Set in Motion

Set in Motion shares conversations with entrepreneurs about the moment that changed the trajectory of their online business. We uncover what led up to it, how the dots connected, and the principles and strategies they used to build on it. Hosted by Chris Yates of Rhodium Network®. rhn.com

060: Rhodium Talk: Improve Monetization With Affiliate Marketing – Mike Nunez of AffiliateManager.com 04/05/2017

059: How to Rank in Any Niche Without Link Building – Rhodium Talk with Ewen Finser 03/09/2017

058: Jaryd Krause – From Plumber to World Traveling Online Entrepreneur in 8 Months 02/16/2017

057: Neil Patel Interview: $100k Challenge 02/02/2017

056: My Master Plan for 2017 and How to Create Your Own 01/14/2017

Story 1.9: The First Year of a Successful Software Startup. Episode 055 with Clarity Wave 12/30/2016

Story 1.8: Turn Your Startup Into a Lead Gen Machine. Episode 054 with Clarity Wave 12/29/2016

Story 2.7: Post-Acquisition – Lessons from the First 12 Months. Podcast 053 with Matthew Yahes 12/22/2016

Story 3.4: The Comeback – Don’t Give Up On Your Business. Podcast 052 with Kelly Shroads 12/16/2016

Story 1.7: Making Customers Love You So Much They Send Gifts. Episode 051 with Clarity Wave 12/08/2016

Story 2.6: Safety First: Tips on eCommerce Site Changes and Business Partnerships. Episode 049 with Matthew Yahes 10/19/2016

Story 1.6: Why You SHOULD Go Into Business With Family. Episode 048 with Clarity Wave 10/13/2016

Rhodium Talk: Selling Your Business – How NOT To Leave Money on the Table. Episode 047 with Mark Daoust 09/22/2016

Rhodium Talk: Selling Your Business – How NOT To Leave Money on the Table. Episode 047 with Mark Daoust This is episode 47. Today we are joined by Mark Daoust, founder of Quiet Light Brokerage, which specializes in helping entrepreneurs get the highest value from the sale of their online businesses. Today’s podcast is a recorded presentation by Mark from last year’s Rhodium Weekend – he explains the early mistakes he made in buying and selling websites and how exactly to avoid those same pitfalls. This is actually two talks in one, and I’m excited to bring it to you today as one epic podcast episode. The first part is focused on exit strategy planning – and after that, Mark goes straight into how to make the sale happen. Highlights The one thing Mark did to increase the value of his business 450% in One Year – from a 30K valuation to a $165K sale Plus what that site’s buyer did to re-sell for an additional $200K without increasing revenue You’ll also learn The 4 Pillars of an Investor-Focused Exit Strategy The 5 Biggest Sources of Risk in Your Business And the most important service that brokers provide (Hint: it’s not a Buyer List) Plus Mark lays out how you can cut out the broker entirely by using his exact selling playbook. Listen Now Next Steps If today’s in-depth look at navigating the acquisition process is really exciting for you, I’d venture to guess that you’re an online business owner looking to increase the value of your business – or maybe you’re looking to make a purchase of an online business – or perhaps you’re just looking to make your business more scalable, even if you don’t plan on selling. Listen, there’s a lot to learn, and today’s episode is a great starting point and maybe even an intermediate step…but if you’re hungry for this kind of knowledge, you’re going to want to go even deeper. That’s why, every year, I host the Rhodium Weekend event – where you can learn, network and do deals with experienced buyers and sellers of online businesses. Everyone comes to learn and share with one common goal – to create and enjoy incredible freedom. If you can picture yourself with this like-minded group of entrepreneurs, now is the time to apply before ticket sales close on September 23rd. I keep the number of seats limited to make sure every attendee gets incredible value and attention. To find out if you qualify to attend: Links to Other Rhodium Weekend Presentation Podcasts Chris Yates Rhodium Talk: Lessons Learned From 50+ Deals in 6 Years (Podcast 026) The post appeared first on . /episode/index/show/rhodium/id/4688367

Story 2.5: 10% Increase in Revenue with One Simple Email Sequence. Episode 046 with Matthew Yahes 09/12/2016

Story 1.5: What Startup Perseverance Really Looks Like. Episode 045 with Clarity Wave 09/07/2016

Behind the Scenes of a Strategic Acquisition: Leadpages Acquires Drip. Podcast 044 with Rob Walling 09/01/2016

