M&A Launchpad Podcast

Digital Assets & Business Valuation with Paige Wiese

This discussion explores topics such as preparing a business for sale, integrating digital strategies after a transaction, and navigating the fast-paced changes in the digital world, particularly the growing influence of artificial intelligence. Paige also discusses the specific opportunities and difficulties involved in establishing a digital presence for blue-collar businesses.

Full Transcript

Hey there. This is Casey with the M and A Launchpad podcast. Wanna let you know about October 25th, put it on your calendar. This is a do not miss one day event. There’s gonna be incredible headliners, but really at the end of the day, you’re gonna get a chance to talk to people that have made acquisitions, learn from some of the challenges that they’ve made, because this is definitely a challenging process.

More importantly, there’s gonna be people there that can help you and support you along the way from great vendors, quality of earnings, how to run the due diligence process, and how do I get financed? How do I raise capital? How do I structure all of these things? October 25th and Chicago, we’re gonna be gathering, it’s gonna be hundreds of people that are all focused like-minded people, and man.

Everyone that’s come has given us incredible feedback. So Mark your calendar October 25th in Chicago. We look forward to seeing you. Alright, on today’s episode, we interviewed Paige Weese, where we talked about what does it look like to evaluate and have a digital marketing strategy on a business that you’re buying, right?

Buying a business has many parts to it. From the operations to the sales, to the marketing, and usually right. Technology is the backbone of all that. And so what are some of the considerations that you as a business buyer need to think about whenever you’re buying a business and who can help you identify those gaps, the weaknesses, and the strengths to help you make a successful acquisition?

So Casey, what were some of your takeaways? Well, you’re the software guy and you know that this checklist is pretty valuable, man. I mean, like, I have been through multiple due diligences and I just have not thought about the digital footprint, the, any of that stuff. So she put a total light bulb onto me and, uh, getting that information because, you know.

Once you get to the close, and if that business has some type of marketing expense or advertising expenses and you don’t know where all that’s coming from or who controls that, or who owns the website or all that, man, that that could be a loss right there just of time, energy, and effort. I’m not saying it’s gonna cost you $50,000, but what I am saying is that time is money, and this is one of those things you could just alleviate right up front.

Know what you’re getting when you close. So I was super impressed with this podcast and page, so she’ll definitely be someone we talked to. No, I completely agree. Right? I mean, you know, it’s, it’s easy to get hyper fixated on buying the business, but not really think about the transition and the mechanics of that and you know, that’s what they’re there to help solve.

And so we should have gone into horror stories on this one. We didn’t. But again, lots of valuable things. There’s plenty of them to help get a successful transition. So. That’s this Optic.

Welcome to the M and a launchpad podcast with your host, Casey and Ferris with Equity Launchpad. On this podcast, you’ll gain insights on acquiring, investing in and selling profitable businesses in the lower to middle market. Whether you’re a business owner, investor, or spying entrepreneur. At Equity and Launchpad, we will provide you with the knowledge, guidance, and capital to navigate the world of mergers and acquisitions.

Hey guys, go ahead and just pause the podcast for a second. When you’re buying a business, you need to ensure the financial health of the company. The quality of earnings is mission critical. It doesn’t matter what size business you’re buying. Patrick O’Connell Advisory Group. They’re dynamic. They do a great job.

They’re gonna look over your shoulder, they’re gonna make sure that you’re doing the right thing. And this guy’s done over 200 buyers successfully just like you. So reach out to ’em and it’s O’Connell advisory group.com. Click at the link in our show notes. Can’t Live With without. Paige, welcome to the show.

How are you today? Doing well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Yes. Great. Well, why don’t you just kick it off and talk to us a little bit about what you do, your background, how you’re involved in the ETA, all that great stuff. So, um, I own True Ring Digital. We’re a full service digital marketing agency.

Uh, really tailored more though as your digital partner. So we’re, while we do the traditional website development, we do the digital marketing and all of that, we like to dive a lot deeper into the digital assets that go along with the business and really looking at the full digital footprint from your domain and your hosting and your emails all the way into your Google Analytics, your social profiles, your.

Compliance, a DA compliance, um, you know, how are we storing and managing brand files? So that’s where I say we really come alongside and work with our clients to meet them where they’re at, to make sure that we’re looking at the big picture of everything as well. I really love it. ’cause at as, I mean, it’s just not part of my checklist, I’ll be honest.

