{"id":21078,"date":"2023-03-15T05:44:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T19:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/?p=21078"},"modified":"2024-04-15T16:06:23","modified_gmt":"2024-04-15T06:06:23","slug":"humans-of-flippa-scott-oldford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/humans-of-flippa-scott-oldford\/","title":{"rendered":"Aggregating Sites and Taking a Portfolio Approach to Scale with Scott Oldford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Scott Oldford is a seasoned entrepreneur, advisor, investor and mentor, and runs a diverse portfolio of multiple assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He\u2019s now back on <a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/niki-cordells-journey-into-entrepreneurship-138k-business-sale-with-flippa\/\">Flippa<\/a> to build an ecosystem of businesses in two niches: entrepreneurship and lifestyle development.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scott has already acquired five businesses on Flippa this year, and he\u2019s ready to acquire a dozen more by next year. His number one tip when it comes to buying businesses? Consider buying multiple assets, and put them together to build something bigger.\u00a0Listen to Blake and Scott\u2019s conversation and find out more about the biggest challenges of buying and selling businesses, how to successfully scale a business and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Aggregating Sites and Taking a Portfolio Approach to Scale with Scott Oldford | Humans of Flippa\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xLGdqZCaVyM?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Listen to this Episode:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/au\/podcast\/humans-of-flippa\/id1739721511\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/3u7RACSb5eSXcp5TZrAjPi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/084d1415-f54d-4df5-bcdb-6d03d140ea7c\/humans-of-flippa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Amazon Music<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-layout-1 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-1\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-separator-is-layout-flow\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-2\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR BUSINESS IS WORTH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Flippa\u2019s intelligent valuations engine is the industry\u2019s most accurate tool, taking into consideration thousands of sales and live buyer demand. Find out what your business is worth with our free valuation tool and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog\">plan your next move<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog&amp;utm_medium=Blog&amp;utm_source=PostCTA&amp;utm_campaign=Valuation\">Get a FREE Valuation<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-3\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/category\/humans-of-flippa\/\">Watch more Humans of Flippa stories here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the full transcript of the conversation below.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scott\u2019s Entrepreneurial Journey<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Welcome to another episode of Humans of Flippa. My name is Blake Hutchison, I am the CEO here at Flippa, and today I have Scott Alford joining us from the Bay Area, specifically from San Rafael. Scott, thanks for joining us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> Great to be here today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Now this is the first time we\u2019ve got to know each other, thanks for joining again, but you\u2019ve just revealed that you joined Flippa some 13 years ago, is that right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> It was like 13 years ago and I had my first business when I was seven. I used to have, by the time I was 16, I had a million dollar business, programming and building different things, online stuff. And I remember selling my first website on there, I think it was May or June of like 2010. I just went back in my Gmail because I don\u2019t delete anything and was saw the day I signed up April 27th, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> And I believe it was a content website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> It was an online form for people that talked about Phish. Back then I used to build online communities, that was part of what I used to do. And I think I was getting rid of them because I was redirecting my direction, and focus and I got rid of a couple of websites I own like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>That is very cool. Obviously we\u2019ve got a big community and some of them like yourself have been around for a while. We\u2019ll get into your Flippa stuff in a minute, but let\u2019s just start very high level. How would you describe yourself, your job and what you do on a day-to-day basis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I mean, I\u2019ve been an entrepreneur, as I said, since I was literally a kid selling eggs on my parents\u2019 acreage in Canada. And today I\u2019m largely advisor and investor, I have ownership in 34 companies, so I run a portfolio group, so that\u2019s part of it. On side of that as well, I also mentor a lot of entrepreneurs and have been doing that now for the last about eight years. And up to this point, I\u2019ve helped about 250 businesses all online, go past seven, multiple seven figures, many of them past eight figures. So when it comes to education businesses, media businesses, courses and coaching and consulting, those are the ones that have helped scale and build behind the scenes as well as my own. So now I bring that into pretty much everything that I do. We\u2019re focused on media, education, certification companies, those types of things and some software as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> So some of them software that would mean tech startups?