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Repurposing Assets for a Six-Figure Exit – Shaina Weisinger

Shaina Weisinger is a recovering content marketing expert hell-bent on helping people live happier and healthier lives. She was the Founder and CEO of Repurpose House, an agency that repurposes content for social media platforms — which she sold to Carbon6 Technologies. Before Repurpose House, Shaina founded WAKE brand media and has contributed insights on business growth and content marketing via conferences, podcasts, intensives, and guest blogs. She has also been featured in Entrepreneurs On Fire, Inc., DigitalMarketer, and hosts The Content Coalition podcast.

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

[02:42] Shaina Weisinger shares her entrepreneurial background in content marketing
[06:14] The genesis of Repurpose House and what it offers
[09:31] The value of creating systematized and consumer-centric businesses
[14:07] Shaina explains her decision to sell Repurpose House
[18:20] Tips for building productive teams and cultures
[20:55] How having proper documentation impacts selling a business
[23:02] Shaina’s experience selling and exiting her business through Quiet Light
[30:29] What’s next for Shaina?

In this episode…

Exiting a successful business can be just as challenging as building it. So what can you learn from someone who has victoriously done both?

After building a rewarding and lucrative repurposing content agency, Shaina Weisinger decided to sell. She found the key to a successful exit is a clear strategy. To make the sales process smooth and efficient, it’s a must to ensure your documentation, especially financials, is up-to-date and in order. With proper preparation and execution, exiting a content agency can be a rewarding experience that sets you up for future success.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Pat Yates sits down with Shaina Weisinger, a recovering content marketing expert, to discuss her journey building and exiting a rapidly scaling content agency. Shaina talks about the genesis of Repurpose House and what it does, the value of creating systematized and consumer-centric businesses, why she decided to sell Repurpose House, and how having proper documentation impacts the sale of a company.

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. They provide trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations. So, your Quiet Light advisors aren’t your everyday brokers — 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 its 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 offers 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

Hey 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.

Pat Yates 0:32

Hello, and welcome again to the Quiet Light Podcast. I’m Pat Yates sitting in for Joe Valley. Today I have an exciting episode. I’m really glad I’ve been working on this for several months trying to get it together as Shaina Weisinger from Repurpose House. She was a client of mine at Quiet Light. And she sold her business Repurpose House. That’s a while ago, it’s probably been about nine months to 10 months ago that she sold it to an Amazon aggregator called Carbon6 who I’m very, very close with and their CEO Justin Cobb. Shaina is an amazing entrepreneur. Not only did she find a niche for something that was necessary and repurposing digital assets, she found a way to sort of put a SaaS feel on it to where someone could come in and had this interface where they could submit all their stuff. She had it done overnight based on her way she set up her VAs across the country would come in on us Thompson and right away they’d have next day for the person, working at different times. She also talked about the culture of how she built the business and had some people that had been with her a long time that she wanted to go forward. It was a really challenging opportunity to think about selling this business. The funny thing is, as soon as we got out there, her personality showed everything she’d done to build the business she was growing 185% year over year in the trailing 12 months of 20 and 21. She did just an incredible job building this business and made my job so much easier. She’s a fantastic person to talk to. She’s a great personality. I’m gonna have a lot of things going on in the future. So I can’t wait for this conversation. Let’s get to Shaina Weisinger with Repurpose House. Shaina, it’s great to have you in the Quiet Light Podcast. Dave, how you doing?

Shaina Weisinger 2:07

Hey, Pat, I’m good. How are you?

Pat Yates 2:10

I am great. I mean, so excited about this. So for the listeners out there, I usually try to bring entrepreneurs on that have sold their businesses somewhere with good brokers, she actually sold it through the best broker in the world, which is me. No, I won’t go to the extent of saying that Shaina, but it’s great to have you in here today. I’m so excited to tell everyone about you as an entrepreneur, because I’ll tell you that your excitement and your smile and your enthusiasm was infectious with me when we first started talking that carried out throughout the transaction. So why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about you and where you’re from? And maybe a little background on you?

