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The EXITpreneur’s Playbook — Part 1

Joe Valley is the Co-owner and Director of Brokerage Services at Quiet Light, a business advisory firm that helps online entrepreneurs achieve amazing exits. Joe joined the firm after selling his own e-commerce business through Quiet Light in 2010. He has advisor expertise in all web-based niches, including SaaS, e-commerce, and content businesses.

In addition to being a frequent speaker and podcast guest himself, Joe is also the co-host of the Quiet Light Podcast.

Mark Daoust is the Founder, President, and CEO of Quiet Light. Since starting Quiet Light in 2007, Mark has guided dozens of entrepreneurs and small business owners through their exits.

Before his work at Quiet Light, Mark founded Site-Reference.com, an online publication with a subscriber base that he expanded to more than 220,000 members. Now, Mark is a well-known presenter and guest author, as well as the co-host of the Quiet Light Podcast.

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

Mark Daoust and Joe Valley talk about the upcoming release of Joe’s book, The EXITpreneur’s Playbook
What motivated Joe to write The EXITpreneur’s Playbook?
The lessons Joe learned as an author: the importance of add backs, the difficulty of the writing process, and more
How writing a book is different from presenting information in a webinar or digital meeting
Joe shares one of his favorite real-life stories from The EXITpreneur’s Playbook
Common motivations behind selling a business — and simple risks to avoid
How to get your hands on a copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook

In this episode…

Are you thinking about selling your business, but don’t quite know where to start? Do you want a resource full of expert advice to guide you through the ups and downs of exit planning? If so, this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast is for you!

According to Joe Valley, selling a business is a lot like running a marathon. You could choose to avoid the pre-race prep, and when race day arrives, you could probably get out of bed and finish the marathon. However, without proper training beforehand, the race itself will be ugly, painful, and simply not worth it. Long story short: training matters, both for running a marathon and transferring your business. So, what are the key concepts and strategies you need to make a successful and profitable exit?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, co-hosts Mark Daoust and Joe Valley sit down to discuss Joe’s upcoming book, The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. Together, they talk about Joe’s motivation for writing a book about exit planning, some of the key lessons and stories from the book, and where you can grab a copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook — starting June 15th, 2021. You don’t want to miss this exciting episode!

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 0:27

Hey folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Today we have an incredibly special guest. In fact, I think it’s probably the most important guests that we’ve ever had on the show today. Wouldn’t you agree more?

Mark Daoust 0:45

I you know, I love my new role as moving to guests status. Well, we I thought I was the guest. Oh, myself. I was totally you’re always hosting the show. These days, I haven’t been able to get an episode. And because you’ve been hosting so many episodes, you are the guest I’m filling in. Hello, folks. This is Mark Daoust. I’m filling in for Joe Valley, the Quiet Light Podcast and today we have an awesome guest, Joe Valley

Joe Valley 1:10

Mark’s taking a break from raising his 18 children to host a podcast.

Mark Daoust 1:16

The TLC show coming out soon 18 kids? Yes, Joe, we have you honor that we have you on for a reason. Because you have just finished I shouldn’t say you just finished finished a few months ago. But we’re getting close. We’re ramping up pretty quickly to the launch of a book, your new book that you have spent? Can you remember the name of it? It was it was a baizen sell or build themselves by then bill by then built by them built that way? We’re not going to buy Joe Valley? No, I’m kidding. I’m no longer know the name of your book, The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. It’s a distillation of all the things that you’ve been telling people for years at Quiet Light, as far as how to plan your exit and put it into book form. Did I did I say that? Right is that? That was

