Thomas Smale Speaking at DCBKK 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

How to Avoid Seller Mistakes and Increase Your Business Value

What Are We Going to Learn?

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

What Makes a Business Sellable

What Do Buyers Want?

Increase Value BEFORE Selling

Avoid Common Mistakes

Thomas who?

2010 2016

Launched 2010 400 deals Over $60M in sales 80% YoY growth Team of 22 100% self-funded

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

FE International History

95%

What Buyers Want

• Amazon affiliate blogs

• Adsense/other affiliate sites

• Amazon FBA store

• E-commerce store

• SaaS products

In Demand Business Models

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

Site 1$2M

Site 3$225K

Site 2$680K

Lessons From Successful Sales

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

• Sold at the right time

• Evergreen content/niche

• Consistent growth

• Outsourced content/basic tasks

Learn From Others

Private and Confidential

Dog Food

Dog Owners Spend Money

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

• Authority blog

• Used a pen name

• Weekly outsourced post

• Eventually outsourced SEO

• $143,000 annual net profit

Sold For?

$450-500k

• Growing businesses sell for a premium

• Let go emotionally

Time it Right

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

Subscription Box

Hundreds of Possible Businesses

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

• E-commerce store

• Recurring monthly subscriptions

• Yoga niche

• All third-party fulfilment

• Everything had systems and processes

• $423,000 net profit

Sold For?

$1.3-$1.5m

SEO Audit Tool

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

SEO Audits

• SaaS

• Dedicated customer service rep reduced churn

• Multiple features on big sites

• B2B and B2C

• 8% customer churn

• $240,000 net profit

Sold For?

$1.2-1.4m

What’s it Worth?

SDE = Seller Discretionary

Earnings

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

FE International Valuation Model

• Proprietary data

• Data from 400 deals, over 20,000 data points

• Multiple of seller discretionary earnings (SDE)

• SaaS: 3-6x annual SDE

• Content: 2-4x annual SDE

• E-commerce: 2-4x annual SDE

Key Takeaways

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK

• Sell while it is still growing

• Recurring income attracts a premium

• Outsource as much as you can

• Document your financials

• Don’t be reliant on yourself

• Valuations cannot be automated, get one free

Free e-course:http://feinternational.com/dcbkk-2016

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/ThomasS

male/

@ThomasSmale Thomas Smale #DCBKK