Shaina Weisinger 2:42

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m from Phoenix, Arizona, born and raised. There’s not a lot of us here who came through the heat from the ground up. But here I am still, I’ve had an entrepreneurial kind of spirit since I was really young. I actually was running around with a video camera, I was the only person who knew how to use a video camera in my house when I was like 10 11 12 years old. And I made like little makeshift video editing booths in my parents backyard, I would gather all the VCRs and edit little like cuts and stuff like that. So I knew that media was in some way, shape, or form going to be a part of what I did. And then I just I really liked being able to create something out of nothing. So my first like real business was doing game footage for different types of sports. So we did soccer, we did a lot of hockey, we would have like 10 videographers all over the valley at all the different rings when they would have tournaments. And this was before you could like film on your cell phone. So I’m aging myself a little bit right now with the physical camera, physical cameras, that what they were shooting on cards, but it wasn’t film. But yes, I mean, still was very much, much earlier than you could use a phone. But we would have these guys like with their cameras above the glass risking it all to get this footage for these hockey tournaments. And just these teams and moms would pay an astronomical amount of money to make sure they got game footage for their kids in order to put together real so they could get scholarships. And I mean, I was an athlete in high school. So I understood the importance of that, but it started there. And then it kind of evolved into more marketing based so it was like I know that if I do video with businesses, it’s not as artistic, but there’s, you know, more money involved there. And I went to do video production for businesses, a lot of marketing stuff. And then that evolved into me wanting to do something that was scalable, because I became the bottleneck very quickly in my video production company because a lot of it was I think you got to hey, yo, go ahead. Yeah, sure. I realized I became the bottleneck on my video marketing company, because I had to also be the brain on the marketing element of it. So you can’t scale rapidly if you have to physically be doing any sort of work. So I had a buddy who has a company called Design Pickle and they’re very, very scalable, I had done some video production with them. And he was like, listen, like you’re the bottleneck, you have to create something that you physically don’t have to do the work in, or you’re never going to be able to scale. And so that’s when created the processes and the systems to make Repurpose House scalable company.

Pat Yates 5:19

That is, I mean, thinking back, you were like doing social media influencing before there was social media influencing you were doing videos at sporting events that could have been streamed live or put on Twitter or Facebook very, very quickly. What when was that? I know, I’m not trying to age you but you look ageless anyway.

Shaina Weisinger 5:36

Well, thank you. Gosh, how long ago was that? I was 21. So oh, God, almost 20 years ago, I turned 40 this year.

Pat Yates 5:44

I had a feeling that we were probably talking mid to late 90s, you would have still been doing that before the video came out on iPhone, it’s really incredible. See sort of stayed in the space. So tell me a little bit about Repurpose House and how you decided that this was going to be where you went forward? Because I was sort of surprised when I saw the business, how cool it was how there was a lack of complexity and what seemed like a sort of a complex situation. But maybe tell us what in the past you saw that allows you to start this.

Shaina Weisinger 6:14

Yeah, so one of the offerings I was doing in the video production was video podcasts were clients. So it was a recurring product, I would bring clients in studio, we’d have like four outfits, they would bring in four guests, we’d film it. But one of the pieces of that puzzle that I was giving is the repurpose assets for social media. So we take little 60 to 92nd clips, all the right sizes, because at that at that time, you would have square and then you’d have landscape and tall and all that fun stuff. And I’d put the captions on it. And then they’d be able to use it on their social media. And as I was selling the video podcast product, so many people were like, yeah, no, we don’t care about the long-form part, we already have that covered. But if you could just do those repurposed assets, and I was like, there’s got to be a company that’s doing this though, and there wasn’t like I’m literally searching online. And there were ways that you could kind of do it yourself with really cool like software. But it’s still you have to physically sit there and do it. And it’s the investment of time. And then there were just full-scale agencies who were going to charge an arm and a leg to do that plus all of your other strategy stuff. But there wasn’t like a very specific productized service that only did the repurposing the assets. So that’s kind of where I leaned into my friend who had created systematized processes for very specific things like that, like they do graphic design. And I was like, well, I can do this and just make it very, very hyper-focused on repurposing assets, specifically for social media. And then we don’t have to think about all of the other fluff that comes before and after it. It’s just very streamlined, it’s easy to create processes. And it’s easy to kind of move when those platforms move, which was way more often than I thought, like those platforms go, like, they change things overnight. And also, you’re like, my whole business model changes. But that being said, it was really great to stay hyper-focused and in one lane and be very specific and offer one thing very, very well it was kind of fun to be able to say no to people when they’d said like, well, do you offer this, like creative editing? We’re like, no, we don’t do that, because that’s gonna break our processes. But we were able to scale so rapidly because it was so focused and systematized that if we had offered more than just that very, very hyper-niche thing, it wouldn’t work that way.

