AF234 - Can I Sell My Amazon FBA Business?

My guest today is Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage, who has had his hand in buying and selling—get this—over a billion dollars of businesses online. He’s the author of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook, and he joins me on this episode to discuss his journey with building up, buying, and selling businesses and how you can best set up and maintain your business so that when you’re ready to exit, it’s a very streamlined process.

We start the episode with some info about the tradeshow experiences and workshops we’ve got coming up before diving into Joe’s background as an entrepreneur, from his childhood business selling nightcrawlers to selling his last e-commerce business and joining Quiet Light. Then I ask Joe to explain how to begin thinking about whether your business is sellable, and he discusses the importance of setting goals for what you want out of selling your business and reverse engineering a path to those goals. He also talks us through The Four Pillars of Value, markers that potential buyers look at to figure out the value of your business, which will dramatically influence the offers you receive. We then turn to some more technical details of selling a business, with Joe explaining how to deal with discretionary earnings, the different types of buyers (including aggregators and private equity firms), and the benefits of setting SOPs. He also goes through some of the dirty tricks aggregators can pull and advises that having a trustworthy broker in place can help you avoid these and have a smoother exit. Then we wind things up by talking about the emotion involved in selling a business and how going through an honest and understanding broker like Quiet Light can help manage those emotions and expectations. And last but definitely not least, Joe shares how you can get your hands on a FREE digital copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook.

You can chat more about how to successfully manage your FBA business with the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword EXIT, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• There are a few spots left in the tradeshow experience we have coming up in Grand Rapids
  
• Joe’s first entrepreneurial experience
  
• How Joe broke into and got out of the e-commerce world
  
• Knowing your business is sellable and setting goals for the future
  
• The Four Pillars of Value in today’s FBA business world
  
• Built-in paths to growth
  
• Risks for buyers
  
• Owner-operators and discretionary earnings
  
• The difference between aggregators, private equity firms, and private individuals as buyers
  
• The benefits of setting up SOPs
  
• The dirty tricks aggregators play and using brokers to avoid them
  
• Add-backs and the mistakes people make without representation
  
• The emotion of selling a business
  
• Quiet Light and honesty about the salability of a business
  
• Joe’s book The EXITpreneur’s Playbook and how to get your FREE digital copy
  

“Always have your exit in mind because you just never know what’s going to happen.”

- Kristin Ostrander

WATCH:

LISTEN:

Quotes:

“I’ve got a question for you. Are you selling wholesale? Have you had issues with wholesale? Are you scared? Are you nervous? Do you not know what the heck you’re doing wholesale? If you answered 'yes' to any of those questions, I would love to help you navigate wholesale.”

“This is where you want to be able to continually set up and maintain your business so that if and when you decide to exit, it can be a slam dunk for you.”

“Came out of that five-year stretch, tired and worn out, woke up one day and said, 'I wonder if I can sell this thing?' Didn’t plan it, necessarily, just woke up and needed to move on as an entrepreneur as we often do.”

“Now we’ve got a team of fifteen advisors, about ten support staff, we closed just under $250 million in total transactions in 2020, all online business transactions.”

“As entrepreneurs, we seem to have short attention spans, whether that’s three years, five years, ten years. We’re always wanting to pivot and change.”

“Every business is sellable. It’s just a matter of what it’s worth to the buyer and what it’s worth for you to go through that sale process.”

“I mentioned documentation. If you want to reverse engineer the path to your goal, you have to figure out the value of your businesses today. If you do not have profit and loss statements with a monthly view, you’re not even going to get out of the gate.”

“Your CPA is a tax-mitigation specialist, and they file your tax returns. Don’t let them be your bookkeeper, too, because they will just screw it up.”

“Growth, they love to see growth trends and built-in paths to growth.”

“When it comes to pure risk, the larger, more established businesses are less risky than the younger, smaller, less-established businesses.”

“Risk, growth, transferability, and documentation is what buyers look at.”

“The more they trust and like you and believe in you and what you’ve built, the better deal structure and the higher value of the company. So that’s one reason to set up SOPs. The other is if you get hit by a bus, your spouse can take over or your employee fairly quickly. Or, you know, if you just want to go on vacation and not be bothered by anybody, not check email, SOPs are great.”

“The aggregators are well-educated, charming, likable, they’ll heap lots of praise on the brand that you’ve built in your business and say that they’ll buy your business for all cash and close in thirty days and then they’ll slide in there, ‘Avoid the broker fee.’ If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

“The advisor is somebody that should be in the middle, helping you first understand the value of what you have, what levers to push and pull to increase the value of that. And then eventually, when you’re ready, exit it for maximum value.”

“We consider ourselves an education firm, first and foremost. And then we happen to do M&A deals as well.”

“You need to be able to feel really comfortable about handing your baby off to someone else who’s going to be able to take care of it. Regardless of the check that they wrote you, you still want to be able to feel comfortable and confident that what you’ve built isn’t just being, you know, tossed to the wayside.”

“These are very emotional processes. You’re a week, two weeks away from life-changing money for the baby that you built, and you know, you need somebody on your side that’s going to support you and help you through that process.”

“If it’s a situation where it’s not sellable in its current environment or current state, we’ll tell them why. And if it’s a situation where it’s a great business, but it’s not sellable by us, then we’ll tell them why.”

“Let’s be real, we all don’t want to work for the rest of our lives forever, all the time. Retirement, whether it’s at fifty or seventy or thirty-two, you want to be able to have a plan and be prepared, and this is the best way to get that done.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• Quiet Light homepage
  
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook on Amazon
  
• Get your FREE digital copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword EXIT to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.