Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / The Art of Selling Your Business with John Warrillow

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The Art of Selling Your Business with John Warrillow · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

0:01
Hi.
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This is Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady host of the small Bizchett podcast.
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I want to serve you.
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This pandemic has been so hard on America's small businesses and on just America in
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general.
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If you're ready to start your dream business, boy, do I have a great offer for you?
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I am giving away 1000 copies of my best selling book, become your own boss in 12 months.
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Over a hundred thousand people have this book It has been printed in multiple languages
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around the world, and I wanted to find a way to serve America small businesses in this
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pandemic.
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And so I am giving away a 1000 copies of my book.
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All you have to do to get your copy is head over to begin my biz dotcom slash free offer
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to, you know, sign up for your copy.
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All you have to do is pay shipping, and we will mail one out to you.
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I am so excited about this.
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I wanna serve you, grab your copy today.
0:56
Ending small business failure.
0:58
Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with a number one small business expert, Melinda
1:04
Emerson.
1:05
Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
1:09
you need succeed and live the life you dream of.
1:13
Now here's the small biz lady herself.
1:16
Melinda Everson.
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Hi.
1:20
I'm Melinda Emerson's small biz lady.
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America's number one small business expert and I would like to welcome you to the Small Bench
1:27
Chat podcast.
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Today's show is all about developing tighter cash flow management in 2021.
1:33
We're also gonna be talking about the art of selling a business.
1:37
And have you ever wanted to become a celebrity doctor?
1:39
Well, if you do, I've got the lady you wanna talk to here with us tonight.
1:44
It's really all about if you're looking for new ways to conserve cash and your business, we've
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got some great insights If you've been thinking about whether or not now is the time for you to
1:55
sell your business to talk about it and if you are positioned interested in creating a niche
2:01
practice and becoming a media expert, I have lined up some amazing experts today who are
2:08
gonna discuss how to make 2021 a great year in your business.
2:13
The small business chat podcast really is a peer to peer interview show that gives small
2:18
business owners a way to get invaluable business insights.
2:22
The mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
2:25
Our goal with small biz chat is to give small business owners an opportunity to hear sage
2:31
advice from
2:31
multiple angles to
2:31
take your small business to the next level.
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Today's guest, John.
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And he is the founder of the value builder system, a simple software for building the
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value of a company used by thousands of businesses worldwide.
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He's also the host of Build To Sell Radio and the author of several best selling books,
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including Build To Sell, creating a business that can thrive without you, the automatic
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customer, and his latest book that was just released, I'm so excited to show it to you.
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The art of selling a business winning strategies and secret hacks for exiting on top.
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I love it.
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John, it's been so many years since we've spoken, but welcome to the small fish chat
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podcast.
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Welcome.
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I come, you don't age a year, and I look ten years older since I last talked to you.
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Thanks for having back.
3:24
It's good to be back.
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You're very sweet.
3:26
You're very sweet.
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Well, listen, I know we're gonna get to talking about your new book, but I I gotta take you in
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your way back time machine here.
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We gotta talk about built to sell.
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I know you published that book gosh.
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And was it 2011?
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It was like almost 10 years ago, but that's how I first met you.
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That's how long we've been we've been at this thing.
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Right?
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And that book was really big, and it it changed a lot of people's perspectives about how to
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build a service business.
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Because I think sometimes when you're building a service business, it ends up being all you.
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And so you were really good.
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And and what I liked about your book is that it was unique because it had a parable in it.
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It really it it told a story through telling stories, and I really am appreciated it
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because, honestly, it made me think differently even about my own company.
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So tell me a little bit about how you started writing, you know, book in this genre about,
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you know, built to sell automatic customer and now the art of selling a business.
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It it's a trilogy, right, that all of these books
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It is.
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And it goes back to the day that someone told me my service business was ugly.
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I remember the day to this day was I was in a an M and A professional's office.
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Guys name is Perry, and I thought I would wanna sell my company to whoever would buy it.
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And at the time, I was working with very large enterprise organizations.