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> We do a little bit of investing on the angel investing side, but largely when I\u2019m looking for a software, I\u2019m looking for a tuck-in software. We have all this audience, we have all these people, what are the things they need? What ends up happening is I see a software that failed at being able to get market adoption, they ran out of money and they\u2019re selling us their software, their customers, they\u2019re trying to go do something else. They weren\u2019t able to raise, they weren\u2019t able to\u2026 But I\u2019m able to take it, and because we have an audience of over a million people in the entrepreneur niche, I can take it, tuck it into all the different businesses we have so that everything redirects there. We take away the marketing sales cost and that business just ticks away, we\u2019re not trying to scale it to this some big thing, it\u2019s more so solving a problem that a lot of our audience needs solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>Diverse background, you obviously get to see lots of different businesses. You probably therefore get to see that the operational problems that some businesses have are very similar to the operational problems that other businesses have, and no doubt that gives you a pretty strong sixth sense for what a good asset might look like or does look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scott\u2019s Portfolio Approach to Scale<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I think the largest part is a lot of the time if you are only buying one business, you really are at a disadvantage than buying and saying, \u201cOkay, this is my investment thesis, this is what I believe.\u201d And the economy as a scale really solve a lot of the problems that you have when you get into buying and acquiring businesses at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>It\u2019s a really good point actually, because the vast majority of people who buy on Flippa do buy more than one business. In fact, most of the time when you see quite a big acquisition budget, let\u2019s say someone lists themselves as having a 5 million total acquisition budget, you\u2019ll see that their budgets for acquiring businesses could be as low as say 50,000 dollars or 150,000 dollars because their entire approach is to take what they think works, but apply it across a portfolio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s a more diversified approach, it\u2019s less risky. If something doesn\u2019t work, it\u2019s not a big deal, it\u2019s not a big part of the budget. I also think it allows you to get gold where you wouldn\u2019t be able to get gold otherwise. I\u2019ll just give you one example, one of the things that I bought from Flippa was\u2026 I won\u2019t disclose what it is particularly, but it is a software company and if someone didn\u2019t buy it and brought it into a current ecosystem, there\u2019s just no way this makes sense. It just does not make sense, and it sat there for a while and I was able to get it, I think 30,000 dollars under what the actual price was because it was just something that by itself made no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I already have a programming team, I already have the marketing, I already have an operator, I already have the marketing taken care of. I can plug it in, and the software itself is great, but everything that surrounded it just wasn\u2019t. So that acquisition was only about six months ago and I think I\u2019ve made three times my money back on that already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Already?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> Already, just because it\u2019s plug and play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-layout-2 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-5\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-separator-is-layout-flow\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-6\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR BUSINESS IS WORTH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Flippa\u2019s intelligent valuations engine is the industry\u2019s most accurate tool, taking into consideration thousands of sales and live buyer demand. Find out what your business is worth with our free valuation tool and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog\">plan your next move<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog&amp;utm_medium=Blog&amp;utm_source=PostCTA&amp;utm_campaign=Valuation\">Get a FREE Valuation<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-7\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-8\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Identifying the Right Businesses on Flippa<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> That\u2019s exactly what I\u2019d love to talk a little bit about right now, these businesses that you identify. Now, my observation is that you were pretty active on the platform in the last half of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is it you are looking for, what is the theme?