Brian Casel: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Open Threads. I'm Brian Casel. It's my podcast. Welcome to it. Today, I'm talking to Alexis Grant. She is the founder of TheyGotAcquired. com. So Alexis has been through the cycle of building media brands, media companies, or content websites, if you will, several times now. She's sold and exited several content based businesses, and now she's on, I think, her fourth content media brand called They Got Acquired, all about companies that got acquired.

So we talked all about that and it was really good opportunity for me to step into the shoes of someone running a pretty different type of business, business model, you know, with a media brand, whereas I'm over here running a SaaS. I always like to kind of compare notes with other types of businesses.

And, you know, she really knows what goes into building an audience and building value for an audience [00:01:00] as the business model. So I wanted to get into that. now, let's talk to Alexis. Here we go.

Hey, Alexis. Great to have you on the show. Great to meet you finally in person.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. Nice to see your face live.

Brian Casel: That's right. Yeah. Not just over email or Twitter or whatever else. So I think we Initially connected on your website. They Got Acquired when my businesses were acquired now a couple of times.

And when I saw that come through, I was like, this is a really cool idea for a site. And then I get curious about people on the internet and then I check out all the stuff that you're doing. And what's interesting to me, like, I like to kind of dive into businesses that are very different from mine. So what's interesting is like, you're basically building like a content business, it's like a media company, if you will.

It's a website. And I kind of just want to understand what that's all about to start one up, which you're still in startup mode with, They Got Acquired and you sold the previous [00:02:00] one. So anyway, why don't we start with like with the introduction to They Got Acquired, how do you describe it?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, I love talking about media companies.

That's kind of my thing, but They Got Acquired. It's new. We only launched in February, but it's my fourth media company. So I've done it a couple of times before. So yeah, They Got Acquired. We feature online companies that have gotten acquired that have sold. And we're focusing on the smaller end of the market.

So the box that we play in is deals between the range of a hundred thousand to 50 million. Most of the deals we cover are in the six and seven figure range, some low eight figures. And it can be any online business like e commerce, content or media, marketplace, SaaS, it's even services. So there's lots of different companies you can cover, but we wouldn't cover, you know, a brick and mortar or yoga studio or a print shop.

Brian Casel: Got it. Very cool. So my understanding having been on, They Got Acquired, it's basically a blog and a podcast. Telling the story of recent acquisitions, [00:03:00] recent exits from these companies.

Alexis Grant: Yes. So on the front end, we are a media company. I'm thinking that a few years from now, I might start saying we're a database company because, well, on the front end, we're telling those stories.

We're building a database behind that. So the database showcases these different companies that have sold. So, so far we have about 1200 companies in the database. But we're adding to that every day.

Brian Casel: So how do you think about like the value of what you're building? Right? Like in my case, I'm building a SaaS, so I'm building a product that I hope the tool is valuable and useful to other people.

How do you think about what you're building with a media company? What's it modeled around?

Alexis Grant: So for any media company, the value is really in the audience. And the people that you're bringing together, which is why one thing that I think is really cool about media companies is you can partner with a SaaS or layer that on top and you have something to sell.

It's interesting as you watch people specialize in different types of businesses, often media operators, especially if it's their first time. Won't have a great way to monetize the business. Whereas like, if you look at a [00:04:00] SaaS operator, who's doing it the first time, they might be more technical. They don't have a way to bring the audience to the product.

So it's like two sides, very important parts of a business.

Brian Casel: It's so funny to hear you describe that. That's literally what interested me in inviting you on this show is exactly that. Right? Like as someone who runs a SaaS, I've always felt like it's an uphill battle to just grow traffic. And relevant audience for my product.

And then I've been also interested in this idea and we're starting to become like a trend now with SaaS companies trying to become media companies as like a marketing play. I spoke to Corey Haynes on this show all about that. But yeah, I wanted to invite you on because it seems like growing the audience and traffic is what you're really great at.

So you must have some formula or tools and processes that make that easy.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, that's the part that I like. So my background's in journalism, but I started building businesses about 12 years ago. And I quickly realized I like doing this better than I liked being a reporter, even [00:05:00] though I love being a reporter, but not all media operators have a background in content, but many of them do.

So I kind of brought that to the companies that I've worked on. And then I worked at a startup where we, we grew pretty quickly. So I was able to learn how to scale a startup from the operational perspective, especially with like the content teams in mind. So one of my sort of niche specialties, if you will, is building content teams specifically.