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We had big companies like American Express And JP Morgan Chase were clients of ours, and I
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thought, oh, is gonna wanna buy my client list.
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And Perry said, let me ask you a couple questions.
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I said, but what do you think it's worth?
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And he said, hold on.
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But, you know, let me ask you a couple questions.
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Number 1, Who does the research?
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You're a market research company.
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Right?
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You must have someone doing the research.
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And I said, yeah.
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We've got researchers, but I'm I'm still involved in in doing the research.
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And then he said, okay.
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Who does the selling?
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And I said, well, you know, I'm I'm involved a little bit in the selling.
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He said, okay.
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We're gonna say, you got a a market research business.
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You're doing the selling, and you're doing the research.
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Oh, I said, well, yeah, I guess so.
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And he said, look, I can't sell your company.
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And it was like being told, you know, like, you're your baby is the ugliest in the maturity
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ward.
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Right?
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And and it was really shocking for me.
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This goes back 20 years, but I took that lesson that he shared with me and and made it my goal
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to really make it a sellable company, change the business model, made it a subscription
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company.
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And ultimately, it was acquired by a public company years later, but that story of being in
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Perry's office being made to feel like a little child that I was kinda chasing the wrong thing
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stuck with me.
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And it inspired me to write sell all those years ago.
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Awesome.
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Awesome.
5:53
Alright.
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So then you wrote, what what was the second book?
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The automatic customer.
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So so give me, like, I don't know, the cliff note explanation of automatic customer, and
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then I swear we will get to the art of Sonya.
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Yeah.
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Do we yeah.
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You go wherever you want.
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You know, built to sell was about how do you create a valuable company?
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The one thing that makes a company even more valuable than making it not be reliant on you
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is recurring revenue.
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Right?
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So that revenue, like, subscription based or contract based revenue that an acquirer can
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look at that will continue on.
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And so a lot of people hear that and they think, oh, SaaS companies.
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Is that what he's talking about or software companies?
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And Not at all.
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I think any company can do it.
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I'm I reminded that the guys behind H Blum, they started a flower company.
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New flower stores are the most seasonal transactional companies out there.
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But the guys from Xbloom said, how do we remake this into a subscription company?
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And they realized that there were organizations.
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In fact, hotels and restaurants bought flowers regularly, right, unlike most of us who buy
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them on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, they bought flowers, like, every 2 weeks.
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They said, well, what if we kinda created a subscription for flowers?
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All the hotels and restaurants would have us fulfill their flower needs every 2 weeks.
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Long story short, they built H Bloom, which is a fantastic company.
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Average lifetime value of an H Bloom subscriber is more than $4000.
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Compare that with, you know, somebody walks into a retail store.
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So it's a business model I think can work for just about any business.
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Awesome.
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Awesome.
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Alright.
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Automatic customer subscription sales, recurring revenue.
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And now we've got to the R of selling your business.
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Okay.
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So tell us what is the gist of this book about?
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Well, look, I, you know, I've been doing built already, which you mentioned in the intro now
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for 5 Right?
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I've interviewed a different entrepreneur every week for 5 years.
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And what I've come to learn is that there is a small group of my guests who seem to punch well
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above their weight when it comes to selling their business.
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I mean, these guys are getting multiples of revenue when they sell, not multiples of EBITDA
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or multiples of profit.
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And it got me just trying to kinda curious about, like, what are they doing differently?
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And I started relistening to all the past tapes of these epic exits and and realized there was
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a way they were going about approaching the negotiation.
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And it was more art and science, and that's why the book's called the art of selling your
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business.
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And it's about how do you punch above your weight when it comes time to sell?
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Alright.
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So let's get into some of this content.
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So what is the secret to a happy exit?
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Well, look, the book is full of negotiation tips and tricks but the secret to a happy exit
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has nothing to do with negotiation.
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It has everything to do with figuring out your pull factor.
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So most of us as entrepreneurs, we have push Right?
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You've talked about them.
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Elliott mentioned them this, you know, red tape, tax, employees.
