It was never a number: the agency exit Heath Maguire planned for five years

Transcript of How Heath Maguire Sold Wolf IQ: Planning a Digital Agency Exit.

1. Simon Bedard0:00

   Welcome back to the Buy Grow Sell podcast. My next guest has been a little entrepreneur from a young age, having started his own car wash business before most kids even hit high school. He then got pulled into the family hospitality business where he learned a hell of a lot about small business and really got him into that world and really has never left. Heath Maguire built a digital marketing agency before he ultimately scaled and exited. Now, I actually had a front row seat to this one because he engaged the team at Exit Advisory to help him sell his business. So I had a chance to get to know Heath, how he runs his company, and really some of those insights that has made him a success. Today, he helps run a global digital publishing business that literally reaches millions of people every day. He's an amazing guy who ran a very successful business.

2. Simon Bedard0:47

   I know you're going to get a lot out of his journey. Thanks for joining. Hey folks, just a quick message before we get on with the podcast. You know, I think the most valuable stories we share on this show are not the ones where everything went right and it's a beautifully well-scripted story. It's the one where they're honest, open, things went wrong and founders faced challenges and dealt with failures. They're the ones that we can all relate to. So if you'd like to know more and you want to make sure that you're not missing any important stories, please click the subscribe link below and make sure you hit like and leave a comment around any topics you'd like to hear about or other guests you'd like us to interview. There are going to be many, many more stories that we know will relate to you and your business, and we hope you get a lot of value out of them.

3. Simon Bedard1:34

   Thanks for watching. Heath, welcome to the Buy Grow Sell Podcast.

4. Heath Maguire1:38

   Thank you. Good to be here.

5. Simon Bedard1:40

   Oh, it's great to have you, mate. I was just trying to think when we first met, you know, it must be going on about 7 years or something now, I think.

6. Heath Maguire1:47

   Yeah, it would be.

7. Simon Bedard1:48

   Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember we first chatted about— and I can't remember exactly how we got in contact even, but we ended up on a call and chatting about your business and where you were and you know, it ended up being quite a journey before you actually ended up even exiting.

8. Heath Maguire2:02

   Absolutely. Yeah.

9. Simon Bedard2:04

   Mate, before we get into all that sort of good stuff, maybe you could just give us a little bit of your background so the audience can kind of understand where you've come from and what sort of led to this point.

10. Heath Maguire2:13

    Yeah, sure. So background-wise, I guess very, very early, started in the family business, which was catering and restaurants. That's where I cut my teeth, learnt a lot of those basic principles that you need which is very, very hard to make a profit in a restaurant. So it was probably a good place to cut my teeth from that perspective. Then went on, did the education side of things and got stuck in the events industry for about a decade, which was great. Got to see the world. But as we started to settle down, met my wife, wanted to have kids, I decided that was a great time to start a business as well.

11. Simon Bedard2:47

    What do you know? What do they say about busy people?

12. Heath Maguire2:49

    Yeah, that's right. And so that's when I started the agency, Wolf IQ. Which is where our relationship started. So what started initially as very much a freelance kind of situation for myself, doing graphic design and website work back when we actually used to build websites, that's when I kind of got stuck into that space. It was always SME market. I did have a few large multinationals, but I really enjoy, I still do, the SME space. It's where I grew up. I went to grow and start to scale that and came across a kind of subscription product, a recurring revenue, and that's what changed the business.

13. Heath Maguire3:30

    That was about 5 years in, and not too long after, actually, I think I came across you on LinkedIn.

14. Simon Bedard3:37

    Yeah, right.

15. Heath Maguire3:38

    And you were probably talking about selling your business and valuation, and of course, as we all are as business owners, we're very interested as to what that could look like.

16. Simon Bedard3:48

    For clarity for anyone listening, so Heath ended up engaging Exit Advisory Group to sell Wolf IQ. So it's a real pleasure to be able to have a client come through and share their experience with us. Mate, let's go back to the beginning if we can. I'm always fascinated with how people end up in business. What are some of those early influences? And it's that whole, is it nature versus nurture even? And maybe it's a blend of both, but—

17. Heath Maguire4:15

    Yeah.

18. Simon Bedard4:16

    Coming through a family business, how much do you think that influenced you in becoming a business owner yourself?

19. Heath Maguire4:23

    I think hugely.

20. Simon Bedard4:24

    Yeah.

21. Heath Maguire4:24

    Once you've seen that side, the flexibility it can give you, the financial freedom it can give you, and the ability to kind of steer your own ship, it's hard to unsee that. As a kid, I always had that, I guess, drive in me. I joke and I say I started the hand car wash cafe trend. as an example, when I was about 12 years old, we started, me and one of my mates on the street, and we'd go around on Saturdays and wash people's cars.

22. Simon Bedard4:53

    Yeah.

23. Heath Maguire4:54

    For about $4. But I bought my first proper bicycle doing that. So it's always been in me. It's a very safe environment in the family business, and you get exposed to everything, warts and all. You see the highs, you see the lows, You feel probably more responsible for that. And luckily I had parents around me that could teach me all of those skills, but also gave me the freedom to kind of run with it a bit as well.

24. Simon Bedard5:25

    Yeah, I like the idea of, you know, there's definitely a safety net emotionally, right? Like, because there's the family. But I guess that also comes with the price of knowing just how hard people work in family business. as opposed to maybe turning up to a job and going, well, all care but no responsibility, right?

25. Heath Maguire5:40

    Clock on, clock off. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

26. Simon Bedard5:43

    Was there anything that you like, was there one lesson I guess you took away from your mum and dad like that just really sank in with you from that time?

27. Heath Maguire5:51

    Yeah, sure. So it was primarily my mum and her partner at the time. The big thing from mum was customer service, and as crazy as it is, and I think it's, it's so relevant in today's world is you've just gotta show up. Sometimes picking up the phone, answering that email, whatever it is, sometimes the quickest one wins the gig.

28. Simon Bedard6:13

    Yep.

29. Heath Maguire6:13

    And I've kind of used that throughout my whole career and always been very available to customers. Absolutely, that is so hard to scale.

30. Simon Bedard6:23

    Yeah, definitely.

31. Heath Maguire6:25

    But it was also a large part of my success.

32. Simon Bedard6:27

    Yeah. Beautiful. I heard a statistic the other day. It was from a company who does a lot of tracking of their data. They said, interestingly, when we get a new inquiry coming in, if we lift the phone and we speak to that person within 5 minutes, the chance of us closing a sale goes up by 75%.

33. Heath Maguire6:41

    Yeah.

34. Simon Bedard6:42

    Right?

