432 – Buying a Web Design Business with Jake Kramer and Hans Skillrud – “Buy or Sell” series pt. 1 of 2

Hans Skillrud: 00:00
If I were to enter the industry again, it I’d go acquisitions is a major attack at growing my business. It’s because I experienced it. When I bought the agency, like first thing I did was I did what I always do. I get on the phone and I called the people and I introduced myself and the recurring revenue that was coming from them almost quadrupled in two weeks just from calling people and asking what they need help with. That the previous agency, who was clearly the kind of burnt out, ready to kind of move on. I picked up the pieces and and built, you know, established a good relationship with each and every one of them. And, you know, a couple of those accounts ultimately turned into referrals, which were hundred K projects, 100K a year, which was like and that was like the next level for our agency. We were nowhere in that world. Um we just like leapfrogged because of these warm connections that this seller gave us.

Josh Hall: 00:52
Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast with your host, Josh Hill, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and the lifestyle you love. Hello, friends. Welcome to a very special two-part episode series of the Web Design Business Podcast, where we’re gonna be diving into part one here acquiring slash buying a web design business in order to get clients. And part two, we’ll be covering selling a web design business if that’s of interest. Now, for this one, we’re gonna take a deep dive into what it looks like to potentially acquire or buy a web design business or a book of clients. And I’ve got two folks here who have experience with this. Hans Gilrudd, who is the co-founder of Termageddon. Uh, but prior to that, as we found out at ProCon, because he was there live with us at our in-person event, he shared that one of the ways he would get web design clients today in web design is to buy a book of business. And he actually has real life experience doing just that. So he was a wealth of knowledge to learn from in this one. And Ha, or uh excuse me, Jake with Artillery Media was recently on the podcast and let us know publicly that they are now acquiring web design businesses and already had a deal go through. So this has been uh a hot topic inside of Web Designer Pro. And in fact, my own agency in Transit Studios just acquired a book of business from one of our original founding members of Pro who just retired. So this kind of thing is going on left and right. If it’s of interest to you, the next two episodes are gonna be ones that you are not gonna want to miss. So we’re gonna dive into buying a web design agency

Josh Hall: 02:31
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Josh Hall: 03:23
All right, friends, now let’s talk about buying a web design business and what that looks like. Guys, welcome to the show. Together, Hans from Termageddon, Jake from Artillery Media, OMG. This is long overdue. We’re gonna have some fun today because uh we’re just gonna take a quick deep dive with the limited time we have uh into acquisition, like buying agencies. The stars have aligned, I feel like, on this because at ProCon recently, Hans was there in person. Somebody, I think, asked you how would you get clients if you start an agency and you said I would acquire them, I would purchase agencies. And it just like I saw the room, like everyone’s mouth was like, really interesting. And then I don’t know if that’s coincidence or not, but Jake and I had just spoken before that about Jake and his agency getting into the acquisition game. And then since then, we’ve had a founding member of Pro who just sold her nine clients. She’s retiring, she just had a little side business and signed, uh, sold those to Eric in trans of my agency in Trans Studios. We have another member who’s on the verge of acquiring 34 websites from web one previous designer. So this is obviously a timely thing. So um, yeah, well, so I think Hans, you have some more background on this. So let’s start with Jake. Let’s just let’s just do quick intros real quick. Jake, if you want to introduce yourself and where you guys are at with the agency, and then we’ll go to Hans.

Jake Kramer: 05:00
Yeah, sure. Jake Kramer, I activated Jake at artillerymedia.com email address August 2014. So we’re past a decade. I met John through music. I was touring with him, and our drummer couldn’t make it, so whipped out the fiddle, did some fiddle stuff. I’m a fiddle player, minored in that at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Music leads to a lot of good things. So I would highly recommend everyone practice that fiddle. Met John, he’s like, hey, you should be in my country band. That developed a relationship, and he’s like, I think you’d be good at this WordPress stuff. So then 2014, I graduated in 2015 from college, and ever since then, we’ve been grinding this out together, co-owners, as we say. It’s a little bit more technical than that. We actually own our own agencies, our own LLCs. And then I won’t get into that. It’s uh essentially allows us to kind of keep out of each other’s pocketbooks. I’m growing the employee side, the agency side on artillery side. It’s actually technically called Artemis. Artemis Sites is my agency, quote unquote, but it’s completely under the name, under under the umbrella of artillery, as far as everyone’s concerned. Um, so my team handles we just developed this brand. It used to be Pageinaday, pageinaday.com. We didn’t really want to go down that road. We kind of pivoted a couple things, so we changed a few things, Artemis. So we have a team now. Um, Haley, Jake, of course, John, but then also uh Liam, Sierra, Clara, a couple others, interns. And we build about 80 websites a year. And most of them come to us from referrals. We have a couple great Facebook groups that we’re in that yield to a lot of uh you know, great relationships and stuff too. Tons of different uh niches. We’re actually about to relaunch our website July 4th. So this podcast may be out after that. So if so, check out artillermedia.com. We’re evolving, growing. And so about a year and a half ago, we a guy approached us actually from our state in Nebraska and is like, hey, I think you’d be really good fit to help my clients because he had done a bunch of research. He was primarily in the WordPress stack, specifically in the theme that we use, Divi, but we’re kind of getting a little bit more interested in other themes uh if necessary. Kind of depends. But that’s where we’re at now. We do about 80 to 90 websites a year organically, and we’re looking at anyone who’s got sites hosted, built, that they just don’t want to deal with anymore that are particularly in that stack. Um, we do a great job of keeping them up and running and keeping the business owners happy with uh with response times.

Josh Hall: 07:54
I think that’s important to note too. I’m kind of kind of glad you gave the backstory on that, Jake, because you guys are a very established outfit and you have a team behind you. So you could take on 20 or 30 clients in bulk, likely. Whereas if somebody is a single freelancer who’s still not sure what tools they’re using, probably not a good uh candidate for you know acquiring a business, especially if they don’t have any sort of capital or any, you know, any any sort of funding behind them to be able to make that plausible. And we’ll talk about a few different the money side of how to how to do this, but I’ll go ahead, Jake.