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They all frustrate us.
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Right?
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And those are the things that make us wanna sell a company.
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But the most successful exits are more pull.
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Right?
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They're they're where you've got things you're excited to go do.
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Another business you wanna start, in your case, like, another book you wanna right.
9:01
Right?
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Those are pull factors.
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Right?
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And and I think the best successful exits are one with lots of pull.
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I'm reminded of one of the guys I interviewed for the show guy's name is Sean Oshman, built
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an IT services company in Denver, Colorado.
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By the age of thirty nine, he said, by 40, I wanna live my life on a sailboat.
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He lives in Denver.
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Right?
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So what are you gonna do?
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He's gotta sell his company, and he figures he'll go, you know, sell.
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It gets two to three times.
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He figures it's worth around two times profit gets an offer of around 2 times profit sells
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his company.
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And I said to him on a show.
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I said, like, two times profits, like, not a huge win.
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It's not a big exit.
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It's not like massive money.
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And he said, yeah, but you're missing the point.
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I said, what's that?
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And he said, I'm living on a sailboat.
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And because he had enough money to buy the boat, and it always stuck stuck with me as as,
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you know, we think about the the the job of selling a company is all about maximizing the
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value.
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And trust me, I'm I'm all about that.
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But in his case, And it was a good lesson that the most successful happiest people are often
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ones that are just not leading something behind.
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They're going to something.
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And I always remember Sean for, I'm grateful to Sean for telling me that that lesson.
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That that's a really interesting point.
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So how do you what do you need to know before you start thinking about selling your business?
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Look, I think the most important thing for you to do is figure out who your natural strategic
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acquirers are.
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A strategic acquirer is someone whom your business is worth more in their hands than it
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is in your hands.
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Let me give you an example.
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There's a woman named Stephanie Breedlove.
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I I I wrote about the book.
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She built a wonderful little company, $9,000,000 payroll company.
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She had a niche where she focused on helping parents pay their nannies.
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That's all that she did.
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Payroll for parents who had a nanny.
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Well, she looked out in the landscape and figured out who out who's out there that
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wouldn't wanna buy my company, and she realized there's a business called care.com.
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Care.com.
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As you know, plug in your zip code.
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It'll tell you who the babysitters are in your in your neighborhood.
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And care at the time had 7,000,000 subscribers, 7,000,000 parents who had managed to pay.
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And so breed love goes, look, I've got a $9,000,000 business with 10,000 customers.
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If 1% of your 7,000,000 subscribers buys my payroll service, that's a business 7 times the
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size.
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Long story short, breed love sells her $9,000,000 business for $54,000,000.
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6 times revenue, which is, you know, it doesn't make sense on paper, no valuation consultant
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would ever have valued at that high.
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But what that does is miss the point for care.
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It was a very valuable acquisition.
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So, again, the the trick to this is to figure out who else in the in the landscape would
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would your business be worth more in their hands than it is in yours?
11:53
Got it.
11:53
Got it.
11:54
So I think that is brilliant, by the way.
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And I'm a I'm a user of care.com back in the day when my son was a little smaller, so I'm
12:01
very familiar with what you're talking about.
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So tell me a little bit though.
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I I, you know, COVID has done a couple of different things to the small business market.
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I mean, first of all, it's wiped out a good 40% of the small businesses that were out here.
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But it's also push people to think about selling or push people to try to save their
12:21
business through selling.
12:22
And so kinda wanted to pick your brain a little bit about what selling trends have you seen,
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you know, in this in this sort of, like, pandemic era and see what you, you know,
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thought about that.
12:34
Yeah.
12:34
We actually just did some research on this topic.
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So you mentioned value builder.
12:38
We have small business owners when they go in.
12:40
They complete a questionnaire.
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You know, asking about their company.
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And we took the 8 months of people that completed the questionnaire in advance of the
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COVID pandemic being announced It's about 5000 business owners.
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And then the subsequent 8 months.