35. Heath Maguire6:43

    Yeah, absolutely.

36. Simon Bedard6:44

    Bang on, right? Like just be the, do the simple stuff well.

37. Heath Maguire6:47

    Yeah, yeah. It removes that objection of, are these guys gonna be in my court?

38. Simon Bedard6:51

    Yeah, yeah. What kind of drove you to sort of start Wolf IQ? Was there some sort of, you know, nexus around that?

39. Heath Maguire7:04

    Probably my creativity and my love of business. They would be the two things.

40. Simon Bedard7:09

    I think timing probably in the industry too around that time, you know, I mean websites would have been around a long time, but it was, yeah.

41. Heath Maguire7:15

    Yeah, if you didn't have a website, you didn't exist. I used to joke and say we were the new accountants. Every company needed a web agency.

42. Simon Bedard7:22

    Yeah, that makes sense. And, and what was that like in the early days? Just talk me through, sort of, you know, you started freelancing, I think you said?

43. Heath Maguire7:31

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the 2 facets, the design side and then the, the code side, I guess you'd say. I was very comfortable in the design side. The code side I had to learn. So self-taught, YouTube, Googling, whatever I could get my hands on. and got through it until I had team that, you know, I could put some smarter people around me. I made it work for about a good solid 18 months, and that enabled us to bring, bring on board a couple of bigger clients, which then we kind of fell naturally into the medical space.

44. Simon Bedard8:04

    Yep.

45. Heath Maguire8:05

    And that was a great niche that we stayed in through that, that whole period. We absolutely worked across industries, but the medical space, the medical specialists, they're very respectful, very good on time. They'd call you in between procedures. We dropped our photographer in some crazy situations where he saw things that he'd probably prefer not to see going on in theatres and that sort of thing. Shout out to Tim if he's watching. But yeah, the medical space was that area that just kind of really held well throughout any of the kind of financial issues or anything like that that's going on in the economy.

46. Simon Bedard8:43

    I think medical professionals, probably above many, many other sectors, understand the value of hiring a professional to give specialist advice.

47. Heath Maguire8:53

    That's it, and they refer as well. So they were perfect.

48. Simon Bedard8:57

    Yeah, oh, that's awesome. I often hear this kind of thing, and I think it's a bit of a misnomer, but I often hear people going, oh, the best time to think about your exit is before you start your business. And I kind of go, I think that's bullshit.

49. Heath Maguire9:10

    Yeah.

50. Simon Bedard9:10

    Most people start a business, they're like, how can I find a customer who will pay me?

51. Heath Maguire9:13

    Yeah, that's right.

52. Simon Bedard9:14

    You know, it's sort of funny. And even like running hard at this, not recognizing even for a lot of people that you might not even make any money for the first year. You might pay a couple of bills and whatever else, but it's— I think a lot of people underestimate that piece of the journey and just how hard it can be to actually do a startup. Correct.

53. Heath Maguire9:34

    Yeah, the thing that amazes me is, you know, you might have a mate or a friend of a friend saying, oh, I'm going to start a business, yada yada yada, I'm going to quit next week.

54. Simon Bedard9:41

    Yeah.

55. Heath Maguire9:42

    And I'm like, hang on, whoa, whoa, whoa, before you quit, you know you can work after hours and you can build it up so that when you transition from the stability of full-time employment into, you know, what's coined nowadays as a side hustle, that there's already revenue there, there's some predictability. That never ceases to amaze me, people that that you need to stop over here in that stable full-time employment to start something.

56. Simon Bedard10:06

    Yeah.

57. Heath Maguire10:06

    You really want to do both at the same time to hedge your bets.

58. Simon Bedard10:10

    And start exercising that I work 60 to 80 hour a week muscle because it's not something you just want to turn on one day and be—

59. Heath Maguire10:17

    Nobody else is going to do it for you.

60. Simon Bedard10:19

    Totally.

61. Heath Maguire10:20

    Yeah, that one amazes me.

62. Simon Bedard10:21

    Yeah, yeah, it is fascinating, isn't it? It's, it's a challenging journey. I mean, look, and of course every now and again you come across people who go, oh yeah, we were just profitable from day one. I'm like, Okay. Now you're making this sound like it's super easy and everyone will think it's that easy. And look, you know, I don't know, every now and again I'm— what's that expression? I think it was, was it Steve Jobs who said the only people who change the world are the ones who are crazy enough to think they can?

63. Heath Maguire10:46

    Correct.

64. Simon Bedard10:46

    You know, because most people look at it and go, that's insane. And then they end up doing it. But yeah, it's somewhere in there. There's this blend of genius, hard work, and a little touch of crazy, I think. So yeah.

65. Heath Maguire10:57

    It's a genetic defect.

66. Simon Bedard10:59

    Yeah, that's right. And so coming from family business and building your own business, I mean, is that something, you know, do you see that? And I know your wife's obviously running a very successful business, which hopefully we can touch a bit on today as well.

67. Heath Maguire11:12

    Fallen into another family business.

68. Simon Bedard11:14

    Yep. Yeah, yeah. It's obviously something's in the blood.

69. Heath Maguire11:17

    Yeah, yeah, that's right.

70. Simon Bedard11:19

    Yeah, I love it. So talk me through the early years of Wolf IQ. You know, obviously I got to see it at sort of the end of the journey.

71. Heath Maguire11:26

    Yep.

72. Simon Bedard11:27

    But what was that like, the early years, you know, how did the business evolve?

73. Heath Maguire11:31

    Yeah, yeah, it kind of evolved. We had a very steady revenue growth month on month, year on year. We always went forward, which was great, and it was all based on referrals, all word of mouth, which from a marketing perspective is terrible because then you don't have a system or a process where you can throttle up and down. But from winning the right clients, when your favorite clients are referring other people like them, you end up in this kind of euphoric state where you finish one job and you get 2 more out of it. It's, um, it's beautiful.

74. Simon Bedard12:04

    It's like a self-evolving avatar, isn't it?

75. Heath Maguire12:06

    Exactly, yeah. So, so that's how we kind of scaled from the early years. And then I started to build a team, and I tried team offshore and onshore. The team was in the Philippines initially, and they were incredible, still are incredible, just were there.

76. Simon Bedard12:25

    Yeah.

77. Heath Maguire12:25

    They, the skills that come out of the Philippines in particular, I'm envious of their level of education and their commitment to education and learning, is, it's just in their culture. I also had team members onshore as well. I found that uh, interesting, but meant that I needed to have an office to have those people. Back then, pre-COVID, let's say, working from a home office kind of signaled that you hadn't quite made it yet, particularly as a, as a, you know, a web person. Everybody expects a guy to be sitting there in a hoodie behind a screen in a dark room at midnight coding away.