Like it’s not on my checklist. It’s gonna be, I’m gonna go to your website, download it. ’cause that’s just great stuff. You know, you assume it’s just gonna come or it’s gonna be there. Right. But that, that’s a great angle. I love that. And it’s important, right? I mean, it’s kind of the lifeline of a business is really that sales and marketing strategy.

Even at our companies, that’s kind of the, the one where you kind of have to get the right people, the right alignment, because it’s kind of, you know, there’s, it’s, it’s a blurriness between operations, sales, and marketing, right? And so you kind of have to get a real strategy, a place that’s effective. Well, what we see too, on the m and a side is, you know, like they’re stoked and they’re looking at all the things when it goes to a transaction, but no one’s really putting their pulse on.

But what does that look like for these assets? How are they getting transferred, um, of ownership? How are they getting handed off? How are we making sure nothing is lost With all of those, we’ve identified 300 digital like data points that go into having a business online. And yeah, you’re deep in the weeds looking at finances, you’re deep in the weeds, looking at the tangibles and operations people slow down and forget to focus on the digital side of that all.

So, um, yeah, and I think anytime you’ve got multiple brands, I know you guys are. You know, got a different, a couple different ventures going on as well. And you know, they forget that each of those continue to have their own set of assets and what are we doing to keep that all aligned? And I feel a lot of agencies or a lot of business owners are focused on just that one little section of it, not looking at the big picture.

And so that’s where we really started to see that there’s some issues out there in that m and a space that need to get cleaned up and addressed. Yeah. So, so who’s your typical customer? Maybe walk us through, you know, a typical customer. Right. At what point did they bring you in? What’s the problem you’re helping them solve and what are they typically overlooking?

We have like two typical, uh, customers for us are on both sides, right? So typical is gonna be your buy side. Typical is gonna be your sell side. There’s two ways that we can really put that into place. Um, when you’re looking at the sell side, we like to see them about a year out so that we can start looking at how do we increase that valuation.

Through your digital presence? Is that increasing your website automation? Is it getting a new website? ’cause you haven’t had one done in the last 10 years. Is it making sure that you do have ownership of these pieces? Is it reducing costs because you’re overpaying for some of your third party tools or license keys and different things that you don’t need?

So how do we come in and really gather all of that and put it together so that when you do go to market. You have a very, very strong section there on that like line item, if you will. And so when you get to do diligence, you’re not gonna get slowed down in your deal and you’re not gonna have your deal and your valuation impacted because they start asking questions at that point.

So that’s a really good side for us on the sell side and increasing valuation there. So a bit of a jumpstart on that is always good. On the acquisition and really quick. And what’s the deliverable actually on that before you hop to the buy? Yeah, deliverable. So we’re gonna go through and we’re gonna put together a whole like packet basically, where it’s like, here is everything that we’re looking at and asking for.

And we’ve identified ownership, we’ve identified when things expire, we identify, you know, do we have the right logins? What happens if an employee turns over and put all of that into place. I, a lot of times we hear. I can’t get ahold of my marketing team. I don’t, I can’t get you the numbers that you’re asking for, for me to prove that the ROI is there on the marketing expenses that we’re having.

So while they’re looking at financials, they’re not able to get the documents to support it. So we’re gonna see what we can do to either recover that or let’s start getting some data in place. Now before we, like I said, get to that like two month mark, um, prior to exiting and don’t have anything to show for it.

Because most of the companies, if it’s online business or even a traditional business, whatever, most people are doing some type of online advertising, right? Yes. Keywords. They’re doing something. And so if I’m going through and I’m doing all my due diligence and I’m like, all right, look, there’s 10 KA month that’s going to advertising great.

Most of the time it’s like, yeah, it’s advertising great, but in your, your checklist and what you’re saying is, Hey, Casey, listen, let’s dial into that 10,000. Or let’s, let’s do an analysis and say, Hey, what, what, what is the ROI on this or you know, all of that other stuff where I’m sitting there vi busy doing the Q of E or looking at the, the PNLs and doing all that ebitda.