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So during the pandemic, March till the end of last year, And as I say this, I'm mindful that
12:59
we're still in the pandemic, but I pulled the data and we analyzed pre COVID and during
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COVID.
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2 big things pop.
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Number 1 is the proportion of business owners that plan to pass their business to their kids.
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Has dropped through the floor.
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It's now around 10%.
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It makes sense.
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Right?
13:16
I mean, this pandemic has been brutal, and nobody wants to pass on their Albatross to
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their kids.
13:22
Right?
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So the proportion that wanna sell to their kids or pass the business to the kids has dropped
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dramatically.
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And in lieu of that, the proportion that wanna sell externally to a third party has gone up
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dramatically.
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It's now over 60%.
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Wow.
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The second big finding for the research was that the sell by date for most small business
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owners has been moved forward 20%.
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Meaning, small business owners wanna sell much sooner.
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So I agree with Elliot.
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I mean, I think it's gonna be a very interesting 2021, and a lot of small businesses
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are gonna sell.
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And so I think that's that's something to look for this year.
13:56
What kind of team do you need around you?
13:58
Okay.
13:58
I've raised my hand.
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I'm ready to sell my business.
14:01
Who like, do I need a lawyer?
14:03
Do I need a broker?
14:04
Like, like, who do I need around me if I think I'm gonna if I think I'm ready to do this?
14:10
Yeah.
14:10
You need an intermediary.
14:12
And if it's small business, a that's a business broker.
14:14
If it's a larger business, it's an M and A professional.
14:16
I'm a huge believer.
14:18
I I remember a story I had with, on built cell radio, a guy named Eric Levy, He sold a company
14:23
called Laundry Locker, and he tried to do it himself.
14:26
And, unfortunately, he accepted a relatively low offer, which got retreated on, meaning that
14:32
the buyer kinda lowered the price on the on on on later as we're they were negotiating.
14:37
And in fact, got him to finance part of the sale on that business.
14:41
Oh my god.
14:41
Learned from that.
14:43
And next time, his second business, Luxer 1, he got an M and A professional.
14:48
Long story short, the M and A professional got five offers for his company and then get this
14:54
through a process of playing one offer off the next, got the offers up 300%, meaning a
15:02
threefold increase just by playing one off the other.
15:06
And so I always remember that story from our lady because it reminds me of try to do it
15:11
yourself and the downside of that versus getting a professional.
15:15
Someone who knows what they're doing, And in this case, they literally tripled the offer.
15:18
Now that's not gonna happen for everybody, but it will, I think pay for themselves in in
15:24
creating competitive tension.
15:26
So I think you need an M and A professional.
15:28
You remind me of a story that I once I once had the opportunity to talk to Famous Dave of
15:33
Famous Dave's.
15:34
And he told me a very similar story that he sold his company to, you know, he sold Famous
15:41
Davis to a company that then franchised it.
15:44
And, you know, he kinda did it himself with a lawyer and and really, you know, he did not end
15:51
up with what he should have had.
15:53
And, you know, you you really do have to get the right people around you, but you also have
15:59
to vet your own people because I've heard stories of entrepreneurs who got a lawyer and
16:04
the lawyer for the other side knew that lawyer, and they didn't represent you as exec
16:09
aggressively as they should because they were helping their friend across the table and then
16:14
got a kickback somewhere else down the line.
16:16
I mean, there's all kinds of salacious stuff that goes on in in deals.
16:22
Right?
16:22
And I know that you you say that the one of the things you really have to watch out for is sort
16:26
of like the evil tricks that that Fortune 500 Giants can do, or private equity firms can do
16:32
when they're trying to purchase a business from a, an experienced owner.
16:37
Can you tell us a little bit about some of the stuff that look out when you're dealing with
16:40
that
16:40
kind of part?
16:40
Yeah.
16:41
I devoted a whole section of the book to all the slimy sleazy tricks you know, private
16:45
equity companies and and corporate buyers try to pull over on entrepreneurs because as
16:50
entrepreneurs, you know, we get tons of time to build a marketing plan, hire employees.