Joe Valley 2:04

the use of the word distillation was very, very impressive. By the way, I’m going to write that down and try to work it into the next conversation I have in the next 24 hours. Very good. Yes, it is. Except that, you know, what I’m trying to do is get away from the word plan. You know, at one point, I said I never want to use the word exit because people get you know, the willies thinking about exit and planning. And here I have the word exit in the title of the book. But it’s more it’s you know, we use playbook and there’s a lot of sports analogies and training, the reality is that if you’re going to run a marathon, or triathlon, a 5k, whatever it might be, you can get up and you can, you might be able to run it, you might be able to finish it, but it’s going to be pretty ugly and painful. And the recovery period is going to be pretty rough. And it’s the same when somebody exits their business, they can go ahead and do it, you know, wake up decide to sell instead of, you know, training for that, that exit, it’s just going to be more painful. And so yes, this book is a distillation. There you have all of the conversations, and I’ve had 8001 on one conversations, I did the math on this recently. And it, I think is really a conservative number. Because I did I had a lot of conversations early on in the first five, six years. One on One conversations with entrepreneurs. And the reality is Mark that you and I could sit down with an entrepreneur for hours talking about what we do and what they need to do to prepare their business for sale and what buyers like and what they fear. And only a certain amount of it would get absorbed. And only a certain amount could get across in two or three hours. So I put it on a blog, I’ve taken everything we’ve done for the last 14 years. And you know, it’s there. It’s in writing. It’s everything that we do on steroids. And it’s as an incredible author and incredible author says it’s the ultimate guide to selling your online business. Thank you, Walker Deibel. That was the incredible author. We do have some really good quotes. Let me just read one. This is a must read for online entrepreneurs, The EXITpreneur’s Playbook provides powerful, clear and easy to read information to help you understand the value of your most valuable asset, your business And that, my friends is Gino Wickman, author of Traction, founder of EOS after he read the book. So it’s it’s it’s exciting. I’m pleased that it’s finally in print form. And we’ll launch on on June 15.

Mark Daoust 4:33

Yeah, this is this is actually really exciting. And we we joke about Walker all the time, but we can’t accurately do too much because he’s sold how many books now like 30,000 or something by them build maybe not that many, but

Joe Valley 4:46

it’s a lot more than that as I think that was at the end of 2020. And he’s you know, he’s taught that by a large number.

Mark Daoust 4:52

Yeah, he’s he’s on a gaining momentum with that, in fact is the reason that people have gravitated towards that book is because it’s genuinely helpful. Then you said 8000 conversations. That’s a ton. But I’ll tell you an inside secret you know, the inside secret about Quiet Light, we measure our value, we track a metric internally of how many conversations are we having? How many quality conversations are we having, we see a lot of value in that. Because those conversations are where we get to hopefully teach and instruct, for the purpose of an exit not and I love that you bring up people don’t like that word. And when we when we go to conferences, and display and people see what we do there, there are people that actually get a little worried when they see us. And they go, I don’t want to sell my business, it’s okay. You don’t have to, we’re not gonna sell your business without you. But having that plan, and understanding that you might have a very good business right now. And if you do that, that’s awesome. an exit is most likely in your future at some point in time, and how can you craft that exit in a way that actually suits your goals and maximize the value? There is strategy to that that doesn’t have to take over your business strategy. And your your book is called The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. Right? That it speaks to the strategies involved there, of doing this, let’s, let’s actually start out, if you haven’t picked up on this, folks, yet, I am filling in as the host. For Joe Valley, since he is now a guest, I’m going to ask chosen questions, rapid fire questions here and just kind of get some insight into the book into what people can expect from this book. And why it might be worth reading. Even if you haven’t loyal listeners to the Quiet Light Podcast, read a lot of our materials, I think this book is going to be really, really valuable. So let’s start at the very beginning, what led you to writing this book in the first place? It’s a lot of work. I know, Chris Moore, our CMO has asked me to write a book and I said, No, I have zero desire to do so. And you thought I can spend 18 months doing that. What What led you to write the book and start putting this down on paper?