Cool.

Brian Casel: Can we get like a brief rundown of like your previous startups?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, for sure. So in 2009, 2010, I started a content marketing firm. It was really small boutique agency. It was me and just a bunch of freelancers. I didn't even have any full time employees. And what we were doing at that point is it was kind of around the time when people are starting to realize the value of content online and how you can use it to grow companies.

So we were running blogs for businesses. And the way we did that was we'd get a client in, I had a freelance editor who would oversee that site. And then we'd farm out the content to a much wider group of [00:06:00] freelance writers who we worked on for lots of different projects. So we get to use their work on different projects.

Brian Casel: Nice. Pretty similar to one of my previous businesses, audience offices, basically content, like we powered the blogs and we had a team of freelancers.

Alexis Grant: Yes. Yeah, exactly. So one of our clients was a personal finance site called the penny hoarder. And so we helped to grow their content in the early days. And they ended up acquiring my business.

So that was an acquihire where the founder of that company brought myself and a bunch of members of my team in house at the penny hoarder. And there we dropped all the rest of our clients and we got to focus solely on building the content operation at the penny hoarder.

Brian Casel: So in that instance, the value, at least when it came to your exit was.

You built this operation and this team who is valuable to the penny hoarder, right? Like, obviously they acquired the site too and it's traffic. Was that part of like the value that they saw?

Alexis Grant: Well, they owned the site because it was the penny hoarder. They didn't buy our site. They didn't care about the agency or clients.

Brian Casel: Right. You were like [00:07:00] the service.

Alexis Grant: Exactly. So they cared about the people. So myself and the other members that came with us. To join us and we became employees. I was a second employee at the penny hoarder. So we became employees of that company. And then also like the processes that we'd built around, cause at that point, we've been running their content for a year and a half.

And by bringing us in house, we could just use that all those same processes and just pour gas on it. And then also the third thing that was valuable at that point in time, I think was just the wider net of freelance writers that we brought with us. So even beyond the staffers that we brought, we had a lot of people that could write content in our network.

Brian Casel: Yeah, I want to get more into your process and building teams and stuff like that. But where'd you go after that?

Alexis Grant: Yeah. So then I left the penny hoarder in 2019. And I initially, I returned to a project that I had worked on previously. It was a website called the right life, a website for writers. And I had started it as kind of a side business when I was running the agency, because we realized that we are running blogs for all these other companies.

And it would make sense to [00:08:00] apply the same processes to our own asset. So we get the upside for the asset over time. So that's how that started. I had an editor running it all those years because. I was busy in a leadership role. I had two kids at that same time. So it was a really busy time in my life. So I really didn't touch the site much.

So when I left the penny hoarder, I picked it up again, partly to say like, do I want to do this? What do I want to do with it? And I played with it for about a year. I'm mostly focused on improving SEO, just cause I think I thought it was fun. I was tinkering and learning through it. And I got to apply a lot of the SEO ideas that I had picked up at the penny hoarder because I oversaw our SEO team for most of my time there.

So I got to learn from them. So I applied that to the right life. And I sold that site now, 2021.

Brian Casel: Yeah. And so it's interesting to hear you say like you decided to build that as its own asset, separate from your content service, which then got acquired by penny hoarder. So like, cause I think a lot of like SaaS businesses and even agencies and services, they think like, [00:09:00] well, we need to up our game with content.

We need to think more like a media company, but let's just have our own company blog and come out with. Really good content and that might be good for like SEO, but it's not a true media company. It's not a separate brand It's not a separate asset, right? And it's like I'm starting to think about if a product company is going to invest in a media company strategy It's probably smart to do what you did, which is like just spin up a separate asset I mean, maybe it's a completely separate business.

Alexis Grant: It made sense to me because Like we didn't have our own asset and this was like a completely different business because we were able to apply all the same things we did for someone else. We just did the same exact thing for our site, but I would actually advise differently on if I think if you're a product building out, you want to build out content.

I don't think you should spin up a new site. This is my personal opinion. I think you should keep it all on the same site.

Brian Casel: Yeah. For like SEO domain authority.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. And like, I mean, if the whole point is to support the sale of the product, you're just. Adding a point of [00:10:00] friction by separating the two, especially if there's trust you've built up already, or you want to transfer trust from the media brand into the product.

