The LFG Show
Talking with movers and shakers who grew up with nothing and worked their asses off to achieve success. Let's 🤬 Go!!!!
The LFG Show
Growth Through Acquisition: Your Guide to Selling Your Digital Marketing Business with Josh Albom 📈
⚠️⚠️ If your company wants to explore being acquired and makes between $300k and $3 million a year in EBITDA- email us at: thelfgshow@gmail.com
🎙 *The LFG Show: Supercharge Growth Through Acquisitions* 🎙
Curious about how you can profit handsomely while accelerating your business growth by being acquired? Tune in as we reconnect with Josh Albom, CEO of GRP Ads, who brings a treasure trove of expertise in these domains. 🏆 Josh shares his fascinating journey from media buying at Educational Direct to steering GRP's impressive growth and international expansion. 🌍 We also reminisce about our early days, filled with dynamic energy and invaluable lessons that laid the foundation for our careers. 💡
Next, we break down the critical role of building a strong, experienced team to ensure business sustainability and success. Drawing parallels with iconic sports partnerships like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, 🏈 we explore how diverse skill sets can drive synergy and lead to greater achievements. Josh provides insights into the complexities of equity dilution during acquisitions and emphasizes the emotional aspects of valuing one's business, making this chapter a must-listen for solopreneurs and small teams. 💼
Finally, we dive into the nitty-gritty of successful business acquisitions, from identifying ideal candidates to integrating them seamlessly into existing operations. Josh sheds light on the importance of culture fit, mutual trust, and strategic guidance in driving growth. With practical examples and personal anecdotes, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge for anyone looking to understand the intricacies of mergers and acquisitions. 💡 Don't miss this chance to glean practical advice and inspiring stories that will motivate you to keep pushing forward in your entrepreneurial journey. 🚀
Tune in, turn up, and let's go! 💥 #TheLFGShow #BusinessAcquisitions #DigitalMarketing #entrepreneurship
We're back. We're in Jersey. We did four episodes the last two days in Miami, in Jersey, and I saved the best for last Guys acquisitions, acquisitions are big. If you ever thought about selling your company, I'm going to give you a fucking banger. Today we're talking with someone who has acquired multiple companies in our space. If you haven't thought about selling, maybe it's time to start thinking about it. I got my man, josh Albom. I've known you for fucking what almost 20 years. Man, it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. He's the ceo of grp. These guys are doing big thing, and the big things in the digital marketing lead generation space. It's a fucking pleasure to have you on the show, man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me good to see you always.
Speaker 1:So guys. Um man, I've. I met you, uh, at a company called educational direct. We were doing student loan consolidation, right, I was in the call center motivating people throwing chairs Crazy fucking environment, man. You were more on the media side right, I was buying media.
Speaker 2:I was in the marketing department. It was my first job right out of college and I learned a lot and set me on my career path and met tremendous people, amazing people like yourself, and created a really great network for me to continue to grow from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and guys, I mean it's funny because you won't find anything about that company online. You Google it, nothing comes online.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, crazy culture, amazing culture, a great culture of learning, a great culture of success, a great culture of positivity and I think as not only I think you can attest to, but probably was a big motivator or pivotal part of your career in helping you achieve what you've achieved, because it's all about who you surround yourself with and what you can learn from, and the people who are running that organization were fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the thing is there are so many good success stories that came out of it. People have gone on to do amazing things. And again, I wasn't an owner of a club, I was an employee. But man, the shit that I learned and I always tell people everyone wants to start their own business, but you got to fucking to go from point A to point Z. You got to learn. You got to, you got to learn and the good things that I got paid. Well, I got to be me. I'm throwing chairs Like, but you know, the team, let me be me. You know Eric, let me be me. And he saw that he wasn't looking to micromanage anybody, we just fucking blew up. It was nuts.
Speaker 2:Look, I think there's two different. You know trains of thought in how you learn and how you become the individual you are or the entrepreneur you are. You could go to school and you can learn a lot of theory.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or you could do it in practice and we, you and I, did it in practice. Right, I didn't go and get an MBA, you didn't go and get an. Mba but we did get an MBA. We got an MBA more than an MBA because we were in it, we were doing it, we were living it, we were breathing it. It was happening and coming at us for us to react to, and and and react on the fly and learn on the fly.
Speaker 2:And I think throwing people into the fire and having that, that ability to, to just learn from you know, teach see one, do one, teach one that, that environment man going back.