Pat Yates 8:28

Well, what’s interesting, and again, we’re with Shaina Weisinger with Repurpose House, a Quite Light exit success story. And when I look at the business, and I got to rewind a little bit, because we got a little bit of time here, one of the things that I was ultra-impressed with, like, when I think about a repurpose an asset, I might send an email to a designer who would then do it with the image that I attached to the email. And it seems very archaic and not very smooth. But I remember that you had a process that made everyone feel much more comfortable, and a timing in that process that would promise something to a vendor. And then as we dove deeper, and I don’t want you to go too far, because we’ll do it in layers. You had these teams of people internationally that were able to turn these things around like that. So tell me about how, because I think the real hidden thing that I loved about your business was you could have done it a lot less systems rich, I guess the best way to put it, but you decided to make it very rich from a system standpoint to make it easier for the consumer. So maybe talk about how you made that decision and how you implemented it.

Shaina Weisinger 9:31

Yeah, well, the biggest part of the decision to make it super systematize really came out of a hospital visit that I ended up having a year or so before where I didn’t have systems, like I said I was the bottleneck. And I was really struggling to make sure that everything was kind of working without me having to work constantly in it. And so when I started Repurpose House, I was like everything needs to be so documented, so systematized so scalable, that it doesn’t matter if I have to step out for a minute, it all functions and it’s quick. And also that translates into being something that clients really appreciate and understand because they know that this is how it works every single time. And it can be fast and efficient. And it doesn’t matter if one person is sick that day, you’re still getting what it is you promised. And so it was an evolution as far as kind of the services that we ended up offering. But the big thing we wanted to make sure we did was people got assets returned to them by the next business day. And that came from the model that I had seen before with Design Pickle, where you submit what it is that you need, and you have an amazing team in the Philippines doing the work overnight, because they’re on opposite time schedules. So once they are done with the work, I mean, it’s going to be well before you’re waking up in the morning, and you have assets in your inbox.

Pat Yates 10:49

I mean, for the listeners out there that don’t understand the backend, maybe you could just quickly say what steps let’s say someone had an asset and they wanted this done, because I think it’s important to talk about those steps, because you and I sort of understand and maybe if you give a quick overview to the viewers of how you changed the systems to fit what you needed it to work for.

Shaina Weisinger 11:09

Yeah, absolutely. So initially, it was a lot of kind of a mix of DIY, and then we also helped so like you had to let us know that this is the little clip in the long clip that you want trimmed out, this is what you want it to say things like that, you would submit that by 5pm. And then our team would take it over, edit it, trim it up, put the captions on it, things like that. What we realized very quickly in the sales cycle was that people don’t want to do anything, they just want a one-stop shop. So then they were like, okay, well, how do we make a process that is still systematized that allows us to do the creative thinking on it. And that’s where we created a service where we would actually go through all of the content for the client. So the client would have a Google Drive folder, or they would send us links to all of their content, they would have an onboarding process, which was the only part that was not fully systematized constantly, but we would have to know what their content looked like their branding, their voice, things like that. And then all they had to do was point us to content one time, even if it’s if it’s a Google Drive folder that’s constantly populated. And then every day you have somebody on the team, going through the content, finding the best pieces to repurpose, creating headlines, and then they are sending it to the actual team that then does all of the certifying of it, they’re going to cut it, and they’re going to catch it and things like that. So we had specialized teams to do all of the different aspects. So you don’t just have one person who may be great at graphic design, also trying to figure out what the best message in the hour-long podcast is. So it was really just honing in on everybody’s special skills, making sure there’s great communication and process and then by the next morning, you’ve got something sitting in your inbox.