Great stuff. There’s just that extra little notch, right? You go into that part or, and let me ask you if this is also something you deliver, which is to then come back to me and say, Hey, listen, there are some things we can do. Off the bat, right? I’ve looked at the keywords, I’ve looked at the market and you know that 10 K could be completely given here and you should be able to get so much more out of it.

Yeah. Low hanging fruit to address. Now that gives you that, and that’s been helpful on both sides, right? We could also come in on the acquisition side and go, Hey look, we’ve looked at the numbers and we see what they’re doing, and there’s actually a lot of opportunity if you just reposition yourselves a little bit and now we, you know, go ahead and acquire because we know we can already jump that.

Revenue pretty quickly if we’re doing the right things compared to what they were doing. And then, yeah, same thing on the, um, exit side of, Hey, why, or another way we see it is a lot of companies will come in as referral based, especially if you’re doing like home services or some of those more traditional kinds, accounting, whatever per, uh, business services, whatever.

And that’s not really gonna look great when you go to the valuation side and due diligence. So if we can come in and, yeah, start to get ahead of it and say, why don’t we focus on two to three really core lead generation tools. Here’s what we’re recommending for a budget. Let’s run that for one to two years so that when you go and we’re asking for this valuation.

We can show them that that revenue is coming with you and it’s not just gonna get lost ’cause all the referrals decided to go to a different company. Um, or, you know, the, the referral network and everything. You know, Paige, you bring up a a great point here, and I think for our listeners that are thinking about buying their first business, or if somebody that has a business wanting to exit, they always say that you gotta start with the end in mind, right?

So if you’re buying a company, you’re not, I love that people say, Hey, I’m gonna own this forever. Right? But the truth is, is if you do it right, someone’s gonna tap you on the shoulder and buy it from you. Okay? So what we are always doing at Equity Launchpad on our deals is we have a data room we’re always looking for.

As we add value, we create a data room, we build out that piece. And so it’s also nice to be able to say to a a, a seller. Is, Hey, this is the, this is, you know, ’cause one, I’ve got salespeople, people do traditional sales, but look at the lead gen, the ROI that we get here. That is, so I’ve never really thought about that as a, as a selling point in regards to, Hey, when I go to exit this business, I need to have a digital marketing kind of stamp.

Like, this is ROI, this is our plan, and prove out that scalability there so I can grow the business. Correct. I mean that, that’s. Really a key. So instead of thinking, Hey, I’m gonna try to sell my business in the next six months, someone’s gotta put that plan together, that exit strategy. And one of them can be is, hey, if we added more digital marketing or if we proved up, you know, a certain amount and look at the sales that are coming in, if you spent more look at what you could get.

It’s pretty, pretty powerful, right? Well, I mean, yeah, people are looking, how do we, you know, two x, three x, four x the company, and a lot of times it is, you’re going to have to modify your marketing budget. You know, like bottom line there. Yes, there’s a few other ways you can do that and maybe you can cut some corners, some place to like shore up your profit margins and whatnot.

But at the end of the day, if you want to really show and like grow and scale. It’s going to be, to your point, how do we get more qualified leads in the door? Then how do we make sure our sales team can close those deals? But we don’t want the sales team chasing unqualified leads. So that comes back to what are we doing to, you know, generate those to begin with.

And sometimes it is the cold calls and, you know, different ways of going about it, but. Are there other ways we can maximize that time too and have those kind of fall more on their lap and a little more warm so that we can get them to the deal a lot faster? Yeah, I can see, and we’ll talk offline ’cause definitely want to talk to you about what, so, uh, we made an acquisition in May on a, a service business, um, has zero zero marketing.

We’re, we’re not at the marketing growth phase. We’re at Solve foundation play. But we know we don’t. We already know that once we get into the digital marketing or we start advertising and doing that stuff, but we’ve gotta build out a CRM. We’ve gotta build out all these things. So is that some of the sides that you come into when you talk about digital?

Is it more about traffic or do you actually help say, Hey, I’m gonna help you guys get a funnel here and how to market to that funnel and build out those triggers and all that great stuff? Is that kind of in the package? You offer, we can go into that for sure. You know, obviously there’s gonna be other professionals that are much more experienced in like the set CRM integration, but we do look at it and the pace, the place that we really like to come in is too many businesses have a website.