Speaker 1:Damn, we moved so fast over there, right, and we broke shit. But like we figured to that right away and that's really where I got my and I was always going. It was like the perfect people, the right people in the right seats is what it was, and I was like go, go, go, go, go man. And we were fuck. I remember we rented out a hotel for a month. I was like where was it? A Tenafly, I mean, and people were coming to the office seven in the morning on the phone. What great memories those were. That really set us up to help us get to where we are now. Great culture, culture of winning. Yeah, culture of winning, exactly. So let's fast forward now. Grp what does GRP do? You're the CEO of GRP. I know you guys are great at what you do in a lot of aspects.
Speaker 2:Tell the audience what you guys are doing. The core principle and thesis and operation of what GRP does is we are a marketing technology company. We specialize in customer acquisition, marketing technology, cohort analytics. The business was really founded on email marketing, database marketing, and so when I came over, the business was primarily involved in customer acquisition in the UK and when you had a crystal ball of how customer acquisition and lead generation worked, because the UK was five years behind us at that point in time, and this is in 2010.
Speaker 2:So we took our skills and our learning and our know-how and brought it to the UK. We were very successful in doing that and we ended up selling that business and that was a business that was a joint venture between two companies. We rolled that business up and that was pretty much around maybe 2015. And then after that, we really focused our attention on diversifying and building a bigger media company. And how do you do that? And first you look at the data and you figure out okay, what's analogous to the data sets we have. We were big in consumer finance, we were big in email marketing. So how do we not only diversify from the data set and the vertical, but how do we also diversify out of the type of media that we're publishing, which was email at the time, and the first thing that we noticed was online?
Speaker 1:education had a huge, strong affinity to this was like 2015,.
Speaker 2:around that time, this was 2015, to our data sets, to people who were looking for access to credit, and that unlocked a huge potential to us. It became our fastest growing vertical and we became one of the largest publishers in generating leads and customers and prospective students for schools. And fast forward to 2020, covid happens and I'm sitting at home, working across from my father, and you see the news, you see the trends in what's happening in your data and you see that you know personal loans and consumer finance are skyrocketing. But the floor got pulled out from underneath it because the lenders pulled out, but online education kept going because the narrative was you know you need to be home and you need to be. You can learn from your living room. So budgets were flying out, demand was flying out. So I called up our biggest agency at the time and I said I need more budget and he was like we don't have any more budget for you and I was like he's like I'm having a little bit of cashflow problems, covid, and I said I'm going to buy you. Wow, and he laughed. I said no, I'm not kidding. You're going to come to have lunch with me and Gary and we're going to buy you. Would you be interested? He said, yeah, so fast forward.
Speaker 2:Our first acquisition was in 2021. We grew that business, pat 56 Media 3X. In the first year we doubled revenue and we took an existing web property that he had was sitting on a shelf. He couldn't get the developers at the time or the energy to do it. He was dabbling in some call center stuff. We took that over and that one business line, the college review. It does over a million dollars a year in revenue. It was sitting on a shelf because he couldn't get it done.
Speaker 1:He didn't have the time. Probably he didn't have the time. You didn't have the time.
Speaker 2:Probably you didn't have the time, you didn't have the resources and I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but our core investment thesis to entrepreneurs is entrepreneurship through acquisition. Onboard your business with our company, Because most entrepreneurs they're the accountant, they're the CFO, they're the lawyer, they're the account manager.
Speaker 1:The fucking janitor. They're everything right, they're everything.
Speaker 2:So if they can plug their business into our operation and we can accelerate it, and they plug it into our back office. You focus on your skill set. You do what you built your business on. Let us focus on the accounting, let us focus on the legal, let us focus on the ad ops. And now you have a real team behind you. You have capital behind you.
Speaker 2:So, after that acquisition, we acquired the remaining equity back in a company called Jobs Online, which we were a minority partner in at the time, and it gets 100% of its traffic from Google SEM, but it wasn't getting its focus. It, you know. As you know, in order to win, you need to have laser focus, you need to be able to be, you know, just in it every day. And no one was really just.
Speaker 2:You know, the captain of the ship Took that business, layered it into our business and we I think we 10X the business. Wow, it was doing 2,000 registrations a day and now it's doing 15,000 registrations a day. And then, from there, we acquired an SMS marketing platform which was very symbiotic to our our story of looking at email and understanding how email engages with consumers and being able to reach that demographic. Well, we should be able to do the same thing in mobile, because mobile is the most transformative thing since the rise of the internet. Right, everyone's on a device, everything's happening in front of your face. So that was our fourth acquisition, and then we acquired an ESP Feedblitz, which was amazing, being an email marketing company as the as its founding.
