Episode 20: Paige Wiese – Digital Assets in Modern M&A
Episode 20 is live, and it features a great conversation with Paige Wiese. We talk about how digital assets are shaping the M&A world and what business owners should be thinking about if they want to protect and maximize the value of their company.
If you are preparing for an exit, this episode is full of practical guidance on the digital side of a deal, which is often overlooked but can have a major impact on valuation.
Here is what we cover:
Digital hygiene is deal hygiene. Making sure owners have control and access to their domains, social profiles, analytics, and other accounts is essential for a clean transfer and long-term stability.
How digital assets can increase or decrease value. We dig into real situations where missing or mismanaged digital elements created expensive problems, as well as times when strong digital foundations significantly boosted a company’s valuation.
Reducing founder dependence. We talk about how positioning a business to operate smoothly without the founder helps protect both digital equity and key relationships when the time comes to sell.
The role of AI in M&A. We explore how AI is influencing valuations and why strong SEO, clear structure, and organized digital assets matter more than ever.
Give it a listen if you want a straightforward playbook on preparing digital assets for a future sale, avoiding common pitfalls, and setting your company up for the strongest exit possible.
Full Transcript
00:00
There’s some things that just you can’t fix. If you don’t have ownership of your social profiles, you can’t successfully transfer them over. And thus, what does that company do? I mean, you’re now impacting the long-term growth. What we were saying earlier, right, is you’re impacting that long-term growth of the company once acquired because they can’t rebuild the social without starting all over again.
00:26
Welcome to the latest episode of the raise the exit podcast. And today I have the privilege of having Paige Weiss on our show. And she has for the past decade and a half been running tree ring digital. Now you might be thinking trees, rings, digital, what the heck is going on here? But what Paige is actually bringing to us on today’s show is a deep dive into what is really modern era M and A, which could be a hundred percent digital.
00:54
in terms of the assets that are migrating from one party to the next. So Paige, pleasure to have you here. I’d love for you to kind of just tell a bit more of how the heck did you over the past decade and a half get into hundreds, if not more, where M &A of digital assets was involved and what are some things that you’ve kind of learned that I probably don’t know anything about at all?
01:15
Yeah, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and for this conversation. then oh it’s a weird journey, you know, I don’t have the business background that most typical people in M &A have. I’m fully aware of that part of it. But coming from a freelance role 16 years ago, just how do I make money? How do I do something that I can do remote due to some health issues and just really listened and adapted over the years to our clients to really understand what are the pain points? What are the challenges? What are we going through?
01:45
was they’re growing and scaling and you know really starting off with some small businesses as we went but then over the years we started to see our clients roll up we started to see our clients get acquired we started to see our clients want to exit and what does that look like and because we have been working with them so closely on that digital strategy it really started to shine more light to there’s more we should be doing or could be doing during this process and how do we really take a bigger picture and look at that instead of so hyper
02:15
focused on did we design a pretty website for this client? Do we have them ranking well in the search engines? But we saw all of our efforts combined really led them to getting the valuations that they were looking for or getting that deal that they were wanting. So that was a piece of it. And then the second side of it really came to getting a lot of calls as we started getting introduced to other private equity firms and getting introduced to different people. We started getting calls of just like we acquired but this isn’t working.
02:45
something didn’t go smoothly, the transition isn’t great, what does that look like? Or, you know, the call later from our client that’s like, hey, I sold the business six, eight months ago, why are they calling me now saying my website, the website’s down? Like that’s not on me, I sold it. And it’s like, well, they didn’t get all the login details they needed. But when we went in to ask if they needed help, they said no, they’re like, we got this, don’t we don’t need you. Okay, have fun. So now we’re getting the phone call and it’s not always a fun one of
03:15
who gets the bill, is it the person that bought the business or the person that sold the business? And so we started really seeing even more of that headache going through the transition process. So that’s how we got really deep into it, is just doing great work and then watching our clients go through it and how do we really help support them through it all? Paige, I love this. um I have gone through the pre…
03:40
social media era of M &A, right? And I think that there’s this really bizarre divide that exists in the world where people don’t know something is consequential until it’s too late. And if we look at a lot of like the thesis of this whole podcast series, right? What we’re going and doing, right? It’s about learning from the successes and failures of those who have been taking those steps before you. And I think what you’re pointing to is, it’s like,
04:09
You know, was just kind of like doing my research for today’s episode. I’m like, wow, like this is like really kind of like, God, it’s an administrative afterthought in M and A, but I go and look at it from the point of view of you should be able to go and pass your own due diligence if you’re the seller and you should be able to pass your own integration before you’ve signed the ownership papers, if you’re the buyer. And I think that’s what you’re going and pointing to here is that this is actually something that affects both sides.
