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Why Jay Campbell Sold a Great Business

Jay Campbell was the Co-founder of Aseir Custom, a cosmeceutical skincare company that uses the revolutionary copper peptide GHK-Cu to create the healthiest and youngest looking skin possible, that he recently exited. He is an international best-selling author of four books, including The TRT MANual and The TOT Bible, and he’s the Founder of the Jay Campbell Brand and Podcast.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[02:50] How is Jay Campbell teaching others to build a personal brand by raising their consciousness?
[09:40] Jay shares how his digital marketing background supported his supplemental brand
[16:11] The importance of cultivating a partnership based on similar core values
[21:25] Jay explains how Quiet Light efficiently guided him through his exit
[26:32] How Jay negotiated his exit to remain present in the company through an equity role
[33:34] Why you need to establish proper insurance for your products
[36:22] Jay talks about the exit process and selecting an offer
[42:32] Why having a broker is a positive element when transferring transactions

In this episode…

As an entrepreneur, how can you push through the challenges and achieve positive cash flow? Do you want to get away from the hustle and grind of ownership and enjoy time with family and relax in the sun — but you’re not sure how to exit?

Exiting your business is not as simple as closing a door. It takes time, dedication, and a clear path toward your exit goals. First-time exitpreneurs may find this challenging. Jay Campbell had already hurdled partnership problems, shipping, and supply-chain issues and was ready to slow down the pace. That’s why Jay enlisted the team at Quiet Light to assist in his valuation and receive higher offers for his brand. Are you ready to achieve your amazing exit today?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Jay Campbell, Co-founder of Aseir Custom, to discuss optimizing your exit strategy. Jay talks about avoiding partnership difficulties, why he negotiated an equity exit, and the importance of insurance when things go awry.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi folks. It’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:32

Hey folks, Joe Valley here, welcome to a another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. This episode is an incredible exits episode, we’ve got Jay Campbell on the podcast, he recently worked with my good friend Walker Deibel. In exiting his business, he and his partner built the business up since 2019. And in late 2021, something happened that made him go, oh, man, we should really just stop stressing so much and just sell this business. They connected with Walker in January. It was listed for sale in early March. And then they exited by, I think the third week of April. They were done and moved on. Except they actually did an equity roll. He talks about that a little bit. how that worked, why they decided to do that. He also talks about a number of things that he’s done personally. We talked about domains that he just bought, how much he paid for him what the process was, and what his next adventures are and things of that nature. It’s great episode, stick around to the very end, he gives some good nuggets and tips all the way through, but especially at the let’s go talk to Jay. Here we go. Hey, folks, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. I’m Joe Valley, your host. And today I’ve got Jay Campbell with me, Jay, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are you?

Jay Campbell 1:50

Joe Valley, I am amazing and thrilled, humbled, honored and privileged to be here with you today. So

Joe Valley 1:55

let’s roll. Well, you’re, you’re quite a successful guy in many, many different ways. We talked just a minute about some of the stuff in the background there. You’ve recently sold a business through Quiet Light using my friend you are now Fred Walker. diable. Yes, sir. And so I want to hear all about all of that. So rather than me trying to do what you do, why don’t you give the folks listening? A little bit of background on yourself?

Jay Campbell 2:19

Yeah, for sure. Again, I’m honored to be here today, man, thank you for the privilege. It’s always a blessing when I get a chance to talk about myself. Right, the personality of Jay Campbell. Yeah, so we you know, recently sold you guys helped us tremendously in you know, positioning our company and brand to the public. And it was actually a very rather uneventful sale, you know, I know that were in very strange times these days economically from about 50 million different angles, you know, depending on your lens. So everything that we dealt with my business partner, and I was just simple. I mean, it was we never really even had a single hiccup, you know, with the current with the, with the buyers, and it just went amazing. So it’s all I can say is like, Let me sing your guys praises everything you did, you know, Walker, personally, put together just this amazing packet on our brand and everything. And I’m just so grateful and so humble. But, you know, the Jay Campbell story is, you know, I was the guy that wrote some books on hormone optimization back in 2015, which became the number one selling book of all time on testosterone, therapeutic testosterone. And then from there, I met all these amazing people, doctors, researchers, you know, biochemical folks, and I started to really build my quote unquote, brand, in speaking and also writing about health optimization. You know, I’ve written six books now, subsequently, you know, four of them are considered international bestsellers. And I have a pretty big name as a, you know, I don’t know how you classify me, some people classify me as a biohacker. Some people just classify me as like an alchemical guy. Because I really try to, I wouldn’t say try, I’m doing it, but you know, bridging the spiritual with physical. And, you know, that’s kind of like what I do and where I’m going today, you know, since exit, you know, it’s about building the personal brand and teaching more and more people about the importance of, you know, essentially raising their consciousness.

Joe Valley 4:10

Normally I don’t jump to, well, let’s, let’s figure out how people can reach out to you or connect with you and learn about what you do. But given the fact that you’re doing the connection between mental and physical, spiritual and physical, and I have a personal need to be healthier, and not focus on work, work, work, work work all the time. Do you have a go to URL where people can learn more about what you do and what you share and what you teach in that regard? Yeah,

Jay Campbell 4:40

absolutely. This is the home website and I recently it’s perfect timing. Recently, I was able to acquire my domain. I’ve had a guy cyber stalking me on my domain. And, you know, every once in a while, he’ll reach out to me and say, I’ll sell it to you for this and I’m laughing. And so I finally sent him an email about a month back and said I I’ll give you $2,500 For Jaycampbell.com Because I have my so my primary domain to answer your question is JCcampbell.com. And they can go there and find all sorts of stuff, contact me get free books, you know, all sorts of great stuff. But it will be eventually Jaycampbell.com. Which is awesome. Great accomplishment for me. But yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff there, you know, from health optimization, to spirituality, to fitness to fat loss to how to, you know, use peptides and hormones. In fact, I probably have right now, we just launched a peptides course, that’s probably the number one peptides course on planet Earth right now for teaching people from a very lay perspective, like how to use therapeutic peptides. You know, it’s kind of a complex topic. We don’t have to go into it on the show today, but a lot of people are getting into that. And you know, if you speak to any of the people who are foremost in the field of medicine today, they’ll tell you that peptides is really the future of it.