78. Simon Bedard13:05

    Yeah.

79. Heath Maguire13:05

    And that's the stigma that you're always trying to break through particularly when we were trying to work in that medical space more so.

80. Simon Bedard13:10

    Mm-hmm.

81. Heath Maguire13:11

    So we went through the process of when we were growing, we had an office, a shared environment in the city, and the side effect of that that I didn't really expect was that we rubbed shoulders with other both end clients, but other industry professionals as well. So when I moved into the city, we were on George Street, smack bang above Apple. we started to work with other agencies as well, and then we took on what's called white-labeled relationships where they win the clients and we do back-of-house operations, enabling them to just go out, win business and scale, and us to build that back-of-house. That was all around that recurring revenue model as well, which from a valuation perspective, I'm sure we'll get into, is the Holy Grail.

82. Simon Bedard13:54

    Yeah.

83. Heath Maguire13:55

    Essentially, of course, we did project work as much as we tried to not, But it's often the project work that leads to the recurring, right? Correct, yeah, the two come hand in hand. So then COVID kicked in, coming into the city was just a big no-no, so we started working from home. I renovated one of the rooms at home, built that out once all the restrictions were off, and we didn't have any need to go back to the city. We had those relationships, we had those plans in place, there recurring revenue, and then that meant that I didn't need a large Australian team anymore as well. We had a good reputation, leads were coming in, most of our Australian team were customer-facing, both in winning business and servicing from an account management perspective. That kind of need reduced as well, so I doubled down in the Philippines and really grew that side of the business. that's a really interesting area where it is a baptism of fire. I often speak to other agency owners about the best way to do that, and I came up with some tips over the years as well, just through the school of hard knocks.

84. Simon Bedard15:04

    Yep.

85. Heath Maguire15:05

    And that enabled us to rapidly scale even through COVID. As an example, we had to, we had to bring people on, most of our clients being medical, the amount of information they had pumping out on a daily basis, we couldn't keep up from a support perspective.

86. Simon Bedard15:22

    Yeah, interesting. It's a fascinating one, the whole COVID scenario. I mean, it was obviously disastrous in so many ways, you know, most people won't have a living memory of living through a pandemic, right? So there's a lot of real issues around it, but I kind of always see, well, what are some of the positives as well? And I feel like it gave society the jolt it needed to evolve.

87. Heath Maguire15:46

    Yeah.

88. Simon Bedard15:47

    You know, the permission to evolve. You know, I often laugh about Zoom and Teams, which I spend so much of my days on video calls now. We had that technology a long time ago.

89. Heath Maguire15:56

    Yeah.

90. Simon Bedard15:57

    Just nobody wanted to use it, right? It was this, no, no, we've got to meet face to face or I'll call you.

91. Heath Maguire16:01

    Yeah.

92. Simon Bedard16:02

    And all of a sudden we had this hybrid environment where it was okay to do this. In fact, it was mandated you must do this. So everybody got over their hangups about this sort of stuff. And realized there's a better way of doing business.

93. Heath Maguire16:14

    Yes.

94. Simon Bedard16:15

    And so it sounds like, you know, you were right at the sort of right time, right place to really capitalize on that.

95. Heath Maguire16:22

    It was perfect. I mean, by the time we exited, it was just myself and Chris, my right hand, and the rest of the team were in the Philippines servicing hundreds of clients.

96. Simon Bedard16:32

    Yeah. Talk to me a bit about the Philippines because, you know, I've got staff in the Philippines. I've been working with teams in the Philippines since the year 2000. So, you know, been around it a fair bit. I think less I'm hearing people complain about it, but, you know, still a lot of people who go, oh, outsourcing, and oh, it has its dramas, and has it this and has that. Nothing's perfect.

97. Heath Maguire16:53

    Of course.

98. Simon Bedard16:54

    You made it work.

99. Heath Maguire16:55

    Yeah.

100. Simon Bedard16:56

     What do you think is the difference between your approach, what you did, versus maybe where other people are struggling to make it happen?

101. Heath Maguire17:02

     Yeah, yeah, so I think the first thing is the recruiting side. Whenever I have other agency owners speak to me about it, there's kind of 2 paths. You can go on the local job sites, so indeed.ph as an example, or you can go to a local recruiter.

102. Simon Bedard17:17

     Mm-hmm.

103. Heath Maguire17:17

     We now have a myriad of Australian companies that are based here, can invoice you direct, and then they go out and find your ideal team members, and they get to know your business as well. So if they have somebody come across their desk that they think, gee, they'd be great for this agency, they'll let you know because they want to, they want to place someone. I always steer towards the recruitment agency side of things and then look to buy them out. Generally, there's a clause there of some sort, 12-month kind of contract, and yes, you have to pay to buy them out. But what that means is you're then managing that team member directly. They're more integrated. And that team member is getting their full salary. There's nobody taking that, that cut.

104. Heath Maguire18:00

     So they get an instant kind of 20 to 25% jump. Yeah, exactly. The response from that is incredible, and the team all know that that's available. So it's a carrot basically to, to outperform, and then you're with us, you know, directly.

105. Simon Bedard18:16

     How do you— what are your thoughts? Funnily, I was having a conversation the other day about Managing high-performance teams and maintaining culture and things like that for the new paradigm, right? This remote kind of work, like, was that something that, you know, you guys spent much time thinking about?

106. Heath Maguire18:34

     It was a little bit. Sometimes I felt like those initiatives, you know, what are they really giving to, to the team? Do we need that? How deep do we need to go? Yeah, you can overkill anything. You can, you can. And I think the expectations of that over here are far larger than over there. And it's not to say that they're kind of not looked after or anything like that. If anything, we grossly overpaid, and I'm very proud to say that.

107. Simon Bedard19:05

     But, but still paid a lot less than you would have for a local staff member, right? So there's a win for everybody, right?

108. Heath Maguire19:11

     And, and the quality of work. And the commitment to that, to the business, was you couldn't refute it.

109. Simon Bedard19:16

     Yeah.

110. Heath Maguire19:17

     So, you know, I would find that if I would give that kind of time and resource investment that would go into that kind of side of activity directly to the team members, the results for everyone were exponentially better.

111. Simon Bedard19:30

     Yep.

112. Heath Maguire19:31

     And that worked for me for a decade. So it's, um, that's something that I—

113. Simon Bedard19:35

     That's enough.

