Double an Offer, Without Turning off an Acquirer

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Wes Mathews built High Level Marketing, a digital advertising agency, to $6.5 million in annual revenue. The business was thriving, but when COVID hit, Mathews started to question the risk he was shouldering employing 49 people. It was around that time that Mathews received an email that would change his life forever.

In this episode, you’ll discover how to:

• Juice the value of your company by leveraging four parallel ideas.
• Price your service to maximize your customer retention.
• Double an acquisition offer without pushing the buyer away.
• Structure an acquisition offer to guarantee the deal points most important to you.

Show Notes & Links

Show Notes

High Level Marketing

(06:33) Wes Mathews: “My business partner and I, Jon Bowerman, he’s the CTO of the company.”

(11:20) Wes Mathews: “I wanted to charge a client set-up fee and a monthly reoccurring fee forever. That was the goal from day one. Looking back hindsight, there’s nothing more valuable than reoccurring revenue.” 8 Key Drivers of Company Value: Recurring Revenue

(12:39) Wes Mathews: “Because what do you have? At the end of the day, if you just have your customers and your customers can go over here, we had stickiness, they were on our own proprietary platform.” Why Sticky Customers Matter

(13:32) Wes Mathews: “I think early on when I started this journey, I was the guy, right? I’m beating the drum, I’m going out there, I’m driving it. But then I finally realized it took me a while I joined EO and just grew as a leader and as an individual to realize I need to build up my team and they were the true real asset of the organization.” 8 Key Drivers of Company Value: Hub & Spoke

(14:28) Wes Mathews: “We use the acronym MYCE, and it stands for Manage Your Content Easily.”

(21:58) Wes Mathews: “I joined EO organization, a global organization in Detroit, it’s like a hundred entrepreneurs that are all going through the same thing.”

(23:27) Wes Mathews: “We set the foundation up in the company saying, we’re going to go all-in and do such a great job early on and really drive the value, because I’m going to retain this customer for life. We sold some customers that we signed 11, 10 years ago that are still customers today. Our retention rate over the course of 11 and a half years, we’re sitting at about 90% now, but I always shot for 1.5% churn, year over year. We’re a digital marketing agency retaining 88% of our revenues. We worked really, really hard to make sure client satisfaction is just at the highest, highest level it could be.” 8 Key Drivers of Company Value: Recurring Revenue

(27:51) John Warrillow: “Michael Gerber’s book and they all know about the work on not in.”

(29:43) Wes Mathews: “EOS changed my life. Honestly, that is the one thing that I think that if I wouldn’t have adopted EOS, we may have blown up as a company and it would have been my fault.”

(33:00) Wes Mathews: “My vision and dream of High Level was always to sell the company for a hundred million dollars, to create a hundred million dollars of valuation. The last couple years I kept telling myself, this isn’t going to happen.” What is My Business Worth?

(34:39) Wes Mathews: “COVID is happening, my team’s freaking out. I’m freaking out, but I got to show up all clean and proper, and I’m the fearless leader. Right? But I’m also like s**t, this is scary, right? I’m in EO, a lot of businesses were affected and revenues, our customers pay us monthly. We lost, we had a small little dip, but nothing crazy. We really worked with our customers, they delayed payments and stuff, but we actually grew out of COVID.” How $1 of Revenue Became Worth $7

(36:28) Wes Mathews: “I go, this guy looks Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is the author of 10X, this fricking crazy sales guy. I love the guy.”

(36:39) Wes Mathews: “Todd Taskey, Potomac Capital”

(44:49) John Warrillow: “We call it The Freedom Point, which is when the sale of your business would create enough liquid wealth that you could live comfortably for the rest of your life.”

(45:04) John Warrillow: “You get your first rung on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and say, I’m never going to worry about paying the mortgage, kids hockey fees, whatever.”

(1:06:18) Wes Mathews: “The deal did get to a point where I’m like, I started to get irritated and said, this is distracting to me. Right? Are we going to move forward in this deal or I got to just close this chapter?”

(1:10:41) Wes Mathews: “I knew from that phone call, he probably doesn’t know. I don’t think I ever told him, but from that phone call, I was like, yeah, we’re going to grow this thing to a hundred million. I’m like, this is the right partner. Private equity would just freaking pick us apart like vultures and bust the company up. I care too much about the people, I built a great team and I care a lot about the people. I’m an emotional guy.”

About Our Guest

Meet Wesley Mathews – Co-founder & former CEO of High Level Marketing. Wesley is now Chief Revenue Officer of High Level Marketing that recently had a merger closing at the end of February. Previous to the merger, Wesley co-founded HLM in 2009 and grew it from an idea to $6.5M in revenue and over 45 employees. HLM thrives on Digital Marketing for Entrepreneurial run Small to Mid-Size Businesses.

Wes is known as a leader in the Digital space, a scrappy Entrepreneur that thrives on relationships and delivering on clear expectations. He is direct and has a clear vision to the future.

Wes has been married for 15 years and has 4 boys ages 12, 8, 8, 6. Outside of breaking up his kids fighting, he’s a very avid Hockey Dad, Golfer, Fisherman, Hunter, etc. He is on the constant seek of improvement, whether it’s personal, business, or family.

 

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