04:39
is the seller should be able to go and articulate, you want to buy my company because I have gone and built brand association, recall, social presence, et cetera. Those are the killer drivers of value today, as opposed to what would have been 50, 60, 100 years ago, which is take a look at my beautiful building and my wonderful neon signage. Like today’s your signage is your digital purview.
05:06
So can you actually tell me a little bit more and maybe go into some examples of you had where people have really screwed it up and where they’ve done it really right so we can get a range of how to look at this issue.
05:18
Yeah, it’s a great point. mean, digital assets, people, is one of the last things that are looked at in a deal transaction. They’re looking at the finances, they’re looking at the legal, they’re looking at the tangible goods, all of that. And then we’re always at the end of it of, by the way, right? But when it comes to evaluation side, if you don’t have actual analytics and marketing numbers and KPIs and everything to back where your marketing spend has been, even as they’re reviewing finances, you’re going to have these questions come up.
05:48
how do we make that valuation a bit better? And another example, while it doesn’t seem that important, could be your Google reviews. If you have a 3.2 and you’re trying to sell stars and you’re trying to sell a business.
06:02
I know as soon as I acquire, I need to get to work and I need to figure out how do I boost that up to like a 4.8 because that is immediately going to impact my revenue. And so those are things that as a business owner, they might not think about is going into that process, right? Evaluation and then, but people should be negotiating that when it comes to a deal and they don’t and that’s or, they are starting to whatever, but like those are things that a savvy buyer though is going to come in.
06:32
in and take your valuation immediately from, it looks like that, but I already know what work we’re gonna have to put into recover. So that’s one example that is very minor. Oh, I just want to jump on that because you just said something so beautiful as a whole nuance of what drives value. Like a lot of people are going and saying, well, look at the business that I’ve gone and built. People don’t give a damn about the business that you’ve got to build. People want to know what is the business that you have built is going to generate value from them on the other side.
07:02
And if you’ve gone and like ramped up your revenue and EBITDA numbers, but you’ve torched your market and reputation, as you put it, the savvy buyer is going to go and recognize it. And yes, we still have this subculture of like almost like fleecing on the deal, but this is the whole point here. This is about how do I make sure that I get full recognition of my value, especially in a digital first economy, and how do I mitigate my risks or know how to responsibly, you
07:31
Take action so I can increase my value in the future. So given your experience You’ve worked with almost 2,000 organizations throughout your career Can you unpack for me? If things are kind of call it bottom half or even worse bottom quartile in terms of your digital Profile or your online reviews. How long does it take to? responsibly improve your digital and social hygiene
07:59
Like how much of time and resources should people investing into this? Cause that’s another thing I noticed. People are like, Oh, I want to my business in three months. Well, it’s going to take you two years to reverse your impairment. So do you want to take the discount now? Or do you want to course correct?
08:14
And that’s correct, right? Everyone’s just like, yeah, how long should it be before they contact you and what does that look like? the answer can range anywhere from three to five years if we want to be savvy and really looking at this. If we’re looking at, you know, even on the growing side of it, even sooner, as soon as you can start setting yourself up so you can scale and grow. But, you yeah, sometimes clients come to us three months out and they’re trying to fix it. But yeah, it’s usually too late. I would say about a year minimum is really where
08:44
we need to start getting a grasp on this. We had another client been with us for maybe five, six years. We’d actually built the site with the previous owner who had sold it. We stayed on board with that client and then they never touched the site in the five years we worked with them. New owner comes in and it’s not a fun conversation and not a great way to jumpstart a new relationship of saying your site needs to be rebuilt. And I’ve been telling them that for the past six years. You know, like I could have told you this ahead.