It's you can make more headway while you're focusing on one thing that has two parts, then two things, separate things. As I mean, I made that mistake before.

Brian Casel: That makes a lot of sense because like, I keep talking to guests about this all the time on the show, like SEO and what's working. And I feel like it's that thing that I keep.

I've literally spent the last 10 plus years like relearning the same processes when it comes to content and SEO, and I'm still trying to figure it out again now. And it's like, I'm trying to separate, I'm thinking about it like there's content that obviously relates to the product. And then there's content that sort of supports the use cases around the product.

But then a media company is going to cover a wide, a much wider range of content. And if someone Googles and finds it or shares it, well, it's coming from this product company, so it must just be like content marketing. It's not actual reporting or interesting, unique content.

Alexis Grant: That's a [00:11:00] good point. I mean, I think some people would take, would have that, but I also think like as a product company, it's about how you do it and if you can do it in a way that elicits trust.

Then it won't matter. They just want good information. I think people pay less attention to where it comes from, which is probably not a good thing, but they just want good information.

Brian Casel: Right. So I guess getting back to what you're building with a media company. So what does the business model look like?

Are you primarily looking at ads driven model, but you also talked About like with, They Got Acquired, you're building up a database of information. Like, how does that sort of play into it?

Alexis Grant: Yeah. So one of the reasons I wanted to build this business is because I hadn't monetized the database before and I get to do that now.

So I'm excited about learning it. So yeah, long term our primary mode of monetization is going to be through the database. Initially, like we're actually, we're getting close to being able to release our first reports. So we're the first slice that we're taking is content companies. Actually, it's going to be something like 20 content companies that have sold in the last couple of years for [00:12:00] six, seven or low eight figures.

And we share all the metrics that we have for all those acquisitions, as well as the stories behind them. Like we put them into context and write a story about it. So you could buy that slice from us so that that's like the first iteration. And the way I think of that is from a founder perspective or a seller perspective.

It's similar to like, if you were selling your house, you'd want to be able to look around the neighborhood and see what are the other houses selling for. You want to see those comps and for much bigger companies that is out there, but for smaller companies, like we're the first ones to aggregate it and pull it together.

Brian Casel: That's such a good point. I literally felt the pain of not having comps when I sold. Me too.

Alexis Grant: That's why I'm doing it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I tried to pull them myself like manually. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Well, I was doing the same thing, but all I was able to see was. Businesses that are currently up for sale and mostly on like micro acquire and a couple other broker sites, especially micro acquire.

It's obviously like, if people are asking X, the real set sell prices are going to be like X minus some,

Alexis Grant: it's the listing [00:13:00] price, not the sale price basically.

Brian Casel: And that's all I was going on. I remember making a list when I was preparing to sell audience apps, and then I sold process kit. Like I made a list of what looked like pretty similar businesses currently up for sale and tried to get like an average of what they're listing for.

But it just felt so inaccurate from what is reality. So it didn't quite occur to me until you just described it.

Alexis Grant: Let me interrupt you for a second. Cause I didn't totally answer your question just because you asked about ads too, and we are selling sponsorships as well. And I think like, that's kind of the most traditional way for media companies to make money.

But there are lots of ways for media companies to make money. So like my bet is even if the database doesn't work, I'll lead them. One of the others, one of those other ways. And already we've seen like a lot of interest with the sponsorships. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I mean, what's so interesting about media companies in general is that like there's so much value in the audience.

And the brand,

Alexis Grant: I mean, so at the penny hoarder, we sold to, or we were writing for people who are frugal, who like want to make [00:14:00] or save money. So we didn't make money directly off the audience, but we were able to make money off the people who wanted to reach that audience. So that's how I think about it is like, are you making money as a media company directly off the people that are reading or listening, or are you making money off the people that want to reach those people?

And often, not always, but often the second option is, can be more lucrative.

Brian Casel: Yeah. And it's also interesting, like the type of audience that you're building, right? Like a business focused audience, like even with relatively lower subscriber counts, that can be much higher value because it's just the type of person that that's trying to reach them.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. A hundred percent and niche media. It's as an example, you can sell sponsorships at a much higher rate for a niche media than you can for a more general media publication.

Brian Casel: Interesting.

So with the right life, so you built that up and sold that and then decided to get into, They Got Acquired. I'm curious what went into the calculus. Cause this is another area that I'm always interested in. Is transitions from one business to the [00:15:00] next and figuring out what your next move is as an entrepreneur, right?