Jake Kramer: 08:30
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, it’s it’s our podcast. It’s what John and I have been talking about for 10 years now, slow and steady. It’s like the Dave Ramsey method. I did the Dave Ramsey thing early on in my young 20s where I paid off $73,000 of student loan debt, car payments and loans and credit cards and all kinds of stuff. I was buried. And my wife and I hunkered down and we did it, and we kind of got done with it in like 32 months or something. Got to meet Dave Ramsey. And that was it, it like implanted that in my brain of like, start with the small wins, knock those out, and you will catch momentum. And then it’ll be hard to stop. And I feel like that’s what we’ve done at Artillery now is the whole slow and steady method of catching those small wins, rock them up, do what you’re supposed to do, respond to those emails, uh, be honest and transparent, especially with pricing and any communication that you get. And that has just led to oh, and ask for Google Reviews. That’s a big piece of it. And then, of course, have an artillery website, rock and roll. But with that, you can grow the business. And that’s what we’ve done ourselves. That’s what we’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of our clients do as well.

Josh Hall: 09:44
So that’s great. Yeah, artillery is in all to say, artillery is in a very good spot to make a move towards acquiring more businesses, especially in bulk, um, because you went the slow and steady route. Hans, I’m curious.

Josh Hall: 09:59
Obviously, now you are the the co-owner and in in termed, but prior to that you had an agency. What made you at ProCon a couple months ago say, if I were to get clients, I would look at acquisition? Where did that come from?

Hans Skillrud: 10:13
Yeah, so I have experience both buying an agency and selling an agency. And um, the experience just doing it once was enough to know that there’s so much opportunity. And I feel like this is the most unspoken aspect about the web industry that I feel like needs to be talked about more. So thank you, Josh, for having us on to talk about this. I am the biggest believer, both as a buyer and as a seller. Um, so so the reason why I shared that at Procon, that if I were to enter the industry again, I I’d go acquisitions as a major approach, like a like kind of attack at growing my business. It’s because I experienced it. Um when I bought an agency, I um we’ll go we’ll go into details, of course, but when I bought the agency, like first thing I did was I did what I always do. I get on the phone and I called the people and I introduced myself. And the recurring revenue that was coming from them almost quadrupled in two weeks just from calling people and asking what they need help with. That the previous agency, who was clearly the kind of burnt out, ready to kind of move on. Um, I picked up the pieces and and built, you know, established a good relationship with each and every one of them. And, you know, a couple of those accounts ultimately turned into referrals, which were 100K projects, um, uh 100k a year, which was like the that was like the next level for our agency. We were nowhere in that world. Um we just like leapfrogged because of these warm connections uh that the seller gave us. So um, and then when I sold my agency, I I I knew my experience as a buyer and knew that like what I wanted and what I didn’t want, and finding the right buyer is so important. I’m I’m such a big believer in go shopping and figure out the person you vibe with. You have to trust the buyer. And and we’ll probably go into the details of why that’s important later. But you have your heart has to be there. You have to have a good gut feeling about the person you’re about to work with because you’re gonna rely on them for at least a couple of years, paying you out commissions, most likely, or uh uh some kind of ongoing payment of some kind. Um, but my experience was wonderful as a seller as well. So I am just such a believer that buying if you’re ready to sell, that you should sell because you have an opportunity to first off walk away saying, I sold my business. That is so much better than I got scared and ran away and kind of didn’t I shut down and left all my customers. I mean, how many of us in the industry have had clients come to us saying, My previous web developer just went missing? Like we’ve all seen those clients. It’s like, don’t be that person. Like you have an asset, you have a book of business that another agency would happily take off your plate. Now you can hand off your clients professionally, you can represent yourself professionally, you get a paycheck probably every month for a while, and um and you get to say I sold my business, which is mentally so much better than I just abandoned all my customers and and walked away.

Josh Hall: 13:14
So that’s awesome. Well, I think so. With Jake being like early into the the acquisition game, I think we’re probably gonna pick your brain a lot on this, Hans, and the time we have. So, Jake, we’ll kind of Hans didn’t know this, but this is actually a coaching call with Hans.

Jake Kramer: 13:28
So, Jake, at any time, it’s like the Doctor Strange Teach Me meme, right? I I feel like I’m in I’m in that space a lot though. Like I’m getting lunches, there’s this agency in Lincoln, it’s called Arch Rival. I don’t know if maybe some people have heard of it. They have huge clients like Red Bull. They’re the agency of record for Red Bull, Adidas. Um, and the guy, his name Clint, Clint Runge, shout out. He has been so gracious with me. I I buy him lunch and I just talk to him because he’s he’s sold. I just told him he just sold it. There’s a huge press release. Havas is the company that bought it. It’s one of the biggest multimedia conglomerates in the world. It was founded in Paris in like 1835 or something. Um, tens of thousands of employees. But what he told me in the whole acquisition thing is okay, so he’s he built this agency and it and it had, of course, revenue, but goodwill, you know, like Red Bull is hooked with them. Youth culture is kind of their their niche. Um he sold it first, and it for a lot of different reasons, like it didn’t go super well, the people weren’t in the right place, kind of sold it for the wrong reasons, all those things, sold it to the right wrong person, just like what you’re saying. Uh so he sold it, and then it kind of did the bar stool sports thing where it just kind of, you know, revenue fell off, goodwill started falling. So he bought it back for pennies on the dollar. And he established a new process, learned from this, learned from what we’re talking about is shopping, finding the right buyer, making sure that like when you do sell, it’s gotta be great for everyone. It’s gotta be great for your employees, it’s got to be great for your clients, it’s gotta be great for the buyer and their clients. So essentially how this all worked out was our tribal kind of got to this point where um Clint was the owner, the founder, he he specializes in hotel, um, like specialty hotels, like Marriott and Hilton and um IHG or whatever that other conglomerate is, calls Clint and says, Hey, we’re about to launch a new uh hotel in wherever, Qatar. Can you fly in and you’re gonna work with the whole team from the architecture to the building to the training to the launch of the hotel, everything. So he kind of had this other thing in the works. But anyway, Havas comes in and this is all public, you can Google this, and they essentially just wanted the RTrival book a business. Like RTrival had Adidas and Red Bull and several others, and Havas and these multi-conglomerates, and this is huge scale, right? But you can kind of see the pattern of how this works. They needed they’re a publicly traded company, so they needed this to show growth and and to the point where like a lot of the clients are happy or the good clients are taken by these smaller agencies. It just makes sense for the big guys to just purchase the little guys to just to get their book of business. It’s just a very interesting conversation with them about that’s ongoing. Like, you know, kind of the whole same Dr. Strange thing teach me of how do I do this? How do I make sure that I’m we’re positioning ourselves in the right way, attracting the right people, setting ourselves up for the right trajectory. It’s just been a fascinating conversation for someone who’s selling it to a multi uh conglomerate versus what we’re doing.