09:14
with just a quick call that the site needs to be rebuilt and they weren’t thrilled of We’re already investing in a point-of-sale system. We’re already investing in getting online ordering set up because they hadn’t done that We’re already we don’t actually we didn’t really budget for a whole new website and so like those things are how do we really get ahead of it and Make it look more attractive when you go to sell but also make it a smooth transition so that even from a advisor side know those things because if you’re advice
09:44
on it and you make that deal, they’re not gonna wanna come and work with you again, because you should’ve caught it ahead of time, right? So all these little things start to play in different ways, whether it be the buy side, the sell side, as you mentioned, but really create a huge impact on the valuation. We’ve seen it, you know, definitely change that multiple one, two times by just not having these things in line or other side of it that you’re asking is after they’ve acquired, if you can’t actually prove that you’re the owner
10:14
owner of that domain name. This is going to be a very expensive legal bill and it is going to be a very, but that could kill a deal. That could be something that like if we can’t actually transfer email addresses and the domain name over, we want to stop looking at this deal immediately or it could stall your deal for the better part of six months while you unexpectedly have to go cover these legal costs to go hunt it down and fight it. And so that’s where like, again, if a savvy buyer is doing due diligence,
10:44
You should you need to be on top of these things ahead of time and if they’re not a savvy buyer That’s where we come in on the other side and say how do we set you up to make sure these questions are being asked in that? Okay, well we have just hit the waterfall stage of this conversation because I’m just like fantastically taking down notes of unlike hard pivot hard pivot with page because there’s a few things you’re pointing to look a lot of Things that I’m seeing being missed in due diligence
11:14
is a sufficient assessment of technical debt. Then they go and buy the company, they pay a premium for it, and they go and discover, oh shit, these guys were profitable because they cut all of these budgets. And now we’ve got to go suck it up, money points of EBITDA to be able to recover, or we’re going to go and kill our growth rate completely. What you’re also going and pointing to is starting to get into one of my favorite domains, which is around digital demand debt. Right?
11:41
Your demand is driven by your digital profile. You have a shitty Google review. That’s going to go and affect you. You don’t have a, you don’t have good reviews on B2B review sites. That’s going to go and affect you. And it’s even worse now because you go and have, you know, the majority of the population now in their buying process, especially in B2B is starting to go and use Chach-EBT or equivalent. And those are fed by all of that social or digital equity that you have. And as you’re pointing to the impairment that may be there, thereby boom.
12:11
there goes a whole bunch of upside. So tell me a bit more of two things. How do you account for that? Like how do you model or price that debt like that you might have for insufficient investment into your digital profile? And then two, tell me a bit about how you’re seeing the rapid rise of AI change this whole narrative the past two years.
12:33
No, yeah, two great questions. How do we adjust the value? One, we work with our trusted advisors of what does this look like? How much could this impact? Kind of looking at it too, because you can’t dollar for dollar, hey, they’re gonna have to buy a new site, so it’s gonna be this, and it’s gonna reduce the valuation by blank, right? But we start looking at all of the different things, or to your point, there’s some things that just you can’t fix. If you don’t have ownership of your social profiles, you can’t successfully transfer them over.
13:03
What does that company do? I mean you’re now impacting the long-term growth what we were saying earlier right is you’re impacting that long-term growth of the company once acquired because They can’t rebuild the social without starting all over again now trying to compete maybe against two Social profiles whether that be on LinkedIn for B2B or whether that be on Facebook for B2C and Now the general consumers like which one’s correct. Are we supposed to be going to this one? That’s quote-unquote doorman or dead
13:33
Or are we supposed to be going to this one over here and the one that’s been around longer typically shows up higher for a while and so that’s you know, you’re asking like longevity of how long could it take to rebuild? a couple Google reviews could improve it Sometimes it could be years of rebuilding a social profile to really get that going where it’s gonna be but then yeah with AI taking over It’s a whole nother beast. It’s a whole nother animal in so many ways. We’re seeing it impact, you know, like
14:03
hey, quick, I got a website up overnight, so we’re not gonna go through professional channels. And at the same time, they’re not React developers, they have no idea how to support that site long term. So now they’re still locked into whatever person, tool, company, vendor, whatever that set them up in that. We’re also seeing, yeah, like a lot of companies haven’t been doing SEO.