16:54
We learn all about running a small business, but very little opportunities to sell it.
16:59
And so they take advantage of that that naivete.
17:02
Look, one of the big questions that you're gonna get when you go to sell your company is,
17:06
what do you want for it?
17:07
Right?
17:08
It's a fair question.
17:09
Right?
17:09
Like, you're selling a car, you're selling a house, like, What do you want for it?
17:13
The danger of answering that question is you put a ceiling onto which you will ever sell
17:18
your company for.
17:19
Right?
17:19
The old expression and negotiation, he who answer, or she who says their price first will
17:24
lose.
17:25
And a reminder of one of the one of the folks I've interviewed for for the show was a guy
17:29
named Chris Jones who built a company called Pepper Jam, affiliate marketing business.
17:33
And they got a he got a call from a guy named Michael Rubin.
17:36
Michael Rubin is, like, tech lube and luminary billionaire, you know, unicorn guy.
17:40
And Jones thinks he's gonna have a one on one meeting with this guy, Michael Rubin, a nice
17:45
chat.
17:46
Jones walks in and Rubin says, okay.
17:48
What do you want for Pepperjet?
17:49
And instead of being on his own, Rubin is flanked by his chief financial officer and his
17:55
head of corporate development.
17:56
And he says it again, what do you want for your company?
18:00
And Chris, like, not expecting this at all is kind of on his back foot and blurts out a
18:04
number.
18:05
And Rubin says to his chief financial officer, okay, I think we can get a deal done.
18:11
And what Jones told me was that I probably put a a ceiling on the the value of my company
18:16
there because I just wasn't expecting that question.
18:19
Right?
18:19
So, look, I think if you get the question, what do you want for your company?
18:22
You're in no requirement to say anything.
18:25
You can just simply say, look, I'm a reasonable person.
18:27
I'll I'll review any reasonable offer you think you'd like to make and and and let them make
18:33
a question.
18:33
Put it back on them.
18:34
I love
18:35
it.
18:35
Like, you're not gonna box me into a corner, buddy.
18:37
Tell me what you want for it.
18:39
It's funny because I'm I'm starting to get a lot of offers for my URL.
18:43
When I created succeed is your own boss.com.
18:47
That's why I never named my business melinda Emerson.com by any I need to seat is your own
18:53
boss.com on purpose, you know, 13, 14 years ago because I knew one day I would sell it.
18:58
Now I'm not trying to sell it anytime soon, but I find it interesting that I'm starting to get
19:04
emails offers, people asking me, are you interested in selling your URL?
19:09
And I'm And I'm just sort of sort of like, well, what are you interested in paying?
19:13
You know, just just to see what the market is out there because you know, I do have an active
19:19
URL that gets a huge amount of traffic.
19:21
I have an extremely low Alexa score, you know, so I know what I have is value, and I also
19:27
have, like, I don't know, 5000 articles about how to start and grow a successful small
19:30
business on it as well.
19:31
So there's lots of different types of assets within one asset, but I know what you mean
19:37
about just, you know, thinking about it, because honestly, what started getting the
19:40
emails, I had never even thought about it.
19:43
What what would I you know, if I ever sold it, what would I sell it for?
19:46
So I I think it's important with the advice that you just gave.
19:50
And I really wanna get more, but I gotta take a commercial break.
19:53
And when we come back, we are gonna be talking with John about even more tips about the art of
19:58
selling a small business.
19:59
You are watching small business chat live, and we will be right back.
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We're back right now my guest, John Burillo, the author of the art of selling your business.
20:38
And now we're gonna talk about the biggest mistakes to avoid when selling a business.
20:42
So, John, break it down for us.
20:45
What what is, like, one of your biggest.
20:47
You you already just told us one about not sitting in the ceiling for yourself, but what I
20:52
know there's plenty others.
20:53
So what are some of the other things we need to watch out for?
20:55
Oh, man.
20:56
I mean, look, The best time to sell a business is when someone's buying it.
21:00
And I think the danger we and one of the big mistakes we make is we play a little bit too
21:06
hard to get.