Josh Hall: 16:58
The good the important thing, like you mentioned that though, Jake, is like the parallels still work at a smaller scale for freelancers and and smaller local agencies and stuff. I’m curious, like Hans, when do you think the time is right for somebody to think about acquiring? Now, I will I will say, um, like we have a member in pro right now who’s on the verge of potentially acquiring 34 websites, 30 clients. And he did not seek that out. He just happened to pop in a Facebook group and somebody said, Hey, I’ve been in business for a long time and I’m looking to maybe sell my agency. But the the most important thing is that somebody needs to be local to me or around my area. My Web Runner Pro member just happened to be an hour from him. So that was like a no-brainer, like, let’s talk. And it were right on the verge at the time of recording this, working out some of the details and seeing that go through. But um, my question to you is like, you know, that that’s not the average, I think, acquisition story. When for folks who get to a certain point, when do you advise that they take this seriously, Hans? Or could you do it earlier in the game than being, you know, an artillery media that has 500 clients and is onboarding 80 sites a year plus?

Hans Skillrud: 18:06
Sure. Yeah, I mean, well, artillery, Jake’s gotten so much further than I got with my agency. You know, prior to us recording, I was um sit there, Jake kind of shared his total client list. I was like, holy cow, like that’s 5x bigger than I ever got. Now, had I not married a privacy attorney and started Termageddon, I’d like to consider myself a reasonable competitor of Jake’s company. I think I would have uh hopefully gotten to that level, but I lost a lot of hair uh getting even to the 125 that I ultimately got to. But um, I think the there’s a series of stages I think agency owners go through that I have at least I seem to get head nods most of the time. Like first and foremost, learning how to say no. I I lost so much hair just doing everything under the sun for my customers. They’re like, hey, can you do my email for me? And all these things, I would just say yes, yes, yes to, because I I felt like you know, the bet the more I do, the more I’m trusted. And learning how to say no, and this is exactly what I do, this is exactly what I don’t do, extremely important. Having SOPs in place, especially if you have employees, like having a set of standards you can manage people on so that um well, so that you can manage people, um, because now you can scale. Um if you if you base your operations on a set of standard operating procedures, well, now you have a business in my mind. They have something you can continue to grow. It’s like, okay, we can handle 200 accounts per employee or whatever it is, like you know, you can start to kind of see that. So I feel like the time comes when you’ve gone, if you’ve made it through those filters. I f I call those the great filters in our industry. If you never, if you never learn how to say no, you’re gonna burn out and run away. If you don’t standardize what you do, um you’re gonna burn out and you’re gonna run away. So if you’ve made it past those two things, um, I would say you’re prepped and ready to go. And that is because of I think a lot of people in our industry think, oh, I have to have a half a million dollars sitting in the bank to do this. I disagree. And and that’s kind of probably gonna be my oh uh shocking comment today. But I believe that our industry should be a payout as you go type of structure. Um, happy to expand further on that if you want me to right now, Josh, or we can see that.

Josh Hall: 20:12
Let’s just,

Josh Hall: 20:12
yeah, let’s talk money. I mean, the big question I think for a lot of people, I know like when I thought about selling my agency, which I did in 2020, the the folks I knew in my sphere did not have access to capital. You know, they like I was I I kind of knew, I guess I could have gone for a bigger payout, but it was also a timely thing. Um, I was happy with selling in a sense of like a long-term game repay. Yeah. So, yeah, let’s talk money. Because I feel like that’s probably more common in web design. Even somebody at artillery’s you know level, like I don’t know how much access to capital they would give for like one-time sales for most web design agencies. But I could be wrong.

Jake Kramer: 20:56
Before money, okay, saying no, standard operating procedures. Love, love, love, love. Saying no, I would say maybe we could riff on this for a second. Like, not only is it figuring out what you’re proficient at, artillery does websites. We’re just starting to tip our toe, dip our toe, excuse me, into branding because we hired an employee who, Sierra, who’s unbelievable, incredible, right? Uh copywriting, hosting. So these are kind of our core things that are kind of all centered around the website. That’s our bread and butter. That’s really what we specialize in. But saying no also means like I had a client come in and he he did the I need to hire someone ASAP. Call, leave a voicemail, call again, leave a voicemail. Um, like even saying no to sort of rating my leads, like just A, A minus, B, B plus, whatever. And just gut feeling. Of, like, wow, this this person is gonna throw off our system, or this person’s not gonna be able to play by the system. So so no kind of almost feeds directly into your standard operating procedure, I would say. So at artillery, it’s all at base camp. We have this 200 to-do list long project that we clone for every project that is just like make sure all these things are done to have an official artillery website. And we’ve noticed that, like, okay, so if we can run that playbook 100,000 times, at this point, we’ve we’ve gone through it a thousand times, and we are constantly adding to it, removing it, changing it, tweaking it, putting this over here, moving this up, combining, whatever. But we found that like if if you standardize the procedure and then you just lean on that procedure constantly from like the first contact, someone reaches out, there should be a canned email that you respond. And you can make it personal, of course, but there should be a next step and then a step after that. And we found that like the no, if you standard operate your if you create SOPs, operating procedures that are standard throughout your whole team for every aspect of the business, you kind of just get those no’s like Dave Ramsey says, you know, a donkey donkey’s gonna tell you they’re a donkey. Like this guy called up and is like, I need someone right away. Okay, fill out this form. He called me again. Hey, it’s just something really quick. It’s like almost right away, you know not a good fit. You can’t even follow the first instruction. So even though he’s like, Yeah, I got like 10 grand or whatever, nope. Because you’re gonna throw off the whole thing and you’re gonna be calling and emailing back. And it’s like we caught him right at the beginning of being like, You’re not gonna fit with us because we’re email, we’re text, we’re asynchronous. Think about it, think about it again, give us your respond, we’ll work on it, and then we’ll go back that way. But if you’re hey, I need to talk to you right now, you’re not gonna be happy with us. We’re never gonna be happy. So even though you’re the perfect fit, you want a WordPress site, you want an individu, you want branding, still no, because you didn’t fit. I think that’s okay. I think that’s and important for like people to think about too. Like, it doesn’t just have to be your work, it doesn’t just have to be you know your niche, it has to be clients that fit within the process of your niche.

