The Best Ways to Build Passive Income In Your Business with Nate Lind

00:00:00 - Nate Lind

Recurring revenue is definitely important. But I'd say that nothing is more important than the actual profit, the base underlying profitability of the digital business over the last twelve months and over the previous two, three years, and that it's growing. If it's growing, that takes out a lot of concerns for a buyer who's thinking, okay, this thing can continue to grow a business because no one wants to buy a digital business that's going down. They can't pay today's price and afford to pay off any loans or anything else they're going to use to leverage the purchase price later if the business is not performing very well.

00:00:37 - Courtney Elmer

Globally ranked among the top shows in business and education, we're known for helping overworked digital business owners navigate the ups and downs on the way to seven figures. Each week, you're going to learn how to get the right systems, structure, and support in place so you can build a self-sustaining digital business that thrives in a rapidly changing digital environment and grow through what you go through to create greater passive income, influence, and impact you deserve. This is AntiFragile Entrepreneurship.

Welcome back! You're listening to another episode of AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™. This is episode 170. And you know, I was thinking recently about how growing up, my dad would always tell me, Courtney, begin with the end in mind. Now, I'll be honest with you.

00:01:26 - Courtney Elmer

There have been so many times in my life where I have not followed that advice and instead just dove headfirst into whatever it was, sometimes successfully. Other times to fall flat on my face. But it's in those moments of face planning that I'm often reminded of this age-old wisdom. And this is the very reason that I am bringing you my special guest today, Nate Lind, who is a business broker and exit strategist for digital business owners like you and me because most of us go into business with a dream, an idea, a mission, or a calling in our heart.

00:02:05 - Courtney Elmer

And as we start to grow a business, we focus on how we can do more, reach more, impact more, and grow more. And what happens is most of us get so caught up in the day-to-day that we don't even give a single thought to later down the road. Chances are you've probably never thought about selling your digital business because this is your mission; this is your passion. This is the work that you believe you're here on this earth to do. And I get it. Because going into digital business for myself was one of those moments where I did not begin with the end in mind, and this is a big mistake.

00:02:50 - Courtney Elmer

And Nate is here today to tell you why. Now, if you've never given any thought to what it means to build a sellable business, even if you never plan on selling it, then pay close attention because this episode is for you. Nate's going to show you how to increase the value of your digital business and where you should be looking if you want to create more passive income so you can experience more freedom both now within your business and down the road. When maybe you want to take some more time off, maybe you want to travel a little more; maybe you don't want to be working quite so hard.

Plus, he's going to show you what not to do if you want to grow a business that can truly run without you.

00:03:56 - Courtney Elmer

Nate, Welcome to the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ podcast. I'm delighted to have you here today.

00:04:01 - Nate Lind

I'm so glad that we connected. Thanks for having me on here. I'm looking forward to sharing my wisdom and my foibles with you all.

00:04:08 - Courtney Elmer

Well, you bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the table. I'm excited to dig into that with you. But where I'd love to start with you. One of the things that you often share is telling the story of how one day you were out on this hike with your family, and your son looked at you, and out of the blue, he's like, Dad, why can't we do this more often? And I'm curious to know, what was your life like prior to that moment, and why was that such a pivotal moment for you?

00:04:35 - Nate Lind

Yeah, very pivotal moment. So to give you a snapshot of what my life looked like at that moment or 30 seconds before that moment, I was mostly a workaholic and was doing a lot of traveling. I owned an e-commerce business, so it was selling vitamins and supplements 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And if the website something happened, if something happened to the payment system or shopping cart, I had to fix it because we were spending a lot of money on advertising.

00:05:12 - Nate Lind

We would be spending money and not having any sales. So it really prompted a hyper-vigilant awareness in my system that I was just constantly worried about and aware of the nature of this digital business, and told my the response to my son was, Son, I've got to pay for all of this. This doesn't come free. Like, we have to pay to enjoy these luxuries and to be able to have this time and that sort of stuff. And as soon as those words came out of my mouth, I realized, holy cow, wait a second.

00:05:46 - Nate Lind

I became an entrepreneur because I wanted passive income, and I wanted to have the freedom to be able to spend more time with my family and friends, and I wanted to have the affluence and wealth to be able to do simple things. I'm not talking about, like, living it up at the Taj Mahal or anything. I just wanted to be able to enjoy some lovely hikes out in the Ponderosa of New Mexico and be able to do some traveling from time to time, maybe go to Mexico or go out of the country and nothing crazy.