And they have a CRM, but they’re not connected. They’re not talking whatsoever or you’re, to your point, right, they have a sales team, but like, are we really tracking how those leads are getting in there or did you just say, Hey, sales team, here’s your CRM. Go ahead. We’ve set up some things for you, but.

It’s there. We don’t have everything in place, right? So we do like to have those conversations with our clients to say, how can we automate more? How can we integrate your existing tools so that you are a well-oiled, smooth rolling machine over there instead of. Then once we get the lead in, someone has to manually add it to the CRM, and then from there it gets triggered to the next person and like, no, we’re not in that age anymore.

We need to get into how do we automate? And that, yeah, that’s another area that if you’re looking to acquire, dive deeper, ask the questions of the company and if those are things that they still haven’t automated. You can, yeah. Jump in there right away, clean those up, and I guarantee you’ll start to see more revenue right off the bat because you’re gonna be able to get things done a lot faster and be able to handle higher volume.

Got it. And, and so maybe shifting gears to the sales side, right? Mm-hmm. You know, what does that look like and you know, kind of what are the clients doing there? What are you helping with and how are you solving. On, uh, let me go back though on the, oh, I’m gonna say the buy side. Sorry. I apologize. I didn’t say the buy side.

No worries. I just wanted to make sure. Um, yeah, so on the buy side, we like to come in one, as we mentioned, just kind of, let’s just take a quick look. What’s going on, what questions did you ask? What, like, what quick things can we identify as your, um, exploring? Is this a good purchase for you or not?

Obviously we can’t get into everything until we get deeper into consulting, but then what we really like to one talk about is. Do you, are you gonna get all of these things and do the, does the current owner know where those assets are? So one thing I encourage is, you know, on our website we’ve got a checklist for the digital asset.

Um. Tools and you can go on there and download it and it’ll start telling you like as far as domain and hosting, what does that ownership look like as far as social? What does that look like as far as marketing tools? What does that look like? Who has owners? So it starts to give you as a buyer, questions to start asking instead of waiting until the deal has closed and starting to ask.

That’s what we see too many clients doing, is that they acquire and then they engage us, and then they start saying. Hey, why is this happening? And we have to, did you ask for this? Did you do that? Did you, no, no. Great. Let’s go back through our checklist and do it. So, um, that’s one thing I would definitely encourage is start understanding what questions to ask on a digital side before you acquire.

And then the second place that we help clients is the post-transaction integration, whether that’s into an existing system that you have, ’cause you’ve acquired multiple brands like that. Or just how do we get them over to you so that you can get off the ground, ground and running? What we’ve seen is, yeah, some people don’t know to be asking for A, B, and C.

The email login details to the actual admin account, not just logins to an email. Um, you know, it could be. Do they have privacy policy and you know, whatnot in place in the right disclaimers, or do we gotta jump in and do that right away? So certain ways that we wanna make sure that you’re protected from the get and really just trying to speed up the integration process too often.

Like you said, they’re focused on all of the different phases. And if you’re a new buyer, that’s a lot to take on in that like ETA space, right? You come in and you don’t really know, you maybe know how to run the, some of the business, or you’re hoping that your key employees are coming with you, but. We need to make sure that that digital side really does.

You gotta have control of that, no question. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That is a good piece. No, I mean, and most people don’t realize all of the nooks and crannies, like, you know, for example, the company may be using a third party service to schedule postings for social media. Yeah. And the owner thinks, let me ask for just a Facebook account.

You kind of miss the fact that how the schedule actually need the software, the scheduling also, right? Or, you know, if I’m getting the domain name, you need to really understand all the DNS entries and what’s happening there. You’re not gonna just flip the switch to go from outlook to Gmail if that’s your preferred thing.

Uh, yeah, I don’t, there’s a lot of mechanics big time. So that’s the value. You know, my background is software, so at least for our businesses, I, I know that you’re nailing it. You’re, well, the most people don’t, I mean, I have 20 years of experience for it, ETA too, if they’re coming in to own a business for their first time, if you will, or like, you know.

No, they don’t know what all these little technical things are. Startups start to understand because they’ve gone through that headache slowly but surely. Right. I set up a domain, something stopped working. Now I know that word, but yeah. If you’re acquiring a business that’s so well-rounded and ready to go.