Speaker 2:You know, foundation of of of what the building was, what the business was built on is is tremendous, and controlling that and and and having a real customer base and building a real SAS product really has tremendous benefits. And and vertical integration thesis, like through its core Right. And then we acquired another online education agency, provide media, uh, who Kyle and Craig were really working hand in hand, getting budgets from one another, and then from there we acquired our call center in Mesa, arizona, because a lot of people needed to, especially in education. You need to have an onshore presence, compliance from a lot of other intangible aspects that an onshore call center. As you know, you've been in the call center business and it's tremendously successful and congratulations on all that and.
Speaker 2:I think that was again core to the vertical integration thesis. The leads we're generating from our own and operated properties are now going into this life cycle of a call center and email and we're touching the consumer and a lot of different touch points. And the last acquisition was we. We we put someone in business for for the mass tort vertical, something we wanted, always wanted to get into. But I'm not going to wake up one day and say you know what? I think we should be a mass tort. Right, let's go, because I don't have the relationships, I don't have the contacts, I don't have the know-how.
Speaker 2:So it's a great diversified media machine and the best part about it is we're bringing in amazing people and amazing entrepreneurs. Because you're a sports guy, if your point guard's horrible, you suck. If your center's too short, you're going to get dominated on the board. So at the end of the day, we're acquiring an all-star team of entrepreneurs. And knock on wood, today you know I don't understand wood, but this is every acquisition. We've grown at least 3X in the first year. That's incredible. And we're very, very selective on who we allow to bring into this organization. You have to. Culture is paramount to to what we do and you know you could have one poisonous. You know acquisition that could destroy the culture, can destroy the. You know the trajectory of the business and that's not something we're looking to do. We're looking to go as fast as possible, but not rush.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, I mean that's the story and I knew. I knew some of the stuff. I didn't know how in-depth, I didn't realize there was that many acquisitions and it makes sense. It's all connected. You need the call center to squeeze more juice out of leads. You need ESP for email marketing, right, and then you're looking at the verticals. Legal is fucking hot as hell, man. I know it is. I mean, we try to, but it's hard to crack, very hard for how long People made a lot of money.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing for solar. You're the king of solar. I'm not waking up and I'm saying I'm going to start a solar business. How am I going to do that, unless I hire someone who's the expert in that business? Business development is hard. That's what really got us onto this accelerated acquisition path. We did it. We said, wow, this is pretty good at this. Maybe we should do it again. But the hardest thing to do in business is sales and business development. But if I call you up and I say, hey, david, I think I could sell you some leads. This is what my company does Maybe you're not going to call me back or you're not going to return my email. But if I call and I leave a message that says, hey, this is Josh Allen, the CEO of GRP Ads. I'm interested in buying your business, you're probably going to give me a call back.
Speaker 1:You start thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Now, there's a 10% chance I'm going to buy your business, but there's a 90% chance that I'm going to work with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you get to know the person more intimately, you know they're for real, they're bullshit and all. There's so much to unpack out of that. And I think the biggest thing for me, I mean I interviewed Momentum Solar yesterday, a big client of mine, the CEO and CRO. They cemented a term in my brain called collapsing timeframes and essentially that's what you guys are doing. You know, time is money. That's the one thing. You could always make more money, but you can't replace the second we just lost right. So when you're buying out another company, acquiring, you're really collapsing time frames, not only for yourself but for the business owner as well.
Speaker 1:And I think one thing that our industry a lot of talented people. You know, I've been, I've been with your team, I've been with gary, we've been all over the world. We were in dominican republic at this. This is event pelican, a phenomenal event. Tons of great talented people there. But a lot of these people are solopreneurs or they have one or two people and they're gifted at generating leads or getting people to click on ads and they're putting up big numbers but they don't have a CFO, they don't have the legal and then they get burned. And you see what's going on with ACA, tons of people owed a lot of fucking money. People are nervous, right so. But when you have the team, not only do you collapse timeframes, but you protect yourself. You're out of business man. So I think that's the beauty of having a team with experience. And, going back to our days at Educational Direct, that same template that was employed there. It's kind of the same template that you're using now, with more experience.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, I think you can make a quick buck in this industry and you can make money. But if you want to build a big business, that requires a different level of commitment and a different level of focus and a different level of capital and, I think, at a different level of team, and some people want to commit to that and some people don't, because you know, we've been in this space a long time, you know, as fast as someone comes on the seat, is as fast as they're gone, and so you have a lot of young kids, you have a lot of um entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs, who can learn how to buy media and make a quick buck and might not do the right thing and might not create a reputation for themselves or establish a longstanding.
