Hi all,

I have a quick question for you.

I’ve written 18 weekly updates and probably covered 30+ businesses. I keep the businesses anonymous and identifying details vague.

I’m concerned that might make it confusing for you, the reader, to follow my updates.

Do you ever find yourself reading my weekly update feeling like you started a movie halfway through?

Let me know your thoughts 👇 below. If it’s a problem, I’ll try and solve it.

On to the update.

The opportunity I missed

Back in July, I found a high-traffic, under-monetized blog for teachers.

This one had all the signs. High traffic, lots of monetization opportunities, interesting niche. I think there was even an @gmail address on the website.

So, I shot him a note…

No response.

This lead had 💎 potential. I should have followed up, but I didn’t. At that time I was trying to figure out a lot, and it slipped through the cracks. I hope my current strategy of will keep me from making this mistake again.

In the spirit of focusing on finding the diamonds, I thought of this again this week. I decided to send another email.

He responded saying he sold the website the month after I reached out.

Bummer. I missed out. But, there’s good news in the last line of the body of his email.

He owns another, similar website, and he’s entertaining selling it. It’s a lot cleaner than his previous site, so there might not be as much low-hanging fruit. But:

• I love the niche — several monetization opportunities

• SimilarWeb has the site at 50k monthly visits

• He’s sold a website before, so he knows how to transact

I have a call scheduled with him next week.

The business I can’t stop thinking about

Two months ago I wrote about a business that became the prototype for my outreach strategy.

I couldn’t get a hold of them until I wrote them a handwritten note, after which they called me and opened up about the business.

I can’t stop thinking about this business.

It’s a 30+ year old business in a niche hobby space, on a great website domain. It’s currently positioned as an e-commerce business doing $250k of profit on $1m of revenue (my estimates based on conversation).

But there are many ways to take this business.

Because it has such a long legacy and is a really neat niche, I think you could go almost any direction and be hard-pressed not to grow it.

Last they told me, they’re not looking to sell but “You’re on our radar when we consider it.” I think they are in their late 70s or 80s.

I have to find as many of these businesses as I can, make friends with the owners, and stay friends.

The “staying friends” part requires patience. It requires investing in the relationship without a clear outcome or timeline.

I wrote them a note this week letting them know they’re on my mind. I actually found something that reminded me of them, so I sent them an email about it.

Playing the long game on this one.

My conversation with a gas entrepreneur

If you’re on 𝕏, you’ve probably seen Gas Biz Guy.

I managed to get on his calendar, and it was a great conversation.

He’s 30 years into executing a very similar playbook to what I’m running, except he’s doing it in the gas business:

• Buy distressed assets

• From unengaged owners

• Know how to fix them

• Do it

My most pressing question to him was:

How do I eliminate as much risk as possible in my first deal?

As I told him, my first deal needs to work. I don’t have the luxury of farting around or taking guesses and being wrong.

The advice he gave that stuck with me was:

His point was that if you know valuations well, you will be much more confident when you find a good deal that it’s actually a good deal.

This seems obvious in hindsight, but it’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time on. If anything, my valuation research is so far anecdotal and not very factual.

After we hung up, I asked Merry, my VA, to log the asking prices for all active listings on QuietLight.com

This is what we came up with for 55 currently listed businesses. Listing multiples on seller earnings as follows:

• Ecom 2.82

• SaaS 2.93

• Content 2.77

• Membership 4.02

Obvious disclaimers apply, but the practice of sourcing and studying valuations is something I’m going to do recurringly.

Thanks, Gas Guy!

Thanks for reading this week. If you didn’t answer my poll above, here it is again:

Mike