So I'm curious where the initial idea for They Got Acquired as a whole media brand came from, but did you evaluate it in terms of like this type of content will be relatively easy to grow traffic and an audience. And then there's a market for assets that can come out of that, whether it's the database or ads.

Like, how did you evaluate that?

Alexis Grant: Well, I guess I do think about like, is it easy to create content around a topic and what's out there already? And like, to me, there's a gaping hole and like information about smaller acquisitions. There's not that much content online. And if there is. A lot of it's from brokers or MNA advisors who many of them are really knowledgeable and they have good things to say, but they're not always great about sharing that information in an interesting way that's like appealing to people who want to learn about it.

So I definitely felt like there's a hole there. I also thought about like, if I went, had to go back in time, I wouldn't start a website about [00:16:00] writing because it's hard to make money off of it. And I mean, there's definitely ways to do it, but writers don't have, or want to spend a lot of money and even some of the people who want to reach writers.

If you go in that way, they also not all those companies are in the end, they're making their money off writers a lot too. So I found it wasn't the greatest space to be in. I mean, you could definitely make it work, but that was something I thought about going into this space.

Brian Casel: So like seeking like a higher value.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, a hundred percent. That's really important for media. And like one thing that can go into it is like, are people using the information you provide to do their jobs? Are they using it in a way that's going to make them money in the end? Not that it's all about money, but it kind of does tie back in some ways.

If you think about it from this angle, it's like, are they going to use the information you provide? To better their life in a tangible way that has like monetary value. Like, are they going to be willing to pay big bucks for what you're creating? And some of that's positioning, but some of it's also audience.

And if it's a hobby that you're writing about, [00:17:00] I think the opportunity it's still there, but it might be harder to get at. So I thought a lot about that when choosing a topic. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Yeah, for sure. I guess the trade off there, like hobby versus like real like business value is almost like B2C versus B2B.

And it's like the trade off in a lot of these like consumer topic areas or subject matter areas that you can get such a massive audience because it's such a massive interest, whether it's like personal finance or health or something like that. But it's. Difficult to monetize. And then on the other hand, like business, you don't need such a high volume of traffic for it to be high value.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. And I mean, I think there are plenty of niches that are hobbies that you can monetize really well, but yeah, you may go after scale instead of like the size of the audience might be really important. Like if you're running a sports site, maybe you need to have lots and lots of readers, whereas if you have a niche site where you can make more money per subscriber, then it can be a smaller audience.

Brian Casel: What does like the playbook look like to build a [00:18:00] business like this? Like where, so obviously it's, it's heavily content. Oriented, right? So again, like starting out, like, I guess They got Acquired is the perfect example since that's what you're in right now and you've been through it several times now. So what are the things that it's like?

You just got to get the ball rolling on building these building block.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, well, I can tell you because I have my whiteboard right now. I think about it in 4 categories, not the 1 behind you, but the 1 in front of me that you can't see. I think of it in 4 categories. The 1st, most obvious 1 is content.

What is the content? What does it look like from the beginning? We had to figure out like. How long would our posts be? What would they cover? What would be in them? And like, if you look at the website, you'll see, we have this like little box that says, here's the deal. And it has the basic stats, basic stats are like the data about each deal.

So yeah, what is the content? Like, what is it like figuring that out from the beginning and then making it? So like, even before we launched, we had to make a lot of content. So we had something to watch with. And that also, that includes blog posts for the website, but it's also like a newsletter. You got to write a newsletter or, and we also have a podcast.

So creating all those [00:19:00] things. And that's always the biggest expense for a media company is creating content is really expensive if you do it well and with good people. And so that's, that can be expensive. And then the second piece is people. So I think of like, who are the people who are going to be doing these for me, these things for me.

And, you know, I have a team of about 12 contractors. I hope eventually to have a couple of full time employees, but my goal is not to build like some massive. I want to have a big company in terms of reach and revenue, but not in terms of headcount. Like, I don't care about that. And I don't want to deal with a huge team again.

Brian Casel: What does your team, what are the roles?

Alexis Grant: So they're mostly content people. And it's funny. I had did a call. I was on a podcast a week ago or something where someone asked me. So it sounds like most of your contractors are content. Like, why don't you have any business contractors? And it kind of caught me off guard.