You’re not gonna know that stuff till it comes up. And when it comes up, it hits a bit harder because you don’t know who’s in place to solve that issue for you. You don’t even know how to say what the actual issue is. You know, it’s just my site’s down, my emails are down, or whatever that looks like, but we, they don’t know how to say what the root cause of it is, or.

Do I call an IT company? Do I call the lawyer who said that this was all my ownership and something happened? Or do I go call a marketing company or a web company? And so now they’re already just wasting time in weeks and circles trying to figure out who’s the right contact. It’s clean. Yeah. So, so is your business more of kind of doing a, a vis low cost audit and then obviously the things you identify are things that you, you can help them solve?

Right. And that’s where, you know, you’re, that’s the real core of the business for you, right? Yeah, no, it’s a great way to say it. We’re gonna come in, we’re gonna audit everything, make sure we, you know, we know where things are, who’s in charge of what, just makes it easier to, yeah, if you’ve got key employee turnover, we can quickly recover, you know, not recover, but like make that transition, if you will, so that it doesn’t get to a recovery phase.

And then also, you know, yeah, as we start to identify gaps. If it’s like, yes, you have legal issues, then obviously we’re gonna refer it out to a lawyer. If it’s like, yeah, your Cybersecurity’s not great, we’ll refer it to a networking person. But if it falls into that digital side, then we’ll say, Hey, these are things that we can help you with too.

So you don’t have to go and find a whole bunch of vendors or have. Seven different vendors trying to handle different things that aren’t talking. So Paige kind of just let’s, let’s un understand the business, but how did you stumble across this niche? Because you’re one of the first people I’ve talked to that’s, that’s focusing in this area.

So how did you, what’s your background? How did you run into this? Yeah, my background is actually just self-taught web design. I was doing architecture originally and trying to find some money and decided to start teaching myself website design. Um, that was about 16 years ago. And then from there we just started seeing clients roll up, you know, we were providing amazing services, we were getting the results they needed, and they would get rolled up into an investment company or.

They would decide, Hey, actually I’ve just been doing this for far too long. You got me where I needed to go. I’m ready to exit. What does that look like? And so our clients just kind of naturally started falling into that arena. And I think it just kind of was speaking volumes to us though of like, we’re onto something here as far as how do we get them ready to hit that exiting phase, and what are the things that are coming up during that deal process.

Or, you know, pain points that we could resolve. And then yeah, as we got more and more into the, some of the investment side and the acquisition side, sure. They have processes in place. Yes. They’ll say there’s a team that’s handling the integration. We, uh, we’ve seen though that when we get in there, no one’s done any of the things that we’re asking about.

And so that’s where we were like, you’re right. You have an integration team. You’re right, you have due diligence. But an IT company who you think is in charge does not really wanna go hunt all these logins down. They don’t wanna identify where these gaps are and how to transfer it over. They wanna focus on your it.

So that’s where we started seeing that. Yeah. An IT company’s just keeping things running. That’s very different than understanding, you know, how a business fully operates and what are the nooks and crannies to be aware of. Yeah, I mean, we just went through this. I mean the, the company that we bought, small business, it’s in the service side.

It’s in a specialty niche. They’ve been running the business the way they’ve done since, uh, really 75, 76. And so they’re using Why not joking. Why, why YK mail? Um, not every employee had an email. Um, people were using their personals. And so our it, the IT group we’ve used prior, they came in and set us up on Microsoft.

They got everybody linked in on the teams and all that, but. That doesn’t get into the other stuff. Right. That doesn’t get into the other stuff that, you know, you don’t even think about until after you close. And then you’re like, man, you know, now I’ve gotta go search all this down. And you find out that, you know, the guy in charge has no clue about any of it, right?

They’re not tracking anything, especially from, you know, to 1975 or something. Like, no, I always say it’s in an email sent to the client at some point that’s like, here’s the login details. And they’re like, cool, I’m not gonna put anywhere. ’cause if I need in the future. I’ll just find that email. But oftentimes in a transition, those emails are all deleted when the ownership is transferred.

So if that was the secure storing of it all right down the drain, it went right. So yeah, like how do we make sure, or even going to say, Hey, as part of this transition, you are not allowed to delete the emails you have to give us. All right? I mean, that’s important too. People don’t realize. Some of these things really matter, right?