I realized that after having read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I'd done kind of a piss poor job at setting myself up with a passive income stream to be able to start to step away from the rat race. Instead, I had made my own rat race, which was my company.

00:06:26 - Courtney Elmer

Wow. One of the things I often say is your business cannot grow beyond you if it's too dependent on you. And I think that resonates so true for so many of us who get into digital business with this big dream, this big idea, this big mission. We want that financial freedom, that flexibility, but then we just get into the weeds of our business. And I think for many small digital business owners, they love the idea of generating passive income, but they're not exactly sure how to do that, especially once they get into business.

And most of our listeners are knowledge brokers. They're coaches; they're course creators. They're selling their knowledge and expertise, speakers, and authors. And so a lot of times, we kind of just get into the day-to-day of our business. Much to your story and your point there. It's like, I have to keep this thing going. It all ties back to me. If I don't do it, who will? And that can really begin to trap us from thinking beyond the day-to-day of our business. What's next? What if I want to sell this thing one day? What if I want to not work one day? What if I want to move on to another venture one day?

00:07:26 - Courtney Elmer

So for those listening right now who want to create more passive income streams in their digital business but who aren't sure how to bridge that gap, can you share with us some examples of clients that you've worked with, who overcame that obstacle, and who have successfully leveraged their expertise and knowledge to start creating passive income in their business?

00:07:59 - Nate Lind

Absolutely. A couple of ways, talking specifically to your audience, two ways that come to mind immediately are both two ways that I've done. I've sold my business and have used the proceeds from that to invest in passive income. Whether it be passive investments that are financial investments or real estate, stuff like that, that is maybe not 100% passive income but is near passive. Much more passive income than operating a business as the owner-operator, which I've done a lot of that before in the past as well.

And then the other route is replacing yourself within the business. I'm doing that again with what I have now. I've got a business brokerage, so I own a franchise. It's like a real estate brokerage, you might imagine. Think of Keller Williams. So website closers are the headquarters and the main brand of the franchise that I own. And just like a realtor or a broker, they may own a local Keller Williams office in Tampa Bay, and then they start to hire other realtors or brokers to start doing deals.

So I do the same thing. I've got two associate brokers that work in the franchise, and they're doing deals. So I'm slowly replacing my deal flow from me individually to having others do it. So if you have someone out there that's listening or watching this, and they're the intellectual property of the course or the service offering, sooner or later, you have to start to diversify other people providing that intellectual property, providing that service to your clients. So hiring other coaches, training other people to start to provide that work, you've got to delegate it.

00:09:40 - Nate Lind

In this case, you really need to start planning on that if you want to exit on the first end. Because it's really tough to sell coaching or kind of an intellectual service providing sort company when you're doing it all because a buyer is going to say, well if you're leaving, how is this all going to get done? Do I need to learn everything that you know? How am I going to learn everything that it's taken you years to learn? How can I learn that in three months? So you can go off to Cancun and sip a Mai Tai?

So those are the two methods that I've used before in the past. Would you have one preference you'd like to steer through versus the other?

00:10:19 - Courtney Elmer

I think replacing yourself within the business is for sure! Because my dad is in the finance world. He does a lot of estate planning. And I remember growing up, he would always come home, and he'd say, you know, gosh, I had another conversation with another client, and they've got no exit strategy. They haven't even thought about it. And so, being a teenager at the time, exit strategy, what is that? Right?

But it's always been something in the back of my mind, thanks to my dad through the years, who just would come home and share these stories about his clients and how they never began with the end in mind. I think a lot of times for digital business owners, that's very true as well, especially the independent owner operator, and especially personal brands, because you are the brand, right? I read a book recently called The Automatic Customer. I don't know if you've read that.

00:11:01 - Nate Lind

I've seen it. I have not read that one yet.

00:11:02 - Courtney Elmer

It's a great book. And in there, he talks about real subscription models for businesses, and that's his main focus. But in there, there was a line, and he said businesses that have passive income streams in place are far more valuable for resale than those that don't. So I'd love to hear, in your experience, walk us through why is that? I mean, from a logical perspective, it makes sense, right? You're making more money in the business. It's a little less dependent on you, but I'm sure there are a lot of nuances there, and I would love to hear your take on that.