Joe Valley 7:05

A couple of different things. I mean, it’s there’s a lot of delicacy that goes into the conversations about someone’s business and learning about it and trying to share the right information with that particular individual. And that’s hard 8000 times, you know, one at a time. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s exhausting. And I know even with the effort I made, I’m not reaching everyone that truly needs to be reached. If you think about it, if it’s a small industry, right, so I you know, let’s just say that I’m 1%, I’m talking to 1% of the total possible people that need information about this book, that means that there’s another 800,000 or so that could have one on one conversations, but they might be afraid to talk to a broker because there’s a stigma because I don’t want to sell my business or I don’t want to be talked in to selling my business. And that’s not what we do. You, you know, when you and I first talked back in 2010, you gave me some advice that was in my best interest. And I went ahead and took that advice and came back later and sold my business for a higher value because of it. And so that’s, you know, what we do, and the purpose of it is to not just reach the other 800,000 it’s actually to reach more than that the goal, personally for me is to set sell a million books over the next decade. Because there’s I even think that’s a fraction of the online entrepreneurs that could use it. But the information is so overwhelming and confusing. it’s second nature to you and me. But it’s still complicated. I was on a podcast. And this was one of the things that triggered me to think I gotta write this, I gotta write this stuff down. We’ve done it on the website, it’s in bits and pieces all over the place, but I want I wanted it to be in one particular spot. So I was a guest on a podcast, the gentleman was a high level Amazon seller, and he also had a podcast. And we were talking about sellers discretionary earnings. And, you know, I went through the process of explaining it and and what it works and how talking about add backs and all this other stuff. And, and then, towards the end of the recording, he went and tried to repeat and reiterate what I said, you know, reinforcing it. And he got it completely wrong. It was just missing information given out to his entire audience. And I had to, you know, awkwardly, you know, correct them. And I realized at that point, how incredibly confusing it was, for the entrepreneur to hear it over a phone call with us and some in writing. It’s like drinking through a firehose and it’s just way too much. So I laid it all out. It’s in writing, and honestly, I learned a tremendous amount from it. Right? You can learn a lot from reading a book but let me tell you learn a lot more from from writing what I was able to take Everything that we do, blow it up, separate it out, put it back together in a sequential process. So anyone that owns an online business can think about the entire process from when they decide, okay, I might want to sell my business someday. And they can go through the book and look at the entire process from beginning to end. Along with hearing success stories from myself, personally, I’ve had some successes, and I’ve had some epic failures that I talked about in there. And then with clients that we’ve had, as well, I do change everyone’s name just for the record. You know, we’re not calling anybody out in the book. But it’s there as a reference guide, so that anybody can look at it’s great for buyers to I would say, as well as sellers. But let’s

Mark Daoust 10:42

I have a number of questions go off with that. Well, first of all, I just want to say one thing I think is really good about the book are the actual examples, bringing things from theory from concept to and rules down to, here’s how it actually plays out in real life. Because I think there’s a disconnect for for an entrepreneur. And I know when I was selling my business, I didn’t believe that I was actually selling my business until that money hit the account. Yeah, it’s all very unbelievable. When you go through that process is very, it feels very remote. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of hopes and so for myself, I guarded myself the entire time, same on, I kept on my wife, I said, I believe that when the money hits the account, until then I’m I’m owning this business. And so hearing some of the advice that that is given, you know, you should be doing X, Y, or Z, it’s one thing to hear it, and then it’s a second thing to see, oh, this added this much value to someone’s business. And those examples are really, really good. I’m gonna ask you a question about that in a bit. But I want to go back because you said you learned a few lessons from writing the book, what are some of the lessons that you learned, I shouldn’t have said that. Now you’re going to call me out and make me try to recall those is one of those lessons, don’t write a book.

Joe Valley 11:56

Definitely don’t write a book. Gosh, you know, I’ve always had the one on one conversations. And they’re always geared towards that owner of the business. And so, you know, I’m not pulling everything in and sharing everything with them. And, and, you know, one of the things that I’ve talked about for a while, and you’ve heard me say, and people in the podcast might have heard me say, you know, the deep, deep dive into add backs. And I used to have three different levels of add backs. And, you know, occasionally I did this in webinar presentations. But I’ve I’ve detailed that tremendously, and separated them out into three different levels, some that should be fairly obvious, some that they’re not so obvious, and others that you really have to deep dive do a deep dive in focus. And what I learned in that process is that none of it is simple, none of it is clean, and none of it is going to be applicable to every single business. So having all of that information, so that a buyer could look at it and say, Wow, that broker didn’t do that add back there some instant equity for me, or a seller that just got an offer from an aggregator that didn’t do their own add back schedule, they can really just put that in there. And and in increased the value of their business. There’s so much that I’ve learned in the process Mark, I really couldn’t encapsulate all of it other than it is yes, incredibly hard to write a book, it needed to be done, because there’s nothing else out there like it. And the objective of it is to give every one that picks the book up and reads it. What’s in my head, your head shucks had Jason’s had Amanda’s head, everybody that we’ve worked with over the last decade, and everything that we’ve learned and sharing it with them just to make, you know, their success better, either as a buyer or a seller,