Speaker 2:you know company in this space, but they're two different. You know skill sets to have and I think if you make the distinction that you want to build a big company, it just requires a different type of commitment and focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then it comes back to talking about sports teams. Right, you got the coach, you got the point guard, you got the center, you got this, you got that. Looking back at the Patriots, tom Brady, I mean Bill Belichick perfect combination. It's funny because Tom Brady won a Super Bowl on his own. Belichick hasn't had much success, but them two together they were like dynasties. Right, look, it's perfect.
Speaker 2:I'm so happy you said that because even though I'm the CEO of GRP the executive team my partners are the best, because you can't I couldn't do this by myself, and people who do do it by themselves wish, I think, that they had a deeper bench from partnerships, because you can really delegate and really hone in on the specific skill sets that your partners have. You know, I'm not I'm a great people guy.
Speaker 2:I'm good with numbers, but I'm not the best with numbers, so I rely on my other partner with numbers and we you know, in the spreadsheets and, you know, sales, and having Greg and an amazing personality out there representing our company and and and bringing in the opportunities, he's amazing, right, Gary?
Speaker 2:Gary speaks for himself, I mean Gary he's a serial serial entrepreneur, Gary's amazing who has who's had a tremendous success in this space, who you know is so wise to be able to give perspective in certain things that we've never experienced before but Gary has. You know that creates a winning formula. There are intangible aspects to that cohesiveness, I think, and that's really what can set people apart from just throwing up a landing page and selling a few leads.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what do you say? Because obviously, when you acquire a company or anything, one of the concerns and I went through the acquisition process with a private equity firm a year and a half ago and we'll talk about that in a bit too, and I learned a lot. It was eye-opening it wound up falling through. We were deep in the thing and one of the reasons it fell through was that the verticals and solar just took a deep dive. Last year I think 250, 300 solar companies went out of business. Obviously, a lot of them were our clients, so earnings went down. When they did the quality of earnings, the first quarter, all this stuff and they all gave us a valuation of 40% lower and they're actually 100% right. If we had timed that three months earlier we would have exited right. So I learned so much. We can talk about that in a bit.
Speaker 1:But you know, at first my partner, I like do you there? Do you want to give out our equity? You want, we want to dilute ourselves because we built this thing. Is it the right thing to do? What if we, this company, is going to take X amount and we still would have been held on? There was like second bite of the apple. You know, the idea is that you're, you'll, you'll sell the second time and you get. You know, you get a smaller piece, but it's a bigger amount, right? So that kind of delayed us. That delayed us a couple, maybe two or three months, before we decided to pull the trigger. I think it cost us at the end of the day, because the timing got fucked up. So what do you say to someone listening like ah, you know, this is my baby, I don't want to give up equity, what? What do you? Because that's so I think you're.
Speaker 2:You're spot on right the the the subjective nature of someone's company that they built, right that that they've like your baby, it is their baby.
Speaker 2:They have every right to put what value they want on their business, right, they have. There's intangibles and tangibles, right, there's there's math and there's there's not math. Um, so, first off, we we come to that process knowing that and we're we're we're dealing with people and we're dealing with something that's very important to these individuals. It's all about where you want to go and where you think you can take your company and we, the, the, our core investment thesis is we're acquiring a majority stake. Right, we're leaving current ownership with a large equity stake can be anywhere between 20 to 50%, 49% still in that equity stake, which gets profit distributions.
Speaker 2:They get an executive salary, and so talk about the second bite at the apple, where there's a liquidity event. Now, there's some type of earn out which isn't traditional earn out, but we can get into those details later if, If you decide to, you want to join. And then a second bite at the apple because you can, you can go like this by yourself and maybe get there, or you can plug in and tap into our multiple and get there faster.
Speaker 2:And you're going to get the benefit of trading at the, at the top line? We're not. There's no, there's no. You know, if you trade at 10, if I trade a 10 and I buy you for four, I'm saying, oh, you're going to you're, I'm only going to pay you a six multiple. No, we're saying, come on with us, I trade at 10, even though I bought you for four, you're still going to trade a 10 when we sell, you know. So that's, that's part of the, you know, snapshot into into into the process of how we acquire the acquisitions. But you're right, there's a human element to this and I think if you come at it with a human element rather than a number or a variable, and treating you like a number and treating you like a variable, and that, hey, I'm going to pay you X, this is what it's going to be. If you don't like it, take it or leave it. I think you have to be.