Yeah. And especially like, you know, let’s say you’re buying a law firm. I mean, you know, you really need to have that history and you need to have backups of it, right? And so how do you check all the boxes? Just make sure you have that in place and you know what to ask for as part of the, the agreement to buy the business.

Mm-hmm. There’s so many questions, right? And you’re right. It’s, everything’s running fine and Okay, like we acquired and we’re doing great. It, it inevitably will absolutely, something will come up. At some point, a digital piece is going to throw a wrench in your operations and it will bring your business to a halt.

It’s just a matter of when, and that is what we have seen for pretty much every business that is acquired. And so that’s where we too, we’re like, how do we get ahead of this? How do we prevent that so that we don’t keep getting calls? Why did everything halt? Why did I have to turn off my marketing?

Because my website’s down? Why are my emails not sending? Why did the contact form stop sending me leads three months ago? And I’m just now finding out all of that. At some point it’s gonna happen. And so how do we Yeah, be more prepared for it? Now just kind of diving into another question here for me, this is more for me and I hope the listeners a benefit, you know, so what are you seeing change right now in the digital landscape from what you guys do on advertising, marketing, and things like that?

Right. We’ve got. Chat, GPT, we’ve got all these things hitting the market. So I’m sure you’re on the cutting edge of figuring out like, Hey, here are the things that are, that are, what do you see? What do you see in that digital landscape that’s changing from the way keywords used to be done to Facebook?

All that good stuff. W what are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, you’re right. The biggest change that we’re seeing right now is just how do we adapt for ai? Uh, obviously, you know. Google search is much lower on the totem pole than it used to be. Uh, chat or just, you know, uh, AI becoming more and more of the responses that people are looking for and trust, trusting blindly like absolutely.

If you know, the first result in the AI is. This company, they’re gonna go and call them right away. They’re really not gonna do a whole lot more research. So, you know, what do we do then from an uh, SEO side, a IO side, all of that to stay more in front of it. And what we’re seeing too, is a lot of clients calling and saying, what do we need to be doing differently to incorporate?

And I’m like, you haven’t been running SEO at all. Why? Why would we think now all of a sudden we can not only catch up but get ahead of, and so any of those that you know, were just like, no, we don’t need SEO. We’re not gonna focus on it. And now wanna quickly shift gears to optimizing for ai. You’ve got a long, long road ahead of you, you know?

Or it’s a costly, expensive road to try to get to that catch up. And so one is, it’s always better though to start as soon as possible than necessarily wait another six months or another two years to try to get ahead of it. So that’s one thing that we’re seeing change. And then another is just, you were saying it with personal email accounts.

We’ve got so many people that are just signing up for AI on their personal accounts, training it for the company, and then they leave. All of that information that was trained now is going away with the employee. And so how do we start having the conversations with business owners of, you need to be setting those up.

You need to be supplying the team with the logins and that way if they leave, that comes with you. And then there’s still stuff on marketing, you know, with uh, Facebook and whatnot. It’s right on the cusp. I mean, yes, AI is great for, should I set this up myself? But you’re still not an expert. You really do need a digital marketing company to come in and set those Google ad campaigns up to set social up.

So I mean, yeah, social media marketing up and stuff. So, you know, it, it’s understanding where is AI good for running the business and where do you still want to, um, lean on the professionals for it. No, that’s a great answer. And that helps. ’cause you know, those are a lot of things ’cause we buy these old businesses.

Right. So look, I’m just gonna talk about what Ferris and I do. Yeah. You know, they’re not, you’re, you’re, we’re not looking at a digital marketing engine. Right. It’s, it’s not even really being thought of, you know, one of the companies that we’re in due diligence on right now doesn’t even have a website.

They don’t need that stuff. Mm-hmm. At least what they think. Right. We know that it’s valuable. We know that’s the value add that you can bring. Right. Those are those, those are those, those pieces. And so, and I would imagine that a lot of our listeners that are looking for a lot of these blue collar ran businesses, you know, they’re like, eh, you know, that’s maybe not as important today as it is tomorrow.

So what is your advice? Right. You know, look at me as like, I’m asking you right now, you know, what is your advice for those that are buying the blue collar businesses that maybe doesn’t have a lot of these digital assets, but what should they be thinking about in their integration timeline? Of, Hey, the first 30 days, first 90 days, I’m really just trying to get payroll, right?