14:24
And now they’re panicking because not only do we need to do SEO, but now we need to be doing AI optimization, AIO. And so it’s like, I just tell clients like…
14:34
We can do it for sure, but like it’s going to be even longer now because we never had SEO as a foundation. Had we had that as a foundation in the last three, five years, getting AIO and there’s going to be much easier. But to start from scratch, you’re probably looking at more of a two year journey or a three year journey where we didn’t say that before. We used to say SEO could be six months to a year. So, you know, there’s pieces of how were they structuring that business over time to create that value of where they are at now.
15:04
And then yes to your point a savvy buyer is going to be What does my presence look like of this company that I’m looking to acquire on chat GBT are they being? Are the answers that are being produced showing this company or not? What is the online presence say I was in a workshop the other day through some of the Colorado Startup Week stuff that was just like Google your company. What does chat say about it? know like that is exactly what you’re saying Be vain
15:34
Get really interested in yourself and how the world thinks about you. uh I’m oh pro that, by the way. I look at it as like, you got to be aware of your digital brand equity. I don’t think enough people understand how critical that it is uh in transactions. I think there’s too much spreadsheet M &A where people take a look and say, oh, we’re just going to transition these clients over. We’re going to have some churn.
16:00
We’re going ask some retentionists like, we killed all of their digital footprint. And people are like, what happened to them? What? No transition website, no transition communication. Uh, some companies are like not even reaching out to customers. They’re just going and seeing an auto email. Oh, Hey, ABC companies now owned by XYZ company. You know, please reach out to us if you have any questions. Like I think what you’re going and pointing to is the, is the difference between a below average or average at best valuation on your business.
16:29
And what actually fulfills that top quartile top deck aisle of M &A premium because you never hear of a crazy valuation and go, my God, their website looked horrible. Right. Exactly. They’re like, okay, that’s put together. And that’s what I say. Like, is you’re going to look at a deal.
16:51
like look at all of these pieces or if you want a premium, you better be going in with the premium. I I always relate it to houses because that’s something that I feel more people you know kind of understand in that deal process is like you can go put a house on the market and if you know that the roof needs to be replaced
17:08
be ready for them to come back and negotiate. If you need the website to be replaced, they’re probably gonna come back and negotiate. You’re just setting yourself up for them to start creating questions instead of going in with just like, here’s our entire digital presence, here’s the last time it was updated, here’s the last time it was backed up, here we know where all the login details are, we know what all of our analytics are for the past five years, what else do you want from me? It’s gonna be a lot harder for a company to come in and start negotiating that deal from
17:38
that digital side into your point is we’re moving so much more into digital space whether that’s automated tools through AI, voice agents, that’s just you know integrating AI into your website and your processes, AI follow-up, whatever, all of that then just that’s what companies want to look for in the M &A space is how much have you automated your processes or how much work do we need to come in and do?
18:03
And again, now I’m going to start negotiating the price if there’s a lot of areas that I’m to have to reinvest in. is so good because what’s coming to my mind is it’s devaluation by a thousand cuts. I’m a huge proponent of you need to be able to pass your own due diligence before you start even entering a deal and then try to pass somebody else’s. And I think that’s something that is really being missed.
18:27
The other element that’s there is, why I think this is so critical, but you’re going and pointing to here. I think what, you know, is kind of like the thesis of what we are trying to do here is. Companies are bought because they are a lower risk way of generating capital than doing it yourself. And I think a lot of people kind of forget, like, why do acquisitions happen? Like, yes, there’s a lot of vanity and other bullshit that goes into that. But if you generally look at it from a pragmatic point of view.