Mark Daoust 13:49

you know, something that you mentioned, there’s this concept of instant equity. And I want to provide a little bit of background on this and then ask you about this, because when you’re dealing with Main Street businesses, and even lower middle market businesses in terms of the valuation that they receive, so the size of the business, we’re talking about the ones that Quiet Light typically represents the the approach that’s expected is to name and asking price. And naming that asking price means that you have to have a fairly accurate valuation. Now valuation is supposed to anticipate what buyers are going to be willing to pay. But if you make a mistake, with valuation, if you use a wrong basis of accounting, if you don’t get the add backs, right, if you miss something significant in there, what happens? buyers gain instant equity, and buyers aren’t going to come to you and say, Thank you miss this. Let me offer you a couple extra $100,000 for the rights, right. So I want to ask you a little bit about this idea of when you’re going through here and then nuance that that he may have found in going through the add back so I want to ask you about one thing that may have surprised you during that process. As, as you were thinking about this, and starting to dissect it and try and put it into a format that’s easy for people to understand, I just read in a book format, what surprise you with, with maybe some of the nuance from how you’ve presented it in webinars, and I’m totally putting you on the spot again, here.

Joe Valley 15:18

Yeah, that that in the past in webinars, it was probably very confusing. There just wasn’t enough time to give enough detail. And, you know, you can convey so much more in a conversation. But there’s only a minute amount of time on a call. Here, I could get, you know, deep into the weeds. And I tell people look, some of this is, you know, it’s got the potential to make your eyes bleed, but you will certainly make a lot more money, doing a proper add back schedule, when you sell your business than you will launching that next skill, it’s a lot less risky to really firm up your true sellers, discretionary earnings, so that you understand how close or how far you are from your goal. So I said, You know, I think what I learned is that you got to get, you don’t want a short presentation, like a webinar or an AMA or anything like that, you’ve got to be general broad. Here, I was able to dig deeper into the details of it from, you know, the 18 different types of add backs that cover most things, but still, in many ways, scratches the surface. You know, getting into valuation, multiples roll ups, what’s happening with that aggregators, tracking key financial metrics. And it’s just, you and I have talked about this for a decade that we as Quiet Light should had a document that takes the seller from all the way from A to Z, this is this is the process you can expect, you know, what you’re going to go through over the next 90 days. This actually does that, but then, you know, gives you some, you know, 12 months of prior preparation that you might want to consider as well, it’s, it’s, it’s just as broad and deep as I could possibly go. While keeping it. You know, somebody said to me recently, it’s the way it’s written is just, you know, some they’re sitting across from me at a at a pub having a beer.

Mark Daoust 17:15

Yeah, well, what I’m excited about with is, like you said, there’s nothing out there on the market like this, right, you aren’t going to find books that are addressing the online business space, like we work in that talk about the exits. I heard recently from a course I’m taking, in which the the founder and the instructor in the course, there are really no original business books out these days. They’re all just read repackaging of other materials that are combined into something new. And I’m actually experiencing that right now. I’m reading Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, which is the foundation for what was in Atomic Habits, tiny habits, atomic habits, same sort of concept. And a lot of the play there. Yeah, I see the similarities and all of these different things. But this one is, is unique in that no one’s really addressed this in book format, we have a lot of blog materials, I’ve written enough to fill a book, but not organized in the proper way. To to, to make a book, when I have read through your book, and I, as you know, I haven’t read through the whole thing, I’ve scanned through it, I’ve been able to pick up on certain things. I like the fact that you’re rolling in these examples. I think it’d be really cool to just talk about like one of the examples and the takeaways that you you were able to generate from that. Out of all the examples that you were able to pull on real people’s stories where their names were changed. What’s one that you might be able to share and kind of tease out here? Yeah,