Hans Skillrud: 24:20
Yes, yeah, yes. Red flag, I call it the red flag clients. Like, yeah, everything you just said, it’s so hard-earned because I’m sure the reason why those SPs get created is because some client caused it to be created. Like, it’s like, okay, well, I never want to do that again. So, how do we prevent it? It’s like I can smell a red flag client before they even call at this point, you know?

Josh Hall: 24:42
So we’ll we’ll keep this the rest of this combo focused on acquiring. So I think we’re gonna actually do a separate one on creating a business that’s sellable. So it’s kind of a two-in-one, but for the sake of this, so like for for Hans, for your experience, yeah, what what was the common acquisition payment models or buyout models?

Hans Skillrud: 25:03
Yeah, so it’s very similar, both as a buyer and a seller. And and that, and it’s it’s because I believe in it. I believe in it 100%. I believe in it when negotiating on either side. And so if anyone’s listening to this, like, oh, I don’t agree with Hans at all, that’s fine. Like you probably can find someone to work with you with what your expectations are, unless you’re out of this, out of this planet with what you’re expecting. But but the way I see it, and this is how I would start the negotiation as a buyer, is I’d be like, okay, what contracts do you have in place? Most agencies are gonna say, I don’t have any contracts, or at best, I have a month-to-month contract. At the very best, I have a year-to-year hosting and maintenance plan. Okay, so the hosting and maintenance plan that’s guaranteed for a year, and you have contracts signed, that’s guaranteed money. So I can pay you cash up front for that type of revenue because it’s guaranteed. There’s a contract in place. But you may have made half a million dollars last year, but there’s no contract, there’s no guarantee that tomorrow, in the next day and after that, uh that the half a million is going to come in from new business. I think a lot of agencies when selling, they think, oh, because I made this in the past, that’s what I should get paid based on in the future. And my argument to that is there’s no contract guaranteeing that. So I you’re basically asking me as a buyer to risk all this money up front for something that there is nothing on paper that guarantees that that’s going to come into me the next day. So to me, I consider that extremely high risk. I I would not, as a buyer, be comfortable acquiring a book of business that I have no relationship with any of these people yet, and just hoping that it generates the same revenue you made from your project-based revenue. So, what I think is have some kind of payout based on the recurring revenue that has some kind of contract, contract in place. But then for all your project-based revenue that you’ve already completed, I’m not gonna base, I cannot pay you an upfront payout for that because it’s not guaranteed in the future. What I’d rather do is pay you a certain amount of percentage of revenue over the next two, three, four years of me taking your website, taking your book of business, and having all those referrals now feed to me, and you will get a percentage of all the sales that I generate for you. And what I’d say as a buyer is like, I’m good at sales, like I will call these people, I will, I will probably turn these into high pay, higher paying customers than what they’re currently at, but I’m not I’m not comfortable paying you some massive payment up front. I’d rather pay you over the course, I’d rather pay you for the money that comes in, I would pay you a commission off of. It’s called an earnout, an earnout payment structure.

Josh Hall: 27:38
Okay, so an earnout payment structure, what’s the timeline typical on those?

Hans Skillrud: 27:42
Like, yeah, so that one is I I don’t have enough experience to speak on it, but I would say, like, and this is where like I feel like the true negotiation happens between the buyer and seller is like how many years and at what percent? So like my gut feeling is like three years, 15%, maybe two years, 20, 4 years, 10. I I something in that range for your project-based revenue. Now, recurring revenue that you know, um you have some kind of agreement that like guarantees future revenue. I would say that’s uh you’re you’re at a different play there. Um that might be um something where upfront cash maybe I think the seller has more leverage, especially if you have a contract sign. Um if anyone’s listening, thinking about selling their business one day, go get some contracts signed by your clients, have them agree to three months, six months. If you can, get them to agree to a year. Um, because now you have more leverage when negotiating with your buyer. Um so so but I believe this industry, the right structure is an earnout because people don’t have we’re not selling utility, we’re not selling electricity or something like that. Like we don’t have 50-year contracts. We we’re we’re project-based. They come in, we whip out a site, we move them into maintenance and hosting, and then we move on to the next one. So yeah, that’s my I said it like a thousand times, but earn out I think is the right structure for this.

Josh Hall: 29:02
Earnout, because correct me if I or fill in any gaps that I’m missing here, Hans. But I feel like for most web designers, when you sell, you sell a client list, any processes like Jake mentioned, like any SOPs, any IP that’s you know special to you in your web design business, and any sort of recurring revenue. Like that’s really it. Yeah, unless I’m thinking, like you’re you’re basically just selling a client book, processes, and any recurring revenue for hosting a maintenance that you have said.

Hans Skillrud: 29:31
And and I would say in that uh in general, the main thing is a book of business and your brand. Like, because your brand, your website will get leads continuing to come in. You’re your but your book of business, that’s what we want. And think about it. How I mean, it’s funny that Jake did a page in a day. I I had a website in a day program, and that’s the other thing I was really excited about. But my website in a day concept came from how do I bring customers from I need a new website to now I’m just paying you month annually or monthly for maintenance. I I wanted to, how can I get them as fast as possible to there? So I built website in a day program, and that were I we had so much potential with that, but that’s a whole separate recording. But the other thing was like, oh my God, if I just bought out someone who has like 30 websites, I just cheat coded my way into acquiring this book of business. So it also I’ll say is a seller, just one little side note, as a seller, boy, is it mentally a lot? Uh like it will, it’s a mental toll selling your business. And for anyone listening that’s ready to sell, like you need someone to talk to, I am here, I’ve been through it. It’s meant, especially when you identify with your business and then you’re saying goodbye to it, um, call me sometime. I’m happy to talk to you about that. But I will say, after a few months go by and you’re just getting a check in the mail, it’s primo. Like it’s awesome. You like it sounds like, oh, it’s not that much money, but when you’re getting a check in the mail every month for years on end, like that’s a cool, it’s good. It feels good.