I’m trying to get this right. I’m trying to get this. When should you start, you know? Then really focusing on this digital side of building that brand and starting to build out the SEO and getting the website where you need it to be. How do you see that in that, that phase? I think that it is great to like be considering it and I, one of the biggest pieces is like you don’t wanna be driving so much marketing if you’re still trying to get your operations in line.

So I do think get the presence, at least build the website and get like the directory listings and whatnot claimed so that you are at least getting a presence if people are looking for you. And also sometimes just announcing that the changed hands or ownership and management, right, so that they’re aware that it’s still around, but.

So if they’re going and doing any research and like, oh, I heard Johnny sold the business. Finally, if someone still goes to look, the business still exists. Right? So that’s where I would say at least getting the foundation in place is best. Then go in and focus on how do we get the operation, the books, the numbers and everything in line, and then move into what are we doing now for a very strategic strategy on marketing to now get this, you know, going even more because.

Like I said, you can do all the marketing, but if the website’s not there, there’s no point. And if the website’s not gonna convert, there’s no point. And at the same time, you can only handle so much traffic and leads if you don’t have the operations in place. So I think really understanding, leveraging what was built and came with the company the best that you can, but don’t let it run dry.

What I’ve also seen is people are like, it’s so established. We’re not gonna do marketing, we’re just gonna let. These, like, especially in blue collar, we see a lot of, we got these contracts and they just keep coming back. All these construction companies just keep coming back, right? So why would we go look for new work?

Why would we look for more work? It will dry up, just like, let’s say Johnny just sold, so is Bob. And so then what happened? They’re gonna, you know, have someone new come in and start looking for a different contractor or vendor and providers. So you don’t want to be just sitting and writing it out. You do wanna start getting proactive.

You wanna be in front of your customers, the potential customers all the time, right? Yep. Constantly. Exactly. Remind them of the who, the what, and stopping and, you know, seeing you, your brand. I mean, with the company we’re looking at buying, didn’t even have signs on their trucks until, you know, little things, right?

Simple things. I mean, it’s kind of a sleeper, but big in his industry, but nobody really knew it was them. So. Awesome. Well, I think we can go ahead and move on to our rocket round where Beautiful. We’ll ask the list, the, uh, the guests, the same three questions. So first question, what do you like to do in your free time?

Uh, in my free time, I’m an avid show runner. I love, I’m in Denver, so I love getting up into the mountains about 12,000 feet and just enjoying the day running and, uh, checking out the trails and the views. See, I gotta say Casey’s more of a 14,000 footer. All right. He just did veneer two months ago, or two weeks ago.

Yeah. So you got that done. So yeah, we love, my daughter lives in Boulder. Um, you know, my wife just got back and she’s like, oh, it’s just so beautiful. And they went for hikes and I mean, it’s just, it’s really nice. It’s so quiet and peaceful. Yeah. Like you just get away from it all. You start to get to the right elevation.

There’s a lot less people too, than some of the easier, smaller trails. So a little more solitude. I agree. It’s big stuff. It’s needed. Alright, next question. What’s your most memorable moment in your business journey? Um, memorable moment in my business journey. You know, I think there’s been so many ups and downs.

It just, sometimes it’s just getting here where we’re at, what we’re doing. You know, I, it’s, I started just freelance with no experience in it and so I just take every day is, I’m very, very fortunate to be doing exactly what I love. I didn’t know I enjoyed business. You guys had asked earlier about, you know, how do we get into, how do I get into m and a?

I’m just, I didn’t even know these things were around, you know, when I started my business and so just, I felt like doors just like kept opening of. How there’s so much more out there than just even owning a business, you know? And how do I grow through acquisition? How do I acquire and invest in other businesses?

And so for me, just finding this is like my passion. This is what I love. And being able to not just follow that myself, but help other businesses go through that same journey is really, really exciting. So it’s more rewarding than like a moment. Fair enough. No, I love that. And then the last question, which I think is actually even more applicable for you, you know, favorite tool or resources?

You probably know many of them. Yeah. Favorite tool I’m gonna say is CRM. We use Insightly. Not a lot of companies use it, but I mean, we’ve been on it since probably 2014, so it’s pretty hard to get off. But I don’t know where I’d be without a CRM, whether it be. Clients opportunities, uh, just tasks. What am I supposed to do today?