Joe Valley 18:37

so many of them. And let me just say one of the things that I had planned on doing with the book I prior to beginning to write it, I, I outlined it, but then the The concept was that I was going to give, you know, material, on on the subject matter of selling in one chapter, the next chapter was going to be a full interview with somebody that had sold their business and what they went through to get that in there. It was just going to end up being too much. So there’s a little excerpts throughout the book with those same people, no same story. So Jeremy comes to mind. Jeremy, was in the corporate world, making six figures, his wife was a teacher. And he was just miserable. They just had a little boy, and it was summertime. So she was at home because she was a teacher, but he was still, you know, getting up and working, you know, 10 hours a day for the man, if you will. They sat down, figured out what they wanted to do. He launched an Amazon business and his his goal was to eventually sell he thought ahead of time, the way that I can probably make money off of this is to sell. So he reached out to me about 12 months in and said look, this is my goal. I want to x for a million dollars and we went through his p&l went through his SKU count and growth and things of that nature, and figured he had at least another 12 months left, before we get that million dollar mark, exactly 12 months he came, we listed the business sold it under LSI. And close within about 45 days, it was pretty quick because it was very attractive business. And he got a million bucks out of it. And when you do the math on that, he didn’t, he wasn’t because of the growth, he wasn’t able to take any money out of the business, right? Because he was putting all that money back in inventory. He initially launched it with money from a home equity loan. So he risk some there, he had some savings, but they lived off his wife’s teacher salary for two years, which we both know is not very much. But doing the math on all of that he made, you know, he went from $100,000 a year in the personal tax bracket to a half a million dollars a year in the capital gains tax bracket, which is much lower, he was able to come and go as he pleased, he was able to be around and be a stay at home dad be there for his wife. And now he’s got a whole bunch of money in the bank. And knowledge is the most important thing. He’s got peace of mind and knowledge and experience to do it again, if and when he chooses to. And he’s actually done that he’s gone off and built his next business and he will eventually have another exit that will be bigger and more peaceful and calm because he’s been there. And he’s done that before already.

Mark Daoust 21:24

One of the things I like about the title of the book is it sets up this idea of exiting as not a career path but but as an entrepreneurial activity. And we’ve had the benefit of working with some people who have had multiple exits. We’ve had worked with people who have bought and then years later are saying the same businesses that they acquired. Is this one of the hopes of the book that you have is to teach people how to do this? And is this something that you think people should consider where in business ownership right now is looking at this as maybe the the path that they take for their entrepreneurial life?

Joe Valley 22:02

Yeah, without without question, because the reality is that the business that they’re operating is probably their most valuable asset. If it’s a physical products business, and they’re just trying to keep up with inventory, they’re not taking a whole lot of cash out most of the money, at least 51%. And most of the time 80 to 90% is in the exit. So they’ll bootstrap that business still scrambled, they’ll run hard for two or three years. And they don’t have a whole lot out of it. And the best way to get the most value in cash is exit. Now they can do it again, do it wiser, smarter, better financed, have no debt or have money in the bank, and always have a plan. So you know, I, I’ve talked to some people that they absolutely look at this as a business plan, they start one, they get it up and running 12 months in, they start the next after another 12 months, they’re going to sell that first one, and then we’re going to send the second one. So every 12 months, they’re going to have an exit, it’s almost like a, you know, an exit treadmill, so to speak, they just kind of stay on that treadmill and peel a new business off every 12 months. interesting concept. They haven’t pulled it off yet. But we have many clients who have sold multiple businesses with us.