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> Coming into 2022, majority of my business beforehand was someone\u2019s paying me money and it\u2019s a good deal of money. I had a very successful business generating anywhere from three to seven million dollars a year mentoring and selling courses on how to scale a business, a couple books, those different types of things. And that\u2019s still rolling, that\u2019s still going, but I\u2019m no longer focusing majority of my attention there. I said, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m at a point where now I want to be able to build an ecosystem of businesses.\u201d And my belief is if we are looking at the next 10 years, software, education and media, meaning <a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/how-to-sell-your-newsletter\/\">newsletters<\/a>, podcasts, blogs, things that we can control, at some level we can control not just the website that has search traffic, but the website that also has a quarter of a million email addresses on the back of it that we own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I said, \u201cOkay. That\u2019s the way and direction that we\u2019re going to go in.\u201d That\u2019s what brought me to saying, \u201cOkay, let me sign up for Flippa,\u201d as well as the different other competitors of yours obviously as well and let me start seeing what is in there. I mean, I haven\u2019t made any massive acquisitions off of Flip, but by any stretch of imagination. More so what I\u2019m looking at is either number one, either a tuck-in or number two, something that I might not fully know but I\u2019m going to dip my toe in to see and understand if that\u2019s something that I want to bring into the overall ecosystem. Or in a couple of cases, I went and started talking with a person behind it and I was like, \u201cI think that person might actually have the skillset,\u201d and in two of the cases, they\u2019re on my team now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bought the property, but in reality I really just wanted to hire the person because I was like, \u201cThey built that, they got all that off the ground, that\u2019s interesting. Let me get that skillset and let me bring that into my entire group of companies.\u201d I mean, more than likely, I\u2019ll probably do another dozen acquisitions in 2023 from Flippa alone, continuing to do that because a lot of the time, again, there\u2019s a lot of gold, by itself you can\u2019t extract it, you bring it in, you put it into the whole gold smelting machine, and now you actually have some gold. So largely I\u2019m looking for properties that are new newsletters, we own a few podcasts. Right now we own 13 newsletters, we own a few podcasts, we\u2019re going to continue to grow the podcast network and content sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But again, things that are inside of, I have two large niches, entrepreneurship and business, and then lifestyle, wellness, personal development. If it\u2019s outside of that, I don\u2019t touch it, I don\u2019t care about it. If it doesn\u2019t make sense in those two, I\u2019m done. If a SaaS is not a tuck-in, meaning it needs its own marketing, I\u2019m out. If a media site doesn\u2019t have a newsletter on the backend or some type of thing I own, besides the search traffic, I\u2019m out. If it\u2019s an education business, I\u2019m not looking to buy those, I\u2019m looking to partner on those, but that\u2019s because that\u2019s my background and that\u2019s my clients, and my deal flow on that is just great. I\u2019m looking for deal flow largely on media and software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Okay, and as part of this, how do you undertake the search? Are you simply going to Flippa or somewhere else and using a keyword, are you using filters? How are you finding out about these deals? Where are you getting your deal flow from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford: <\/strong>My son came about eight months ago, at the beginning I had a lot of free time in between because I went back from the business, said, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to take a step back.\u201d I got a lot of time on my hands, and I would just spend time going through Flippa, and the other different websites, and doing a little bit of due diligence, and this and that. And obviously I\u2019ve been investing in businesses probably for about four years, this last 16 months by far majority of my focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I essentially have somebody else that does it for me, goes on the website, compiles and essentially says, \u201cHey Scott, I think this might be good to look at.