Joe Valley 5:52

Well, let’s not go into the weeds there, because I want to know all about peptides, but I wrote I wrote it down and put a question mark, meaning I’m going to check it later. So in regards to domain purchasing, where did the guy who owns Jaycampbell.com. Start out on price base?

Jay Campbell 6:09

It’s a great question. ballpark. I know I gotta go back. I’m happy. No, I’m very transparent. So his last offer to me was 30, grand 30. Yes. And I laughed in his face, you know, literally emailing him. And eventually, he didn’t want to deal with me anymore. And he started to deal with my I don’t know how he found me through GoDaddy, because I own so many different domains in there. But I have a guy and GoDaddy who said, Hey, this guy is serious. Now he’s willing to make a deal. And I’m like, Oh, really? Well, here’s my deal. And he can fly a kite. You know, but he took it. So I mean, you know, I was very persuasive. I’m, obviously a writer and content guy. So I mean, I wrote a very persuasive about I say, hey, look, man, this is the last offer I will ever offer you because JC Campbell is as good as Jay Campbell to me. So if I can’t get it, it’s not a big deal. You know, good luck. If you ever find another J. Campbell, willing to give you 2500 bucks. And that’s it. And you know it literally in an hour. He said, Okay,

Joe Valley 7:02

that’s awesome. You know, when I wrote the experience playbook, I registered the domain EXITpreneur.com. But I’m such a dumbass, I spelled it wrong. It’s EU are not? No, it’s you er, not EUR. And so you registered the wrong domain. Turns out, somebody else owned it. And I was in discussions with Walker and my business partner Mark about whether I should buy the domain or not. And I think the initial offer was something like 10 or $15,000. What they wanted to sell for there at $250,000. Last Last check. Wow, yeah, I haven’t bothered asking for nine months or so. And I’m certainly not going to buy the domain for anything. Ya know, so. And my personal name, I’ll tell you right now, thank you, because my personal name, I owned Joevalley.com, a decade ago, and then I know I let it go, because I wasn’t smart. And then a photographer named Joe Valley took it. And as we’re talking, I just looked it up. And it’s registered, but may still be available. So I may be able to buy it. And I’m gonna go back and look and buy it. Knowing that this particular recording is not going to air till July. So I got some time before anybody tries to steal it from me and sell it to me for a quarter of a million bucks. You sneaky entrepreneur bastards. Anyway, all right. All right. All right, let’s talk about this. This, this this brand that you built, and sell sold through Quiet Light using shock? Is it? Is it the first online business that you built that had physical products?

Jay Campbell 8:41

Technically, no. So I was actually involved in a supplement company. Actually two, but one that was serious. So so so no, the answer is no, but it was the first one that grew, you know, of that magnitude?

Joe Valley 8:55

And did it grow out of your experience in the naturopathic space? This the second one that you just sold through quiet light? And so if you just connect, and how did you connect with your partner and that kind of stuff?

Jay Campbell 9:07

Yeah. So it’s a great question. So yes, and no. So my background, you know, as who I am, so I actually, so I’ve had a couple of incarnations in this lifetime, but just to give you a big picture of Jay Campbell and for the listening audience, you know, up until I was 41 years old, I would consider myself a very highly accomplished wage slave, right of always doing all these things, but other people and I had a very, you know, I think it was Shawshank Redemption. Remember, Morgan Freeman was like, you know, you have an institutional mindset that’s what I was, you know, I was my dad trained me to get a good job and impressive progress up the ladder and you become CEO and yet, you know, you get the golden parachute. So I never really had an entrepreneur mentor or mentorship growing up, but I was really good at the things I did and what I did was in my 30s was I was involved in digital marketing in the automotive space. So from 3027 to 40 I became pretty accomplished I was like a senior VP I worked for Kelley Blue Book also worked for autotrader. I worked for admins, I worked for all the big endemic Carmack automotive sites, you know, in various capacities. And so I was really learned in that. That 40 Kelley Blue Book got bought by autotrader. And I was one of the three highest paid guys at the company and I’m not kidding you the next day, sacked. We didn’t even know severance or anything. Do we didn’t even know they had sold the company. We mean, it was like privately announced inside to the you know, the Kelly family trusts, which is down here in Irvine, Southern California. And then they let everybody know, like three days later, but the next day, they just got rid of the three pies paid guys in the company. And we didn’t understand what was going on. Other than that, it was in 2010. As you remember, there was all sorts of going ons. But they did it because he is out of stock that we were gonna get. So long story short, I then resurfaced and a couple other companies. But as you know, in 2010 2011 2012, was a crazy crazy times, there were companies were going through all sorts of stuff, the company that I landed with actually was purchased one month later, and they just wiped out their entire sales organization. So then I just did various consulting, I moved back to Los Angeles in 2012. With my I actually just come out of a divorce, there’s a lot of crazy stuff that happened tectonic stuff. And I met my current wife has been the best thing that ever happened to me, who was a very successful residential real estate person. And when she dated me for a couple of months and saw what I did, she was like, why would you not do this for me, you know, because all the things you do, I could use, and I was kind of like, you know, not an entrepreneur, and I need that check twice a month. And you know, so I was very against it. But I eventually took the plunge, you know, she convinced me. And man, we crushed it in residential real estate from 2012 to 2015. We built an awesome, very successful team here in Southern California, which we still owned, and totally not in it anymore. But I taught you know, all the various technological things that I understood to those folks that came after me. And so you know, flash forward to 2019. And really 2017 2018, I was part of a supplement company, I had a couple partners, I Joe had a very vast awareness or knowing of the supplement industry, I know how to formulate I know about products as a biohacker. You know, I know what works, what doesn’t work and stuff like that. So we were able to build a supplement company, which I’ll mention to you because it’s still around it was called optimum life nutrition. And I did not I’m sorry, optimized Life Nutrition. But I didn’t like one of my partners. And so didn’t last long. They bought me out, I built I was one of the guys that really designed all the products, they had a couple of really awesome products and nootropic and another advanced like thermogenic fat loss supplement. But I was like what not working with you buy me out, I don’t care go my separate ways. And then in 2019, I decided to build the company that we just sold, which really came from my awareness in the supplement space, which he had originally asked me and then my business partner, as formulation background, he had been in the biopharma space for over 20 years. And he knew everything backwards and forwards that him and I had been friends for like three years, we met on the internet, through Twitter, and had just always kind of us to ourselves, man, we start something together, you know, but then we just never did it. And then showed off. I came back from Peru in 2019 and September, which is when I literally shifted my brand from Jay Campbell what I was known around worldwide, which was the testosterone guides Jay Campbell, the Raise Your Vibration guy. And at the same time, my business partner, by the way, just said to me, Hey, man, let’s build our own company. You know, here’s some of the things that I can do. And I’ll send it to you and your wife, and you can you know, check it out. And if you like it, we’ll go from there. And so, you know, the people that know us know that my wife took the staff for I even had a chance to use it, and came back to me like a week later and said, What the hell is this? Like, this is the most amazing shit I’ve ever used in my life. You guys got to sell this was