18:56
That’s the reason for it. So I look at it as this. You invest into your digital hygiene, your social presence, your relational capital, you’re de-risking your deal. You’re minimizing the things that would reduce your valuation. And can I say it might make you a more attractive target or am I being too ridiculous here?
19:16
No, absolutely. think I mean that’s the point right is how do we make this the most attractive business for someone to want to buy and I mean there’s so many things now like You’ve you know been around and through this a lot longer, but take it back 10 years 15 years There wasn’t as many deals happening as now and we’re in the baby boomer area where they’re getting out a lot of them haven’t paid attention So it’s really easy for companies to come in and say if I just throw a tech stack on this We got a much more effective
19:47
business because it’s really grounded and established. So there can be things that are super attractive about that. But then you’ve got this younger generation coming in and wanting to do a lot up to your point. Entrepreneurship looks cool, but I’d rather just go buy the business. I don’t really want to start from scratch and do the whole headache for the next X amount of years putting all this in line. Let me just acquire a business that has this in place. Those people, they need it in place. They are looking for a turnkey business that
20:16
that will let them just start profiting, not one that they’re gonna have to dump a lot of funds and resources into because A, they don’t have it, and B, they don’t know what they’re doing. Otherwise, they would’ve done it themselves, right? So that’s the place where they need to start looking at how do we get this more turnkey ready because those younger, savvier buyers that are coming in, it’s what they want, it’s something that’s more ready to go and they are gonna be more aware of the tech side than some of the, lack of a better word, you older
20:46
generation that’s just looking for a more solid piece and see the but I’m with you. I’ve seen so many businesses acquire and then sit. Yeah, that’s another place where I’m just like you purchased an asset. Why is it now a line item on your expenses? It needs to be an asset that is creating value for you. That was why you bought it unless you bought it for the vanity. And so how do we make sure that we do have a very smooth transition that you’re not halting business to get
21:16
things back and running on your digital side and keep going in your ad expenses, your social profiles, whatever that looks like, your website lead generation CRMs, all of those tools. And that’s the piece that we really need to be focusing on on the acquisition side too. So I want to actually go back to the very beginning almost of the show when you introduced yourself and kind of coming at the whole M &A arena from the non-traditional either iBanking, big consultancy, I got a finance from Wharton, whatever side.
21:46
of things, right? um But the way that you’ve got an operationalized this is also from, would say, almost like the counter bias that people from that background would come in. What are, as you’ve gotten implemented your digital audits with your clients, what have you seen as kind of like that breaking point? And I don’t mean like 10 point digital audits. I think you have like a
22:09
couple of hundred or more? There’s three, yes. 300 plus. 300 data points that go into one business, one brand being online. What are you going and seeing are some of those like either inflection points, it could be like how well they score on this digital audit or like the most material aspects of the digital audit that then as you’ve helped through that, it has translated to evaluation premium or the absence of it has translated to evaluation impairment.
22:39
We’re usually seeing about 200,000 in risk management that we’re able to prevent, put back into the company in some sort of capacity when we get through our asset assessment. And that just comes from the standpoint of, sometimes it’s expenses, sometimes we’re saving them money. They didn’t know they were paying for license keys or third party tools that some employees somewhere along the way signed up for. Didn’t know who was getting the emails. And at the end of the day, it’s been running on a credit card and accounting’s just been saying,
23:09
It’s a business expense. Let’s go ahead and keep allowing it to run for months and years on end. So sometimes it’s just us coming in and saying, how do we look at all of those and cut those back? You’re no longer using some of these plugins. Why were you paying for them still? So there’s some of those you’re overpaying for email accounts that you don’t still need. And there’s other ways we can be smarter about how we make those transitions. Others could be though, coming in from, have so much risk right now. You’re not staying ADA compliant.
23:39
coming in and making sure you’re staying compliant on privacy policies and everything like that, that if a company came at you right now and tried to sue you, there’s a whole lot of risk that we’re putting into that. So how do we start getting these things all aligned? But it often comes from companies over time and going through that growth and scale phase that they’re not documenting or they’re not, they’re just letting employees or interns come in and set stuff up. seeing it with even virtual assistants on the rise of we need this set up.