Pat Yates 12:48

It’s really amazing. And the reason that I asked that question, Shaina is because I looked back at your numbers to kind of understand and I’m not necessarily going to give the exact numbers. It’s not fair to Shaina, but I can tell you that anyone out there listening, and that talk thinks about how you become customer-centric is the best way I can put it of what she did with relation to how she could operate her business, she went from the standpoint of not how easy it is on me, at least I think this is how easy I can make it on the customer. And the results of that, where she basically almost quadrupled the business trailing 12 months from 2019 to 2020 versus 2020 to 2021. And when I looked it up, you had six months over 200% growth from year over year of six months out of the 12. And then the others the lowest was 103% an average of 182% growth for that year, which is absolutely astounding. And the only way you can do it is to be really smart, really lean and get to the customers needs. And I think that’s really what you did. You should be commended on that. So let’s take a step forward. You’re sitting around you’re killing it. You’ve got other things you’re going to work on to you’re trying to renovate a house you got all these things going on. And one point I think you might have said that you were dealing with some health things and you had some other family things going on. You had a lot going on. What made you decide that I don’t want to do Repurpose House anymore, I want to go sell it and I want to move on to my next thing.

Shaina Weisinger 14:07

Yeah, there were two main factors for me. One of them was I was dealing with a pretty drastic health kind of situation, a lot of doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I was immobile in bed, I had all these auto-immune things just randomly starting to happen to me, every test and scan known to man and it was scary. And I had spent a lot of time kind of in Google land just trying to figure out things that these doctors couldn’t figure out for me. So that played a big role in changing my perspective on what I wanted to focus my time and my energy on moving forward once I felt well. The other part of it was that Sarah who was my COO, she’s now the CEO over Repurpose House. Her and I went into it just building something like we don’t have specialized training in Google ads and funnels. wasn’t any of that we were just like, this could be really cool. Let’s see what we can do with it. And so we both knew that we had limitations on growth. At some point, we were going to hit a place where we either needed to bring in partnerships to be able to implement strategic pieces that we weren’t well versed in like funnels and ads and things like that, like I could do Guerilla Marketing all day. But like, I’m not an expert in AdWords, and all of these things. And so we had hit a mark, where we were like, kind of getting stagnant in growth, we didn’t really know exactly what we needed to do. And we needed to figure out whether or not we wanted to bring on partners stay in it and still grow it or if it was time to kind of pass it on to the next generation of people or a company that will be able to do what we want to happen within the company. And so for me at that time, because of the health stuff, and I knew I wanted to get into more of like a health and wellness kind of path, it just made a lot more sense to sell. And so that’s kind of one of the forward foots that I put in it was like, hey, there’s room for growth, you’ve seen what we can do. Imagine what you could do if you were able to implement these things that we have no idea about.

Pat Yates 16:07

I mean, it’s really amazing, because the more that I started thinking about it, I wanted to dive in and figure that out. For those people out there that own a business and are thinking about the right time to sell it, she just hit on so many things like we talked about it in speeches as well, that one day, you’re just going to wake up and either be tired to run the business or you think that you’ve gotten in as far as you can. It’s hard for me to imagine entrepreneur, so humble that you grew 180% year over year, one year, then the next year, you grew almost 30% on top of that, and decided it was time to sell a lot of people think if I’m running it that good and I’m growing it, I’m the best I’m going to be able to get over anything. And you had the ability to say they’re gonna be headwinds and challenges that I can’t navigate. I mean, that’s amazing that you would sit and be able to think that your next move has to be going on from that. Did you go back at any point and regret that you did that? Or was it just, you’re committed, and you’re happy with that decision?