Joe Valley 14:05

something that she enjoys. Oh, was that? Was that something she ingested or topical?

Jay Campbell 14:10

No, it’s topical.

Joe Valley 14:12

Jay, how old are you now? How do you think I am? Joe? 54. Well, he’s a little bit older.

Jay Campbell 14:20

I mean, I’m a little bit younger. I’m 51.

Joe Valley 14:22

Okay, well, I was just doing bad math there. I was going okay. 41 and adding the years. I’m Look, folks, y’all sometimes are kind enough to reach out to me and say it’s hard to believe that I’m actually as old as I am. I’m 56 That’s awesome. And dude, you look. I mean, you’re a strong 52 year old you look very, very healthy. So whatever you’re doing, more people want to do. So go to JCCampbell.com and check that out. But you know the story that you’ve got first, let’s talk about that partner that you didn’t like, because there’s a lot of folks in the in the audience that may be considering a partnership. The only Lead time? No, I shouldn’t say that because I have a business partner now. And two times in my, I had, I had a partnership, where I was out golfing with my attorney and my CPA. So they both knew how much money I made. And they wanted to get in on my life. Right. And we were driving home from golf and talking about this, they were talking about how they’re both entrepreneurial, mind minded, you know, CPAs, and accountants. And they were talking about this particular product and whatnot. And I’m like, Well, you guys want to do that I’ll help literally pulled the car over. And, and then, you know, asked me to jump in, and we became 1/3 partners. And it didn’t really work at all, because the 1/3 partner, really, I was doing most of the work, right. So I bowed out, I gave I brought in somebody else to do what I did and bowed out of it and all that, well, how did you meet the partner that you ended up not liking? And why didn’t you like,

Jay Campbell 15:54

so is exact same thing. So my best friend in the whole world, I can name his name and Jim Brown, who I was friends with for 28 years, like he was even a mentor to me, and a lot of the things that I learned, he was actually at one time a professional bodybuilder. And then he became a really, really successful surgical sales guy, you know, ended up like buying into a company, very successful guy. So it was him and I and when we got into this, we needed a money guy. And the money guy who will not be named, got in, and he was also very successful still is, you know, with the companies, he owns deals a software company that’s worth like 150 million, he still hasn’t sold it. But he didn’t do anything, Joe, you know, we brought him in, and nothing happened. And I did all the work, like kinda like you, and I’m like, This is insane. And I went to gym and I’m like, bro, like, I can’t work with this dude anymore. Like, what is he bringing to the table? You know, we hired him for money. And he told us give us money. And he’s not doing any he also had a big, you know, email marketing list and stuff. And he wasn’t marketing to his list. He wasn’t talking about the stuff. And so it’s just like, you know, one night I just decide, well, I know what the final nail in the coffin is. We actually hired a consultant. And we bought him in. And he’s a very big name in those sports supplement industry. And we paid him a lot of money. I think it was like 15 G’s for one day. And he gave us a great advice and strategy. And we went to dinner, and this guy got wasted, and brags about his net worth and the software company and all this stuff. And I’m just sitting there like, what am I doing with this dude? Right. So like, on the ride home, he was was in Orange County, but we flew him in and we rented out one of those works. That was his workstation so that now it’s gone out of business. You know what I forgot what it was, you know what it was everybody knows it was like a big joke, because they were listed on NASDAQ and everything we work or whatever the hell that scam was. And so we sat there and, you know, the whole day, got all this great info, then went to dinner, and he made an absolute fool of himself, and I drove him home that was not his home because he lives in somewhere else. But he was insane and apart. I mean, in a hotel in Irvine, I dropped him off. And I looked over my best friend said, I’m done. Mouth, there’s no way. That’s it. There was a nail in the coffin. And he’s like, Look, man, he’s like, we can’t do that, you know, Josh has got the money. And I’m like, Dude, I don’t give a shit about the money. I cannot work with people that I can’t be vibrationally aligned with, right. So it’s like I’m done. And truth Truth. Truth be told, Jim chose him. And the rest is history. I mean, I’ve literally this guy is my best friend for 20 years, it’s now been almost five years, I haven’t even spoken to him not an email, not a text message, not a voice message. And look, I get it. People go their separate ways in life. But it was just weird for me. But it taught me a lot of you know, rare, valuable lessons, like for the next partnership that I ended up getting into,

Joe Valley 18:43

you got to choose the right people because you’re as committed to them in even more stressful situations than your spouse.