Speaker 1:There's emotional intelligence into this whole process and people make decisions based on emotion, right, and they justify it with logic. Look, they have every right to it's a business. They built from the ground up.
Speaker 2:But you know there are core private equity, vc, whatever you want to talk about and call it. Models of how things are are valued. Yeah, that's it. And it's sometimes it's educating, um, these entrepreneurs, these small businesses, into the process of how it works. And I think once you back into that and you talk about how how it works and what, where we're looking to go, I think it makes a lot of sense, which is why we've been successful at it and I think one thing you said that resonated with me listen, I started my company in 2016.
Speaker 1:I started getting a lot of traction in 2019. Started to grow tremendously, man. And then I have a partner. I was doing business he wasn't my partner at the time, but we decided in late 2021, hey, maybe we should merge our companies together. He was doing data. I'm doing a live lead synergy there.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed working with him. The guy was always trustworthy, even when things were bad, like we got to work with each other in good and bad times and we liked each other and we complimented each other. But at first I was nervous, like you know I don't know how many, maybe I had five or six people on my team. I was more like a solopreneur, doing a million different things, and I was a little nervous. And now, instead of me being a hundred percent, I'm going to have 50% equity and you start thinking all this crazy stuff. I decided to pull the trigger and when I pulled the trigger, wow, I mean at first it was a little bit of a we'll talk about that too the cultural fit. I moved a little different than he moved. But then we meshed like three or four months. But then things started to click. But, bro, man, I inherited so many people on see me traveling. I'm working, doing what I enjoy doing, I'm connecting with people, I'm talking to people like you, I'm building this fucking crazy network. So my team's handling, they're handling the operations, they're handling the stuff I'm bringing to the table and that's what's allowed us to grow.
Speaker 1:And then when we merged, man, damn, our revenue fucking roof, so much so that we started getting attention. And then people wanted to buy us out. You know, first I thought it was a joke. I'm getting these emails oh, we're interested in buying you out. I'm like this ain't fucking for real. But then it was, for I'd go to, like solar shows, people like I saw you do this interview. We'd be interested in acquiring you and, bro, I'm listening to that person versus someone trying to sell me a lead or do a jv, like you know, someone's talking about lots of money. You're gonna listen to them. Eight figures, like I'm gonna listen. So so the point I'm trying to say is that for people listening, like, oh, I'm used to doing it my way you gotta step outside your comfort zone. I was nervous at first. I'm like what I? You know I'm giving them control. It was kind of weird at first, but now I see the wisdom of all that and that's why I can do what. I do, what I'm good at look real executives are.
Speaker 2:Don't let their day control them.
Speaker 2:They control their day, absolutely right and it's something that I've learned as I've grown as an entrepreneur and as an executive as a CEO, of making sure that the team can operate and are empowered to make decisions. They feel that they are in charge, they have control and because you trust them, they have control, and that allows you to be successful and scale in a true executive fashion. So I think you're spot on with something that you didn't necessarily think of, that now you can, and that just brings back to collapsing the timeframes, which is something similar that Steve Jobs said when he gave a speech, I think, at Stanford University, which is you can always connect the dots backwards, you can't connect them forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but knowing that can help you connect the dots forward. Connect the dots forward.
Speaker 2:So as you look back and all the acquisitions we've done, I can connect the dots backwards and all every acquisition that we've done to know and they've all been successful but working with certain people of how I think that this is, oh, this seems similar to this situation, so now I think we should approach it with this, or this is this business and all the businesses we've acquired. They were all on our ARAP, we were doing business with them.
Speaker 2:So we had relationships with them, we knew we were intricately working with them, because it goes back to culture, right, it's very rare that I'm just going to call up someone random Because we want to make sure we love each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can work together in the good and the bad. Wow, you said some great stuff. I love that. You can't connect the dots forward, you can connect them backwards. That's huge right there. Love that. And then what you just said. I was going to ask you how do you find these companies? And what you just said about they're in your AP and AR. That makes all the sense in the world. So it's kind of like me, my partner Ed, and I. We were doing business together for three, four years and then we got to see how we worked together. We enjoyed working with each other very similar, same values and then we decided to merge and it's not like you know, I'm just, it's like same thing, like dating, getting married same crap.