21:07
So I'll give you an example.
21:09
I I had a guy on the on the show called Rand Fishkin, and Rand built a great company called
21:13
Moss that software business.
21:15
They built the $5,000,000 in revenue.
21:17
And software companies are really highly valued, and he got in his head.
21:21
It was worth four times revenue.
21:23
So in his mind, it's a pretty it's a pretty attractive asset, and he's going growing at
21:30
about a 100% a year.
21:31
So while he's at 5,000,000 today, he's expecting to be at 10,000,000 next year.
21:35
So in his mind, he's like 10,000,000 revenue.
21:37
It's worth four times revenue.
21:39
It's worth 40,000,000 bucks.
21:41
He gets a call from a guy named Brian Halligan who started HubSpot.
21:44
And he says, look, I see what you're doing at SCO Maz.
21:47
Why don't we have a conversation?
21:48
Halligan offers him five times his existing years revenue or $25,000,000 of cash and
21:53
HubSpot stock.
21:54
And Fishkin says, well, you know, I was thinking more like 40.
21:58
And Halligan says, no.
21:59
I'm not paying for the future.
22:00
I'm paying for the company you built today.
22:02
I'm offering 25.
22:03
Fish consists can't do it.
22:05
Fiskin instead raises venture capital and goes out and a and starts a number of different
22:10
products.
22:10
Unfortunately, most of them aren't as as successful as he was hoping.
22:14
And the company starts to bleed cash.
22:16
And in fact, it's so desperate that the venture capitalists remove Rand from the from the CEO
22:22
spot.
22:23
Wow.
22:24
And I interviewed him after the fact, and I said, what, you know, what was that like?
22:28
I mean, what happened to your share?
22:30
Do you still own?
22:30
And he said, you know what?
22:31
Because of the way the venture capitalist invested, they use something called preferred
22:36
shares.
22:36
Preferred shares means that they get their guaranteed return before he sees anything as a
22:42
common shareholder.
22:44
And so I said, well, what's what's your stock worth these days?
22:47
He said it's probably not worth anything.
22:49
Because they've held it for so long that they're gonna get all of their return before I
22:53
see anything.
22:54
And then I said to Ren, okay.
22:56
So what would that offer have been worth that you got from Halligan based on the appreciation
23:02
of HubSpot stock.
23:04
They said it'd be worth close to $200,000,000.
23:08
I tell you that story.
23:09
For two reasons, number 1, preferred shares are a way a lot of investors try to effectively get
23:14
your company and ensure they are gonna get their return.
23:18
And oftentimes that's gonna undermine your return.
23:21
Number 2, again, the best time to sell your companies when someone's buying.
23:25
And if someone like a a Brian Halligan shows up with a check, it's a good time.
23:28
It's a good time to pay attention.
23:30
Oh, yeah.
23:31
No.
23:31
He should've taken that money and ran for sure.
23:34
For sure.
23:35
For sure.
23:35
Alright.
23:36
So got a great book, by the way.
23:37
You gotta you gotta get his book.
23:39
Rand wrote a book.
23:40
Called Lost And Founder, and he tells a story in the book.
23:43
So do get the book.
23:44
It's a beautiful book, and he's done a great job with it.
23:47
Somebody just emailed me about that book, actually.
23:50
So I was thinking about getting the book and maybe getting him on.
23:53
So thank you for that tip.
23:55
I'll follow-up with that.
23:56
Alright.
23:57
So how can you position your business to get acquired by somebody?
24:01
Man, positioning, again, it's all the art of selling.
24:04
It's all about how do you position it?
24:06
And what you wanna do is make sure you look like something someone was gonna wanna buy.
24:11
So what you're gonna look at is look the acquirers in your space and see what kind of
24:16
businesses they're buying.
24:17
There's a lot of private equity groups right now, for example, rolling up certain
24:20
industries.
24:20
So you're gonna wanna look like something others wanna buy and reminded of a story from
24:25
the guys from Embanet.