So I’ve never heard of Insightly. So what, what’s the, just, what’s the plug, what’s, what does it do that’s different? Can you give Casey some insight? Yeah. My biggest reason that we chose it is that we get to, um, have project management and, uh, CRM in the same system. So if we update a contact, it updates in the project as well.

And then the other reason is the way that we can do our own customized pipelines and tasks. We don’t run in a Kanban, um, you know, type of style we, or any of the traditional kind of tools, if you will. So it’s very, especially web design and marketing, it’s different. And every service that we offer has a different flow.

So we’re able to go in and create that exact flow. What tasks need to be happening, what tasks can happen 30 days from moving into that phase where a lot of ’em are like sprint style and it, good luck. You guys have seen sites get built as Sprint is not the way that that’s gonna happen. So yeah, for us, just the customization of it all has been.

Uh, stellar. And then on top of it, the tasks. Yeah, it just moves us to a much more task based so nothing gets falling through the cracks. It’s a lot of what allowed us to stay, you know, even ready for digital assets as we got into this, is we’re already collecting these things as we go. ’cause we have tasks reminding us to do things.

Yeah. Can I tell people going from zero CRM to one CR. Is one of the biggest leaps you can make to have a CRM, right? Yes. People obsessed about which is the right one, but then later, once you’re on any CRM, even if it’s Excel, right, you could treat Excel like a CRM if you’re methodical about it, right? But just making that first leap is a huge impact on the business.

Then later, once you’ve used something for a little bit, you can start to know what you like, what you don’t like, what are you looking for, and then make the leap from one to two. But it’s really getting from zero to one is that first and most critical piece of it all. So critical. Well, I think that’s a good point ’cause a lot of companies will ask, like are starting to specialize in HubSpot.

Um, go high level, different tools that are out there and. With tree ring. I don’t care what CRM you’re using, I am not gonna ask you to change off of it. We’re gonna figure out how do we use that into what we’re trying to do instead, so that it is that efficient tool. But you’re right, I mean, what we keep trying, like we should get off of it.

There’s probably some ways we could automate a little bit better, some of our processes and whatnot. And then I just look at it and I’m like, how, how after, you know, 10 years on this tool, are we literally just gonna overhaul and jump to a whole new program? So, you’re right, it is a huge jump, but something to really, really think about what is it that’s working and do you need, well, I know a company that helps, you know, businesses basically put together a strategy.

They can help you put that strategy together of how do you switch a different CRM. All right. That’s good to know because I know I even keep talking to my, um, project manager about it. I’m talking about you. No, that’s what I’m saying. No, like internally, like. And plus like, it’s gonna be my time. Let’s be honest.

I don’t have the time to revamp a CRM this moment, so I’m, I’m actually really stoked about it. That’s pretty awesome. Great. Well Paige, thank you for hanging out with us today. Great stuff. I learned a lot. I’m gonna get that download, but. Tell us what website and how people can get ahold of you, um, from this call, from this podcast.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, on LinkedIn is one of the best ways. Just kinda see what we’re doing, stay in touch, stay up to date on certain things. And then on our website, truing digital.com. That’s TREE. R-I-N-G-D-I-G-I-T-A l.com. And if you visit treer digital.com/ma launchpad, that’s where you can get the free download and the checklist.

And like I said, really, if anything, just a great place to start, especially in that acquisition side of, am I asking the right questions? So what should I be looking for before starting that, um, journey on the digital front. And then from there deciding, you know, what direction do you wanna go? Awesome.

Outstanding. Paige, thank you very much. Yeah, it was outstanding. Thank you so much. Thank you. No, I had a good time. Thank you so much. Likewise. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the M and a launchpad podcast. If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to support us, please leave us a rating and a review after you listen.

If you’re looking for guidance on your next business acquisition or sale capital to support your next business transaction or to invest in a private equity opportunity, visit equity launchpad.com to learn more and to connect with our team. If you know of an individual who would be a great guest for the show, head over to equity launchpad.com/nominate where you’ll have the chance to refer yourself.

For someone else to be a guest on our show. I’m Casey Minsu and I look forward to talking with you next week.