Speaker 2:So it's Cause you. That's important, it's very important to us. It's the most important culture because we've passed that we've passed on acquisitions, that that just doesn't feel right.
Speaker 1:Yeah For the audience to listen.
Speaker 2:what's your ideal candidate and what's more in-depth Any business that's making anywhere between $500,000, to call it, $2.5 million, $3 million in.
Speaker 2:EBITDA. Okay, because we think that the effectuation of growth at that company's level we can 3X it as you get into larger businesses that take longer to integrate. Um, it's harder to grow them and that's where m&a, I think, gets screwed up. Right, because most of the time m&a doesn't work, they're not integrated right, it's not a culture fit. Um, you know, people are told that they can still have the autonomy to run their business, but they aren't?
Speaker 2:It's all bullshit and a lot of the time, it's true, and it depends on the partner that you have. But you know, we I encourage anyone who's listening to go talk to one of our portfolio companies and hear from their mouth of what what their experience has been in in joining our team and and working with us and if they feel they have true autonomy or not. And I would be willing to bet that every one of them would tell you 100%. Yes, they make the decisions and I'm there to help them be a sounding board of maybe think differently or help prioritize differently, or maybe they didn't have a partner before that can give them different advice or opinions or analysis on certain things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a different way of looking at things. That's what you need as a business owner. You've seen things this way. You're missing out right. That's what the experts say you have to legal. You've got Gary with all his experience right. Gary's been in this industry for decades. He's a wildly successful person. I always say success leaves clues, big tenant of our show. And you guys have a formula that freaking works. We stick to the formula. We're not.
Speaker 2:We're not straining from the formula. We're not looking to acquire a horizontal EBITDA oh, that's a shiny object. Look that made. They make 5 million EBITDA. If we think we layer it in, it makes our valuation. We don't want to do it at all. We want to acquire companies that have vertical integration within what we're looking to achieve. You know, fill a gap that we can't do a skill set we don't have, a role we don't have, a vertical we don't have and build it from there. You know, and layer it in with our you know core skills, that we know that we can take something from you know this to this Got it.
Speaker 1:So we talked about the revenue $500,000 to $2.5 million to $3 million EBITDA. It was essentially net profit. So you don't think it's top line.
Speaker 2:It's different with top line and then profit Earnings before interest taxes. Yeah, learn that hard in the solar world. Adminization and depreciation.
Speaker 1:One of my mentors says revenue, top line is insanity. Revenue no, bob, fuck, I can't believe I forgot. Top line is van. No, top line is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is king. It's really what it comes down to, man. Because you have you, could you know how many? There's so many companies putting a big numbers top line, but they're the more they don't know how to run the business. And if you're someone's putting a lot of top line money but you're wasting money, a lot shit. This is where the merger might make sense or not. The merger, the acquisition, makes sense.
Speaker 1:If someone comes in and buttons up, you start pissing away a lot of money. I was doing the same thing. I was pissing away money on this and that and I didn't realize it until the end of the month. I'm like it's cut in half. Well, I you know what. I oversubscribed on my by my C SAS products. I got hit with overages because no one was watching. And all of a sudden overages go another 20 grand, 20 grand here, five grand here, two grand here, and there's like 40, 50 grand. I'm like, damn, half my profits, god you know what.
Speaker 2:You figured out how to make an extra five hundred dollars a day huge okay, that's fifteen thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you didn't do anything. Yeah, you didn't do anything. You just figured out. You know what, if I change this and I do this and I do this and at a time time to focus, I made $500. Well, if everybody in your organization does that, times five, that's powerful stuff, you know. So you don't. I challenge myself and my mentors have challenged me to think bigger, right, which is which is where you get to grow and where your growth becomes, I think, as an executive and a CEO. But the other side is we don't. We're. We're all about-hanging fruit and the loose change and how to optimize and how to extrapolate the value of what we're doing. Yeah, um, and I think a lot of people don't have the time, like what you're saying, because they're all over the place, to really dig in.
Speaker 1:Things get missed yeah, I think they don't have the time because they're thinking about how do I make the next dollar? And then you have there's so much turbulence in our industry about these. This, like ACA, is hot for a couple of years, goes to crap. What's the next thing? So there's always a scrambling mindset is what it is, and that's why teaming up with you and getting acquired helps you. You guys know you already have evergreen verticals that are working right, and then you're looking for newer ones and you apply that formula. So I was going to ask you what's your ideal? Someone watching the show that's a digital market affiliate. What's your ideal candidate for acquisition? What verticals are in like? What are you guys hungry for right now?
