you and uRoutine, how can they do that?

uRoutine, head to uroutine.com. That's the letter U, routine.com. Connect with me or follow me on LinkedIn. And, uh, and follow our page on LinkedIn as well.

Ed Johnson, thank you. Successful exit, going straight back in to a new business. Sign of sanity or just passion? You can decide yourself. Ed Johnson, thank you for sharing great stories today with me.

Thank you.

So we've been listening to Ed Johnson, who started uRoutene with his business partner. We've been learning about the importance of intentionality about alignment between the partners as well, and also about getting started. Start small, be authentic, and engage. If you've enjoyed this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, please do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur and review it on the player that you're listening to, because it all really helps. Until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.