Jay Campbell 18:51

Totally, man. Totally. Yeah, you’re right. And that’s the thing that happened. I remember, you know, I sent him an email. Then he was in Hawaii with his family. And he calls me rambling drunk. And I’m like, I got him on speakerphone. I’m letting my wife listen to this, like, can you believe this? And she’s like, well, that’s what happens to me was you’re right, you are married to your business partner, and you better make sure that you’re vibrationally aligned or else like, as you know, it doesn’t work.

Joe Valley 19:19

In my situation. The advice that I give that I applied to my current partnership with market Quiet Light is that we both have very distinct roles. We make we make a company decisions together, strategic plans to gather, but I have a certain role and he has a certain role. Fortunately, his role. Fortunately, for me, his role is taking all the crap that flows downstream. So thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. And he’s actually he’s actually back on to podcasting. Folks. You’ve heard the intro for years that it’s mark and Joe are the hosts but Mark hasn’t hosted podcast in 18 months, but he did one A couple of days ago, so it’ll air either before or just after this one. Jay, I let let’s jump to your exit this this business that you created with this new business partner, you built it up did quite a bit of revenue. I mean, you just launched it in 2019. And now in early 2022, so really just less than three years later, if you’re exiting, is it because you set a goal to exit or you just woke up? And you both said, You know what, this is good. Let’s, let’s cash in while we can. Let’s focus on some other things. But what was the what was the mindset behind exiting?

Jay Campbell 20:35

Yeah, it’s a great question. And really is there’s a bunch of different answers. So if you, you know, what was the story? In November of last year, I was actually in Cabo San Lucas, I just come from a meditation retreat, with my wife complete silence. And it was the last day that we were before we came home, we were gonna like re acclimate. And we rented this really nice Hotel in Los Cabos. And my business partner and I talked on the phone, it was on a Sunday afternoon, we were flying out early Monday morning. And we had just had, you know, an oil. Well, it was it was obviously a week before Black Friday, right? It was that Sunday before. And we already had an amazing November, it was our bidding, we knew it was gonna be our biggest month ever. And we were talking plans for what we needed to do from a strategic planning in 2022. And where we were gonna go, and you know, how much money we needed to get to get here, we have like, five new products that we were gonna phase in at some point in 2022. And like, that’s where we want to, and one week later, we got a letter, you know, from one of the FDA, you know, Attorney Sniffer, we call them teams that said, Hey, you guys are, you know, you sell uptight solutions, and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and like, you know, do know, and so, like, whenever we get something like that, we would send it to our, you know, in house counsel, and we say, you know, what is this, you know, because they weren’t asking for money or anything. And you know, our in house counsel came back to us, like four days later, we’re like, that’s scary shit, right? Like, that’s a watchdog deal for the FDA. And we’re like, what? So at that point, and by the way, now, now, we just had our biggest month ever, in November. And we’re like, you know, getting ready to blow up ramp up, do this hire, that we just hired this brand new, really amazing agency that was gonna do a lot better than anybody we’d use before. So like a lot of things were moving and shaking. But my partner and I just sat down and like the second week of December, and we’re like, what should we do about this, we actually talked with other people in the industry, about peptides. And every single person who knows anything about peptides is always going to look at you and says, the same thing, nebulous. You know, very gray, very cloudy, there’s no crystal ball could go away tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. So it kind of just behooves us to, like, let’s ask and find out, like, you know, if we did, you know, what would it be worth? And as we started to talk to people and get the feedback that we got, we were like, okay, you know, we could, we could probably keep a piece of the company and still x it and not have to worry about waking up one day and it’s over. Right? And, you know, very truthfully, what the work Walker did. You know, I was reluctantly, I was optimistic, but I was also reluctantly cautious. Because some of the people that we spoke to initially were like, Oh, we talked to our regulatory attorneys, and they were like, No, so my concern was, you know, like, what was gonna happen either way, because, ultimately, if nobody wants to take this on, because of that risk, it doesn’t matter what our profit and loss is, and you know, the valuation and where we can go and stuff like that there’s just too big of a risk. But thankfully, you know, the company that did acquire US, like, that wasn’t even a hiccup to them. They’re like, we have an army of those guys. And this is what we do anyway. So he’s like, you know, we’re not concerned about it. So that that was really it, it was more about like, do we really want to risk this on ourselves? Or would we rather, you know, sell now to somebody with greater know how greater marketing, you know, because truthfully, and I know, you know, this, and you’ve written about this in your book, but like, when you’re dealing with a supply chain crisis, you know, the ship that everybody had to deal with in the last two years with China, and overseas shipping. And I mean, I’m sure we could talk a whole podcast on the racket that overseas shipping became in the last like year and a half with tangible goods. There’s a lot of negatives, and it became almost like every 45 to 60 days, like, I wouldn’t call it a cash flow crisis, but just like that thought of like, oh, shit, if this goes bad, what can happen? I mean, you know, I can tell the listeners, you know, I did a podcast with a guy. What’s his name Austin, for Austin browner for his you know, talking about what happened to us but like when we launched our new product last year, in 2021. In the very beginning of the year, every one of the bottles broke because they We’re a farmer grade bottles for our hairloss product. And they snapped on in the cold weather in Chicago. And so it cost us literally $100,000. And you know, real money to have to replenish and find and source new bottles. And you know, obviously during COVID, so all the list goes to the bottles in time.