Josh Hall: 30:51
Well, that’s a good point, too, is like whether you just what for a seller. Well, let’s let’s since we’re focusing on acquisition, as somebody who might buy a business, what I there, I guess there’s like two routes. You could buy the clients and then they come under your brand, or you buy a business and take it over or have it merge into a brand. Like when I sold in transit, I actually sold in transit studios to Eric. I didn’t just give him my clients under his agency. So, and that was a big decision on whether what what what to do there. Um, so Hans, is that I imagine if you buy a brand, that adds a whole other level of revenue and complexity there just because you’re buying a website, you’re buying domain authority, you’re you’re potentially, yeah. That’s the acquisition, but yeah.

Hans Skillrud: 31:40
Yeah, as a seller, I would say, look how many leads I get every month, um, you know, or every week or whatever it may be. So, like as a seller, that would be my negotiation. Like, in my so the I guess I’m unique in the sense that when I bought the the seller wanted everything to go. Like, you know, I I want to I want to move on and great. And when I sold my agency, I I was just like, there’s this crazy thing called termaged and that I want to start with my wife, and who knows what will happen, but I want to focus just on that. So I was also in that position of I need to just say goodbye to everything as much as it sucked mentally. Like I just needed to do it, rip the band-aid to move on to the next thing I wanted to do in life. Um, so maybe my situation is unique in the sense that as both a buyer and seller, I kind of experience the same type of situation. Um, to me, it seems really messy to be like, I’m gonna sell you my book of business, but I’m gonna keep my media site up. Like, yeah, that feels messy to me, but I I would, you know, maybe that’s a red flag, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Um, I guess that would depend on the buyer and and what if they like that or not.

Jake Kramer: 32:42
Yeah, I want to divorce my wife, but I want her to also come over for dinner each night. Yeah, yeah. No bad analogy.

Hans Skillrud: 32:51
I’m gonna take that. No, no, no, it makes sense. I I understand what you’re saying. I understand what you’re saying.

Josh Hall: 32:56
I mean a similar analogy, Jake. We have a member in pro who uh the one who’s like potentially acquiring some clients, and like the seller’s getting not cold feet, but like has uh it’s like it seems like the seller is like trying to keep a foot in the door a little bit, and that’s like no, look, you gotta you gotta just make a clean break. It’s I might the analogy I use is like breaking up with a girlfriend, but being like, but also we can still hang out all the time. You just gotta make a clean break. Yeah, if you’re gonna sell.

Hans Skillrud: 33:24
I know an agency that has bought a couple agencies, and they did uh one of them was like, hey, you come along with it and we’re gonna turn you into an employed uh person. And they were delighted. They’re like, I just want to do SEO, or they wanted to just do SEO. So they just came in and just did SEO.

Josh Hall: 33:39
And um, I don’t know exactly how that panned out, but I mean there are structures like that too, where it’s like Yeah, like what I did with In Transit, I am still on the website as the founder. I just don’t do any client-facing stuff. I am completely different. So I’m basically just I’m kind of like on the board. I’m basically just like a consultant to Eric in Intransit. But that’s it. That’s my only involvement. I don’t, you know, I have access to stuff, but I’m not doing any client work. So there are.

Hans Skillrud: 34:06
I kind of bet that feels good. I bet that feels good. Like you get to kind of retain that founder setup, um, but you’re not in the daily grind, which I’d imagine was part of the benefit to selling because of all the other things you got going on in life, Josh.

Josh Hall: 34:18
Yeah, well, and at that point, like I wanted to take courses full time. So I, you know, I think every acquisition story I feel like looks a little bit different based off of all these variables. I think that’s why it’s kind of hard to say, like, web design businesses can sell for this and this and this. And yeah, there’s probably some commonalities. I do love, Hans, that you’ve reiterated how important like the earnout thing is, which I totally agree, unless you have contracts where people are, you know, contractually obligated to renew. Yes. Yeah, you’re it’s web design businesses are often very, very vulnerable. Um yeah, I mean how many oh go ahead, Jake.

Jake Kramer: 34:55
Wow, just gonna say, yeah, I I had a friend who was trying to sell and they didn’t have any honestly artilleries in this spot where we tell our clients month to month no contract for hosting, goodwill only. That’s been great for us. But of course, I mean when a when a client comes and wants to leave and there is a contract, it’s like now you’re gonna make me be the asshole, you know. Like so, I I I can kind of see both ways. Uh like, or or even being, I don’t know, liberal with flexing or deleting the contract. But anyway, my point being, yeah, this this person tried to get a loan to be purchased by, and the bank was essentially like, there’s no there’s no contracts, there’s no guaranteed money. They didn’t they didn’t kind of see the vision, but there it’s exactly what you’re saying, Hans. It’s real. If there’s if it’s not like guaranteed money, it might as well be zero, according to most buyers.

Hans Skillrud: 35:58
Buyers, yes, agreed, most, not all, uh, but like, and that’s where I fell into. That’s the bucket I kind of fall into. Maybe I’m a little more conservative with how I approach like an acquisition, but it’s risky, especially it was my first time doing it. So I wanted to minimize risk as much as possible. And it’s it’s I think the reason why they sold to me was they trusted me enough to like, okay, I I want to do this, and they’re like, I felt like I was as transparent as I possibly could be, even learning new things along the way during the negotiation process. And when selling, like I, because it’s an earnout structure, I had to trust the seller. I had an offer for way more money than what the I ultimately selected. But that guy told me he wanted to strip the company, get rid of all employees, um, just take the book of business and run. And I just, my gut was like, I don’t like this. So I took the lesser offer, the offer for less money, but with someone else, like, I trust this guy’s gonna do great by my employees, by my customers, by everyone. And I would rather walk away with that. And so, yeah, for me it was it was money, of course, but it was other factors I took into consideration too.

Jake Kramer: 37:02
Oh, that’s nice. You found your ex-girlfriend a nice new boyfriend, and she I sure did.

Hans Skillrud: 37:07
I sure did. Handed her off, yeah.

Josh Hall: 37:12
Playing matchmaker as the ex.

Josh Hall: 37:14
Just set them up for somebody real nice.

Hans Skillrud: 37:16
Um also for for I just want to drop another tidbit bizbycell.com, B-I-Z, biz by sell.com. That’s where I sold my agency. I spent like a hundred bucks to list it on that website, and within 24 hours, I had 36 legitimate inquiries, like legit, like legit inquiries. Um, now that dwindled down to 18, and then that dwindled down to nine. It cut cut in half during kind of like calls and back and forth. Some people just, oh, I’m not interested anymore. But it started with 36 and then it came down to two or three, and I selected the one I like.