00:11:28 - Nate Lind

There are. In fact, I was just going through some notes. I'm getting ready to create some new content on my YouTube channel, and I wrote a book just recently that I've got a lot of this information in it. But I'm trying to chunk some of this information down into some different bite-size elements so that we can get through it. There are about 27 factors that go into a business valuation. This is the first thing that I do when someone approaches me and says, hey, I'm thinking about selling.

Usually, the first same thing that you would have if you've got a house is you want to know how much your house is worth, how much they are selling for in the neighborhood, how much the company is worth, and how much other companies like it selling for. And since we're the largest marketplace for these types of companies, I've got these comparables that I can go back and look within our database of what's sold, and we'll go through, and I'll get to your question because there's a number of facets here.

00:12:14 - Nate Lind

Recurring revenue by itself isn't worth it like an individual one-time trailing twelve months earnings multiple. But it's a component that goes into a variety of factors. So we have the transferability of the business. So have you delegated the major operational chunks of the business to staff that can support the business? It makes it a little bit more passive for the buyer. The recurring revenue has diverse revenue streams coming in from multiple platforms; if you're doing all of your advertising with one platform like, let's say, Facebook or Instagram, or TikTok, all of your passive income is coming through just that one channel. That can be a potential risk.

So there's a bunch of things that we go into, and usually what I'll do is kind of like what a doctor would do in a free consult. I'll assess the business. We have a series of questions I need to get into the nuts and bolts of the finances of the business. How much is it actually making? And then also because that's going to give me the number to apply the multiple to. But then I need to understand the 27 factors; it takes me about 45 minutes to get through all of them. To then be able to assess the multiple recurring revenues is definitely important.

00:13:25 - Nate Lind

But I'd say that nothing is more important than the actual profit, the base underlying profitability of the business over the last twelve months and over the previous two, three years. And that it's growing. If it's growing, that takes out a lot of concerns for a buyer who's thinking, okay, this thing can continue to grow a business because no one wants to buy a business that's going down. They can't pay today's price and afford to pay off any loans or anything else they're going to use to leverage the purchase price later if the digital business is not performing very well.

So the number one thing, and this can be the point of sale revenue, or it could be subscription or recurring revenue. A lot of buyers don't have a really strong preference for one over the other as long as everything is growing. There are some models that a disclaimer, I'd say, is like subscription or software as a service or SaaS Companies insurance and some financial fields that are based on long-term annual contracts. For some business-to-business services, something that your clients might have is whether they are on a month to month with their clients or if they can get three-month, six-month, or twelve-month contracts

It's not necessarily recurring, but it shows stickiness to the revenue, and that shows comfort to the buyer that thinks, okay, wow, this is a track record of these contracts. Over time that, yeah, this thing's going to be worth more money.

00:14:52 - Courtney Elmer

That makes so much sense, and it's so multifaceted too. Right. This is the things that when you get into business, usually you're someone on a mission, you want to change the world, you want to make an impact, you want to do whatever it is that you got into business to do. And these are not even things that you're thinking about for most business owners. Right. And they don't go into the business with the idea of growing a business that's sellable because usually, for most of our listeners anyway, they got into business to do something that is personally fulfilling for them.

00:15:18 - Courtney Elmer

And if they make money and make an impact while doing it, well, that's great. Right? So I think many of these business owners they're in their digital business right now. They are not thinking about what really is the value of my business. And so I'm curious to know, Nate, what is the biggest mistake that you see small business owners and independent owner operators making that actually decreases the value of their business? I'm sure this is a loaded question, but if you could say what are some of the top mistakes, right? That you see that people really need to be giving some thought to?

And how can we as business owners look at our digital business through maybe a bit of a different lens here to avoid these mistakes?

00:15:58 - Nate Lind

Yeah. People who have a personal brand as their company brand are not doing themselves a favor when it comes to trying to think about selling it. Find a way to be a featured face of the actual brand or the service itself. So it might be time to think about some branding and some rebranding around. Like always think about what's in it for me from the customer standpoint. I do this all the time with my buyers; what's in it for the buyer?

And they're going to be thinking, okay, well, if this is Natelin.com and I'm getting ready to buy Natelin.com and I'm not Nate Lind, how the heck is this going to work? So you really do need to be thinking about setting up the company itself as its own brand, that, yes, you're a contributor, but you're not the brand. And I wish I had a chance to go back about 20 years and tell Russell Brunson to stop doing this whole archetype of the individual personal brand. And I know why he did it.