Joe Valley 25:18

Yeah, it’s these little things that keep entrepreneurs up at night and make them stressed during the day or focused on work during dinner, when they should be focused on the family. So all of the corporate folks out there that wonder you’re running a great business, you’re making a great living. I can’t give the exact numbers, guys, but it’s, it’s very, very healthy. In terms of discretionary earnings. This is why people sell because sometimes it’s just the stress and the anxiety. It’s keeping up. And especially in the in the early years like this, you’re still three years old, and until you get to a certain size, right? These these hiccups cause cashflow crunches, that affect your personal life. Oh,

Jay Campbell 26:08

Dee Bryson. I mean, I mean, Joe, you know, in truth to that. My wife in the last two months, has been like, the least amount of stress that I’ve had in probably six or seven years. I mean, it is, you know, you’re right. I mean, it is a psychological component, probably more than anything else, because it’s that going to bed at night thinking what might happen, and you get so caught up in like, oh, shit, you know, if I have to account for that, and I know, you don’t want to live in the future, or obviously in the past, but when you’re owning a brick and mortar, you know, Shopify brand, you know, that is dealing with the ways that we’re dealing with, it’s very difficult. It’s almost inescapable. So, you know, once we started talking, and then obviously, we started talking to Walker, it just made a lot more sense. And, you know, I’ll be honest, like, the people that acquired us, I, you know, I think that they would be the angel investor, you know, picture in the dictionary for, like, what they do you know, how willing they were to come in and help us where we were really, you know, where we had significant weaknesses. And now as we go forward, like working with them, you know, in fact, Walker texted me like, two days ago was like, how’s everything going? And I’m like, Dude, it can’t be better. You know, they want to do this, that and the other. You know, they want to keep obviously, both me and my partner, you know, intricately involved. You know, we’re still 10% owner, whatever, but like, the reality is, is like they treat us like we’re still running the company.

Joe Valley 27:37

Alright, so let me address that I wrote down a couple of things, because you were talking down before. So I was going to ask the question about an equity role. So you sold 90% of the company, you listed the business for sale? Yeah. In the in the teaser, or in the client interview, did Walker say hey, are you open? What kind of sale? Are you looking for? Are you open to an equity role? Are you looking for a full exit? Did he did he have to say that or he just left it as a full exit?

Jay Campbell 28:03

No, he left it. And then we negotiated that.

Joe Valley 28:07

And the reason folks while why Jay and his partner did a, you know, 10% equity role, Hey, you didn’t need the full exit. So you’re okay, financially. So you’re keeping 10% there. The next exit will probably be hopefully, the goal is that, that 10% is going to be worth as much as the full exits. Exactly. That’s exactly right. Okay, so that’s good. And you also get distributions as they distribute, you know, leftover funds and things of that nature, which is, which is good. How much work are you putting in? I think I saw in the details in the in the closed sales report, that you’re actually on salary as well. Is that Is that accurate? So

Jay Campbell 28:44

I’m not Nick is Nick is for new products and stuff, because he’s really the formulator and soft, but what they gave me which is actually even better, is I am the master affiliate. So now all the influencers, you know, that will come on board, and believe me, there’ll be some big names. I mean, I get a piece. Yeah. So it’s crazy. And they just built out like, so the guys at their marketing firm. One of the guys that runs the company, he’s a partner in the company is like a genius pyramid guy in the real estate business. And so he knows how to leverage people in and you know, keep the pyramid going. And so, you know, when they had a couple of calls with me and showed me like, this is the game plan. I’m like, Yeah, Sign me up. I don’t use salary happy to do that, you know, so I’m not working that much. You know, I’m obviously still in that kind of inner interim period right now, where they’re changing the affiliate brand, because we were using reversion to a new one, which is the pyramid based one, which is also way more advanced and much more functionality, so that they can start layering it in. But you know, in truth, I’ll just be who I really am now, which is a guy who does podcasts, you know, hawks products, talks about various things, you know, fosters connections with name brand people, so it’s really not going to be much work. For me, as you know, I won’t be having to do the difficult, you know, day to day, mind crunching calculations that I was doing for two years.

Joe Valley 30:07

Pretty. That’s awesome. All right. Second question was, you know, you you had this issue, you had this letter about FDA compliance with peptides. And I’m guessing, knowing Walker in the way we work a Quiet LIght that, that was full disclosure that wasn’t withheld as a secret surprise to have the buyer deal with it was in the client interview talked about that, that and how you addressed it and how to address it going forward. Full disclosure, right.

Jay Campbell 30:33

Yeah. 100% Full disclosure, but you know, they’re really what those guys there’s really not, there’s, it’s so nebulous, even from their side, you know, all we can really think is like, it could be that and so, you know, there’s nothing for them saying, like, Hey, your product is at a risk, or, you know, like, they’re looking at us differently. It’s just kind of like a, hey, you know, we, we know what you’re doing. And, you know, we’re out there. So it was, it was more of like, a whole, like, in a worst case scenario. But it got worse when the first couple of people who are all over us and wanted to offer and then they found out that we’re like, whoa, you know, we make cosmeceutical peptide based products, it a couple of them backed off. And so then it was more like my worry, or my internal state of like, oh, shit, you know, but there really isn’t anything out there other than just the typical like, hey, we know what you’re doing. You know what I mean? Like, we’re letting you know, everywhere, the Big Brother is always watching.