114. Heath Maguire19:36

     Yeah, yeah, that's it. That kind of worked. The other thing I will say, and it's a bit of a, an interesting one, whenever I was recruiting, even if I had one position, I'd put 2 people on for that position.

115. Simon Bedard19:46

     Yeah.

116. Heath Maguire19:47

     My time in the business was the most valuable thing, and the— it's heartbreaking, we've all been through it. You, you bring someone on board, you bring them up to speed, 4 or 5 weeks later you go, it's not quite the right fit, and you're back to square one.

117. Simon Bedard20:01

     Yeah.

118. Heath Maguire20:02

     So I would always start 2 team members at same time. I'd bring them up, bring them on board, I'd bring them up to speed, everything in parallel. If they both worked, great, I'd find work for them. I always did. If only one worked, equally great for the business, not so great for the person that didn't work out for, but it meant my time was multiplied.

119. Simon Bedard20:24

     Yeah, makes sense. And in fairness to the person who was moving on, if it wasn't working, they wouldn't have enjoyed it anyways. They're best to find something that is a better fit for them too.

120. Heath Maguire20:31

     Exactly right. And I guess that's something, that's a privilege that you can do when you are engaging overseas labour. You wouldn't necessarily do that here in person. That would create the wrong vibe.

121. Simon Bedard20:43

     Well, it depends on the role too, right? I mean, I think if you, yeah, what sort of stage they're in in the business and their day-to-day job, yeah. You and I had an early conversation around exit. You'd approached me, we chatted, and it ended up being a fair time after that you actually did the deal. But that struck me as being quite unique. I don't find— I find people leave it too late. Most people by a long shot leave it way too late.

122. Heath Maguire21:13

     Yeah.

123. Simon Bedard21:14

     What made you a little bit different? Was it just something in the timing or was it inherently that you've always recognized the need to plan for an exit?

124. Heath Maguire21:22

     Um, both, in short. Uh, the, the timing was around the technology. Um, we can see the explosion of AI at the moment. Um, not to say that the websites that the agency has built and am I maintaining are going anywhere tomorrow, but they do have a shelf life like all technology. We don't use VHS players anymore, we don't use CDs. That was always in the back of my mind.

125. Simon Bedard21:47

     Yeah.

126. Heath Maguire21:47

     You can't predict that, but you can certainly prepare for it. The second thing was the business got to a size that it was becoming bigger than me. I knew what it was going to take to level up, and I didn't have it in me.

127. Simon Bedard22:01

     Yep.

128. Heath Maguire22:02

     I could have done it, admittedly, but—

129. Simon Bedard22:04

     It's not a capability, it's an energy focus thing.

130. Heath Maguire22:07

     Correct, yeah. Likewise, which I'm sure we'll get to, my wife's business was, was taking off.

131. Simon Bedard22:11

     Yep.

132. Heath Maguire22:12

     She let me go for that 10 years that I needed to get Wolf IQ to where it was. She did all the heavy lifting with the kids, that sort of thing. I was in the city, you know, burning the midnight oil, as they say. It was time to kind of step back, help more at home, and also help her in the business as well.

133. Simon Bedard22:34

     Yeah, it was her time to thrive.

134. Heath Maguire22:35

     Exactly. And that was the other factor that we had going on. It certainly wasn't a financial model that we could depend on at that stage, but I also had my financial goal of what I needed, and it wasn't a money figure, which is interesting, to move on the agency, to sell it.

135. Simon Bedard22:54

     Yep, yep. I always found that in my conversations with you, you were quite clear about what made sense and what didn't make sense, which I do think, you know, in all of our time doing stuff, it actually just took out some of the emotion that I do see.

136. Heath Maguire23:10

     Yeah.

137. Simon Bedard23:10

     You know, I see owners bouncing around and changing their mind on things and it just complicates stuff. It can even turn buyers off because their buyers go, hang on, you're— this is not— you're not reliable, you're not being consistent here.

138. Heath Maguire23:23

     Yeah.

139. Simon Bedard23:24

     So I always found that approach, which to me just spoke of somebody who was clear on what they needed to do and there was a plan process they had to go through. Correct. I find a lot of people just, they hit this period with uncertainty, and the more uncertainty is, the more emotional they become.

140. Heath Maguire23:40

     Yeah.

141. Simon Bedard23:41

     So yeah, so I think, you know, I take my hat off to you, mate. I thought you were, you know, it was something that I noticed was a little different to you, about you, compared to a lot of the market.

142. Heath Maguire23:51

     And it was about 4 years, I think, maybe even 5, before we, we went to market with the and I don't know whether you recall, at the time I was running 2 agencies.

143. Simon Bedard24:00

     Yes.

144. Heath Maguire24:01

     And I'd set one up that had the recurring revenue, basically the subscription-based product, and the other business, which was the larger agency, was the project-based business. You kind of looked at the project-based business, you went, that's great, but that revenue's already been realized. It means nothing for the next person that's gonna be buying the business. And then when I actually looked at separating the two, they were intrinsically linked. It would have been too tricky. Nobody in their right mind would have bought the subscription business and left this one open. There would have been too many conflicts of interest.

145. Simon Bedard24:37

     Well, it's the funnel, isn't it? Correct. Yeah.

146. Heath Maguire24:39

     And it was at that point then when I said, I'm going to merge the two businesses. And we brought them under the same brand. We basically retired the existing one and brought all the customers over, which was good fun, and then just really doubled down and focused on those plans.

147. Simon Bedard24:58

     It's, I think, from an impartial person, you sort of go, well, actually, you do want to own the whole customer experience, don't you? Like, okay, we might not like project revenue, but if it's necessary and we can transition them better and control the metrics message more. Yeah, you can see why it becomes an integral part of the transaction, right?

148. Heath Maguire25:18

     Yeah, correct.

149. Simon Bedard25:19

     I've seen that a lot in actually SaaS companies where they do, you know, project work, get them on the platform, and then they stay customers forever almost. And funnily enough, even when it comes to valuations, you know, in SaaS companies— and we'll talk a little bit about yours in a moment— but in SaaS companies, you know, everyone talks about multiples of annual recurring and stuff like that. But I've literally seen buyers go, oh, hang on, you know, 50% of your revenue is actually the projects, 50% is the recurring. Okay, well, actually, it's almost like we're gonna value it like they're 2 separate businesses. Come up for a number of each, smash them together, that's your number.

150. Heath Maguire25:53

     All right.

151. Simon Bedard25:54

     And it's sort of in some ways kind of almost how we looked at your business as well.

152. Heath Maguire25:58

     Absolutely, yeah, which makes sense. I fundamentally agree with it.