00:17:01 - Nate Lind

It is easier to get those up and going, but long term, they're not worth as much, and they're really hard to sell. So starting to transition from a personal brand into a non-personal brand is really critical. Also, to have your financials done in a professional and incredible way, you have to have QuickBooks or Xero or something. You need to have all of your business and just business expenses in the bank account and flowing through the bank account. Don't commingle your personal stuff in the business if you can help it.

Some things I can add back car, travel, meals, and entertainment. Those are pretty standard deductions, but it gets to be a lot more complicated. When I had one client, she had like she was paying her personal nanny. Okay, well, it looks like an employee. So there's a whole conversation that goes on about the nanny. What does the nanny do? Where's the nanny at? 

00:17:50 - Nate Lind

That you wouldn't even have to have gone into if you'd paid them separately.You can form a holding company as a single-member LLC and flow everything from the brand into your holding company. Load up that LLC, that holding company, with any of your personal expenses that you're going to write off in there. But keep the actual operating entity clean. Keep it simple. That's one of the biggest things I see time and time again. People don't have financials that are either up-to-date, accurate or professionally prepared.

So changing your personal branding updating, make sure your financials are really clean and easy and perform. You really have to be focused on the growth of the company. These lower middle market companies do not sell as a multiple of revenue. So if you're really excited, you cracked a million dollars in revenue. Congratulations. How much did you profit? Did you get over $100,000? Did you get over $250,000? That's the number the buyer is looking at. That's the number I'll be looking at when the time comes.

00:19:02 - Nate Lind

You're calling me to look at the valuation. I'm going to multiply your company's multiple by your earnings, not your revenue. So this game is a hard shock to me too. I was really excited. One year I did eight figures in sales, but I barely netted over seven. And I was super frustrated that it wasn't mid to high sevens, but I felt really proud. I got to eight figures. Like, that was my number. That's me, I'm over $10 million. I didn't make that money. That didn't come to me.

That was after paying for advertising and inventory and all that sort of stuff. That was just a big ego-inflating number. And the mergers and acquisitions market does not pay for lower middle market deals like this as a multiple on revenue. So those would be some big things. I think that if I could go back in time and share with clients prior to their listing with me or even share with myself back in the day, I would have liked to have heard so valuable.

00:19:51 - Courtney Elmer

So valuable, I mean, my goodness. I hope for you listening right now that you are taking notes now; again, these are things that we don't often think about. And when you were talking, know, kind of becoming the featured face of the brand but not the brand itself. There are a couple of examples that came to mind. You know, Dan Sullivan is really well known with the strategic coach, but the strategic coach is his brand. Dan Sullivan happens to be the founder of that brand. But if Dan wanted to go sell that, he could certainly sell that business. He's got the team in place. He's got all these things that you're describing. Right?And certainly, you would look at the numbers of that digital business too. 

00:20:26 - Courtney Elmer

But just again for you listening to be thinking about, and I used to get a lot of pushback on now, my company is The EffortLESS Life®, and for many years, I operated it as a personal brand. And the moment I started to make that shift away from that, people were, no, no, Courtney, you are the brand. I said, I have been the brand up until this point, but I am not the brand.

And we kind of got to put our ego to the side there a bit too. Because if we're thinking bigger, if we're thinking long term, I had a conversation with a wonderful woman yesterday. She's in her sixties, and she said, I'm starting to think about what's next for me. And I'm in my mid thirty’s, and it's like, I think at this point in our life, we're not often thinking about what's next. But it's actually one of the smarter business moves that you can make to be thinking long term, beginning with the end in mind.

00:21:14 - Nate Lind

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Anyone that's told you to keep your personal brand, don't listen to them. It's okay, maybe, to start, but you need to get it moved over to an actual service-oriented brand.

00:21:29 - Courtney Elmer

Yes, and the financials too. Because I remember a time in my digital business where that would just cause me to break out in hives and sweat, and I didn't want to think about the financials and I outsourced that to a team who has done a beautiful job. They have put it together far better than I ever could. And now I actually know my numbers, and I didn't have to figure it out. So I know many people listening right now probably had that little moment of panic as you were sharing that. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be you keeping these beautiful picture-perfect books but having someone who can help you do that.