Speaker 2:so you're perfect fit obviously you know insurance is a bit. Is is a hot vertical that we're looking to grow into home services is a big vertical, always looking to expand our, our reach within education. Um senior vertical is a big vertical for us that we'd look to expand.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of affinity products that I think you know, that touch, that demo Tort looking to build out in more, I think, skill sets from you know media buying so we'd love to enhance our internal media buying capabilities here. So layering and skill sets are a company that fits that. Click to call is a big one. We tried debt. That was tough enough, that's tough.
Speaker 1:It got really saturated it's got saturated.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of the bigger players in the space have cherry-picked a lot of value out of out of data. So, um, but definitely an analogous, you know data set to, to our customer demographic, um, and you know content, content's a big one for us uh, that will help obviously uh drive a lot of the growth in the esp, because esp is?
Speaker 1:is your content like native ad generation?
Speaker 2:so more like uh blog, okay, um you know, recipes, coupons, sports content, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:And then data, like, obviously, data pens, data analytics. There are a couple of companies we're talking to in that space that are really impressive, and I think the more you know about your customer and the more that you can create a lot of value from your data sets to deliver the right message at the right time, you know, to the exact person in a much more refined way, and we're working on really building out our infrastructure behind the scenes to be able to handle that, because the biggest thing, like I said before, is you can't only acquire a company, you have to integrate them, and it's hard. That's the process, and a lot of people don't want to take the time to do it because it's. Let me tell you something, it's brain damage, some of it, right, getting there hooked up, then reporting and analytics, the compliance it's not that was kind of when I merged.
Speaker 1:When we merged, that was. The biggest thing is like now we got these emails, it got confusing, it's but if you don't do it, yeah, if you don't do it that's how you break and you've done it so many times where now it's like it's easier. If you're the first template, you follow the template, right you?
Speaker 2:follow the template. You don't stray from the template.
Speaker 2:And I think, once you start to go off path and not stay on, stay focused on the trajectory of what you're looking to do, and that comes back to we're not looking to acquire companies that maybe have a lot of EBITDA or do a lot of revenue, but just because you're in, maybe e-com, doesn't mean that you're going to fit into this organization. We know how to grow you because we have to be fair to you too, right, you're trusting us, just like we're trusting you. It's a partnership.
Speaker 1:I love that you say that too, because really our business is a relationship business, and I think that's why you guys have an edge too, that you've been doing this for so long. You have so many relationships and you've worked with so many people that you kind of know when the right was the right fit, rather than going to cold. Then you have the templates. You have all the everything all locked in, you know, checked off from point to point. Look reputation.
Speaker 2:We stand behind our reputation. I've been in this space for 2005.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 20 years, 20 years, gary's probably 30 years.
Speaker 2:You guys probably have like 100 years of experience on your team, if you walk around in this space and you you know whether it's my company's name, our company's name, my name. I don't think you would find.
Speaker 1:You won't.
Speaker 2:I'd be very surprised to hear that we did something that wasn't, you know, above board or we did the wrong thing. We to hear that we did something that wasn't above board or we did the wrong thing, we treated you improperly. That's how we treat everyone with respect and we'd always do the right thing at 930, ventures and GRP and we stand behind that and I think that helps us have conversations, because when we bring an entrepreneur into our network and we fold them into our holdco company or our portfolio company I just brought in your network- yes, and if you don't truly believe that, that's not gold, because I'm never going to know who's behind your doors, but you have to want to be able to open your door.
Speaker 1:And that's how one plus one equals 10 versus two. I'm glad you mentioned that, because people forget about that stuff, man, and again, success leaves clues. It's like the six degrees. Is Kevin Bacon right?
Speaker 2:You could always connect, but if I don't connect to you, then I don't open up those relationships behind you which the next acquisition could be sitting behind 100%.
Speaker 1:That's great. So let's say, someone listening on the show and I would love nothing more than someone in our audience to be acquired by you. I know, listen, we don't put people that are bullshit artists on our show. We put people track record success. It's my reputation too, of course. If I'm putting people that are just doing bullshit I'm gonna be associated with. No one's gonna wanna watch my show. Love for something like that to happen. And so let's tell, let's. Let's imagine, I don't know, next week, two weeks from now, you someone, you get a call or communicate someone that watched the show and you start talking. What's the process look like? How long does it take from a to z?