\u201d I take a look at it, an initial look at it, and then I go from there. That\u2019s how I do it today, obviously when I started back in the summer, I had all the listings to go through because it was all new, I wasn\u2019t looking at it each day. And then as time went on, there was only so many listings that come up, but that\u2019s the process today, and there\u2019s not that much in my criteria really come when it comes down to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019re only going to see probably a few deals a week that fit my criteria at this point, and understanding your criteria is also important so that you\u2026 You just waste so much time on due diligence, it\u2019s just the biggest time suck ever. And also you have people that you just don\u2019t know when you\u2019re buying from somebody, you just don\u2019t know them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> The amount of due diligence you have to do of going in there, I\u2019m used to going into business, people literally pay me a lot of money to go into their business and say what\u2019s wrong, and I\u2019m really good at that. I can look at a business and in 10 minutes be like, \u201cAll right, this-this-this is all messed up, now what matters? Does that matter?\u201d And it was also fun at the beginning, and now that I\u2019ve done it so many times and just whenever I do something, I do it obsessively, and then I move on and I delegate it to somebody else. So that\u2019s what I\u2019ve pretty much done. But it was just me on my phone just being like, \u201cLook at this bit. Let me talk to this person,\u201d and it was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> I love that. So first you did it yourself, now it sounds like you\u2019ve got your own personal deal origination service, which is pretty cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> We\u2019re expanding that now\u2026 Because obviously an advantage when you have more time, and more cabinets to go and say, \u201cCan we start approaching people versus people that are actually looking to sell?\u201d And there\u2019s advantages and disadvantages on both sides of doing that at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Wow, you just gave me a opportune time for a plug. Flippa just recently launched our off market, so for those of you who are new to Flippa, click the search button, then next to the live listings, you actually see 10,000 off market listings. They\u2019re not actually for sale right now, you get to prospect on that directory. That\u2019s pretty cool, and hopefully we can help you out with that Scott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scott\u2019s Scaling Process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> We\u2019ll be continuing to add to that, and then it sounds like you are clearly very experienced and so to some extent you have an ability to de-risk your acquisitions. But what I\u2019d love to get into, just briefly, if you don\u2019t mind, you mentioned you bought a site, whatever it was, three months ago, and I think you said two or three times the return on that small investment. What is it you do once you take over the asset to either stabilize the patient we might call it or accelerate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I think we finished that acquisition in October, it\u2019s February right now. So that\u2019s the timeline on that, and it really depends on every business. Some businesses, I\u2019m like, \u201cWe literally don\u2019t have the time to do anything with the business.\u201d I\u2019m actually buying one right now, it\u2019s a little software that allows you to do some legal stuff, and I\u2019m buying two businesses, I\u2019m buying the software, and then I\u2019m buying the legal templates from\u2026 I\u2019m buying two businesses, bring them together, and then the lawyer\u2019s going to be on retainer to be able to take care of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I got a SaaS that didn\u2019t work, and then I got legal templates with a lawyer that doesn\u2019t know how to market it. I brought it together, and then I have an entire army of entrepreneurs that need contracts that don\u2019t want to pay 10,000 dollars for a contract, you can\u2019t screw that up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, it was a situation where I went in, I did the due diligence, I liked it, I gave a low-ball offer and they accepted it. And I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s great,\u201d and I think it was the first sale I did on Flippa if my memory serves me right. I did that, it went smooth. My due diligence, I actually went into the thing\u2026 Funny enough, I actually knew the people that sold it to them, they were friends of mine. So I went to them and I was like, \u201cHey, what\u2019s the deal with that?\u201d And they\u2019re like, \u201cListen, this is going to be a pain in the if you\u2019re going to try to build it by its own thing. We sold it because we couldn\u2019t make it work because of this\u2026\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cOkay, cool, sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I went to my programmer, my head programmer and I was like, \u201cHey, can you do a little bit of a review?\u201d And he\u2019s like, \u201cWe don\u2019t need to screw around with the code, we don\u2019t need to update it, assuming that we don\u2019t want to do this, this and this.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want to do this, this, and this.\u201d So then I was like, \u201cOkay, sweet, let\u2019s do the deal.\u201d So I did the deal, it was 33 days from the time that I submitted the offer to the time that the cash was done, it took about a week to do that. So then I went and I talked to the operator and I was like, \u201cMan, this guy\u2019s worth the money alone, this guy\u2019s amazing, he\u2019s been there from the beginning, he\u2019s bought in, he loves it. I\u2019m in the process right now giving him a percentage of the business because I believe in him, I believe in his vision.