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August 5, 2015 |
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Aaron Walker thought the money from selling his business would make him happy, but life after selling was a lot harder than he thought.
At the age of 27, Aaron Walker sold his business to a Fortune 500 company. He thought the money would make him happy, but life after selling was a lot harder than he thought. In this episode of Built to Sell Radio, Aaron Walker shares his story of rags to riches to depression and how he climbed back out. He also provides three tools you can use to help visualize your life after selling so you can avoid the trap that many cashed out entrepreneurs fall into.
Businessman and Life Coach, Aaron T. Walker, has inspired many through his leadership, mentorship, and consistent pursuit of excellence. He enjoys helping others and believes experience is a great teacher. 35 years of entrepreneurship and marriage have given Aaron a wealth of experience. Aaron continues to reach new heights and broaden his perspective of the terrain by examining his experiences and growing from them. It only took a few years as a partner with David Patton Construction LLC for Aaron to help take the business from doing one to two projects per year to a multi-million dollar company, voted number one builder for three consecutive years by Nashville’s House & Home & Garden Magazine’s People’s Choice Awards. He sold his retail business to Cash America USA, a Fortune 500 company. In addition to being the owner of eight lucrative businesses, Aaron participates in civic endeavors.
One Company, Two 8-Figure Exits
Ed Buckley started Peerfit, which allows companies to offer fitness classes as part of their employee benefits package. The company grew to more than 150 employees before receiving an acquisition offer for almost $100 million from a major fitness brand widely reported to be Peloton. Buckley retained some of the IP, which, in a strange twist, he was able to sell in another eight-figure exit months later.
Calvin Johnson built Lykki, an office supply company, to more than $7 million in annual revenue.
Johnson had two divisions, one had office kitchen supplies (e.g., coffee), and the other sold office supplies. The kitchen supplies business was more attractive to acquirers than the office supplies side, so Johnson decided to separate the divisions and sell them separately.
In 2015, Lorenzo de Plano co-founded Solace Technologies, one of the first vape manufacturers in the United States. The goal of the business was to create a discreet vape pen that customers could use as an alternative to smoking cigarettes.
The business boomed to revenue of more than one million dollars a month, but a looming threat had de Plano eyeing an exit. So, when a $15 million offer came in, he bit.
Start-Up To Ferrari In Five Years
Zain Hasan started an insurance agency called National Insurance Consulting Group (NICG), in 2014.
The downside of accepting shares as payment from your acquirer
Doug Chapiewsky built CenterPoint Solutions Inc. into an Inc. 500 company with $5 million in revenue and more than $3 million in EBITDA before he sold it to Israeli-based Nice Systems.
Sociopaths & Impostors: How To Sell Your Baby To A Giant
Jonathan Evans was an air ambulance helicopter pilot when he started to think about how drones could safely navigate the sky around him. Commercial pilots had rules of the sky, but there were no guidelines for drones despite companies from Amazon to Walmart beginning to experiment with using drones.
The ‘Sell Your Business Before It Starts’ Mindset
When is the best time to start thinking about an acquirer? For one company, they had it on their agenda since day one.
Selling to a Publicly Traded Company
In 1988, Tony Falkenstein started Just Life Group, one of the first water-cooler companies in New Zealand.
In 2016, Falkenstein identified the need to diversify into new service offerings and opted to start acquiring companies. Since then, Falkenstein has acquired six businesses, aligning with their overall focus of enhancing lives through healthy living and healthy homes.
Bootstrapping to a $200 Million Exit
In 2012 Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell to help SaaS companies increase revenue and reduce churn by managing their data in a single place.
After bootstrapping the business to 8-figures, Campbell decided it was time to raise money. While he was seeking a financial investor, Paddle approached him with an acquisition offer. Soon after, in 2022, Campbell sold ProfitWell to Paddle for over $200 million.
How to Make Your Email List Worth 7-Figures
In 2007, Laura Roeder started selling online courses on how to market through social media. Her courses gained popularity, resulting in Roeder growing an email list of around 70,000 people. Inspired to further serve her customers, she decided to create social media scheduling software.
It was one of the first social media planning tools that allowed you to schedule your social media content. Piggy backing off the list she had built from her online course business, the company hit $1 million in recurring revenue in only 11 months.
Jeremy Nagel started his entrepreneurial career teaching clients how to get the most out of Zoho, a popular CRM platform. Nagel began cultivating a small following on YouTube by sharing his advice for Zoho enthusiasts.
Given his status in their ecosystem, Zoho approached Nagel about creating an SMS plug-in for their application to allow users to text their clients while using Zoho. Nagel developed the application while keeping his day job. Despite only dedicating one or two days a week to its growth, the feature quickly became one of the top five applications in the Zoho marketplace.
One Bold Decision That Led to a 20X Growth in Revenue
In 2009, Raman Sehgal started a small marketing company called ramarketing. In 2015, frustrated with the company’s progress, Sehgal decided to analyze his business.
That’s when he discovered something interesting.
Ramarketing’s most valuable customers (low-maintenance, sticky, high gross margin etc.) were in the pharmaceutical industry. Sehgal immediately pivoted the company to solely serve clients in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