24:26
So Embanet was in the business of helping universities and Colleges put their courses
24:31
online.
24:32
They were like a graphic design, web design shop, and they got an offer for their company
24:37
early days.
24:37
They got an offer of 3 times profit.
24:40
Which is kind of an average offer, not a very sexy offer, but it was, you know, it's a good
24:44
offer.
24:44
And the guys behind the company, Felberg and Wells are the names.
24:47
Said, yeah, we wanna do better.
24:49
We wanna get a better valuation.
24:50
And so they choose they chose to reposition their company from just a website development
24:56
shop.
24:56
To being part of the burgeoning e learning industry, right, because they were working with
25:01
these universities to help put their content online, So they started to remake their website
25:05
and their whole entire marketing message went from being a graphic design shop to in a a
25:11
development shop to a e learning organization.
25:15
Two and a half years later, they got an offer of 13 times EBITDA.
25:20
Oh.
25:21
The way you position your company and talk about it in the marketplace has a huge impact
25:26
on its value.
25:27
I love it.
25:27
I love it.
25:28
Alright.
25:28
So last piece of advice for somebody that wants to sell their company.
25:32
What is one more thing you want them to know?
25:34
Man, I look, I think the most important thing to ensure you punch above your weight is to
25:40
have multiple offers.
25:41
Right?
25:41
And there's 3 types of buyers.
25:43
Small businesses are generally bought by individual investors.
25:47
Medium sized businesses are often bought by private equity groups in particular these days.
25:51
And then larger businesses often get the attention of a Teegic Acquire, like
25:55
stephaniebreedloveincare.com.
25:57
What you wanna do is not turn yourself off to any one of those 3 acquirers because what you
26:02
really want is multiple offers.
26:04
With multiple offers that allows you to be in a driver's seat, you to dictate your terms.
26:09
And so I'd I just remain open to all three types of buyers Get more than one offer and
26:15
then play the game that our lady played so well and, you know, ginning the offers up by playing
26:20
one off the other.
26:21
I love it.
26:22
I love it.
26:23
What is your favorite podcast, John Rubillo?
26:25
Yours.
26:26
And I I actually like the New York Times, the daily.
26:29
I get most of my information from the daily.
26:32
Love that show.
26:33
Alright.
26:33
Good stuff.
26:34
Good stuff.
26:35
Alright, John.
26:36
What is your favorite business app?
26:38
I'm gonna give you a weird one.
26:40
Strava, and here's why.
26:42
I follow on Strava, the fitness app, some of the entrepreneurs that I interact with, I do
26:47
think he gives us a a different platform to connect with that is somewhat unsuspecting.
26:52
Okay.
26:53
I've never heard of that one, so you're teaching me something tonight here.
26:57
Stress.
26:57
I'm here for you, Linda.
26:59
Alright, John.
27:00
What's your favorite old school marketing tip?
27:02
Man, I love taking a book.
27:04
And highlighting something in the book, like, with a sticky note and writing, you know, I
27:09
thought of you.
27:10
Page 14, really reminded of you.
27:13
And and it the tailoring of the page in the book.
27:16
Nobody has time to read a whole book, but if you actually tailor it, I find that that makes
27:20
an impression.
27:21
Alright.
27:21
Last question, you guys, favorite business book you've ever read?
27:26
Yeah.
27:26
Small giants by Bo Birmingham.
27:29
It It's a wonderful book if you haven't read it.
27:31
That was an absolutely absolutely great book.
27:34
Alright, Katrice.
27:35
What's your favorite business book?
27:37
Thank you so much for being my guest on smallbizchattonight.com.
27:42
Alright, everybody.
27:44
I am Melinda Emerson, the small business lady, and I always appreciate you for coming and
27:49
joining us for the small fish chat podcast.
27:51
If you want more information on how to start or grow your small business, to my blog at succeed
27:57
as your own boss.com.
27:59
I'm Millen Amherson, the small business lady, your host, and until next time, remember that
28:04
you never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
28:07
God bless everybody.
28:09
Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
28:14
For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
28:21
Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.