Mark Daoust 23:18

Yeah, I think one of the advantages of doing that is de risking your entrepreneurial career, right, as you grow a business. And as you go through the different iterations. Different demands are needed of businesses as they grow in different skill sets. And I think one of the most I mean, look, you know, one of the most common questions we get from buyers is why are they selling? And if we analyze, why are people selling? A lot of times the reasons people sell, are because they get to that point where that next iteration? Oh, I don’t know, if I want to do that, you know, that next iteration means I have to go from running this business out of my garage with my son, where we, you know, send out orders twice a week, and it’s really fun to I’m gonna have to get an office and start to hire some people. And I kind of don’t want to do that. Yeah. So what this does this idea of having these rotating exits, it can de risk some of those changes that you would otherwise have to take on, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take them on, it doesn’t mean that somebody shouldn’t say if this is the path I want to take, but I think this is one of the reasons a lot of people go this way. I like the idea that you have here with The EXITpreneur’s Playbook, which is the idea to to plan for this so that you you can de risk what you’ve built, right? Like you said, Your business is the most valuable asset that you have, most likely, most likely. And so exiting, pulling that value out, means that you are now cashing in, you’re getting that reward and you’re no longer sub subjecting it to you making a bad decision with your business and destroying the value of the business. I don’t know if I’m, I’m taking over your motivations for the book here or not just I’m just kind of riffing on the the general concept and now

Joe Valley 24:55

I you know, Brian and Janine, who you know they’re in the book. They gave me a nice endorsement in it. And I do talk about their story a little bit. And I don’t change their names, they had a business that was about three years old. That was tracking on, you know, $5 million in total revenue in that calendar year that we sold it or that trailing 12 months that we sold it, but they just kept throwing money at inventory. So they had a business doing 5 million a year in revenue, and that people think about that, and they’re like, oh, my goodness, I’m gonna get to keep 20% of that. That’s amazing. That’s not the case, they had $600,000 worth in inventory. And it kept, you know, Jean said that all they did was send money to China. And it just felt so risky. And they actually they, they closed on the business just as the pandemic hit. And they ended up with all sorts of money in the bank. Before they closed, they launched another business, a small one and easy one to manage. And they had already gotten to 30, or 40, sales a day, about two or three weeks prior to closing on this one, they didn’t take any time off from one to the next, they did that sort of cycle of EXITpreneur, one after the other. But they were able to do it with knowing that there was going to be more money and growing it properly. Because there’s just so much as you say, risk associated with sending money overseas or risk associated with any business to get hit by competition. And just burnout getting tired and moving on these people that we work with and what you know, buyers say why are they selling it? It is because they don’t want to take it to the next level. But we as entrepreneurs have an affliction that says, You know, I can do that, which means that we have shiny object syndrome. And we look at something I can do that well, that’s exciting. I’ve been doing this for a while I want to go over there and I want to do that. It’s an issue. And we get a little bit better at managing that illness as we age and have more experience. But But a lot of people are selling simply for that reason. And the earlier they can understand what to do, and how to prepare their business for that eventual exit. If I want to be completely selfish, the easier it’s going to be on me if I’m their advisor. You know, if I want to be ego even further and be selfish, even more 8000 conversations in nine years, one on one, I’m tired, so I wrote it all down. So another, you know, 995,000 of you can read it. And then we can have a really, really healthy conversation about truly getting you maximum value for your business for the future. The valuation called Quiet Light will be thank you for emailing us by this book.

Mark Daoust 27:41

Right. And you’re gonna know the value of your business? No, I think I think having this is important for the purpose that that being able to absorb some of this information. In a format that’s not a half an hour phone call, which we’re still willing to do. Obviously, those phone calls are really important because we apply these concepts to your business individually to say how do they apply for being able to soak up the concepts? Like I said, this is 14 years worth of of knowledge built up over the actual real live examples into this. It sounds like the people that will be interested in this book primarily are business owners who want to sell Is that right? Or is that or my narrowing the audience? You know what