153. Simon Bedard26:02

     Yeah. I know the answers to these, but I'll ask you the questions. How did you find the process? How long did it take? You know, before you and I even spoke, did you have an inkling of how long something like this might normally take?

154. Heath Maguire26:18

     I didn't. I was— I knew once somebody saw the numbers and they had the ability to take the business by the reins and run with it, it's a no-brainer. Shoe on the other foot, I would have bought it. if I didn't sell the agency, my next step was to acquire another agency and grow that way. In the industry, it's the best way to grow. It really is.

155. Simon Bedard26:43

     What are your thoughts around where it's all going? You know, you mentioned AI before.

156. Heath Maguire26:48

     Yeah.

157. Simon Bedard26:48

     And, you know, when you and I first started talking, AI wasn't even a conversation.

158. Heath Maguire26:52

     No.

159. Simon Bedard26:52

     You know.

160. Heath Maguire26:53

     Science fiction.

161. Simon Bedard26:54

     Yeah, right? I mean, if somebody had told you when you and I first spoke those years ago and somebody told you, around the corner you're going to be able to do X, what we can do now with AI, like, it would have blown probably both of us away.

162. Heath Maguire27:06

     Absolutely, yeah.

163. Simon Bedard27:07

     How do you see the digital marketing and agency space evolving because of this?

164. Heath Maguire27:12

     Yeah, the, the agencies and the individuals in those agencies that are utilizing AI to, I guess, enhance what they're doing, um, from a capacity perspective, are the ones that are winning at the moment. Of course, there's going to be the people people that come through and just, you know, the term AI slop, you're seeing it everywhere, particularly in social. They've just got that format.

165. Simon Bedard27:33

     Yeah.

166. Heath Maguire27:34

     Reeks of AI. But the ones that are using it in their business to multiply their time, they're the ones that are winning. Even in the, the venture that I'm working in now, we use AI. We've given it a name, we refer to it as a team member, and they're in our chat like you would chat to somebody in Slack or whatever communication tool you use, we're using AI. Where I see the biggest benefits coming from is not in content creation. I think that needs to stay people doing it. I think it's disrespectful to your listeners if you're, if you are serving up that type of thing. But where it's hugely beneficial is on the agent side, which is obviously emerging now, where you're having effectively virtual team members running around Doing the things in your business, the grunt work, the very, very deep insights, analytical things that our human minds can't process, not quickly anyway.

167. Simon Bedard28:28

     Yeah.

168. Heath Maguire28:29

     Doing that for you behind the scenes.

169. Simon Bedard28:31

     And I think this concept of a human in the loop remains constant, right? I mean, we're seeing the same thing in law.

170. Heath Maguire28:37

     Yes.

171. Simon Bedard28:38

     Now, I've had a few friends who are lawyers going, yeah, we'll kind of get to a point where it's, you know, all the digital stuff is if this, then that, you know, 80, 90% of a discussion might actually be resolved through AI eventually. But there'll always be a 10% that just needs the humans to go, okay, the basics have been sorted out. Let's now go through the complex stuff. And I imagine creatives in some way will be the same thing. I might have AI powering things for me, but the human's got to make the decisions and craft the outcome.

172. Heath Maguire29:07

     That's right. They do and they don't. And I think the ones that understand that kind of hybrid model of a human in the loop, they're the ones that are going to endure, they're going to be successful. The others, they're going to have their time, they're going to burn through, and they're going to disappear because people will just stop engaging them.

173. Simon Bedard29:23

     Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I, uh, even our own team have talked a lot about rebuilding our websites and how AI is just changing it all. It's like it's moving so fast, you know. We used to talk about, oh, that's so old school. Now that we go, oh, that's so So last week. Yeah, it was moving any faster, we'd— I was going to say blow our hair off, but hey.

174. Heath Maguire29:42

     Yeah.

175. Simon Bedard29:44

     So, mate, let's come back to Wolf IQ for a second. Like, we obviously, when we started speaking, I said, I recall you being quite clear about what you wanted. We took a look at the business, we thought, yep, we can land around this sort of area. Maybe could you talk us through just from your perspective, because I know I remember what the process was like from our end, but what was the process like from your end?

176. Heath Maguire30:08

     Yeah, exceedingly simple, and I think the reassuring thing from day dot was the process. Not that I ever saw it mapped out, but I could feel myself getting dragged through step by bloody step of the process, and one of the, one of the early steps in the process was obviously the introduction to Brent, who was our broker in the deal. And you know how I feel about Brent, incredible guy. I've actually said to people when they, when they asked me who was my broker and that sort of thing, the fees from Exit Advisory, I would have paid them as a coaching fee, a learning and development cost. The amount that I learned from Brent was incredible.

177. Simon Bedard30:50

     Yeah.

178. Heath Maguire30:51

     And he could still, right up to the very end, so surprise me with little tidbits and just how he managed that relationship. The buyer and I were very different from a personality approach, our view of things, and, you know, obviously we worked it out and came to a deal, but Brent was able to be that bridge in between us. Couldn't have done it without him. Yeah, bottom line. So the process was the most important part.

179. Simon Bedard31:18

     No, that's awesome to hear. It's It's funny, you know, cause for those listening, you know, Brent's a very calm guy. Um, and I had one client saying, you know, that, um, he expected Brent to be, have all this sizzle and flair and making noise and drawing attention to himself. I'm like, that, that's actually not what you want in this scenario.

180. Heath Maguire31:37

     Yeah. Brent doesn't sizzle.

181. Simon Bedard31:38

     Yeah. Yeah. You actually want someone who's calm.

182. Heath Maguire31:41

     Yeah.

183. Simon Bedard31:41

     Somebody who will take on what might be emotional things from either party, absorb it, walk them through, hold their hand, let them know that he's not their enemy, that we're here trying to find the common ground. And yeah, now one of my old expressions is, you know, like, deals are super hard to get done. There's so many reasons they fall over, but you know where they get done, it's because you've got a willing buyer and a willing seller who can form a lot of trust in a short period of time. And that needs parameters and a sense of safety around it.

184. Heath Maguire32:10

     Yeah. Brent also identified quite early, know what you said just then sparked it, but he said, you need to meet Andy. He's like, you two need to get across from each other. He's like, I know that there's something here.

185. Simon Bedard32:23

     Yeah.

186. Heath Maguire32:23

     And, you know, paraphrasing, he kind of said, I don't know what it is.

187. Simon Bedard32:26

     Yeah.

188. Heath Maguire32:27

     But you two just need to talk. Yeah. And you guys will come to terms.