Joe Valley 31:30

Always watching I used to, I used to, I used to sell supplements, as well, I sold that company back in 2010, before joining Quiet Light, and I remember getting a letter from and it was a letter, it wasn’t an email from an attorney general, somewhere in a tiny little County, in California Unbelief and telling me that my claims were an issue or whatever, and, and they were asking for $10,000. So what the hell is this? I’m getting bribed by an attorney general. I shared it with my attorney. And he’s like, he’s fishing, man. How many units have you sold? How many? How many customers have purchased product in that in that county? I looked at like zero, he goes zero, tell him to eff off. And I did I changed my I changed my ad stuff a little bit, instead of will like change to me, I learned an awful lot that.

Jay Campbell 32:24

See, we never I’m with that. And I’ve seen that. And I’ve experienced that. Not personally but through friends and stuff. But we never, you know, because my partner is biopharma background. He knows backwards and forwards what you can and can’t say, like, we never made claims, it was always, you know, may has been shown to May, could possibly, you know, so it was really not even that it was it was more like I said, like the letter came from one of their watchdog groups. And when our attorneys told them that was one of the watchdog groups, me and my business partner, were just kind of like, Whoa,

Joe Valley 32:57

yeah, you know, I just gotta be cautious, just out of curiosity in the space that you’re in. Did you for the listening audience that is also in the supplement space or puts stuff on their bodies? Did you get product liability insurance?

Jay Campbell 33:10

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So we have actually, there’s a funny story about that. It’s really good for everybody. So we have really good insurance and we thought we were completely covered in all aspects. But here’s what we saw if this if this can help anybody. Where we didn’t have coverage is after it went to our three PL and was dropped off in the warehouse. So the three PL we did not have coverage if the three BL magically lost it,

Joe Valley 33:40

or destroyed it. And that’s where you ended up having those bottles crack

Jay Campbell 33:44

because while it wasn’t that this is actually separate. That’s a whole nother story without going into the full details, but they lost a huge shipment. And then after investigation, oh, no problem. Our insurance will cover it will cover you were like, well, what are the terms of insurance? Oh, you know what, we’ll get them to you when we don’t don’t don’t have any type of hurt. And then it was do five cents per pound of our product. So basically just put it this way it was we got jammed out about 75k

Joe Valley 34:17

Yeah, that’s a lot. That’s a lot. So you lost 100k and cracked bottles and then 75k there and yeah, being an entrepreneur, it’s not a cakewalk, folks.

Jay Campbell 34:26

I mean, we thought we had to the T to the i’s every T dotted and crossed. But that’s one of those things where like, until you actually experience something like that you don’t even know to ask for it. Yeah. You know, and the three PL guy was like, oh, no, you guys are fully covered, unfortunately ask them, but then you see the terms and you’re like, dude, yeah, pretty bad.

Joe Valley 34:47

Alright, let’s talk about listing the business and the offers that you ended up with looking. Here. It looks like you wound up with two offers presented to you and only had to accept one ello Buy the two offers, by the way, is half what the average has been over the last 12 months. Why do you think that was? Was it because it went under LOI? So quickly? Let’s say the engagement. Yeah, it looks like it went pretty quickly. Is that the case? So yeah, so

Jay Campbell 35:15

So there were like four people that jumped, wanting to get more information. And they were like, basically all of the ones that, you know, pushed away initially, okay, because of the fact that we’re, you know, peptides based products. And again, when I say peptides based product for the listening audience, we’re not clinical by any stretch of the imagination. But again, there’s a lot of peptide based products out there now. And so people just have this idea like, oh, peptides, you know, nebulous, not FDA regulated, blah, blah, blah, but, but again, we’re nowhere close to that it’s not a risk, if anybody’s listening to this, but I personally think the reason that, and again, this is just my personal opinion, but the reason that we got such great offers is because we have a product that solves hair loss, and about 80% of the users. And we just don’t have we don’t have enough, you know, I would say visibility, you know, from a mainstream or a public perspective yet. And so I think that the companies that you know, really wanted our product, you know, wanted to buy us right away, you know, sold that themselves, and were familiar with the product and familiar with, you know, various influencers that were promoting it. And we’re like, wow, you know, we want it because the other the other guys, I don’t know, if we’ll ever talk to you about them, we’re in the UK, they, they came back, and they, once they knew that, you know, we were going to take the other guys, they were like, well double our offer. And we’re like, sorry, that’s great. You know, you can say whatever you want, but you know, we like the other guys better. And we listened to both of them. And they were both great people and folks, but the second folks, we felt more comfortable with the ones that exempted.

Joe Valley 36:50

Okay, so let’s just touch on that I was gonna go somewhere else, but the, the guys from the UK said, Okay, we’ll double our offer. So you’re in a situation where, I mean, that’s a substantial amount of money. You know, I mean, and you just said, No, we like the other guys. Was it because you didn’t believe them or feel like they get through to closing be difficult? So, great question.

Jay Campbell 37:12

So both my business partner and I were, you know, we talked at length about it, and we were just like, and you know, and again, thankfully, you know, he’s 44 year old guys been through the wars. And obviously, I’m a little older than him, and I’ve been through many, and we just felt comfortable. And the answers

Jay Campbell 37:31

that they had given us on like, how they were going to do what they were going to do was just way better and way stronger, and the other guys were more loose, you know, more kind of like free spirited, like, you know, we’re talking a big game that didn’t really have the substantiation that we felt like with the current guys, and of course, that double, you know, offer was, you know, when when Walker came to us later, it was like, You’re not gonna believe this, but you know, but we’re already about 10 days in so it really wasn’t even a thought process for us to like even think about it.

Joe Valley 38:02

So the situation there, folks is that he signed a non binding letter of intent, and could have backed out of it and walked away and chosen the other guys. I sold the business a few years ago. For saya saya Belka he owns OptinMonster a lot of folks use their services

Jay Campbell 38:18

don’t have OptinMonster on Jay Campbell right now.