Shaina Weisinger 16:59

I knew the thought of getting on a stage and talking about repurposing content, maybe one of them a little, that was probably, it was probably time for a clean break. But that’s not to say there wasn’t some bittersweet moments during the transition. And having to say goodbye to people. I mean, a lot of our Filipino team was there from the very beginning, like the first person I hired wasn’t Sarah, it was Rachel, and she ended up being the head of our HR department in the Philippines. So I think that kind of stuff was hard to let go of. But as far as knowing that I made the right choice and exiting, I haven’t looked back on that at all.

Pat Yates 17:35

Well, you touched on something. And I know we want to get to something about the sale a little bit. But talk a little bit about that summer, were you talking passionately to entrepreneurs that talk passionately about building the right teams and culture via virtual stuff, not even people that are in their office every day and all of them overseas. Another business I sold, Jimmy Chang was called away basics. He talked about his culture that he built with his Filipino vas a lot like what you did, so maybe you could tell people what made you make that decision because some people might have a nervousness about doing that, whether or not I mean, there could be a lot of reasons it could be that they just feel there might be barriers to communication and timing and things, but it really fit with your business, especially from a timing standpoint. So maybe talk about how you approach that.

Shaina Weisinger 18:20

Yeah, I was absolutely wary of hiring overseas, prior to going to the Philippines, to film people for another company. So I mean, I completely understand the hesitation there. But I actually got the opportunity to go to Philippines as a videographer to create recruiting videos for another company that was scaling in the Philippines. And just filming these employees talk about how the opportunity that they had at that company to live a normal day-to-day life with an eight to five with like, their benefits, like a health insurance kind of option. They don’t have to work weekends. And the biggest thing for them was that they didn’t have to have this good mentality and wonder where their next paycheck was going to come from every week on Fiverr or whatever. Like I was in tears in some of these interviews, like just hearing about the impact that this company had had on all of these folks lives. And at that moment, I was like, I am 100% committed to Philippines as a major place for great talent and there’s incredible talent. So it took an actual trip to the Philippines for me to get to that place. But I helped other companies learn how to create the correct processes, how to hire internationally, obviously, my heart’s in the Philippines, but it applies anywhere. You have to be able to create training systems that can be like duplicatable. So one thing that I tell people is like, if anybody remembers that game or whatever we used to play in elementary school where you have to like tell the person who’s up there how to make the sandwich by just explaining how to make the peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they’re like, okay, open the jar and they’re like folding the jar like hitting it against the table like no, no, you got to grab the lid, you got to twist the lid to the left, you’ve got until it stops twisting, like you have to be so obnoxious about your training and your processes, so that as the least amount of questions that people will have. And when you hear those questions, then you have to add to the training to answer that question. And the sooner you can get to that place, the easier it’s going to be to hire anybody in any location and be able to scale which is a big part of hiring overseas, because you’re going to want to be able to make those positions scalable.

Pat Yates 18:20

What’s really interesting, the more you talked about that I started thinking about another thing you know, I talk to entrepreneurs all the time, and I know we had this discussion of having your financials in good shape and having your SOPs and the way you operate your business documented meticulously and you were probably as detailed as anyone I’ve ever had do that. Do you feel like maybe in hindsight, doing it how you did it actually helped you prepare to be able to sell? Was it easier because you documented those process so heavily?

Shaina Weisinger 20:55

That made the process so much smoother? Because they were like, oh, we need people to teach us how you guys do everything. I’m like, oh, here’s the login information to our SOPs knock yourself out. And it’s like my team got so sick of hearing me say, is it documented and fluster? Is it documented and fluster anytime anything happened or change in our processes? It was like, is it in the platform that we document all this stuff? And I learned that in the past from somebody else, and I’m so happy that I implemented it, because it made the sale so clean, very little questions were asked as far as how things work. I mean, it was very, very much a massive part of the success of the transition, and also of being able to sell it because, people need to know that they’re not going to have to figure this thing out themselves, and granted, there’s probably a transition period where you as the seller are going to be a part of that. But I mean, I’ll tell you what it makes a night and day difference. I can’t even imagine having sold without those SOPs in place the way they were.