And I thought, and it made me doubt myself. I'm like, am I doing this wrong? Why don't I, why haven't I hired anyone to do the business stuff? You're building content. Like exactly. It is our product. Yeah. And the [00:20:00] business right now is like a, it's building the database, which is more product. And I know what we're doing there.

And then second, like for selling sponsorships, I just, I don't need a business person for that right now. It's just been easy and it's just, I can lead that while doing other things because it's minimal work. So yeah, I have a bunch of reporters that cover the stories and then I have a design person and I have a researcher who does a lot of the research for the deals.

A podcast producer. That's been really important because I had no background in podcasting before starting this brand, uh, VA or like an operations manager.

Brian Casel: Pretty cool. And so in terms of like the content, obviously that's the core of it, right? So in this case, it's basically like a news site, like in turn.

Well, I mean, I guess it is evergreen cause you could still want to find information about acquisitions that happened a while back, but. How do you keep the flow of new acquisition news to cover?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, there's so many. I mean, so the choice to not do news and to do Evergreen was intentional. And the reason I chose that was because it's a lot easier.

And you have [00:21:00] to have big staff and a lot of resources to cover news because you have to have someone who's there the second it breaks and willing to write it. And that doesn't work well with freelancers. And then you need an editor who's willing to edit it at that time. And then you need someone who's willing to put it onto the website.

Brian Casel: And you're not trying to like break the news of acquisitions. This just tells a story of a recent acquisition.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. So, I mean, we have, like I said, we've already put together a database about 1200 that we want to cover. So we're just slowly chipping away at it.

Brian Casel: Okay, cool. So you built up this database, whether you've covered them or not, it's just like reaching out to them and invited them.

Alexis Grant: Well, a lot of them we haven't even reached out to yet. They're just in there because we found it somewhere. So the next step is to reach out and hopefully write a story about it. Nice. And then, but coming back to your other question about the buckets, it's like we did content and people, then there's also monetize.

It's like, how are you going to monetize this? So like for us, that's at the moment. That's, that's sponsorships and the database. And then the fourth piece is audience growth, like getting people to come and join our list. [00:22:00] And that always ends up being the last thing on my list because like the website doesn't fall apart without it, but it's really the most important piece.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I mean, that's one of the biggest things I wanted to really kind of pick your brain about here is. Just growing traffic, right? And it sounds like you've been through this process several times with super high traffic websites and doing SEO at a high level. So again, like what are like the early building blocks or beyond like the obvious stuff, like getting Google search console and analytics all set up, but like planning out content and optimizing and maybe it's in the way that you manage your team.

What does that look like to, to grow a traffic and audience?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, it's really hard, even though I've done it before, I still doubt my ability to do it because it changes every year. Like, and the things that used to work five years ago, don't always work today. I SEO, I think is the exception to that, but SEO was much harder than it used to be.

So yeah, SEO is kind of baked into our process, at least for onsite. Whenever we write [00:23:00] something, we optimize it. We prioritize making it helpful for the reader and a great piece of content. And then we layer SEO on top.

Brian Casel: So your stories are about a specific company, but I guess in your topic area, you're not really doing like keyword research up

front.

Alexis Grant: So we have two different types of stories on the site. One is stories about companies that have sold. And for those, we're just optimizing for the company name usually, unless the founder is famous or something. And that's actually already worked really well. But then the second piece is we're doing resource and advice pieces.

So we have a post about like mistakes you don't want to make in your first letter of intent. And what do you want to do to prepare to sell your business? And we have lots more in the queue that are coming, how to find the right broker or marketplace or MNA advisor, what a lawyer should help you with all the things that you need to understand.

Brian Casel: So you're going through a process to find those opportunity keyword in this space that you can build content around.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, well, first we like, we did look to see what are the opportunities [00:24:00] keyword wise, and we'll chip those off first. But I also think of it as like, what do our readers just need to know?

And then we do work with that backwards. We'll say, are there any keywords in that query that we could target? And they're really, a lot of them, the volume is really small, but I'm hoping that it will all add up over time.

Brian Casel: How do you think about your audience? Like, are there different personas, right? Like, so I would imagine you have people who are interested in potentially selling their own business sometime soon.

Do you get acquirers, like people searching to buy a business? And maybe even brokers.

Alexis Grant: Well, that's the part that I still have a lot of questions around. And my goal is to serve both audiences, but we're really just at the moment, because I want to be niche, like as we start, and then we can broaden as we gain trust with our audience.