Joe Valley 38:20

There you go. Hey, guys. So separately, this is separate business I silverside. But he had two full price offers, one from a jackass and one from a really nice guy. And the really nice guy actually had to it was an SBA purchase. And he at that time, the SBA required a 10% seller note. So we’re talking multiple millions of dollars that Sayed would have had to carry, you know, several $100,000 in a shorter note, and he chose that guy over the Jackass that had all cash, because the jacket asked that head all cash was braggadocious like your former partner that drank too much. He seemed like he was going to be difficult in due diligence, and there were hints of this guy is just going to try to renegotiate ndd for absolutely no logical reason. And so he chose the other guy. So for the folks that are how do I win when I don’t have all cash? Just don’t be a jackass. That’s number one. It looks to me though, like you wound up getting going under loi for over asking price.

Jay Campbell 39:27

Yep, yep. All right. So we went back and you know, we basically just said, hey, we’d like you a lot. Here’s where you’re at, here’s what needs to be and we’re done.

Joe Valley 39:40

Perfect, perfect. And they closed it looks like in my goodness, like 3839 days pretty sick. Literally. Beautiful. Even with an equity roll, which is impressive. And yeah, that’s great. I was gonna I was gonna just talk about training and transition, but there’s no necessary it’s not necessary there because you’re If you’re staying on the company and Nick more so than you, how was the due diligence process? How was it? Was it fairly quick? Was it down? I

Jay Campbell 40:08

mean, honestly, Joe, there was no sweat. You know, we had a meeting a stand up meeting once a week, a zoom call. And it was every Thursday at 11am. And, you know, Walker was on most of them, you know, obviously, my partner and I, and, you know, their emissary, and then eventually we met some other folks from their marketing. And it was amazing. I mean, like I said, I mean, it was kind of like, I kind of was like, you know, a little bit weirded out that it was like, so uneventful. I assumed there would be a couple of gotchas or something, but there really wasn’t anything.

Joe Valley 40:37

You know, when it’s done, right, when you prepare the package, right, and you run the business properly, like, it sounds like you did. There shouldn’t be too many hiccups. The only

Jay Campbell 40:49

gotcha was the money showing up in our account.

Joe Valley 40:53

That was the good Gotcha. The bad guy, Chip, what happened? Sharp lays like, I

Jay Campbell 40:56

know, you know, but it’s like, you know, when you’re dealing with a rather large sum, the money gets sent. And, you know, we had a couple of, we had a capital line, you know, with Shopify for like, 70 grand, and then we had a, whatever else we had for inventory, I can’t remember it’s like, same number or something like that. And then, you know, those are paid off instantly. But where’s your money? Right, you know, nine days later, it

shows up, you know, days, dude, nine days. Yeah, yeah, you can talk to Walker about it. I mean, you know, but I mean, we kind of expected it and then was shot. Where was it coming from? Really nebulous to call it Shopify.

Joe Valley 41:34

But nine days it was it? What was it, they sent it, but it took nine days to get you where it took him nine days. Where are they located? Where’s your buyer? They overseas?

Jay Campbell 41:44

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, their money showed up immediately. But from their money, you know, by paying off the capital wide in Shopify, then the money didn’t go into our Chase account for nine days later. That’s odd.

Joe Valley 41:57

That’s stressful. You know?

Jay Campbell 42:01

They’re like, Oh, Mr. Campbell, I’m sure it’s there. You know, it’s just the process, it can take up to seven to 10 business days, I really weren’t stressed that wasn’t going to show up. And it was just ridiculous. Because, as you know, you can’t transfer the transactions with Shopify until the money officially changes hands. So like all that we had to deal with and had to go back and count and deal with all that. I mean, the cool thing is, is the buyers expected it to probably happen. So you know, there was no deal. But like, for me and my partner, were just like, This is ridiculous.

Joe Valley 42:28

Yeah, it’s a long time. I know if I send a wire to I’ve got a relationship with some marketing folks in Australia, but I, you know, I sent them some money last week, and it showed up one day later, it’s not that hard. It wasn’t as much money as yours. But it’s not that hard. It’s It’s normally much

Jay Campbell 42:42

more. Well, I mean, again, if you know, banks, you know, they can lend the money out. Right. So I’m sure that’s what it was. And they’re just lending it out. And you know, they say it’s not there when it really is it’s ones and zeros on a computer screen.

Joe Valley 42:56

That’s all it is. Absolutely. All right. Let’s talk about something Walker did. And that is a you you closed in April. And now it’s June 1, we’re recording this on June 1. And you said last week, Walker reached out to see how things are going. What are your thoughts on that? He’s done and he’s been paid, you know, he can just move on and never speak to you again.

Jay Campbell 43:18

I mean, honestly, Matt Walker’s an amazing human being. I consider him a friend. You know, I would, you know, go to a barbecue with him hanging out with him, you know, have a couple pops with him. I mean, he’s just a cool guy. I mean, like, from the very beginning, you know, that was one of the things that really, we loved about it. You know, he was very transparent. He was just, you know, he’s like, one of us. I mean, I felt so comfortable. You know, with him from day one.

Joe Valley 43:43

Is one of you he is one of you is an entrepreneur just like you are that’s just everybody that’s on the team.