Pat Yates 21:55

It’s really amazing you say that, because I was just, I was just in Las Vegas, a shark tank reunion speaking and Ethan and I were talking a lot about preparation and it was more about how you get yourself prepared to sell like people that are out there listening if you don’t understand what SOPs are, it’s your standard operating procedures is everything you do start to finish in that day. And it’s very easy anymore. To get a loom account and just videotape your screen as you do, say, your ShipStation orders or you populate your inventory to Amazon or you do an FBA insertion, whatever it is, you can easily turn on loom, film it as you do it, put those in and you’re cataloging everything, it’s a great way, when you sell to show everything you’ve done your business, you did an amazing job on that clearly. And that obviously made my preparation a lot easier, too. So let’s go a little bit to you deciding to sell with Quiet Light. I mean, I don’t want to put you on the spot, necessarily, even though I will, with relation to working with me. Because usually I’m talking to some other people that have other entrepreneurs, but maybe talk a little bit more in general about what you were looking for when you came in to try to sell it and maybe how it was so awesome that did you found that not kidding? You can tell us a little bit about what when you started your search what you were really looking for?

Shaina Weisinger 23:02

Yeah, so the epicness of the Quiet Light experience? Absolutely. So actually, at first, I think we had a conversation before like months before I had decided to actually sell with Quiet Light. I had a mentor that I had spoken with about just the possibility of selling it was like just before I was kind of toying with it. And he was like, it’s a great time to do it right now. Like okay, well, I don’t even know what it’s worth, I don’t even know how to get evaluation. So I had interviewed a handful of brokers that included and just kind of to get just an idea of what this whole thing was about. Because I had no idea like my I didn’t even think that selling was really an option until this mentor said it. And then I had somebody who was kind of like a partner of ours, they are a similar business model, but in content writing. And we had been doing some like cross-promotion, and we had a conversation with them about like, hey, just so you know, we’re not putting focus into the partnership right now. Because we’re contemplating selling, we’re getting everything prepped for that. And they had expressed an interest in acquiring the business. And I was like, okay, well, that’s interesting. I don’t need to do the broker thing. There’s fees attached to that, and they make a little extra money and this and that and to say the least it turned into a massive shit show. It was the things you don’t know, you just don’t know when you’re trying to sell right and I just kind of stumble through that I’m in my own way. But I mean, we burned like eight to 10 months on just like a painstaking like, oh my gosh, we just need to get this thing done. And in that amount of time, there was a lot of things that like we felt like we couldn’t change or evolve with the business and so some of that was mildly detrimental to when we actually did sell later. But finally, like I decided to pull the plug on that because I just didn’t see it going through finishing um it was almost a year. And I circled back to Pat and thank God because it was the fastest most simple process. I wish I just pulled the trigger at the beginning, I would have saved myself a whole year of madness. But it’s really just comes down to the whole, like you don’t know what you don’t know. Also the types of buyers, I think, brought to the table were just so much more quality. I mean, instead of going from mom and pop shop, which sometimes that is a great way to be acquired, I’m certain of it. But just the pool of buyers that are brought to the table is just so much different. And then the process is so much different. I should have done it from the get go.

Pat Yates 25:30

Well, it’s great that you say that and obviously I appreciate that I try to make my process and Quiet Lights as good as possible. We have 14 Amazing advisors of which are way smarter than me. But, you know, we’ve come up with some pretty good processes and pretty good buyers. Again, we’re talking with Shaina Weisinger era from Repurpose House, one of my clients that sold. So in hindsight, are there things that in preparation that you think if I’d have just done this that have gone a little bit smoother? Do you feel like it went as smooth as you could? When people are preparing? What are they missing other SOPs making sure their financials are tight, and that they’re growing at 200% a year, like you were.