\u201d So it has about six and a half thousand a month in monthly reoccurring revenue, 6,500 bucks. In the entire scheme of things, never going to miss 6,500 dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I said, \u201cOkay, 6,500 dollars covers all the expenses so it\u2019s basically at zero.\u201d We need change the website, we need to change the marketing, we got to activate the email list, we got to get some marketing stuff, we got to get the backend. How many clients can we actually take? So beforehand it was a do it yourself and it was 35 bucks a month, and I was like, \u201cListen, we\u2019re never going to be able to scale with that. We\u2019ve got to be able to bring in some done with you or done for you element and bring the SaaS on the back of it.\u201d So then I took that, helped on the marketing a little bit, and then I went to all the certification companies that I\u2019m owner in or partner in, I said, \u201cListen, we\u2019ll give you the first year free, and then after that it\u2019s going to be 399 dollars a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can go to every single person and tell them, \u201cHey, we\u2019re doing this promotion, we\u2019ve partnered with this business and it\u2019s working incredibly well, but now here\u2019s what the other thing that happened, there\u2019s a 3,000 dollar upgrade.\u201d We\u2019re getting all these people come in getting their free thing, it\u2019s going to cost us about 70 dollars per person for the first\u2026 So of course it\u2019s going to be a loss, but we are capitalized, that\u2019s fine. But as people are coming in, some people are upgrading and they\u2019re pushing a buy button right there and then, we\u2019re getting the cashflow from that because we own in the education businesses, we don\u2019t have to pay any affiliate fees on that. And based on our current projections, that business will probably 15X within 16 months it\u2019s revenue that I bought it with. If again, the churn rate\u2019s not massive in 12 months from now, again, I don\u2019t know what that\u2019s going to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was my strategy on that particular business. Again, this is the advantage of having sort of an ecosystem versus just one business, and it\u2019s also not particularly easy to build an ecosystem and it takes time. And there\u2019s a massive unfair advantage where when I buy something, it\u2019s really hard for me to mess it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>It\u2019s super enlightening. I hope people are listening in who are first timers and thinking about how they can chop up their overall acquisition budget to begin that ecosystem play. But the other thing I like about what you\u2019ve just said is, you know what you\u2019re getting into. You\u2019ve got a business which is doing 6,500 a month. You\u2019ve bought it probably on a multiple performance or I at least imagine that was how it went out and then\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I got it for 70. It was a firing sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> And all you\u2019ve really done is gone, \u201cWell, it\u2019s a good business at the heart of it, but it\u2019s financials and its operational metrics don\u2019t quite make sense, so what I can do is add my ecosystem network to ensure its efficiency and then optimize for performance long term,\u201d and as you said, whatever you said then, 16 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> My thesis is, my belief is, \u201cLet\u2019s get all these people here.\u201d Worst case scenario, in three years, it has probably a couple thousand customers if I keep on going this way, and I can do a long-term flip and probably get two and a half million for it, maybe more. Or it\u2019s just a cash cow, and we just keep on doing it and it churns a little bit every year, obviously every month, every year, and I\u2019m collecting checks. But it\u2019s not a business that I\u2019d go into where you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, I need 70 grand to buy it and then I need\u2026\u201d You wouldn\u2019t need a quarter million, a half a million, and you wouldn\u2019t even be able to compete because this is not something that by itself is any better than its competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The advantage I have is proximity, and I think that this is probably one of the biggest lessons I could probably tell anybody that\u2019s going to get into buying and acquiring, which is if you don\u2019t own the traffic and you can own traffic through paid ads, or organic, or partnerships or all three, but if you don\u2019t own the traffic, that\u2019s one of the biggest risks you can have. You can fix operations, you can get in there and figure out operations, you can get in there and figure out customer support. Those operation and delivery issues are generally not that expensive, but if you run out of money trying to get customers from a marketing and sales perspective, you\u2019re done, pack up the bags and you got to sell it again. I think probably most people overestimate their skills on marketing, and sales and how much it costs to get that momentum for our business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Finding Your Niche and Expanding