Hello, I have an update for you this week.

You just wouldn’t read about it.

Honestly, I feel kind of silly. But also, sometimes the universe works in funny ways.

So let me share with you what’s going on, and what has changed in the space of one week since I should hit an episode with you last.

My life feels like a bit of a shit show right now, and I’ve taken a massive U-turn. But it’s only temporary.

Tune in to this episode to hear exactly what’s going on 👇🏻

OR TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | GOOGLE PLAY

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Episode Transcript:

So welcome to this week’s episode of online store success with me your host Jodie Minto. I have an update for you. Last week I shared with you why I decided to close my business, iland co., and those reasons still very much apply. I am absolutely exiting the business. However, in the last week, I’ve had multiple conversations with different business brokers who are listing the business for sale and they have all said the same thing that the business must be still trading. So I am now still trading iland co. it’s live online. It’s very much a scaled-back way it’s just me in the business right now doing all the things so I feel like I’m just at the very beginning again, I’m doing all the Instagram posts, I’m answering the customer service emails, and picking and packing the orders for a little while until my 3PL can take my stock end of this month.

And I’m actually taking a different approach where I’m taking some of the pressure off myself around manufacturing my own products. And I’ve been buying some ready-to-go products from other wholesalers. That has actually been quite fun shopping from someone else’s catalogue is actually really fun. Plus, I don’t have to worry about photo shoots and size guides. And they’ve even got videos a lot of them these days. So it was within a day of ordering for one particular brand. The stock was with me the following day. And it was live on my website the next day.

So that is my approach right now. And if anything, I will be able to share with you my tips for running your eCommerce store completely solo for the next few months when I find a buyer for my beautiful brand www.ilandco.com

So I wanted to share with you today a few tips that I have learned kind of the hard way this is generally the way I like to learn things when it comes to building a business that you intend on selling. So here are my tips for you my most important tip number one, if you are busy building a business or a brand to sell at a later date, if that’s your end goal, you need to really make sure that you are using a system like Xero or MYOB and keeping really accurate records. And if that means hiring a bookkeeper, I absolutely recommend doing that. Bookkeeping isn’t the most enjoyable or easy thing. But when it comes to chatting like I am right now, with business brokers and potential buyers, they all want to see the financial statements to profit and losses and things like that. So it’s really, really important that you keep those from the very get-go because they want to look back as you know, three, four years. If you’re not already using one of those systems. This is your friendly reminder to go and organise that this week.

The next tip I have for you is if you plan on selling your business don’t stop trading. The brokers all told me and I thought maybe the first one was just been difficult but now that all three said the same thing that the longer the business is not trading, the more and more worthless it becomes and they said if I was to continue another month with the website being password protected, saying that we’re closed, you know, the business may only end up being worth maybe $30,000 versus maybe half a million dollars if it still trades, so you need to seek to keep trading and even if that means running your business really lean while you are looking for a seller, you know doing all of the things you can yourself in order to keep trading, but also slowly exiting. That’s my tip number two.

Tip number three is that it can take months and months and months to sell, it could take up to a year to sell depending on the price and the size of the business. So my business is currently listed for half a million dollars. And they’ve advised me or potentially take three to six months to find a buyer at that level, if your business is worth more than that, yay for you, it potentially will take longer. If it’s worth less than that, you know, if it’s worth, say, $50,000, it might be a lot quicker, but you will be in it for the long run. So make sure that you are just aware of that and just managing your expectations about how quickly it may or may not sell. And also my fourth and final tip is that you need to show some sort of proof or story around whether it’s the growth in your net profit, that is the profits after you’ve paid all of your bills. For all the growth has your revenue or your sales increased year on year because selling a business that has been in a declining state, whether it’s in declining in sales or declining in profit is quite difficult to sell unless you’ve got a really great explanation as to why so just keep all those things in mind.

I know a lot of people I talk to are building businesses and brands up ready to sell. So if that is you make sure that you’re like I said, keeping great record-keeping bookkeeping, you’re still trading you’ve got months up your sleeve, knowing that it could potentially take that long to sell and that you hopefully either grow in revenue or growing in net profit or if neither of those you have a very good explanation as to why because they’re the things that a buyer will look for.

Thank you for being with me this week. As I said, I feel kind of silly honestly. I went and announced to the world that I closed my business which I did for two to three weeks and did a big sale to all of our list and customers and all of the things moved out of the office let all the staff go and find new jobs. And now I’m trading again and I am getting a little bit of backlash on some Facebook posts and ads and things like that from people saying you told us you were closing and now you’re back trading again is this all just a ploy to get us to buy you know from you when you said you were closing down which is not I did not have any intention of starting to try it again and one after the other of these business brokers was saying you know you you need to you know, this is potentially you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars that you will be losing if you don’t so here I am so thank you for being kind to me I’m feeling like I’m you know been flung from pillar to post but here we are.

This is the life of a small business owner and all if we can’t laugh about it, you know. We’ll be rocking in a corner. So anyway, that’s it for me. This week, I will be sharing some digital marketing and Facebook ad tips with you next week. Enjoy your week and I will talk to you next Wednesday. Bye for now.