{"id":5103,"date":"2021-07-22T08:04:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T22:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/the-exit-podcast-attracting-buyers-with-the-co-founder-of-breedlove-capital-stephanie-breedlove\/"},"modified":"2021-09-14T17:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T07:12:27","slug":"the-exit-podcast-attracting-buyers-with-the-co-founder-of-breedlove-capital-stephanie-breedlove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/the-exit-podcast-attracting-buyers-with-the-co-founder-of-breedlove-capital-stephanie-breedlove\/","title":{"rendered":"The Exit Podcast &#8211; Attracting Buyers with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital Stephanie Breedlove"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-listen-on-apple-podcasts\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/attracting-buyers-co-founder-breedlove-capital-stephanie\/id1532346146?i=1000529326584\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Listen on Apple Podcasts (opens in a new tab)\">Listen on Apple Podcasts<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-listen-on-spotify\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/2zgYRTWoOe9fhCJvqzEjAx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Listen on Spotify (opens in a new tab)\">Listen on Spotify<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-listen-on-google-podcasts\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zb3VuZGNsb3VkLmNvbS91c2Vycy9zb3VuZGNsb3VkOnVzZXJzOjg4MjY1MjIyOC9zb3VuZHMucnNz\/episode\/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTA4OTQ1NTQ5Nw?sa=X&amp;ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiYwaPgk_HxAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Listen on Google Podcasts (opens in a new tab)\">Listen on Google Podcasts<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1089455497&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\"><\/iframe><div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/theexitpodcast\" title=\"The Exit - Presented By Flippa\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Exit &#8211; Presented By Flippa<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/theexitpodcast\/ep044\" title=\"Attracting Buyers with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital Stephanie Breedlove\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Attracting Buyers with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital Stephanie Breedlove<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we\u2019re talking with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital, Stephanie Breedlove.&nbsp; At age 56 Stephanie says she\u2019s had a long career and has the wisdom that goes along with it.&nbsp; She didn\u2019t start out wanting to be an entrepreneur, but instead stumbled upon an idea for a business while working in corporate America.&nbsp; Her business idea took off and scaled until it was acquired by care.com.&nbsp; Stephanie now spends her time investing in the entrepreneurial space, primarily focused on mid-stage businesses that are starting to scale.&nbsp; She invests all the way through acquisition.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>An idea Is Born<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie earned a finance degree and left right out of graduate school into corporate America.&nbsp; She says she didn\u2019t know what she wanted to be, and it was still the early stages of a woman trying to climb the corporate ladder.&nbsp; During her climb, Stephanie would have two sons just seventeen months apart.&nbsp; Maternity leave was not yet a thing, and so Stephanie found herself having to hire a full-time nanny.&nbsp; This is when she got the idea to start a company in the in-home care industry helping with payroll taxes, benefits, and the like for people hiring child and elder care.&nbsp; It was in 1995 that Stephanie took the leap as the first full time co-founder of Breedlove &amp; Associates, which is now HomePay by care.com.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pulling Yourself Up By The Bootstraps<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Building the company was a &nbsp; journey that Stephanie took with her husband as her co-founder.&nbsp; She says they were bootstrap entrepreneurs and that it took three and a half years to get to a break even point.&nbsp; Once they started to break even, they increased to a team of five.&nbsp; With that, they crossed the million&#8217;s dollar revenue mark and began to grow departments.&nbsp; They steadily increased their employees, it didn\u2019t happen overnight.&nbsp; She says the people you hire will organically create growth.&nbsp; Stephanie says they were in an emerging industry and could have been larger with more money faster at any given time.&nbsp; At the same time, though, she sometimes says they were ready to grow faster than the industry was ready for.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Attracting Buyers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once Breedlove &amp; Associates was approaching the ten million dollar mark in revenue, they started to become attractive to the general world.&nbsp; They started to get phone calls from potential partners and financial acquirers.&nbsp; Breedlove &amp; Associates had a lower level marketing department that was providing monthly content for care.com which put them on their radar.&nbsp; The CEO of care.com simply picked up the phone and said she wanted to know more about who they were, as she had heard good things about them.&nbsp; The two women would spend the next six weeks on the phone talking to each other.&nbsp; Stephanie says it then went from getting to know each other to having serious talks about whether we were ready to make an acquisition happen.&nbsp; NDA\u2019s were signed, and then they started sharing info.&nbsp; Stephanie says you have to be willing to walk away from a deal if it isn\u2019t right for you.&nbsp; That\u2019s exactly what she did when they weren\u2019t in the right price range.&nbsp; Six weeks later, the CEO of care.com would call Stephanie back to let her know she thought they could get into her range and should continue talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Take the Lead<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you think an exit is in your future, Stephanie says you should do the work to be very organized and documented.&nbsp; She also says that as a founder you know your business the best and while it\u2019s smart to hire the right legal team, you should take a lead role in negotiations.&nbsp; When the deal finally went through, they took 50% in cash and 50% in stocks.&nbsp; She says they took the risk that they would go public and figured they would either break even, lose a little at best, or have stock value slightly higher.&nbsp; They ended up just slightly above, which was great.&nbsp; Stephanie says when negotiating, you have to know what your priorities are.&nbsp; She said during the give and take, it was vital for them to keep the headquarters based in Texas.&nbsp; They did end up staying in Austin, and the two co-founders had a two year earn-out to help with the transition.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tracking Is Never Overrated<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie says they tracked a lot, but had three main KPI\u2019s.&nbsp; The main one was client retention, which Stepanie says equals recurring revenue.&nbsp; The other two main KPIs they looked at were year-over-year growth and profitability.&nbsp; Other companies in their industry had an average client retention of eighteen to twenty-four months, while their client retention average was at fourty-eight months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Knowing What You Know Now, What Would You Tell Yourself Ten Years Ago<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While it may sound clich\u00e9, Stephanie says her best advice would be to not sweat the small stuff.&nbsp; She says she would tell herself to stay focused on the big picture, the long term.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Where To Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie can be found on LinkedIn.&nbsp; She also has a book out right now called All In and anyone that would like a copy can email her at <a href=\"mailto:stephaniebreedlove@gmail.com\">stephaniebreedlove@gmail.com<\/a> to have a copy sent to them.&nbsp; You can also learn more at breedlovecapital.com.&nbsp; Breedlove Capital is a family office and investment firm that is primarily focused on investing in the entrepreneurial space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google Podcasts The Exit &#8211; Presented By Flippa \u00b7 Attracting Buyers with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital Stephanie Breedlove Today we\u2019re talking with the co-founder of Breedlove Capital, Stephanie Breedlove.&nbsp; At age 56 Stephanie says she\u2019s had a long career and has the wisdom that goes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[8],"tags":[],"dipi_cpt_category":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103"}],"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\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5103"},{"taxonomy":"dipi_cpt_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flippa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dipi_cpt_category?post=5103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}