24:09
just go handle that for us please. It gets set up but no one’s actually asking for the ownership back. We’ve seen it with agencies and you know vendors of hey can you set up our CRM? They don’t realize that it was tied It’s under somebody else’s license or somebody else’s, your vendor’s credit card is paying for your website.
24:27
Yeah, and then you’re paying them and so if anything like so we had an example the other day We had a client call us and they were like hey our web designer just passed away Can you help us and I was like oh, yeah, we’ve recovered, you know dozens of sites We got this and then we started digging deeper and they’re like no it was a resold domain It was a resold hosting account. It was a resold, know, like then the website was they had a login at one point but the password got changed and the emails aren’t sending for reset passwords and the SSL certificate was uh
24:57
a tie to all of that as well. So no, there was literally nothing that we could do to recover this because they went through this weird back door of the reselling side, but to a general consumer, a general business owner, they don’t even know that’s an option. They just know they’re paying their web person and hoping that everything goes fine. So that’s a place where they were halted for about two weeks and had to stop all of their Google ads until they’re up and running. That was probably easily at least a $200,000.
25:27
You know, piece where we’ve got more of a guarantee that if your site will never be down, your business will never be down for than four hours. That is just like absolutely brutal in terms of kind of how I’m looking at this. it’s almost like a ridiculous analogy, but I would say like there’s a certain equivalency to this. It’s like, I’m just going to go and give my banking details to Jerry at the deli down the street on my behalf. You know, because, because, and I think this is what people are missing because we don’t, like we still do not have
25:58
35 years after the kind of rise of the internet as a commercial asset, we still are very bad in M &A and accounting from them from a digital metrics point of view. And that’s a whole other conversation that I think we can go to and we don’t have time for that one today. But I do want to go and shift to kind of like one final question or domain of questions. uh A lot of our listeners are founders of businesses and there’s a different nuance when a founder sells their business, especially if it’s a very
26:28
um prominent association of the founder to the business. What are some things you’ve learned or helped transition through in making sure that that equity is both recognized, but also transferred over to the new buyer?
26:46
Yeah, I think one of the best things you can be doing in that situation is making sure you’re not the name in the face of the company and making sure that while you’ve put all of this time, energy and equity into it, the same time that you are fully confident and can prove to an investor or a buyer that that business is going to be completely fine running on its own without you. And so how do you start to remove yourself? And I mean, great example, and I work on it every day.
27:16
if you go and Google tree ring digital and look at our reviews.
27:20
Paige, Paige and her team, Paige, Paige. And it’s like, I’m mostly at this point just doing operation, or, you know, just kind of making sure that the business is moving smoothly and some sales, but I’m not doing any of the work anymore. That is my team. And so really trying to reposition, how do we make sure they realize there’s a company that created this, not an individual? And then same thing, how much of the business is dependent on referrals compared to, no, we have statistics and analytics.
27:50
that can back up that this much of the business is coming from how we show up online, how much through social efforts that we’re doing, through our PageRank on SEO, through Google Ads, through Pinterest Ads, and Amazon, whatever you’re running from the company side, right? And being able to show that confidently when you go into that deal so that they aren’t coming in and going, yeah, but how much of this is actually going to carry over? Or how much are we going to lose your client base when we buy this?
28:20
or your customers or whatever. And then to your point, making sure what is that handoff and is there a smooth way to say, we’ve got email lists for the past 10 years and we can make sure, we’ll send one out on our behalf saying, this is getting ready to transition. We really support this deal. This is how we wanna keep moving forward so that we can try to help set them up to stay with you and nurture that relationship instead of, I the business. I’m just checking out now.
28:50
I just love the catalyst of where the conversation is going. I think you can ridiculously prepare for a deal, but you can very obviously under prepare for a deal. think what you’ve been pointing to is just what the role of digital presence, managing your social assets, making sure that you don’t screw up an acquisition or you don’t screw up a sale because of your oversight or undervaluing of what actually drives revenue.
29:34
Thank you so much. It was a great conversation. I enjoyed it. Awesome. Thank you.