Behind the Scenes of a Strategic Acquisition: Leadpages Acquires Drip. Podcast 044 with Rob Walling This is episode 44. Today we are joined by Rob Walling, a serial web entrepreneur who has been building, acquiring and revamping digital properties since 2005. We had Rob on to talk about his incredible turnaround with the SaaS company Hit Tail. During that presentation, Rob talked about the genesis of his latest company called Drip, which focuses on marketing automation. In today’s episode, Rob is still fresh from the year-long acquisition process with Leadpages. We’ll go deep into the day-to-day aspects of the acquisition hearing more about the effects it’s had in his life and work. Highlights What was going through Rob’s head when the email came in from Leadpages founder Clay Collins asking him if he’d like to sell his company. The biggest deal breakers that caused him not to pursue other acquisition offers. Which advisors you definitely need during an acquisition, and the right times to bring each of them into the process. And to top it all off, Rob’s daily tactics to manage the stress of an intense year long process. Listen Now: Next Steps If today’s in-depth look at navigating the acquisition process is really exciting for you, I’d venture to guess that you’re an online business owner looking to increase the value of your business – or maybe you’re looking to make a purchase of an online business – or perhaps you’re just looking to make your business more scalable, even if you don’t plan on selling. Listen, there’s a lot to learn, and today’s episode is a great starting point and maybe even an intermediate step…but if you’re hungry for this kind of knowledge, you’re going to want to go even deeper. That’s why, every year, I host the Rhodium Weekend event – where you can learn, network and do deals with experienced buyers and sellers of online businesses. Everyone comes to learn and share with one common goal – to create and enjoy incredible freedom. If you can picture yourself with this like-minded group of entrepreneurs, now is the time to apply before all the spots are taken. I keep the number of seats limited to make sure every attendee gets incredible value and attention. To find out if you qualify to attend: Links The post appeared first on . /episode/index/show/rhodium/id/4634319

From Stuck in Career Purgatory to Selling Out His First Course in 48 Hours. Podcast 043 with Sean Ogle 08/24/2016

Rhodium Talk: Expert Funnel Hacks To 10X Your Revenue in 15 Months. Podcast 042 with Rob Walling 08/17/2016

Story 2.4: After the Sale, All The Things You Didn’t Plan For. Podcast 041 with Matthew Yahes 08/10/2016

Story 1.4: When to Quit and When to Double-Down on Your Startup. Podcast 040 with Clarity Wave 08/02/2016

Rhodium Talk: The Journey From Entrepreneur to Passive Investor. Podcast 039 with Scott Fritz 07/27/2016

Story 3.3: The Truth About Passive Income From Websites. Podcast 038 With Kelly Shroads 07/17/2016

Story 2.3: Preparing for Business Growth with Matthew Yahes (Podcast 037) 06/08/2016

Story 1.3: How to Grow From Your First 16 Clients to 100+. Podcast 036 With Clarity Wave 05/17/2016

Story 1.3: How to Grow From Your First 16 Clients to 100+. Podcast 036 With Clarity Wave This is episode 36. Robert has been hard at work turning his workplace client management software company, Clarity Wave, from a group of new concepts into a functioning, money earning company. Sales and marketing for the company’s Epic Pro and Epic Light services have been launched and clients are beginning to show interest in the groundbreaking features that it offers. Meanwhile Robert is trying to balance new clients and new business pursuits with the demands of marketing the business and keeping it moving forward. He tells us how he’s doing, what he’s learning and what you can learn from his experiences. Highlights Hiring a marketing expert on a performance basis. How to track the sources of your leads and sales in Google Analytics. Streamlining the new customer on-boarding process. How to drive traffic from Linkedin without writing any content. Listen Now: More About This Episode Evolving a Sales Strategy Robert has a great software and a great service to offer in general. He knows it and his clients know it, now he just needs to let enough of those all important potential clients know it to really get the ball rolling. Robert brings us up to date with his work with an external sales company, his innovative marketing techniques and a perfect little gem of a pitch that we all wish for more of. Usability and saleability in a client friendly system You can test and trial a piece of software as much as you want, but some issues only come to show in the trial by fire. Robert reveals the strengths of his system along with a few of the weaknesses he had to resolve, including overloading new clients with too much data input and scaring them with employee prize systems too soon. Learn how Robert solved these problems and figure out how to avoid them yourself. The ins and outs of outsourcing Outsourcing; it can be a dream or a nightmare, the making or breaking of your company. Robert is just beginning to expect returns from his outsourced sales and is meanwhile looking to outsource another big company operation; marketing. He tells us how he makes the decisions that need to be made as he moves forward. Turning content into a marketing asset Robert knows the importance of good content in establishing a company as an expert in a field. Get some general tips on creating and distributing content as well as some specific pointers on tactics and services to use. Links Clarity Wave: Robert’s company. – Snip.ly: Send users to useful content with your own ad banners superimposed – LinkedIn Editorial Calendar: Find out what LinkedIn will be featuring when and synchronise your content output with it. – Upwork: A secure platform for finding and hiring tried and freelancers – The post appeared first on . /episode/index/show/rhodium/id/4376286