It<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>The number of people who say, \u201cYep, I\u2019m making this product, or I\u2019m going to sell this product, or I\u2019m going to run this service, getting my first thousand customers will be easy,\u201d and not recognizing the cost to acquire, and not recognizing the unit economics and the contribution margin for that effort is surprising. So that lesson is really pertinent, and critical and thank you for mentioning it. I\u2019m going to put you on the spot here, and I hope you don\u2019t mind me saying, I\u2019ve discovered an asset that you\u2019ve purchased and it\u2019s in the camping space. I want to know why you bought that asset, I\u2019m looking at it, I know why you bought it because I can see the data here, but you\u2019ve bought an asset that is essentially campground booking software, so why do you like it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> That\u2019s a test for sure. I told you part of what I\u2019m going to is lifestyle, in the lifestyle niche. I also own a productivity company, so we got a productivity planner, some productivity products, and some e-commerce products. E-commerce is not my strong suit, I don\u2019t know e-commerce but it came with 94,000, and this wasn\u2019t off a Flippa, this was off\u2026 Came with 94,000 planners, so I said, \u201cWell, worst case scenario, I sell them all to my audiences and I make my money back, worst case scenario.\u201d So I have that, I also just acquired another from Flippa website in the spiritual niche. I just acquired two other spiritual websites that all collective have 10 million visitors a year, majority in America. So I\u2019m creating a little bit of a lifestyle media brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I don\u2019t really care about\u2026 The software is terrible, but there\u2019s a couple of very powerful assets that came with that. So number one, I had a great operator that ran campsite and RV phone sales, so they would actually sell to the camp and I was like, \u201cWell that\u2019s wonderful, that\u2019s great, you understand it.\u201d He knows a copywriter that also writes for another campground software company so we brought that person in, then I went and I bought a camping newsletter that already had, again from another website, 20,000 people on that email list with about a 70% open rate, which is phenomenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This one came with 50,000 email addresses of people that booked, people that spent money, not just email address, people that literally booked a location in America. We\u2019re going to turn the software of booking, the reservation system, which is basically what this is, a reservation system in the camping niche, and we\u2019re going to turn it into a directory. Right now the business model\u2019s taking 10% of booking fees, which is a terrible business model for SaaS unless you have massive scale. So we\u2019re going to turn it into a directory sell ad space there. We\u2019re about acquire a podcast and a Facebook group so that there\u2019s a community and there\u2019s a podcast on the back of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>There\u2019s a theme here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> We acquire all the assets and then we\u2019re going to utilize influencer marketing and audience swaps of other lifestyle brands and that type of thing build half a million-person email list and now we can go and sell advertising. And because I have a media brand with the media where we\u2019re selling, we\u2019re buying, and newsletters and media brands, we already have the infrastructure to be able to do that, that\u2019s the play. Whether or not it works, I don\u2019t actually know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison: <\/strong>I mean, it\u2019s a system, the system is benefited by the ecosystem, the ecosystem implies that there\u2019s a community and then there\u2019s a theme here, and the theme is that you\u2019re going after operators who have subject matter expertise to some extent, therefore, the asset is defensible because they know what they\u2019re doing. You don\u2019t have to worry about having to school yourself up on that particular industry or category, they already know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> Another part of my due diligence is that there\u2019s always an operator that always has a part of the company that understands that niche intimately. If I don\u2019t have an operator, I will pass on a deal just for that reason, or if I really love it, I\u2019ll buy it and just let it sit until that person comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Experience with Flippa<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Amazing. And now if you don\u2019t mind a selfish question, why do you love Flippa? Why are you buying six or seven sites per half year on Flippa right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I feel like Flippa is the OG of the space, you have great market share, great deals that are there, it\u2019s easy to use. From a functional perspective, it\u2019s probably the easiest of the platforms that are available. I mean, it\u2019s interesting from a market perspective, you go from the guys that have 10-20 million dollar business, I\u2019m not looking to buy those businesses, that\u2019s not my budget, that\u2019s not how I\u2019m looking to build what I\u2019m