Shaina Weisinger 26:03

Model details, right? You know, for me, it was just I should have just gone the broker route at the very beginning. And it’s so funny because my husband’s a real estate agent. And it’s the same thought he’s like, you don’t know what you don’t know, like, use a professional who’s done this a million times to help you so that you don’t make dumb mistakes, or you don’t like end up having a terrible experience or whatever. And that to me was the thing that I could have done to save myself a lot of time because truthfully, our growth during that time period, while we were attempting to sell to the other company, became stagnant because we were in this weird Limbo when I couldn’t do all the things that I knew I needed to do to grow it. So in hindsight, had I sold at the beginning, likely it would have been for a higher dollar amount, but it is what it is, at this point. Like I’m thrilled with how it worked out. We actually ended up in a baby bidding war, which was really exciting and unexpected. So that’s cool. But outside of just use a broker, I would probably say yes, the SOPs are a massive part of it, have all of your financials documented, and kind of know what you want your exit plan to look like I was in a really unique situation where Sarah, my COO chose to four but I didn’t want to move forward. And that’s not normal. Like I want it to be outside of the business. I didn’t want to continue for six months to a year. And so for me, that was a hard stop. But that’s not a normal thing and I know that. So making sure that you kind of know what you want your moving forward to look like with the company how you’re going to help them transition. That to me, I think is important also.

Pat Yates 27:35

Well, I think you stuck on something that’s really important. I think that I wouldn’t diminish the value of especially Sarah going forward in this deal. It’s funny, because when I talk to my clients, I’m like, they say, well, what kind of deal to have to take like, you don’t take anything I’m bringing five offers you decide you don’t want them we walk on to the six because this is not about Quiet Light. It’s not about Pat Yates, it’s about you. And when we talked about that we wanted to achieve certain goals, which is to move Sarah along, if possible. And we wanted to make sure we got the price she did. The funny thing is we got all of them. And then she was able to go on. And now as people don’t realize, transitioning a business is always hard implementing a business, it’s always hard when you don’t have the owner that goes forward. There’s always things that changes. When they’ve got bought, I’m sure they’ve had challenges as well. But Sarah being the CEO that now is really got to be something you’re sort of proud of, because you ran the company, and now she’s running it as your right hand, they took her forward. That’s a goal if someone wants to have it that we just keep looking for. I mean, that had to be pretty exciting, even if it wasn’t easy for her. Correct?

Shaina Weisinger 28:34

Yeah, I mean, it’s a see her kind of take it on and be able to lead the team and give them a sense of like, we’re not being abandoned, if you will, like that, to me was really a huge positive in the transition. Because if both of us left, which was actually the original intention, she wanted to move on to other things, too. I just feel like it would have not been as great for the team that we’ve been so supportive of and that was it like culture was such a big part of our past that I’m so thrilled that Sarah got a chance to go in there to really lead. Also, she got kind of her dues on the amount of work that she did to create this company with me, so it was really cool to see her take the helm of it. And one thing that she has passionate goals about are supporting second and commands actually. So she wants to help support COOs and Director of Operations. She’s a very operational-minded person. So it’s been interesting to have conversations with her we’re now she’s had an opportunity to be at the CEO seat. And she’s like, I would teach people totally differently now knowing how both sides work because being just the COO, you’re not thinking about all the CEOs, CEO stuff. So she’s like now I can have a more vast in well-rounded training on my second and commands because I understand what it’s like to be the person they have to communicate with all the time. So I was like, that’s pretty cool, too.

Pat Yates 29:54

Yeah, it’s also a big thing. Sarah may have other things. I mean, she’s a sweet young lady. See that she may have other things she does in her career to jump from someone that was a right hand to a CEO of a company is a big resume builder. It’s a heck of an opportunity for her no matter how it turns out. So I guess in hindsight, let’s just kind of look what’s next for Shaina. What are you working on? You sold a business now you got to decide. You said you’re renovating a house. It looks like you’re in there with a bunch of guitars and boombox is clearly but it looks great. So what’s next for you?