Josh Hall: 37:50
So well, it’s funny because like even in my community, Web Designer Pro, we’ve been talking a lot about this just because the situation, our last coaching call was talking about this, and we’re like, no one in pro needs to go anywhere else. Like it’s inside of like if you’re in a private community or a trusted Facebook group, like that’s especially if it’s an earnout model, because you don’t need somebody who’s gonna have access to you know quarter million dollars in capital, pay at one time. I will say though, like from a buying perspective, I know what Eric did within with my agency in transit. What we did with this member of Pro is he just he he did a really good job of making it super simple. He’s like, listen, the the book of business that she has is basically, yeah, it’s vulnerable because there’s no contracts, it’s less than a dozen clients. Um, so he all he did was the structure was 15% of each month month to month, the clients that stay with us up to I think 18 months is the final buy. So it’s a year and a half, but she gets this member gets 15% of every one of those clients month to month. So as long as they stay, she gets paid up to 18 months. But if any go, we’re not liable. I think that’s what do you think about that, Hans? Have you seen that as far as like that’s more could you just take us, you know, series of clients, and then if they stay with you, that person gets paid. If they leave, they don’t get paid.

Jake Kramer: 39:05
Um before you get to that, I was gonna yeah, I was gonna say to I want this answer because we did that. Artillery purchased I think 34 sites, um, and we paid per site front.

Josh Hall: 39:19
Okay, was it 34? What’s up with that number? What’s up with 34 sites being the number to say?

Hans Skillrud: 39:24
It’s probably the filter periods we go through in the agency world. Like I couldn’t break 125 customers and Termigun was taken off. So I was like, all right, I gotta sell and go.

Jake Kramer: 39:33
Yeah, 30 clients for one person. Yeah, anyway, yeah, take it away.

Hans Skillrud: 39:37
Yeah, uh, so so I would say that’s a little bit more aggressive, I would say, because I did that. Plus, I pitched the idea of all the revenue I generate from your book of business. So any referrals that come from these people over that two, three year period, any referrals that come in, I will pay you for. Any upsells I do, I will pay you for. Um, and I do know a buyer, uh a guy who’s buying agencies actively. I’m pretty sure he’s now doing it where I’m gonna pay you a larger percentage over the course of X years for the current book of business you have. And anything additional that I upsell or bring in leads, I’m giving you a smaller percentage. I never got that that granular, but I feel like there’s a fair argument to say for that, um, for sure. And then I feel like when you’re paying out for like upsells or especially referrals, like you’re kind of paying out the goodwill from that previous agency owner and the goodwill, the the the the the because they got you got the referral because of that client that came that came from that seller, you know. So like I feel like money’s out there, but that’s just my opinion.

Josh Hall: 40:39
So that is that’s a biggie. That that’s like two different lanes of acquisition, I feel like, is I actually I don’t know, Hans. I think I lean more towards just like paying for what is in place, and then in the future, you know, moving forward, unless it is like maybe like up to a year or 18 months. But yeah, obviously that that could get tricky with like the random, like, oh, by the way, can you add a branding package on there? And then that’s like 500 bucks, and then you have to remember to take the percentage of that and and bring it back. But the other aspect to that is I feel like the act the the buyer, like that really is in good faith, right? Because the seller is probably not gonna have access to access to their Stripe account and look at what’s coming in.

Hans Skillrud: 41:16
So as a seller, and when I sold, that was one of my requirements. Like, I want to get a monthly report of your books, and they’re like, no problem, we already do that, so we’ll just send it to you. Now, that being said, I looked at it for like the first two months and I never looked at it again. Because and why it comes back to I trusted them as a buyer. I just my heart told me these are good human beings, like um, they’re gonna do right. And so um, so so yeah, it’s not, it’s not especially the more accounts you have that you ultimately sell, the more kind of pull you have in the negotiations and requiring things like books to be replied provided. And you know, selling eight clients is very different than selling eight hundred, of course, like you know, um, the in terms of expectations. So and Josh, that I think that’s a wonderful counter. And if we were like in the exchange of buying and selling, like one of like you had an agency I was trying to buy, or vice versa, like that would be a good place of negotiation. Like, well, I don’t think that’s fair to for me to pay out for nothing that you you did, nothing. I wanted to buy what you have for sale. And yeah, and it’s I feel like that’s a totally good negotiation point.

Josh Hall: 42:17
Yeah, because I think both routes absolutely could work. It’s just like, you know, I think I err on the side of just keeping it simple and the amount of complexities, depending on the amount of clients, that could, you know, that could be tricky. Even if it is just up to a year, 18 months. But I would, as a buyer, be much more willing to pay more, knowing I’m gonna have upsells and I’m gonna have more marketing and referral opportunities because of this book of business. So I would be open to paying more in an earn-hour or whatever setup that looks like. That’s a good, that’s a good mindset. Yeah. Because Jake, we talked about that with with when you guys, you know, when we talked about like artillery setup, it’s like you guys, I think even John had said at one point, like, you know, it’s worth almost buying a book of business, even if you break even just for the upsell opportunities, because from then on you can be profitable very quickly.

Jake Kramer: 43:04
Yeah, I mean, if the businesses are legit, you know, um that you’re serving, the clients are good book of business. That’s another thing that’s worth but I’m curious, Hans. Um it seems like how you’re doing it, which makes a lot more sense than how we did it, it even kind of keeps the owner like emotionally invested over a long period of time of this is good. And I’m sure that person still gets phone calls from those clients because you have to buying, and the more sites you buy, eight, thirty-four, a hundred, two hundred more calls, more relationships that you have to kind of you know, it’s like you’re getting sod put down. Like a lot of that sod won’t take, uh, because you’re just kind of injecting it into the system. When we get a lot of new clients, that’s what we found. Like we lost several. Um, some people just saw it as a good time to make a change, which will happen. Some people saw it as um, oh, we don’t we don’t really need to pay this much for this, whatever we can do X, Y, or Z. Find another search, right? But how you’re doing it is it makes sense to keep that person emotionally invested in kind of this thing ongoing and help with those keeping churn down and contained. Because that’s one thing.