189. Simon Bedard32:31

     It's the vibe, man. It's the vibe. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, no, but that's cool. And I think, you know, even with all the talk about offshoring and this and and digital whatever, you know, this element of sometimes just sitting down with somebody, you know, allows you to form connections in ways that you wouldn't otherwise be able to, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There were a number of people I recall being interested in your business, which, you know, didn't surprise us. We said at the outset we thought that'd be the case. Were you Do you feel like the outcome was, do you feel like you got the right outcome?

190. Heath Maguire33:13

     Yes, yeah, overall, yeah. Probably the next in line, I'm still in contact with them, those agency owners.

191. Simon Bedard33:21

     Yeah, great.

192. Heath Maguire33:21

     And, you know, we've kind of had unofficial conversations after the fact, and I think all things considered, it was the best outcome, both for myself, selfishly, but also for the clients within the business.

193. Simon Bedard33:36

     Yeah, good, good. How much did that kind of legacy piece play on your mind? Like, were you like with customers and, and all the rest of it?

194. Heath Maguire33:45

     Yeah, I thought it would play more, and I don't want to seem insensitive, but I gave my everything to all of those customers. So I— the flip side of that is I don't feel like I owed them anything. I didn't feel like I was abandoning them. I was leaving them in good hands. My team was in place still. For them, it was business as usual. So yeah, I— there's of course a select few that, you know, after working with them for a decade, you're mates. Yeah, you know, we check in, we have a laugh, that sort of thing.

195. Heath Maguire34:19

     You know how much I love business. I'm checking with their business still. How are you going? You know, we have chats and whatnot, and they try to get me to come in and I'm like, I'm taking a break, a bit busy. I'm heading off on a trip again, that sort of thing.

196. Simon Bedard34:32

     So that conversation we were having offline. Yeah. Don't rush into doing anything. People will approach you about stuff.

197. Heath Maguire34:38

     Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, look, I was— we had a very short handover as well. Yeah. By design it was 3 months.

198. Simon Bedard34:45

     But that was the structure of your business.

199. Heath Maguire34:47

     Yes.

200. Simon Bedard34:47

     You know, I'm going to come back to it again. But this idea of you were talking about exiting about 5 years before you exited.

201. Heath Maguire34:54

     Yeah, yeah.

202. Simon Bedard34:55

     It's, you know, this was an exit by design.

203. Heath Maguire34:58

     It was, yeah, yeah. And I had, you know, I always kind of tried to visualize it. And this was one of my very early business coaches. He said, you should be able to look at your business in a binder. If you were to print all your SOPs out, you should be able to go, here you go, Simon. Yep, you're gonna run the business now.

204. Simon Bedard35:15

     Yeah.

205. Heath Maguire35:16

     And I always had that in the back of my mind. And during due diligence, which was about 3 or 4 months, pretty short as well, I think we supplied over 200 pieces of information around SOPs and process. And Brent even said he's never seen this.

206. Simon Bedard35:35

     Yeah.

207. Heath Maguire35:35

     Andy has a great capacity to absorb information, the buyer. I have a good capacity to document. and feed information. I think Brent was a little bit uncomfortable actually how much information we were giving, but it meant that that handover process was 3 months. That last month I was kind of just there to put out any fires.

208. Simon Bedard35:55

     Yeah, sometimes just show your face and keep everyone happy.

209. Heath Maguire35:59

     Yeah, and that was a piece of advice that I'd gotten. It was like, once you've sold the business, everybody that has sold the business that stayed in there My mum being one of them. You know, it's, it's not yours anymore.

210. Simon Bedard36:12

     Yeah.

211. Heath Maguire36:13

     And you have to let it, you have to let it go.

212. Simon Bedard36:15

     Yeah, if you can't reconcile that, you're gonna have a very hard time.

213. Heath Maguire36:17

     Yeah. Yeah. So that 3 months for me was, was perfect.

214. Simon Bedard36:21

     Yeah. Yeah, nice. As I said, I mean, I think you've, you approached it in a way where probably you would set yourself up for a better transition already mentally.

215. Heath Maguire36:29

     Yeah.

216. Simon Bedard36:30

     You know, it's my last guest Geoff, we were talking about this idea of, and so nuanced, but I'm a business owner versus I own a business.

217. Heath Maguire36:40

     Yeah.

218. Simon Bedard36:40

     You know, I'm a business owner, I'm in it, I'm, you know, versus, well, look, I own this business. It's an asset.

219. Heath Maguire36:45

     Yeah.

220. Simon Bedard36:46

     You know, am I gonna feel emotional when I sell that house? Well, I might like that house, but I'm not gonna get emotional over it because it's an asset.

221. Heath Maguire36:52

     Yeah, that's right.

222. Simon Bedard36:53

     And to some degree, and that might sound cold to some listeners, but at some point, you know, You've got to be able to step back and somehow rationalize all this in a way that makes sense.

223. Heath Maguire37:03

     Correct. Yeah, yeah. It can't become your identity too much.

224. Simon Bedard37:07

     Yeah.

225. Heath Maguire37:07

     It has to because you've gotta back it, you know, almost blindly.

226. Simon Bedard37:11

     Yep.

227. Heath Maguire37:11

     In some ways. But if it becomes too much of your identity, then you're encumbered by it. You're stuck.

228. Simon Bedard37:18

     Yeah.

229. Heath Maguire37:18

     It gets really hard.

230. Simon Bedard37:21

     Looking back on your business, is there anything that you'd do differently if you had your time again?

231. Heath Maguire37:25

     Of course, like hindsight is 20/20. Yeah, yeah, I probably would have been more aggressive, even more so on the plans. I would have bought agencies earlier to bring up that client base, which of course increases the valuation. We had great cash flow, it's cash flow positive to the ears. would have been ideal to do that. That's probably the biggest change I would have made.

232. Simon Bedard37:54

     Becomes a bit of a lazy balance sheet, right? Like you're creating cash, what do you do with it? Yeah, and for a lot of people, just, it sits there in cash and, oh well, look, it looks healthy when you're looking at your retained profits. Okay, that's great, but that money's not working for you anymore, is it?

233. Heath Maguire38:07

     Ah, no, it's dead money. Exactly right. And I would, I would push back even harder on the project work. I loved it, but it was That's where if margins are going to get eroded, yeah, it's in the projects.

234. Simon Bedard38:20

     Yeah, yeah, it's it. And I think probably that's where AI is going to have even more impact too, is how do you systemize a project even if the human has to come in and do certain components. But yeah, it's, it's, dare I say it, the sausage factory of digital kind of products, right? Like it's, yeah. Coming into the exit, I mean, obviously we chatted about the fact that you, you were Clearly thinking about this in advance, one of the big questions that comes up a lot for people is, is, you know, the valuation, what they end up getting paid. And I think there's a lot of different ways people come at that, but did you have a number in mind as you started to progress towards this?