So at the moment we are really focusing on founders or sellers, people who have a business that they want to sell. And maybe just growing a business that they, they want to position it to sell in five years from now. That's a big piece of our audience too. But I'm thinking that we also [00:25:00] have a lot of value for the support professionals in this space.

So whether it's like a broker or an M& A advisor, especially in our database, I think there's gonna be value there for those types of people.

Brian Casel: Yeah, yeah, for sure. What are some like the quick wins or maybe wins that you've seen so far with They Got Acquired, whether it's traffic growth or first revenue coming through, like, yeah, what are you looking for there?

Alexis Grant: Well, right after our launch, we got featured the New York times, which is a pretty big get we, we, they dedicated entire their on tech column wrote about what we were building from the perspective of like, you hear about all these big acquisitions and you don't hear about. The little guys who is most, it's most of us, like most of us actually fall into this category.

Like most of us aren't building unicorns and don't want to build a unicorn, you know? So shining like a spotlight on people who want to build sustainable businesses. How did that come about? It really came about from me. Sharing what I was up to, like basically what people call now building in public, but ahead of our launch, I had a landing page up.

We had about a thousand subscribers when we launched, which was my [00:26:00] goal. We just barely got there. And so I was sharing what we were up to in the months leading up to that. And someone wrote about it. And then somebody else passed that along to a friend who wrote that column and that's how it came about.

So it wasn't me pitching her or anything.

Brian Casel: That's awesome. That's so funny. Like the big media companies covering. Like our space of small internet businesses. Like I remember seeing, I think something in the New York times, maybe about six or 12 months ago. And it was like an article about like, look at these small, like they're calling them bootstrapped businesses.

Like it's a unique concept that like no one has ever heard about before. It's like, well, we've been here for 10, 20 years.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, when I used to be a reporter in Texas and we always would joke because we'd be like deep into covering a beat and we'd do like story after story about the evolution of what's happening with that particular topic.

And then someone from a big patient would like swoop in and like write a trend piece about this and we're like, we've been covering this forever, but [00:27:00] like, it's just a different audience. Right. Cause they didn't know about it before. So you can take a different angle.

Brian Casel: Yeah, yeah, totally. So like when it comes to your process and team and just publishing content in general, what do you as a media company, professional, like expert in content know that a typical like SaaS operator doesn't know about content, right?

Like there must be something where, or it's like you see all these product companies publishing content, but they're not doing it the way that real media. Content person would, would do it. Like, does anything come to mind there? You know what I mean?

Alexis Grant: Oh yeah. That's a big question. I mean, I think voice is a big piece of it is like choosing your voice.

You want in almost every situation you want it to be an approachable, like relatable voice. We focus on that a lot at the penny hoarder is like making personal finance accessible. Because no one wants to read, like, dry information.

Brian Casel: Do you bring that into, like, your work with your team? Like, do you have an editing process, [00:28:00] working with your writers?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, and most writers will say, like, I had someone send me something today and she said, is this the right voice or style that you're looking for? Or do I need to, like, rewrite it, basically? I'm like, no, no, we're casual and informal, like, that, that, how you did it is what we're looking for. I mean, every writer brings their own voice.

But the publication also has a style that we want everyone to adhere to. And that's basically just like, not boring and not stuffy. You asked about the process. Like I can tell you a little bit about how we'd manage that. Please. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, we use ClickUp for our project management and it's pretty simple because like when we grow or bigger media companies will have a much bigger blown out version of this.

But at the moment we're only publishing about three or four posts a week and we do two newsletters a week. So it's not a crazy volume, but you know, at any given time, we have probably 30 posts in progress. So we just use the statuses and click up. And like, I have one column that's like, these are assigned.

The next one is the writer moves it into like, these are in [00:29:00] progress. Then they can put it, I call it the editing funnel. They can put it into the editing funnel. It's ready to be edited so that an editor will look at it. Then they send it back to the writer. Then the writer sends it back. We go back and forth as many times as we need to.

Usually, hopefully it's not too many. And then it goes over to someone else who puts it up onto the website.

Brian Casel: Okay. What's kind of like the volume of content that you're putting out or the frequency?

Alexis Grant: Yeah, it's just like three or four posts a week, so not crazy.