Hans Skillrud: 44:34
It aligns it aligns everyone’s interests. Like as a seller, you are totally invested in ensuring those handoffs are as successful as possible because you’re not getting paid until the dollars start going into the new buyer’s pockets. So so it like in my mind, that’s why it’s such a win-win-win. Uh, because it it just I just can’t break through a better program than it, both as a buyer and a seller. It keeps all the motivations the same. And also say, as someone who sold two years down the road, I remember a pizza shop, one of the first websites I built, they’re like, hey, we launched a new restaurant, we need a new website. I’m like, great, here’s this guy who bought my agency, he’s way better than me. I’d always say that they’re way better than me, you know. So so they’re already, um, you know, and I’ll send them an email and intro everyone. And granted, I would have just done that naturally just to help people, but knowing that I’m getting like, you know, there’s like a benefit financially too, that’s just so nice. Like it’s cool.

Josh Hall: 45:28
Like so, Hans, if you could, if you could put like on a napkin what the ideal earn L is, what would that be? The percentage and the term and the the transition period, what what would be like you know, the postcard version of just the the high level vision of this or not?

Hans Skillrud: 45:48
Yeah, so I would say it kind of depends on how many customers you have. So if you have less than 50 versus like over 50, I would say less than 20, more than 60. Like those are kind of two different ballparks. Like if you have less than 20 customers, you need to realize as a seller that as a buyer, I have a lot of upfront work I have to do, whether I’m acquiring you with 20 clients or the other guy with 200 clients. Like, you know, there’s a set of upfront work I have to do no matter what. So as a you have to be more lenient or like more like liberal with your approach as a seller under 20. Um, if you have over 60, you know, you’re you’re you have a little bit more sway, you know, like holy cow, like this could be a sizable upgrade to someone’s book of business. So I would say in the 60 plus world, um I would say that you should get, I don’t know, um I would do it as clean as possible. I’d say 15 three years, maybe two, maybe two, um, two or three years. So we’ll say 20%, two years. I would offer also 20% of all the revenue that I generate from their website and from their referrals. I would offer that. Um 40% altogether then? 20%. 20% okay of it. Basically, all money, all money that comes from you, from this acquisition, from all your leads, everything, you get 20% for two years. I would say that would be a very clean thing to do. Um, but I also want to say, like, there’s some beauty in the negotiation process. Like, you know, oh hey, I like that, but I’d feel a little more comfortable if I did this or that. But at its core, though, that I feel like 90% plus of the deal should be an earn-out type program because that is putting risk in the right places. Like, I get that you made 200k last year, but that does not guarantee I’m gonna be making your 200k again next year. Like, yeah, I cannot pay you based on your past. The stock market works. You can’t you don’t base your investments on the past, you base your investments on where the future’s going.

Josh Hall: 47:48
Would you, as a buyer, be open to giving the books every month with revenue? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Hans Skillrud: 47:55
In fact, I would I as a buyer, if I especially if I want to focus on like holy cow, like what we should be buying agencies all the time. Like, I would be selling myself as like, look, we’ve done this before. You’re not like this is not a first time for us. Like, we’re gonna, this is how we do it, and this is what you can expect. I would try to make the seller feel as good as possible. And and and you need to just be an honest good person. Like, if you’re gonna screw people over, uh well, good luck sleeping at night with yourself, but uh like but I’ll say that doesn’t apply in the WordPress well.

Josh Hall: 48:28
It just doesn’t, yeah.

Hans Skillrud: 48:28
It’s just yeah, it’s you you know the the people you are you in a vibe with the person, are you vibing with them or not? Like yeah, you know, especially and then if you if you’re a buyer, if you’re a buyer that has experience with other agencies, be like here are three references to other agencies I’ve acquired. Uh you know, feel free to reach out to any of them to ask what their thoughts are about me. That cool that would go really well too, I feel like.

Josh Hall: 48:51
If you wanted, if somebody wanted a cleaner break, like let’s say I was selling and I did not want to be involved for two more years at any capacity, if I just wanted to do it within a year or something, um, would the percentages go up or less for a year, or how would that work?

Hans Skillrud: 49:05
Well, what the day you sell that two years, like you’re you should not have any involvement. Like you should just be sitting back on a beach somewhere getting your paychecks. Like you should not do you get a random text from that one client who always texts you, sure. And then you can say, Hey, I sold my business, here’s a new point of contact. Like that that should be it though. And I’ll say the most one of the more depressing things was me thinking I was such a vital, important part of my business, and then I sold my business and like it went to crickets really fast. Like it was kind of crazy, kind of eye-opening. Like it went, I went to not having to do anything shockingly quickly. Um, and that was because we had our books in order. We had I had a team in place to do a lot of things where you know they could explain most things. But anyways, I’m rambling.

Josh Hall: 49:53
Yeah, no, that’s good, that’s good. So, like to you, just based off your experience, of course, there’s no right or wrong way to do this. 20% of the current book of business, the current monthly recurring revenue, and additional work and referrals that come from that to the seller for two years.

Hans Skillrud: 50:07
Just yeah. And as a seller, I probably would aim for 15% for three years. Um, that’s you know, I think that would equal more money. Yeah, a little bit more money. Like that’s you know, so okay, negotiation. Now you gotta, you know, do your negotiation stuff to figure out where to be land.

Jake Kramer: 50:23
So that’s good.

Hans Skillrud: 50:24
So you wouldn’t do any money up front, just so I when I sold, we had about 70k in accounts receivables. I think it’s accounts receivable, like money that was owed to us for work that we had already done. So we got paid that out in cash um because that was money we had per work we had performed, we just haven’t gotten the check yet. Because when someone buys you, you’re mid-project, a couple projects. So so so I did get paid out in cash for that. I think I got paid a uh I think I negotiated like some kind of upfront payment for the annuals, uh the monthly maintenance that I had. Um I forget what that was. It wasn’t, you know, it’s like I think we had 150k MRR or ARR. Oh, MRR, that would have been nice. Uh uh, but uh um, and I think we got like 50% of that up front, something like that. We were able to like talk that in. But then the rest, I think it was, I think it came down to 15% three years. I’m pretty sure that’s what we finished at.

Josh Hall: 51:22
I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s another thing too. Let’s say you’re selling hosting and maintenance and you have a bunch of people on annual, but they’ve already paid. And unless they’re locked in for that next year, that may be worth nothing too because they’ve already paid. So you’re absolutely right.