Story 3.2: Should I Sell My Business? With Kelly Shroads (Podcast 035) 05/06/2016

Story 3.2: Should I Sell My Business? With Kelly Shroads (Podcast 035) This is episode 35. Keeping Focus While Selling a Business With Kelly Shroads Kelly Shroads is a photographer, web design consultant for startups, and E-commerce business owner. Her business, which sells spa-quality bathrobes, has been going strong for eight years, but is currently in a state of transition. Kelly is looking at selling her company now—but that in itself involves a lot of research and work. In this episode we take a look at Kelly’s business model, and the many considerations she faces as she decides how to sell her business and where to go from there. Starting an ecommerce business: finding a niche, finding suppliers Selling a business: keep a share or sell outright? When is the right time to sell, and for how much? How should you prepare? Financial classifications: is it worth the hassle to reclassify a business as an S corp? Finding direction: how do you take stock of your business’s “why”? Listen Now: More About This Episode Kelly Shroads runs a successful E-commerce business in a particular niche: spa bathrobes. The high-quality robes used at hotels and spas aren’t widely sold online or in stores, and many spa-goers are frustrated by their unavailability to consumers. “That really was my initial inspiration, trying to create the spa experience at home,” Kelly says. “It’s very specific.” After a lot of research in industry journals and trade shows, and a lot of refusals, Kelly found a supplier to help her meet the demand. But that supplier was recently bought, and while Kelly looks for new ones, the business is in a state of flux. At the same time, she’s also starting the process of selling it, and wants it in optimal condition for potential buyers. “When you look at your business from the standpoint of showing it to a buyer, it changes everything,” Kelly says. That means putting some work into cleaning up her financials. “I used to do just simple spreadsheet accounting,” Kelly says. “I knew I needed to step it up in the accounting department so I dialed everything into Quickbooks.” While before she had filed taxes as a sole proprietor, with income from all three of her businesses under the same LLC, she’s also reclassified her robe business as an S corp. The reclassification involved some changes and challenges, with payroll to manage and new accounting habits to form, but Kelly says that she’s traded a little more work each month for a lot less work at the end of the year. More importantly for her buyers, having separate entities has made it easier for her to report on and track expenses and earnings for this particular business. She can clearly report on exactly where her company’s earnings and expenses are, and send that earnings information to her potential buyers. Then there are higher-level questions about selling the business. Is it best to sell the business outright and let someone else take off with it? Or is it better to retain some part in it so she can “get some reward from the work I put into it.” A lot depends on the sale price, but that can be hard to assess. Hearing a lot of discussion about value at Rhodium Weekend gave Kelly a sense of what’s average in the market for businesses like hers, and what the low and high end she can expect to see are as she proceeds with selling—helping to inform her decision to retain part of the business or not. But maybe the largest scale question is when the right time to sell is. This year is the first year Kelly’s sales have gone down. Part of that is because of her supplier issues, but there’s a lot of other work she knows the business needs as far as branding, promotion, and alternate forms of monetization. The question is whether it makes sense for Kelly to do that work now, taking a year to get her business in top condition before selling it, or to sell it and leave those decisions up to the new buyer to make for itself. That’s a question Kelly hasn’t answered yet, but she’s devoting a lot of thought to it and to her overall goals in business and life. “[The bathrobe business] is something comforting for people. It’s a simple product, simply delivered,” Kelly says. But as she moves forward, she’s balancing the management and improvement of her business and deep consideration of how her future business can make an impact and be of service in the world. Helpful Links Books that have helped Kelly think about her business: The post appeared first on . /episode/index/show/rhodium/id/4349508

Rhodium Talk: Scaling From Lifestyle Business to Inc. 500 with Dave Parkinson and Andrew Pincock (Podcast 034) 04/14/2016

Story 2.2: The Million Dollar Takeover with Matthew Yahes (Podcast 033) 03/29/2016