Jay Campbell 43:47

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it was just we just felt so comfortable with them. And you know, you you who forgot who it was that recommended you guys and that other guy what’s the other guy that I spoke to? I know I mentioned him too. He was also a really nice guy or something Empire

Joe Valley 44:05

probably no Empire Flippers because they’re a company Empire

Jay Campbell 44:07

Flippers. Yeah. So So whoever recommended you guys to us? I can’t remember I apologize,

Joe Valley 44:13

Bob. Bob Anderson from

Jay Campbell 44:16

Anderson Yeah, yeah. And you know, we’re also really really nice kind of I was like, you know, talk to both of them and see what happens but like I mean, no, no, I mean they were nowhere close to you guys. You know and again, Bob great guy, but like it was just the comfortability that we have with Walker was just incidentally,

Joe Valley 44:35

well if you do connect with Walker personally have him older, old fashions because he makes he makes the bartender make them absolutely perfect. The only time I drink well, my neighbor actually does pretty well too. But anytime I go out with Walker for an event or something, I just let him order the old fashions and sometimes he’ll take it back and goes, Can you can change this column and it comes back and it’s just fantastic. So, so you know thing there is that we are Quiet Light we do this, yes, we do this to make a living. But the best part of it is the relationships that we make. The worst part of it sometimes can be, you know, managing people’s emotions and expectations and it’s deals fall apart occasionally. And it’s that can be hard. But it’s the relationships that we’ve we build. And Walker’s one of the best that the walker actually was a buyer Jay, before before he joined the quiet life team. And this is another thing for buyers that are out there. Walker was on a conference call trying to buy a particular business didn’t really somebody else ended up buying it making an offer that was accepted. And then maybe a month later, my business partner Mark said, Hey, team, I’ve got a client that doesn’t want to list the business publish publicly. This is the deal. Does anybody have a really exceptional buyer out there anybody that’s just super nice, great to work with. And I remember I’m like that guy, Walker Deibel boom, and I made the intro, he bought the business, he still owns it today. And not too long after that he became an advisor on the team. So he’s fantastic guy. Great. Very cool. Do you agree, though, that he should get a haircut and stop looking like many Tarzan?

Jay Campbell 46:20

Well, the funny thing is, is that he started using product, like, dude, like, that’s why I’m gonna do a better job. He’s like, now my hair is gonna just grow to unlimited lengths. But no, I think it’s there looks good. I mean, I have nothing bad. Oh, he was babysitting us too. Because, you know, my business partner. And I, you know, even though we’re very, very close personal friends, we definitely had different ideas about how the business was to be run, as we were moving forward, you know, he wanted to hire, you know, a CEO and do all these things. I’m like, bro, we’re not hiring a CEO until we get to x. And we’re not at x right now. You know. So I mean, like, he did a really good job of marrying us and keeping us, you know, really, together and focus, like, the whole thing. I mean, like I said, Man, if you guys asked me to write you guys a review, you should you’re doing

Joe Valley 47:07

it right now you’re doing it right now. So it’ll be glowing. Appreciate that, I’ll tell Walker, he needs to reach out to you the written review. From the time you thought about selling the business and deciding you want to get a valuation, to the time you sign an engagement letter was it was fairly quick, or did you think about this nine months ago and decided to go into engagement in

Jay Campbell 47:32

March? No, it was it was it was fairly quick, you know, obviously, seeing the economy and you know, I have a lot of friends at work in Wall Street, you know, and seeing the deterioration that was starting to happen, you know, which we all knew was coming, you know, it just seemed like it was the best thing to do. Also, just to get the stress of the day to day off. I mean, because again, we had a massive November, and we expected to do something similar in December, and it was nowhere close. And so it was, again, our traffic, you know, just really started to lessen and stuff like that. So it was a pretty simple decision for my partner and I just to say, You know what we don’t want we don’t need to deal with the stress of this day to day anymore.

Joe Valley 48:10

Good for you. Congratulations, man, what a journey, what a story. We’re running out of time, I want to wrap up, but I really do. And I’m gonna put you on the spot here. For entrepreneurs that are out there now, just thinking about buying an online business that have started on a bootstrapped one and just trying to get through to the positive cash flow part of the business, any any advice, any tips, any guidance that you would give them, whether it’s from, you know, your vibration aspect, or entrepreneurship aspect, anything that you want to share with anyone listening in the audience? Yeah, for sure.

Jay Campbell 48:48

If you have a great product, and you believe in your product, continue on don’t waver, you know, find a mentor. There are a lot of guys now in the entrepreneurial space that are very successful or have been successful in doing what they’re doing. And in fact, I’m doing that now. You know, I bet you I have two guys that I’m mentoring that have phenomenal products that I’ll be bringing to you guys to sell within the next you know, year to two and I found them at because they were customers of ours. Right. So, you know, I it we’re definitely changing from an economic cycle, obviously, again, June 2022. Right now, things are gonna get a lot tougher, I would assume over the next year to year and a half, but great products will exceed and overcome all markets, regardless of you know, the strength of them. So how about if you have a great product, you know, and you have an unwavering mindset that you’re going to be successful with it, you know, find somebody to help mentor you. So you can avoid a lot of the pitfalls and obstacles that you know many people don’t avoid. You know, I mean, you know better than I do. I mean, you’re the guy that wrote the book on this. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. But with mentorship. In an unwavering determination to succeed, there’s no question that the technology of, you know, Shopify, and you know, all these apps and all these amazing things that make things much more simplistic. Anyone can be successful today again, with that will and that wavering at that unwavering approach.

Joe Valley 50:16

Right. I love it. Folks reach out to Jay at JayCCampbell.com. Soon to be JayCampbell.com. Once he gets that transferred over, and if you want to reach out to Walker, because obviously Jay loves him and he’s a great guy and you want to talk specifically to him. You can reach out to him at [email protected] Jay, thanks for coming on the Quiet Light Podcast greatly appreciate the time you spent with us today.

Jay Campbell 50:42

Thank you, Joe. I’m grateful and humbled to be here.

Outro 50:46

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 And the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guests, email us at [email protected] Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.