Speaker 2:look, we'll move as fast as they want to move. Um the phone call happens, get on zoom, tell them about our, our you know what they haven't already heard on this podcast? Um, and then get them here for dinner, golf meeting in person, really dig into the synergies, talk about where we're going and what our overall goal is, and then from there get go a little deeper, share some top level numbers, understand what's important to them, what do they want for their business? Right, because if someone's living on Saturn, and thinks their business is worth $100 million.
Speaker 2:Let's not waste each other's time. So we try to flush that stuff out before. But look, I mean, we've closed businesses in 90 days.
Speaker 1:Wow, I wasn't expecting to hear that quickly. I know how you guys move, some take longer.
Speaker 2:What's the average, I would say? I would probably say the average is like anywhere between 90 to a hundred days. Okay, 90 to 120 days, pretty quick yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, With us we were two months into it and then, like everything even went the other way. It was private equity and I think I think they were saying it's like 180 days is what it would be Right.
Speaker 2:Now let me be clear. The more complicated and sophisticated the potential acquisition target is, the longer that you know that takes right. Different levels of due diligence, different aspects of due diligence but yeah, I mean we, we, we move fast, you know we. Different aspects of due diligence, but yeah, I mean, we move fast. We want to make sure that, because every minute you're not in this organization we feel is a lost opportunity, not only for you but for us.
Speaker 1:I love that you say you move fast and I'm a testament of that. I mean I'm part of, I feel at Education Direct it was like we got immersed in this culture of moving fast.
Speaker 2:Sky's falling right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sky is falling. We got to fucking, we got to break last most record and I got indoctrinated in that. And also, I think, where we live. We live in North Jersey, right next, right across the river from New York City, right.
Speaker 2:Look, it's a total mentality. It's the New York Northeast mentality, but it's also having goals, like you know. Hit your goal, you know. Shame on you. It's about being accountable. Everyone's accountable to one another but you have to be able to have goals, you know.
Speaker 1:It comes down to results and it comes down to it didn't work. But what do we do? And that's one thing at educational director, things are gonna get fucking broke. What? What caused the break? Let's, let's fix it, let's figure out not to do it again and let's go and we're gonna break some other shit and move. Let's keep going, just keep going and it.
Speaker 2:It's who you hire as as team members. Right, we like to hire former collegiate athletes because their ability, yes, to not only problem solve but persevere, and their discipline competitiveness and their competitiveness, and their goal oriented and they have a culture of winning. Teamwork, teamwork, right. So that's core to who we are as as a group.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I have a producer I show chance quarterback in college. Man I mean, yeah, you're right, athletes, great sales people, great athletes people, and they're in the military, high ranking military military too.
Speaker 2:But we have, we have a few, we have a few veterans, uh, that work for us, and again they're in the military high ranking military Military too. But we have a few veterans that work for us and again, they're some of the most savvy just entrepreneurs, yeah. Because, they want to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's great. It comes down to the team, and this was so great. We're going to wrap up, but the last thing I was going to say is that who can people reach out to you If you meet those criteria and listen, guys? Time is money, so don't don't waste time If you're not within that category or you know. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to be too harsh, but you know, when it comes down to it, I have an idea why don't you?
Speaker 2:you have more insight into your, your subscriber base. I think maybe they reach out to you and you think you have a hot one and they can come to us and then we can go that way.
Speaker 2:Hit us up this way keep, keep our celebrity in the loop and, um, you know, and uh, thank you for having me and seeing you just build something amazing over. Your career has been tremendous and I'm honored to be on this podcast, and these guys set up a real operation. This is impressive. Oh, it's only going to get better too.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, we'll do another round, we'll do a part two Come down to Boca and we have a podcast studio.
Speaker 2:This has been really incredible and I'm happy to share our story and I can't wait to see what you do with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no listen guys, success leaves clues. I've known these guys for 20 years and they're very hungry. I mean you guys have had a lot of success, but you guys don't rest on your laurels. You guys are looking to do big things. So that's what excites me is having people like you. It motivates me, man. We keep going. Look entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:You know you'll never stop a true entrepreneur from. You know figuring it out, making money, adapting. You know adapting and surviving and entrepreneurs get punched in the face and things don't go your way Right. But you figure it out and you and you and you keep, you keep growing and you keep achieving and, um, you know, we're excited to see what, what, what the future has for us and I'm excited to see what the future has for you.
Speaker 1:I am too, and going. That's why we call it the LFG Let.