Joe Valley 28:21

you that’s who I wrote it for? But the more I kept rereading it because, you know, I didn’t want all the typos that a buddy of mine has in his book. I’ve read it 50 times. But the more I read it, the more I thought my buddy knows who I’m talking about. So does Mark people. It was for buyers, right? So if you think about, you know, trying to gain instant equity, there are people out there a lot of the a lot of the audience members here are buyers, you know, they they’re building a relationship with us, they’re looking at our listings, they’re connecting with us and they are buyers, but they’re also looking at on their own. They’re looking at other brokerage firms listings, the book itself will give them the best possible understanding of what is missing in certain p&l, what should be there, what should have been an ad deck, what wasn’t how much instant equity, they can gain that type of thing. So I think it’s if I was if I was on the buying side, what you want to do is know everything your competition knows, which is your seller, right? you’re negotiating against the seller, you want to know everything they know. So the book is really I think, a secret special weapon for them if they want to get the best transaction value they can when they’re buying, either again through an advisor or or on their own. Yeah, go ahead, please. You’re not you know, I want to say one of the one of the things that I added the very last minute last month was, you know, a completely new chapter on what’s happening with the aggregate And how to negotiate with him. If anyone in the audience has an FBA business and by the way, the book is for online business owners, we talk content, we talk about SaaS, we talk about physical product, business, all of that in the book. And when I say we, I mean all of my multiple personalities. Yes, Mark was probably thinking Who the hell’s we it’s, it’s it’s all of the Joe’s in my head. But the the aggregators. You know, anybody that has an FBA business has probably heard from them. And if you want to sell on your own to them, have had it, buy the book, if you want everything that’s in Mark’s head in my head, and it will help you negotiate with them and get a much better value. But keep in mind that if you’re going to sell to them, it’s like going into Shark Tank, you’re ready to pitch your wares. And you show up. And the only person there’s Mr. Wonderful because everybody else called in sec, you’re not going to get the best transaction unless you’re presenting to all of the sharks, and then all of the sharks friends. And that’s, you know, the reason you want to definitely present to, you know, what are their 50 aggregators now?

Mark Daoust 31:12

60. new one every week? Yeah, every week? Yeah. Fantastic. Well, we are coming up on time here. But I want to ask one last question. I think that that hopefully people are thinking about when is the book coming out? And when going to expect to get it?

Joe Valley 31:32

Yeah, it’s officially the official launch date is June 15. So about a week from when this airs, you can go to Amazon now and pre order it just Google or not Google search for EXITpreneur on Amazon, or The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. You can also go to The EXITpreneur’s Playbook website, which is www.exitpreneur.io. There are free chapters available there. You drop that in and I’ll shoot you an email when the book launches, we are going to give a special discount code when it launches. That’s cheaper than the current preorder rate on Amazon at the moment.

Mark Daoust 32:08

All right. So what was the data on that again? June 15, June 15. Fantastic. I’m excited for the launch. I think people are going to like this. And when you send this out, it’ll be in book format. For those that are watching on YouTube right now. I see it up in the upper left hand corner of your screen there The EXITpreneur’s Playbook. There’ll be a Kindle version. There we go. Nice and big. I think I have to speak in order for it to show up. But there it is. There it is. Alright, so it’ll be in print format. It’ll be in Kindle format as well. Is that right?

Joe Valley 32:42

Yeah. Yeah, Kindle paperback, hardcover, I have not done the audio version yet. Because the pandemic, the studios were backed up at least six months. Can we get Walker to read the book, the audible version? Oh, I like that idea. Yeah, I like that idea.

Mark Daoust 32:57

There we go. Fantastic. June 15th. Yet, we will be putting it in our newsletter in some of our email updates. So expect to hear those come out and see those if you have not gone to www.exitpreneur.io, highly recommend doing so. Joe obviously knows a lot of people listening here to us right now. And, you know, sign up for that announcement for when it comes out to get that discount code. I know the goal right now is to get this in the bestsellers as soon as it launches. And so we want to get as many orders for that as possible. This is a book that is designed to help both buyers and sellers and anyone interested in the acquisition space. So really, really excited for this book. Joe, thank you for coming on as a guest to my podcast. It’s such a pleasure to be here, Mark, you’re a hell of a host. Hey, guys, if you haven’t rated the podcast yet, please do. I think we’re upwards around 60 ratings. Now. I’d love to be able to get that up to 75. For those that have not rated the podcast, please take a moment. leave us a review. I don’t know leave us three stars. If you think that we earned at least five of you who really really like us.

Joe Valley 34:03

Silence they’re going Huh, three or five? What should I do? I totally agree. Yes. If you if you enjoy if you enjoy listening help us out. We don’t ask for it. We never have up until what a couple of months ago and we start saying please give us a ratings and review we would greatly appreciate it. We read every single one. Fantastic. Thanks, Joe. Thanks Mark.

Outro 34:21

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.