235. Heath Maguire38:55

     Yeah, it was, it was never a number. It was more so what the deal was going to enable me to do. And the 2 main things were to have a kind of unrestricted holiday, whatever we wanted to do, disappear for 6 weeks, myself, my wife, and my 2 kids, and pay off the family home. Every business owner's kind of dream, get that done and dusted. And obviously what that affords you is a lot of flexibility. So as long as the deal checked those 2 boxes, that was my guiding compass.

236. Simon Bedard39:28

     Yeah, no, that's great. I sometimes hear people throwing numbers out, you know, I'm gonna 10x this, I'm gonna grow that, and when I sort of dig a little bit into it, often it's actually not based on anything. It's just kind of based on a, I don't wanna say ego, it is a little bit of that.

237. Heath Maguire39:44

     Yeah.

238. Simon Bedard39:44

     You know, it's kind of this, oh, that would be a great number to say I achieved. And I just find, you know, as we spoke about before, building businesses is hard. It's hard work, you know? And like, I just think if you don't have an intrinsic motivator that goes a little deeper, I mean, it can get tiring pretty damn quick.

239. Heath Maguire40:01

     Correct, exactly right. And the other thing as well, which I learned with Brent along the way, was that the number is one thing, but the terms of the deal, there's a tangible value to that as well.

240. Simon Bedard40:15

     Yeah.

241. Heath Maguire40:16

     Things like, you know, I managed to retain one of my key clients. I'm not going to say favorite clients, and they're smack bang in my interest, my hobby, kind of thing, run by a couple of young, young blokes that are going places. They're growing month on month, extremely coachable.

242. Simon Bedard40:35

     And fun to be around by the sound of it.

243. Heath Maguire40:37

     Absolutely, I love it. And they're based in Adelaide, which is just that little bit too far away that I'm not too much in the business as well. So that was an example of we managed to negotiate them out of the deal and I got to, to service them still. Things like the shorter handover period of 3 months. That again has a tangible value.

244. Simon Bedard41:00

     Money and terms, right? Hand in hand. They are the flip sides of the same coin. You know, talk to me a little bit about sort of deal structure and how, you know, we landed and, you know, any sort of just broader thoughts around that sort of stuff.

245. Heath Maguire41:14

     Yeah, absolutely. So we landed on an upfront payment as well as an Earnout based on growth.

246. Simon Bedard41:19

     Yep.

247. Heath Maguire41:21

     You know, in retrospect, and when anybody asks me about it, I speak to quite a few agency owners, I always say just be comfortable with the upfront amount. The earnout is cream. If you're dependent on that, then probably don't do the deal.

248. Simon Bedard41:34

     Yep.

249. Heath Maguire41:35

     It's largely out of your control. The business is no longer yours. Even if you feel like it's a sure bet, it maybe isn't.

250. Simon Bedard41:43

     Yeah.

251. Heath Maguire41:43

     So be comfortable with that upfront amount. That's what Brent and I worked on. That was the large kind of negotiation piece as well. And, you know, you get your initial term sheet and it's all looking good. The term sheet is never, in my experience when I was speaking to people, typically it always changes by the time the contract's signed.

252. Simon Bedard42:03

     Of course. And there's always so much more detail in a contract anyway.

253. Heath Maguire42:05

     Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, your business gets If you were buying a business, you'd do the same thing. Don't take it personally.

254. Simon Bedard42:14

     Yeah, well, it's a great point, this whole scrutiny and the emotional side of it. I get clients who sometimes try to sell me the dream of how amazing their business is because they want me to sell it. And I'm like, listen, in the end, I'm gonna run a really good process, not, not like wave a magic wand and make this look better than it really is. I'm, you know, we're not magicians. We're great at process and we're great at people and bringing them together and handling complexity. But it's, I think a lot of people underestimate just how thorough this whole thing is and it can make you leave some people feeling a little bit stripped back and exposed.

255. Heath Maguire42:53

     Correct. Yeah, yeah, you can see how that would happen. Absolutely.

256. Simon Bedard42:57

     In terms of structuring the deal, obviously there's lots of multiples of different things You know, I talk to lots of digital agency businesses and we've represented others as well. I find in this market, like a lot of— there's a lot of people who've heard the story down at the pub from somebody who sold a digital agency and got some crazy, crazy number.

257. Heath Maguire43:18

     Yeah.

258. Simon Bedard43:19

     But it's not necessarily connected to reality.

259. Heath Maguire43:21

     Correct.

260. Simon Bedard43:21

     I don't know, like, do you— what you've seen in the digital space now, is there kind of a broad expectation around multiples and things like that that people should be thinking about?

261. Heath Maguire43:31

     Again, people come with a number and it's like, what's that grounded on? Yeah, ultimately that number is dictated by the buyer and the value that they see in your business.

262. Simon Bedard43:41

     Which is very individual to them.

263. Heath Maguire43:42

     Absolutely, because they've got a plan for it. They're not buying it for no reason. They're not buying it to leave it as is and to just take the cash flow. They've got a plan. So if it's more valuable to them, they're gonna pay a multiple. If you're in a competitive situation where there's multiple buyers, the value, the multiple goes up.

264. Simon Bedard43:59

     Yeah.

265. Heath Maguire44:00

     What was interesting about our deal as well, it wasn't a fixed multiple. We had, don't quote me on, about 4 or 5 different plans that were, that made up the bulk of the recurring revenue. Each of those plans, because of their profit structure, had a different multiple. And I thought that was a fair and clever way of doing it.

266. Simon Bedard44:18

     More stable, reliable, consistent revenue is worth more than other revenue.

267. Heath Maguire44:21

     Correct, and that was put forward by the buyer, which we reviewed and accepted on its merits.

268. Simon Bedard44:28

     Yeah, great. Mate, any tips? I mean, there's probably a number of people in the digital space still listening to this. I mean, would you have any tips having come out the other side about how to think about this journey and plan for it and all the rest?

269. Heath Maguire44:42

     Yeah, absolutely. I think journey is the key word there. It is a journey, doesn't happen overnight. We transacted within about 6 months, which is pretty quick from what I understand. Yeah, that's very quick actually. Yeah, yeah. And I, I think the thing is the journey. Plan for it, have these conversations early.