00:21:52 - Courtney Elmer

Because these are just the fundamental cornerstones, you need to have in place to start increasing the value of your brand. But also, if you ever do want to sell it one day, there are things you need to be thinking about. But I want to pivot here a bit, Nate, and ask you because I noticed that you're a triathlete, which is amazing, and I would assume that in doing triathlons and competing in this way, you've likely learned the importance of discipline and consistency, right?

And all these other aspects that go into training and training hard, as well as remembering why it is you want to achieve that goal, right?

00:22:35 - Courtney Elmer

Why did you start? And I'm just curious to know, how has your experience in being a triathlete? What are some of the principles that you've learned, and how can we maybe apply those principles to our digital businesses to remember why we started, to remember what's really important and to work smarter and not harder, and actually enjoy the work we got into business for in the first place?

00:22:57 - Nate Lind

Well, you alluded to some key points discipline, goals, and accountability. Those are some big ones. So I found myself very numbers oriented. The business I sold was a reporting system that I built that plugged into a shopping cart, and the strategic shopping cart it was associated with made me an offer, and that's who I sold to. And often, that's how this works. You don't even know that you're worth something, or you don't think about selling until somebody says, hey, would you be interested in selling? And then the real question is, well, for how much? We'll get back to that later.

But when it came to training, I had to find something that really excited me. So I signed up for a race. I signed up for it in the beginning; it was what they call a sprint triathlon, so a shorter distance would happen quicker. I didn't have any training experience up until that.

00:23:51 - Nate Lind

I haven't been a lifelong runner or cyclist. That only came kind of just before the pandemic. In 2019, I kind of started, but really in 2020, I really got going. I signed up for a race and just started doing the best that I could in the beginning, and then I got kind of serious about it because I just really enjoyed it. It was different for me, gave me a kind of competitive outlet that I could play around with, and no one was stopping me. It was all in my own control.

So a lot of psychological things were going into being able to be accountable for what you do, control, recognizing a lot of factors outside of yourself, pretty much everything outside of yourself you can't control, and then just focusing back on what you can control, which is yourself.

And I found a platform that let me do assessments, so I would go out and run a 5K. In fact, I just reassessed myself this last weekend. So run out and run a 5K as fast as I can, cycle as hard as I can for 20 minutes, and then swim as fast as I can for two minutes and then four minutes.

00:24:53 - Nate Lind

 And then it takes all this information and puts it together and then gives me a plan, tells me where I'm at. So I had a measurement to know physically where I am. And I'd never seen anything like this before. And I've got a watch and like these little power meters and stuff like that, which are my key performance indicators.

Translating this back to business, your sales, your profit, your clients, your contracts, whatever your key performance indicators are, you need to understand where you're starting out at. I needed to understand where I was starting out physically, and then I needed a plan. So I used this platform, and I had a coach as well. I'm a big fan of coaches. I'm a coach.

00:25:32 - Nate Lind

I'm an M&A coach. Call me an M&A Advisor or Business Broker. Sounds like your clients, your audience, are coaches as well for a variety of different industries. So if we're coaches, where are our coaches? So find a coach that can help you and have them lay out a plan. They need to know where you're starting from and where you want to end up. So I set a goal. I just wanted to finish a half-ironman. I didn't have a specific time.

And after a little while, my coach is like, okay, that's kind of a wimpy goal. You're going to finish it, how fast do you want to do it? And I set a goal of 6 hours. I wanted to get it done in 6 hours. It would put me in the top quarter of all the people at the race. I was going to think, okay, for my first time, if I could finish over half, that'd be great. I'm going to shoot for the top quarter. And over time, every day I was doing my workouts, all of my information was tracked on my watch, was uploaded to the cloud. This system put it all together and gave me a score. So I had a scorecard every day.I could see if I did well or if I needed some improvement. Some days I needed to take some time off; other days, I needed to work a little harder. On other days I was perfect, or I would overachieve. 

00:26:45 - Nate Lind

So having the knowledge of where I'm starting, where I'm going, and then the confidence of a map or a plan on how I am going to get there gave me this reassurance and calmness and quietness that all translated into an epic race day. And I did it in 6 hours. In fact, I've done three of them now, right at 6 hours.