Shaina Weisinger 30:29

Thanks. Yeah. So as stated before, I really wanted to get into health and wellness, it kind of into a way where I can help offer answers to other people who have had similar struggles where they like have questions about their health, or they’re confused about products that have toxics, like everything we use is toxic, which is so infuriating. And it’s really difficult to do all of this research to find out like what’s good for us what’s actually bad for us that we thought was good for us, like alternative healing methods and stuff like that. So it kind of came in the form of my cousin and I have been talking for a really long time about creating an event. And so we have an event happening in February of 2024. And it’s geared towards women aged 30 to 45. And it’s all alternative healing, spirituality, wellness, fitness, diet, that kind of stuff. And it’s got a cool vendor experience where we vet all these companies where we’re like, no, there’s not trash in these products, you can actually show up and be excited that it’s already been vetted for you. And there’s like a physical component to so it’s like multiple tracks. It’s funny because a lot of these like, these wellness or like spiritual conferences are like real woo-woo and I’m like, I don’t want it I’m gonna run it like a marketing conference. So it’s gonna have like multiple tracks with speakers on different topics. And one room that’s all classes all day long, like yoga, palates, different studios in the area, and we’re having in Scottsdale, so that’s just kind of the one passion thing that I’m working on. And then that will branch off into like more immersive experiences. So like taking a group of 20 to loom to do a really curated trip, and doing those throughout the year as well.

Pat Yates 32:05

That’s incredible. Honestly, I know it’s not about the sale but I’d love to have you back at worst case. If the listeners out there want to understand about changes thing, you may not even have a site launch will tag the podcast episode, we’ll add that there whenever your site ready, someone wants to check out your new stuff. That’d be great.

Shaina Weisinger 32:20

Yeah, I mean, it’s already in rocking so elevate2024.com.

Pat Yates 32:24

There you go, elevate2024.com I love that. So any other final things, any thoughts, reflections, anything that you would want to add?

Shaina Weisinger 32:33

I think that the biggest hurdle for me personally to get over was that I had invested especially like, as an entrepreneur, you invest your heart into the business that you’re creating, especially as the first one that you’ve really seen success with. And it’s okay to change gears like it’s okay to say, you know what, I really enjoyed this experience. It was fun to build something. But be gracious with yourself and saying like, but this time in my life is changing. And it’s okay to transition, it’s okay to sell. And that was something I battled with, because I was like, but this has been who I’ve been for five years, I’ve been in marketing for 10 years, I’ve been video in some aspect for so long. That suggests make the decision to just completely transition was difficult. But honestly, it was the best thing that I could have done for myself and I can guarantee you the other business owners will struggle with that in their choice to be acquired or to sell or to partner. And that’s something that just know like, if you’re feeling a lead that there’s time for change, just do it. It’s okay, you’ll find the new identity, you’ll be great at it and you can start building again and building is why we entrepreneurs do it. It’s fun to build.

Pat Yates 33:49

That’s absolutely amazing. I mean, you were a model client just for the people out there Shaina made it so easy on me your financials are in great shape or SOPs are amazing. Obviously you can see she’s a great interviewer that bread confidence in any buyer sometimes you have to have the right things in the right place to be able to make this happen. And what’s amazing about Shaina story is she built a business out of a necessity then went through some things in her life that now she’s building something around to try to address her health and wellness. Sometimes when you think about things that going on your life that might be the business start Shaina, you’ve done an amazing job. I don’t have to say that. I had such a great time working with you. I’m sad we don’t get to talk every day. It’s good to have you in here. But I appreciate you coming on the Quiet Light Podcast today and sharing your story. Thanks a lot Shaina.

Shaina Weisinger 34:31

Awesome. Thanks Pat.

Outro 34:35

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, 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.