Brian Casel: It seems like ClickUp is one of those like main, like broad use cases, kind of project management tool, but it seems like it's really ideal for a content publishing process.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, this is the first time I've used it and I've really, really liked it. I've loved how customizable it is. Yeah. I really like it. It's cheap too. Which is nice.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Most of those big ones are like premium. Yeah. So where do you go next? Like what's happening this year? We're coming into the middle of 2022.

What are kind of like the next building blocks that you're working on right now? Yeah.

Alexis Grant: The big piece is getting some of our paid products out there so people can buy these reports from us. [00:30:00] I mean, if no one wants it, we're going to have to change our strategy, but then also because that will help fund the building for

Brian Casel: what are you looking looking for? They're like, you're basically looking for businesses who are starting to think about going up for sale and giving them, you Information to better equip them for an exit in the near future.

Alexis Grant: Yeah, exactly. So we haven't done this one yet, but once we want to do the SaaS, we could say here are, there's so many SaaS companies, like that's been the easiest one to cover in terms of like, cause I want to have a good variety, but there's so many SaaS ones we could do like 40 SaaS companies that have sold in 2021 and someone who's going to sell a SaaS might buy that to see where they stack up compared to everyone else.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. What else are you excited about right now before we wrap up?

Alexis Grant: Oh, so we'll talk about our podcast because we just wrapped the first season.

Brian Casel: Yeah. How does that fit into the overall content?

Alexis Grant: So it's a little bit different. Well, we did, first of all, we're featuring founders and we're only interviewing founders.

We're not interviewing, we didn't interview experts. We only interviewed people who sold [00:31:00] their company this first season and it's a narrative style podcast. So it's like highly produced with music and narration. So it's more like, what's it called? How I built it. Or like, you know, the NPR style of like, Storytelling and the way I think of how that fits in is really just like, how do I help people trust us and understand that we're legit and doing good work here and they can come to us as a resource.

So that's how I think of like the value of that in the, in the grand scheme of things.

Brian Casel: What does producing that look like? Do you get them on like an interview? That's sort of a, a typical podcast interview, but then you and your producer kind of cut it up into more narrative.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. So our producer, her name is Laura Boats.

She worked on it. She's excellent. She did 95 percent of the work for the podcast, partly because first of all, I had no idea, I don't know how to do a podcast, but also I wouldn't have had time to do it and build the business. I only work about 30 hours a week and that's just, I'm time boxed a bit there cause I have a family and other responsibilities.

So I was like asking myself [00:32:00] the question of like, how could I do this, but without spending all my time on it? And so, yes, we do guest prep and then I interviewed the guests and it's usually, the interview is about an hour and a half. We found that we need that much time to get through everything we need.

Brian Casel: What are the episodes end up in length?

Alexis Grant: About 30 minutes. So she then goes through it and she writes a script that tells the story of the person, basically. And there's usually a theme or like something people can learn from it. It just like gets to the meat way faster than like, I find we didn't really do this today, but I find a lot of podcasts, they chit chat at the beginning and they're like, just talk about the thing.

Like I'm really impatient. Not everyone's like that, but I'm pretty impatient.

Brian Casel: Totally. I try to just get into the conversation on air because that's where the best stuff is going to come out anyway. So all of these podcasts who put that level of effort into the production and like post production, right?

Alexis Grant: Yeah. It's way more time consuming. It's way more work. It's way more expensive. I'm hoping that it will be a good investment for us over time. And my goal is if, and when we do another season in the fall, [00:33:00] I'll be able to get some sponsors that will just cover the costs of it for us. But yeah, check it out.

They Got Acquired if you just search in your podcast player. And it's, she did a great job. And I'm like super proud of every, there's only eight episodes, but I feel like attached to every single one. She did a really good job. That's awesome.

Brian Casel: And it's great to kind of box them into seasons. Again, it's like you're building an asset.

Like it's a product in

Alexis Grant: itself. Not an ever earning project. Yeah. Check it off. Exactly.

Brian Casel: Very cool. Well, They Got Acquired. We'll obviously get that and everything else linked up in the show notes. Alexis, it was great to hear what you're working on. This is awesome.

Alexis Grant: Yeah. Thanks for asking good questions. And it's nice to connect in person.

Brian Casel: Yeah, I'll definitely be following along. Of course, it's interesting to people who are looking to sell their business soon, but I think anyone building a business is just interested to hear these kinds of stories of growing and then exiting. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Thanks for doing it.