So there's a part of me that's a little irritated that I've been so consistent. At 6 hours, I haven't overachieved and gotten three-quarters or five and a half, but I'm happy with that. And that's just how things have panned out for me. And being happy with my results, as opposed to constantly criticizing my own success, that's another opportunity for growth. And I've translated that into success. I have with my clients how I would recommend everyone run their business is know where you're at, know where you want to go.

00:27:37 - Nate Lind

And then, if you don't know how to get there, find a coach that can give you a plan on how to get there. Whether that's outsourcing yourself, delegating yourself, if that's rebranding yourself, if that's increasing your sales revenue, if that's increasing your profit, eliminating waste-cutting staff, whatever that might be, I promise you there's an entrepreneur or coach out there that's done it before you have, and they probably know how to do it faster than you do.

It may not be a bad idea to spend anywhere between usually $100 an hour is about the lowest I've spent for quality consulting, but all the way up to $1,000 an hour, tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. You'll know what's the right fit for you and your budget, but give yourself some opportunity to at least evaluate that instead of just trying to play Whack A mole and figure it out on your own and not getting the results you look for.

00:28:26 - Courtney Elmer

That is such fantastic advice, Nate. My goodness. Congratulations on doing that multiple times. As you're sharing this about this cool device that you're using that gives you your baselines. And I'm like, gosh, can someone just please invent that for our businesses? And we just hit a button, and it just tracks what we do. And I'm like, you'd have a really valuable company there, right? Tell you, hey, you need a day off. Hey, you need to work a little harder today. You're being lazy. No, but that's amazing.

00:28:54 - Courtney Elmer

And I am just thinking about what you said a moment ago about you having to control what you can control. And often, that's us. That's it. And that is the heartbeat of our show here, is when it comes to antifragility and really what that means, taking things a step beyond just being resilient in the face of pressure, stress, or obstacles, but growing through them and growing because of the obstacles that you face. In those moments, we can only control what we can control. And this is a point of frustration for so many because we want to control it all.

But what you said there, and I just want to make sure our listeners hear that. If you take away nothing else from this conversation today, walk away with that and start looking at your business through the lens of what is in my control. And what can I do to get clear on what are my baselines? Where am I right now? Where do I want to be?

00:29:45 - Courtney Elmer

I was thinking about this just this week. Honestly, Nate, just to be totally transparent with you here about how I haven't really sat down in a minute and looked at where do I want to be a couple of years from now, three years from now? I've got my one-year plan, and I've been working on that plan, but thinking a little bit beyond, which I think kind of nicely wraps up everything we're talking about here today. What is the end for you? Because sometimes that target will shift as we go through our life, as we go through our digital business, as we achieve certain goals, right? And what's next? What's the next thing?So I want to thank you for being here. You've shared so much with us today. And one final question for you before I let you go.

00:30:22 - Courtney Elmer

For those entrepreneurs who are listening right now who are so used to actively running their businesses that that mental shift is tough, right? To go from actively running the business to kind of stepping back and not necessarily a backseat role in the business, but being that featured face of the brand, building a brand, and growing a business that can run without them and be self-sustaining.

For those that are having a hard time wrapping their mind around that concept and maybe a little bit of resistance to let go of the reins and to actually look at putting some passive income streams in place and starting to increase the value of their business right now, what is the number one first step that you would recommend they take?

00:31:03 - Nate Lind

I'd ask your family. Do they want to see more of you or less of you? Where on the balance and scale of time that you're spending with your family do you want to be, and where do they want you to be? Because that's what really changed my mind about, okay, how hard do I want to be working at this? How great does it feel that I'm doing everything versus can I start to let go of some things and some stuff? I needed to shut down.

At one point in time, I had 27 LLCs operating. I shut down like 18 of them. And just to be able to recognize, okay, why did I become an entrepreneur in the first place? I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I wanted passive income. I wanted to level up from lower middle class to upper middle class or as high as I could go in the top 1% if I could make it. 

00:31:52 - Nate Lind

And I wanted time to be able to experience more nice things with my family. And I don't mean nice things like luxurious items, but I wanted to be able to travel and do things and explore more of myself, do internal work, spend time making retreats, and spend time around healthful activities and mindful activities.

And I just realized that grinding away 60 hours a week on a job, even though I was the company owner, wasn't the satisfaction I was looking for. So I think for people, this is kind of they need their own rock bottom moment or kick to the gut moment to figure out why are you doing what you're doing. Or are you just waking up and doing today, like yesterday as a Groundhog Day moment, or like a robot because of some choice that you made in the past with reading some entrepreneurial or motivational book that got you into this space in the beginning? And are you actually achieving your goal, or are you just going through the motions?