Hans Skillrud: 51:35
And now now the buyer has to pay for their own hosting to manage those sites. So it’s you you do kind of have to break like you would have a list of your customers when they renew. Okay, today’s date is this, so therefore they’ve paid 80% or they’ve used up 80% of their payment or 20% of their payment. This person just renewed yes yesterday. Like, that’s you do have to figure out you know, how does that move as well? Getting the heck up, sorry.

Josh Hall: 52:01
No, that’s good. That’s interesting. Awesome, guys. Well, we’ve covered a lot in uh less than an hour here. Um, do you guys have a hard stop at the top of the hour here?

Hans Skillrud: 52:10
No, I’m good, but whatever you want to do.

Josh Hall: 52:12
We’ll bring this home. Jake, any other? I feel like this, yeah, this just answered a lot of questions for me and fills in a lot of the gaps on some of this. It is just so tough because there’s just no right or wrong way to go about it. And there’s so many different variables. As we both as all we know, you know, web designers, everything’s a little there’s just no exact web design agency that is exactly the same. There’s always a mix of different services, building styles, payouts, different processes. But um, go ahead, Jake.

Jake Kramer: 52:41
That made me think of a question.

Jake Kramer: 52:43
How do you handle differences in pricing? It’s great if pricing goes down to the new buyer. It’s charging 100, new buyer charges 80. Great. Uh, that’s the other way, the other way is frustrating to clients, and that was kind of the one thing that got tangled. Not tangled. Um, because the the seller did a really great job of kind of explaining all that and getting verbal yeses before we proceeded. But there were a lot of yeah. That’s a good point.

Josh Hall: 53:15
It’s like as a buyer of our maintenance plan is 99 and this person is wanting to sell and their plans are currently 20, how do we know the clients are gonna be okay with a 5x jump?

Hans Skillrud: 53:24
Yeah. That’s a really good one. I unfortunately don’t have experience with that because the maintenance plans that I bought out were similar enough. I think it was like a $20 a month difference. So we our retention was like 98%, I think, of the customers that we bought out. So um, but yeah, if you’re acquiring a book of business that’s going from 20 to 99, that should be known up front to the seller, like, hey, this is what I charge. Like, and so what I would do if I did buy a book of business that was previously $20 a month maintenance plan, and now they’re going to 99 a month, I would certainly be very clear with the difference of what you’re getting. And if anyone pushed back, I’d be like, look, like I figured out the best way to politically say this, but it’s like that person went out of business, probably for a reason. Like they were undercharging. Like, so like this is reality. And like, be like, here’s if you do want to go, and I probably say if you want to shop, like here’s what I would look for in a new hosting provider. Like, here are the things you want to look for. Um, so I would say it as nicely as possible, just because that’s I wouldn’t want to come off as a jerk, but like that’s kind of a reality too. Like, if if the previous person wasn’t charging them off, that’s probably at least one variable as to why they had to shut down their business.

Josh Hall: 54:37
So yeah, and I think for anyone who wants to sell and they’re worried about their clients disappearing, or vice versa, buy and those clients disappearing. For those clients, there’s really three options. It’s either us, you know, the the acquisit the the the buyer, nothing. Like you just you don’t go with them, and good luck, you can try to figure out on your own. Or there’s like some, you know, yeah, you look for somebody else who may or may not be referred to you. So I feel like unless there’s like something drastic or it’s just completely out of budget compared to what they’re used to, or if they just don’t trust the buyer, they’re I feel like it’s much more likely they’re gonna continue on, at least for a while, to be able to build that relationship.

Hans Skillrud: 55:15
Also, also, if you could maybe start off with like what’s a like, I don’t know, this is just off the top of my head, but like what if it’s like, okay, this is the book of business I want to buy. Let’s look at each of their sites. What’s like one winner we can give each of these customers? Like, hey, welcome. I I by the way, I noticed XYZ was broken on your site. I went ahead and fixed that. Like, boy, what a warm way to say welcome to the new team you’re now working with. Like, oh my gosh, that’s a great point. Human to human, just give them a little win. Um, that could go so far. Right. Give them that. Jake, you’re so good with analogies. You’re so good with analogies. Don’t hold the phone. I always mix mine up. That’s great.

Josh Hall: 55:57
Awesome. Well, guys, it’s been great. So the the follow-up conversation on this is gonna be how to make your business sellable. Jake, I feel like we might need to have Hans back on that one because we could really dig into that too. Yeah, let’s do part two on that.

Jake Kramer: 56:09
I’d be really interested in that.

Josh Hall: 56:11
Let’s do part two then. Yeah, and then because we had talked about John, Jake’s partner, uh maybe coming in on that too, just because he’s done a really good job. He I feel like John is just somebody who just makes sellable assets. That’s like his middle, that’s like his tagline.

Jake Kramer: 56:22
Yeah, he read Built the Sell by John Werlow. I think he’s read it 16 times now, or something like that.

Josh Hall: 56:27
He’s the one who referred it to me, and I read it.

Jake Kramer: 56:29
Like, dude, you’ve read it more than the Bible. It’s kind of saying something. Yeah.

Josh Hall: 56:33
Yeah. John’s gonna write make shit sellable one day. It’s gonna be the the 2026 version. So bad. We’ll do the we’ll do the follow-up on that. Well, guys, thank you so much for your time. Awesome. Hans, really appreciate your you know experience and insight on this. Absolutely. Uh Jake, I love that you’re kind of in the weeds. I hope this was helpful for you too. So it’s kind of like a live coaching call in something.

Jake Kramer: 56:53
No, that was great. That really helped me and really kind of changed my approach on how we’re gonna

Jake Kramer: 56:57
have these conversations. So appreciate it.

Josh Hall: 57:00
Heck yeah. All right, guys, until the next round. Appreciate you both. Alrighty, friends. Well, I can’t wait to hear from you. If you took a lot from this episode and are interested in acquiring or buying a web design business, either now or eventually again, make sure you stick around because the next episode is part two, where we’re gonna focus on how to make your business sellable if you’re interested in selling in the near future or in the long-term future. All the show notes for this episode are gonna be over at joshhall.co slash 432. So head over there for all the links mentioned. And again, if you are catching this on the week that we released this episode, make sure you sign up for the local SEO Academy boot camp. You can go to joshhall.co slash L S A, that’s short for local SEO Academy, to get your special offer of $50 off the boot camp. That’s also gonna grant you a full month of the Local SEO Academy. That is an affiliate link, by the way. So official disclaimer on that. All right, friends, I will see you on the next episode where we’re gonna talk about making your business sellable.