Story 2.2: The Million Dollar Takeover with Matthew Yahes (Podcast 033) This is episode 33. “Drinking from a fire-hose” – the enormity of a million dollar takeover. It’s been a month since we to Matthew Yahes about his seven figure E-commerce business purchase and a lot has happened. The deals have been done, the keys have been handed over and Matthew has just started to get to grips with his new investments. In this episode, Matthew talks about the importance of a supportive handover before getting into the real meaty issue; how he is dealing with the huge task he has taken on. It’s a major rush as well as a serious challenge for the buzzing entrepreneur. Highlights What the closing day on a 7 figure deal looks like from behind the scenes. Managing all the aspects of the handover. Benefits and challenges of running an E-commerce company. Listen Now: More About This Episode Starting out Just what is it like to take over the controls of a major E-commerce business? It’s now just under a month since Matthew Yahes did just that, making the biggest deal of his life in the process, and a lot is happening very fast. Fortunately, thanks to careful due diligence and a positive approach from everyone involved, Matthew has exactly the support that he needs. It’s not always a cutthroat world This brings us to the first big lesson of this month’s catch-up. The old cliches about business being a case of kill or be killed aren’t always true. Sometimes a little friendliness between buyer and seller goes much further than the old game of hardball. The ample support Matthew has received from his seller has proved much more valuable than the few dollars he could have knocked off his purchase price. Building Relationships It’s not just about the buyer and the seller though. Along with the business, Matthew gained a team of new employees who he is gradually building mutual trust with. You can have all the business savvy in the world but if you can’t relate to your team, there are going to be problems. Fortunately he has been fine with this from the first time he met them over dinner. We find out how he managed this and how he benefits from it now. Starting to Delegate and Outsource Getting to grips with his place in the company and other people’s places around him has been one of the biggest parts of Matthew’s learning curve. Settling in with the team and knowing who to look to for what is just the start; negotiating with suppliers, arranging SEO audits and managing a hugely complicated advertising campaign are all things that need careful attention in a short space of time after takeover. Matthew takes us through all the niches of a new business that need to be filled and offers a few tips on surrounding yourself with people you can rely on. Tips for taking over From vendor management, to hiring, to advertising. Matthew has taken on a lot of new responsibilities and his lessons are yours. What is the best way to use a business platform operations manual? What should the financial plan look like? Should advertising or tech be a priority? These are all questions that Matthew has had to answer for himself. Thanks to his latest lesson though you won’t have to The Pros and Cons of an E-commerce Company Being a drop-ship company and not having any inventory to deal with seems like a flexible financing dream, and Matthew tells us that for the most part it is. He also takes us through the challenges of building a brand identity around other peoples’ products while competing with your own suppliers. Big challenges, big rewards! As Matthew says, “Go for it.” It may be “Like drinking from a fire hose.” The information may come at a hundred pages a minute and the challenges just as fast, but the achievements and opportunities that lay in wait make it all worthwhile. He tells us about the opportunities he sees in the future, the goals he has set for himself and how these things keep him motivated through fifteen hour days and long, tense meetings. Goals and Opportunities Matthew’s plans and visions for the future are becoming more and more clear all the time. He tells us just what these are and how he is 100% confident that they will happen with hard work and determination. In time he’ll be cutting the management of this company down to just a few hours per day and spend more time working on spinning off other businesses to reinforce his portfolio. Of course we’ll be there with him along the way to see how he is doing, hear about his successes and learn from his mistakes. All in all it’s been a roller coaster few weeks that has seen Matthew move from ‘new kid on the block’ to the center of operations. Not an easy maneuver, but a necessary one. There has been a lot to take in and a lot to dish out, but with the help of the seller and the new team Matthew is determined to come out on top. Listen to this month’s story to find out how he got into this position and where he plans to go from here. This is one man who is going far, and we intend to go all the way with him starting next month. In his words; “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You need to put in the effort to succeed”. See you at the finish line. Mentioned In This Show : The Leading digital E-commerce platform. : A useful E-commerce store setup tool. : An SEO company recommended by Matthew and MOZ. The post appeared first on . /episode/index/show/rhodium/id/4257110

Story 1.2: Outsource Your Sales People with Clarity Wave (Podcast 032) 03/24/2016

50,000 Visitors a Day By Partnering With Content Experts With Sol Orwell (Podcast 31) 03/14/2016

Story 3.1: Doubling Ecommerce Sales Every Year With Kelly Shroads (Podcast 30) 03/04/2016

Set in Motion

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