00:32:55 - Courtney Elmer

So good. There's so much there in what you just said, so I hope those of you who are listening go back, play that back a few times, and see what you can walk away with from this episode to apply to your life and business. Nate, thank you for being here. It's been such a pleasure.

I know that you have a list of resources for people who are looking to figure out what is the value of their business, how I can start increasing passive income within my business right now, and what I need to be thinking about if I want to sell my business. Can you give us the link to that? Because I know included in there, you've got some examples of businesses that have sold so you can see what works and some businesses that didn't sell so you know what to avoid.

00:33:32 - Nate Lind

I sure do, yes. Your audience can go to Natelind.com/gift. It's my gift to your audience. So you go to Natelind.com/gift. You'll have a digital copy of my book. I've got examples of financials for businesses that sold and examples that didn't sell, so you can see what to do, and what not to do. I've got a lot of information about how to figure out your own multiple. If you feel like you don't want to have a conversation with me or you don't meet my threshold.

I only work with businesses that sell for over a million dollars, so they need to be doing at least a million dollars in revenue and need to be getting close to a half million dollars in profit, and then I'll do the business valuation for you for free. But if you're under that level, you can still take whatever your profit is, multiply it by your multiple. You can figure out your own multiple using the spreadsheet that I share in there. And I've got a bunch of other stuff as well testimonials of clients and their war stories of selling businesses, whether it be digital marketing companies and e-commerce companies and other digital and tech and SaaS.

And there's also a video about how many buyers there are out there, and you would be shocked. There are tens of thousands of them for every listing I am a guide for or an advisor for. I'm getting anywhere between 152 hundred buyers signing the nondisclosure agreements and requesting the information package them. It's still a seller's market, despite the doom and gloom of the economists and recession and this and that.

I'm getting multiple LOIs on listings right now. It's happening. Every listing I've done this year, 2023. So it's applicable. The market is hungry. People want to put money into investors, want to put money into cash-flowing businesses. If you've got one out there, I'd love to talk to you. Or if you know a friend that's got a cash flow business and it's doing well, and they're looking to sell it at some point in time, I'd be happy to pay a referral for anyone that sends them my way.

00:35:30 - Courtney Elmer

Fantastic. Nate, thank you again so much for being here. Truly has been a pleasure.

00:35:34 - Nate Lind

Thank you.

00:35:35 - Courtney Elmer

I'm so glad you joined us today for another episode of AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™. Thanks for being here. And if you want to connect with Nate, make sure you head to the show notes so you can get the link he shared here and grab the free resource that he has for you to help you see exactly where you can start building more passive income into your business to increase the overall value of your digital business and stop trading your time for dollars.

00:36:03 - Courtney Elmer

Now, if you like the show, I would love it if you would forward this episode to a friend. Just tap the Share button, share it with them via text or on social media, and if you love the show, then it would mean the world to me if you would take 30 seconds and leave a review. Even just one sentence helps other people know that this show is worth their time and that it's worth listening to.

And if you want to connect with me personally, come find me on Instagram. I am there @thecourtneyelmer. I'm always sharing behind-the-scenes in my stories just about every single day. And I share with you my insights on how to launch and leverage a podcast of your own as a profitable tool for lead generation and also thought leadership expansion. So I hope you'll come to find me there and hang out with me.

And coming up next week, I am going to reveal the game-changing habit that helped me double my business revenue in a single year. Now, this game-changing habit is not your typical bro marketing tactic. That's just disguising the same old worn-out information and presenting it in a fancy new way.

00:37:19 - Courtney Elmer

The secrets to growing your business more effectively are literally right under your nose when you know where to look, and they're hidden within every situation you face in your business.

The problem is most people don't know how to recognize them. They don't know how to harness the power of those situations that they face, whether it's something really positive, it's high in their life, or it's something negative and difficult and challenging, one of those low lows. But when you know what to look for and when you know how to harness the power of each and every situation that comes your way, you'll be able to grow exponentially faster and create the greater impact that you dream of because you'll have a distinct advantage over your competitors who aren't aware of how to leverage these specific business truths to their advantage.

So that's all coming up next week. Join me right back here. And until then, let's go out and grow through what we go through together.