270. Heath Maguire45:00

     What you think your business is worth, sure, it might be, but it also might not be, and it probably isn't. Could be more, you never know. somebody like yourself, a broker, or somebody like Brent, who's probably sold more businesses than I've had breakfasts, let's be honest, they're gonna help you leapfrog all of those gotcha moments, and it will add zeros when the deal is done. So engage those people around you. You're great at running your business, but most of us haven't sold a business before. Get a plan in place. And stick to it, and it becomes your guiding compass. Is this going to add to my business sale, or is it going to detract from it? And if it's detracting, then you run, run away from it, run for the hills, and just focus in that one direction.

271. Simon Bedard45:49

     I think that's great advice. It's remembering something one of my mentors over the years told me is, you know, to actually achieve a plan usually means you're going to have to say no to a bunch of really good ideas.

272. Heath Maguire46:02

     Yeah.

273. Simon Bedard46:02

     And that's hard to do as somebody who might be a bit entrepreneurial or get excited over—

274. Heath Maguire46:06

     Twitch.

275. Simon Bedard46:07

     Exactly.

276. Heath Maguire46:09

     Yeah, I always say that you start making money when you say no.

277. Simon Bedard46:12

     Yeah, definitely. Mate, thank you for making the time to come in and chat to us today. We've got a minute or two. I'd love to hear more about what you're doing at the moment. For those who don't know, your lovely wife Nicole is also the founder of Simple Home Edit and has written. This is the second of her books, isn't it?

278. Heath Maguire46:32

     Yep, with number 3 on the way.

279. Simon Bedard46:33

     With a number 3 on the way. My wife and I are very avid followers of her and her work. She does amazing stuff and is an amazing cook. So yeah, tell us about it.

280. Heath Maguire46:45

     Yeah, so Nick started probably about 5 years ago now when our son was about 5. Nick's wildly successful in her previous career as well. She's she's got that, that spirit about her. She started cooking at home and wanted to start sharing it with other mums that were going, going through that phase of their life, I guess. We had 2 young kids, 3 and 5, who are now 9 and 11. And she, she decided to start filming for Instagram, just more so probably as a bit of stimulation, something to do while she was at home. It between naps and that sort of thing, and she was very shy.

281. Simon Bedard47:24

     Yep.

282. Heath Maguire47:25

     We joke about it now. She said, I'm not showing my face. It was always just her hands and whatever she was doing at that stage. There was a bit of like home organization in there as well, which is on the rise again, and her food of course. And Nic wasn't the cook when we started dating. I was the cook. I was raised in commercial kitchens. I can cook, not as well as Nic now, but she's self-taught.

283. Heath Maguire47:47

     Her mum is a very, very good cook, very traditional European. So a lot of that has washed over. And so Nic joked, she said it was something like 15,000 or 20,000 followers. Once, once I get to that, once she gets to that, then—

284. Simon Bedard48:00

     You made it.

285. Heath Maguire48:01

     Yeah, that's it, I'm going to show my face. So she did within like 4 or 5 weeks, and then she's like, oh, I'm going to show my face now. And from that point, it's just kind of gone gangbusters. There's now an audience of at last count about 5.5 million.

286. Simon Bedard48:15

     Yeah, wow.

287. Heath Maguire48:17

     Yeah, book 3 is coming out and it's all centered around the website. So these recipes are now published on the website as well as some of them in the books. There's more than 500 recipes on the website and, and that's the business model, is sharing these amazing recipes with home cooks from all walks of life. They message us, we get all their comments, we get emails it's incredible to hear all the stories, and I'm now there to support her from a technical perspective. I'm often behind the camera instead of in front of the camera, and it's just about now multiplying that out, growing that audience base, sharing more recipes. I'm always amazed that she can come up with new ones. She feels like she'll never run out, which is interesting.

288. Simon Bedard49:03

     So yeah, that's where I'm spending most of That's really exciting and it's a beautiful book and people will be able to go pick up that book. We're going to put some links in the show notes here for anybody who might be listening online. Quick question about it. I mean, as a guy who's kind of led the businesses and been out in the charge and all the rest of it, I mean, has it been a mental shift taking that back step and being, playing the supporting actor?

289. Heath Maguire49:28

     I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. I love not being in front of the camera. So that's, that's fine, check. But it's still extremely stimulating and very challenging for me because it's now, well, how do we make this a legacy? How do we build it out? The last 18 months since we sold has been about scaling it.

290. Simon Bedard49:49

     Yeah.

291. Heath Maguire49:49

     And I can't say too much, but there's some really cool things coming along the way that, you know, behind the My job effectively is to keep Nick in front of the camera and take care of as much of the other stuff as I can.

292. Simon Bedard50:04

     Nice.

293. Heath Maguire50:04

     We play to our strengths.

294. Simon Bedard50:06

     Yeah, yeah, 100%. And great to be able to support your wife as she's thriving and growing and evolving and developing a business. And yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, mate, um, thank you. Thanks for being, uh, giving us your time, and you've been very generous, and I appreciate it.

295. Heath Maguire50:20

     And thanks for coming by.

296. Simon Bedard50:21

     Yeah, no, it's been great catching up, and, uh, Look, I'm sure everybody who's listening has gotten a lot of great tips out of today. So yeah, really appreciate it.

297. Heath Maguire50:28

     Awesome. Thanks, Simon.

298. Simon Bedard50:28

     Thank you.

299. Heath Maguire50:29

     Cheers.

300. Simon Bedard50:31

     If you're a regular listener of this podcast, then you know that we're all about straight talk. So here's something straightforward for you. This show is built on decades of actually doing this kind of work. And our book, Exit Like an Expert, is the actual guide and framework this entire show is built on. You know, we talk about how do you value a business? What are buyers really thinking? And what does a sale process actually look like? This is not some kind of motivational book or technical journal. It's a practical guide that's designed to help business owners get real results. To get a copy of the book, go to exitadvisory.com.au, or you can click a link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did.

301. Simon Bedard51:17

     You know, there's a couple of quick takeaways there that I got from Heath. And the first one was really around the valuation. You know, I think a lot of business owners get really hung up on what is the multiple and what is the number. And I guess for Heath, it was less about what is a specific number as opposed to what does this help me actually achieve. You know, it's that kind of insight, that kind of intrinsic motivator, I think, that helps Or helped Heath have real clarity through this deal. So not only did he know what the outcome should look like, he also started planning much earlier than the average person. So by the time he arrived at the challenging part, the actual transaction, he knew what he wanted. He knew what it should look like, and he was able to navigate that through with less stress and less emotion.

302. Simon Bedard52:05

     And ultimately it led to a great outcome for him and his family. I hope you enjoyed that episode. See you at the next one.

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