Menu
Subscribe:
Have you ever stayed in a fancy hotel and wondered how much they pay Aveda for those little bottles of shampoo? Turns out, there is a company called Pacific Direct that acts as a middleman between the hotel chain and the company supplying the shampoo.
U.K.-based Pacific Direct was earning £3.3 million when founder Lara Morgan decided to sell. She got multiple offers for her company and ultimately sold it to a private equity group for £20 million. During our interview, Morgan shared her wisdom on how to sell your company, including:
Have you picked your number?
Morgan grew up in an environment where she always felt she had less money than her friends, so she decided one day she would like to have £10 million because that meant her kids would never feel the same embarrassment she felt growing up.
Picking her number galvanized Morgan and she credits having a specific wealth goal as a key ingredient to building a valuable business.
Have you picked your number? If not, that is something we’ll do together during Module 12 of The Value Builder SystemTM – you can get started for free by getting your Value Builder Score.
Lara Morgan is most widely known for building her own leading global brand-licensing business Pacific Direct over the course of 17 years before selling a majority share in the company for £20 million. She is the mother of three and determined to be a voice for growth enterprise support as well as driving sales pride in Britain through Company Shortcuts.
Morgan is a regular commentator on Sky and BBC News and has appeared on BBC2’s The Apprentice: You’re Fired. She is a three-time finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was a finalist in the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year Award. Morgan also authored the recently published Amazon best-selling business book, More Balls Than Most. Taking it all in her stride, Morgan also an avid athlete, having competed internationally in the World Triathlon Championships.
How To Avoid The Hodgepodge Discount
The Traffic & Conversion Summit attracts 7,000 attendees and keynote speakers like Sir Richard Branson. So why would the creator want to sell it?
How Mike Winnet Sold His E-learning Company for Around 4-Times Revenue
In 2015 Mike Winnet started U.K.-based Learning Heroes after recognizing that most e-learning programs were long and boring. Winnet saw an opportunity to transform the industry by creating short, engaging, animated training courses.
Winnet started by trying to sell his courses to job seekers, but when his efforts failed, he pivoted to selling to companies. Instead of a few hundred dollars a year from job seekers, selling to companies meant he was getting a few thousand dollars a year.
Why Robert Glazer Sold His $28 Million Agency
Robert Glazer started an affiliate marketing agency called Acceleration Partners in 2007. Glazer never took outside capital and grew Acceleration to almost $28 million in sales before he sold a majority interest to Mountain Gate Capital in 2021.
John Ratliff started Appletree Answers in a spare bedroom of his house in 1995 and by 2012 had grown it to 650 employees and 24 locations when he decided it was time to sell.
Walking Away From an 8 Figure Exit
Josh Davis started Spirit of Women, a marketing agency selling content about women’s health to hospitals. Davis built the company up to almost $10 million in annual revenue when he kicked off a process to sell it, which he hoped would garner an offer of around 7x Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA).
When To Hire A President To Run Things
Want to bring in a President to run your company day-to-day? Here’s how to get it right.
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.
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.
6 Things to Know Before Approaching an Acquirer
Touraj Parang has experienced the highs and lows of selling a company.
In 2009, Parang sold his first company, Jaxtr, for pennies on the dollar. He took the lessons he learned and joined Webs.com, where he helped Haroon Mokhtazarda sell his company for over $115 million.
Parang left Webs.com and joined GoDaddy as a leader in their acquisitions group, where they acquired dozens of companies during his tenure.
Rory Fatt began his entrepreneurial journey running marketing seminars for restauranteurs. After several owners approached Fatt to do their marketing for them, he decided to launch Royalty Rewards in 2005.
The business was a multimedia marketing platform that helped small businesses market their products and services by rewarding loyal customers. The company took off, hitting just over $2 million in revenue in its first year.
Inspired to achieve financial freedom, Fatt began to explore selling his company. In 2022, he accepted an offer from Schianti Partners that would set his family up for life.
In 2001, Haroon Mokhtarzada and his brothers started Webs.com, which allowed anyone to build a professional website. Eager to grow the company, they decided to raise money from a venture capital firm – a decision Mokhtarzada would later regret.
They ultimately grew Webs.com to over 50 million users and sold it in 2011 to Vistaprint for over 10x revenue, totaling $117.5 million.
How to Turn Beta Users into Customers Plus 3 Other Stories
This week, we’re featuring four recent guests and highlighting transferrable lessons they shared about exiting their company.