building, at least not right now. So it\u2019s interesting because on Flippa, you could see that 10 million dollar business, that 10 million dollar business might be there, but at the same time you also have the 7,000 dollar business or the 170,000 dollar business. So the range of that is nice, I think a lot of the search filters and those different types of things, I really like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not that there\u2019s so many, there\u2019s a couple of dozen that are necessarily out there, and I think the other part of it is that in the buying that I\u2019m looking, I\u2019m not looking to have some broker involved that makes my life just terrible, which not against brokers. I think that brokers for a certain type of business make a lot of sense-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> I would want a broker if I was selling, don\u2019t get me wrong, but for the way I\u2019m going about buying, having a broker is just going to make it so that negotiating is impossible, and it\u2019s just going to make the deal three times longer and all these different types of things. So I like the fact that, obviously, there\u2019s a level of due diligence that Flippa does, and at the same time I\u2019m not dealing with, \u201cWell, let me talk to my client and I\u2019m here waiting for three days.\u201d The other advantage is a lot of the time when I\u2019m buying, I want to ideally even hire the person that\u2019s selling whether or not for a long term\u2026 [inaudible 00:29:08] Well, a lot of the time people want to keep working on their thing, they just ran out of money, and that to me is the perfect person to be part of that because I mentor people for a living, I can help them be able to make it work. So that\u2019s some of the reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Excellent reasons, and thank you for articulating that. It\u2019s a really important piece. You want to get to know the person selling the business, you want their skillset, you want their knowledge, and the fastest pathway is to go direct to do that. Particularly for a certain size of business, and we all accept that over a certain value advisors and brokers are absolutely critical so that\u2019s a key point too. Now, Scott, thank you, because what you\u2019ve talked about today is really critical. You\u2019ve talked about the value of buying something versus starting something. You\u2019ve talked about the fact that multiple transactions across multiple different marketplaces, including quite frenetic buying in the last half of last year. You\u2019ve also talked about the fact you might do even more of that in the future now that you\u2019ve got a system and a process to do it. So thank you, I really appreciate you being a part of Humans of Flippa today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford:<\/strong> It\u2019s fun talking about this stuff. I think it\u2019s super cool, I think buying them building makes a lot more sense than just starting, especially if you can do it, and I think buying a portfolio allows everything to grow faster than just putting all your eggs in one basket. So I\u2019m excited to share once it all works, I\u2019m excited to share the results of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blake Hutchison:<\/strong> Let\u2019s get you back in six months time, we can talk about that portfolio and how it\u2019s going. Thank you again, Scott.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Scott Oldford: <\/strong>Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-vertical is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-layout-3 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-9\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-separator-is-layout-flow\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-10\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR BUSINESS IS WORTH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Flippa\u2019s intelligent valuations engine is the industry\u2019s most accurate tool, taking into consideration thousands of sales and live buyer demand. Find out what your business is worth with our free valuation tool and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog\">plan your next move<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/flippa.com\/free-valuation?buy_sell=blog&amp;utm_medium=Blog&amp;utm_source=PostCTA&amp;utm_campaign=Valuation\">Get a FREE Valuation<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-11\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer wp-container-content-12\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Oldford is a seasoned entrepreneur, advisor, investor and mentor, and runs a diverse portfolio of multiple assets. He\u2019s now back on Flippa to build an ecosystem of businesses in two niches: entrepreneurship and lifestyle development.&nbsp; Scott has already acquired five businesses on Flippa this year, and he\u2019s ready to acquire a dozen more by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":25112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,554,506],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21078"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26505,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21078\/revisions\/26505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21078"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=21078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}