#101 Josh Dittrich from Branded Seller: How To Sell Your Business For Millions Of Dollars

Entrepreneurs put in their blood, sweat, and then some to scale their dream business. But, there comes a time and point in every business owner's life when they decide to take the next big step - cashing in. However, too many online business owners leave the game too soon and miss out on their big payday because they lack a good exit strategy!

Today we've got Josh Dittrich, the Founder and VP of BrandedSeller, here with Daniel Budai, our podcast host, and CEO, to discuss how businesses can maximize their value before exiting.

Branded Seller is full-service management and consulting firm that helps e-commerce businesses grow and plan their exit strategy. Josh Dittrich founded BrandedSeller after successfully selling both his e-commerce ventures for millions of dollars. Josh is also the writer of "Aggregator Navigator: The Ultimate Playbook for Selling Your Amazon Brand Successfully."

In this episode, we will discuss everything from why businesses should sell to planning your successful exit strategy. Tune in to find out:

✔ Josh's multi-million dollar success story.

✔ Why sell your business.

✔ When to sell your business.

✔ How to prepare your business for a sale.

Josh's Multi-Million Dollar Success Story

Josh's story begins in a sales job where he ran into someone that worked at Amway. Fascinated by the prospect of generating recurring revenue without any glass limit, Josh was determined to get a job at Amway.

After two/three failed attempts to get a job working at Amway, Josh decided to try an alternate route that led to him dabbling into eCommerce. He started by reselling products he'd purchased from China on channels like Amazon and eBay.

However, he realized that he wouldn't go too far without a good strategy. Josh then joined forces with a growing startup to get some industry experience before venturing out on his own again. In the short span of three years, he moved his way up the ladder from being a salesperson to managing their business development and advertising. He helped the company grow from a 3 million dollar business to a 50 million dollar business.

He achieved this by focusing on multi-channel growth. As a result, the business started selling everywhere, from Amazon to eBay. He also onboarded the help of experts to nail down their advertising campaigns and SEO.

During his time there, he learned eCommerce; end-to-end technology, supply chain inventory management, tech, digital marketing, eCommerce, and the whole nine yards in private label. After seeing what an enterprise-level eCommerce organization looks like, he was inspired to leave and start his brand.

Josh then started two e-commerce ventures; Essential Values and Sniper's Edge Hockey. The first business provides a versatile range of liquid homecare products and follows a multi-channel strategy. The second caters to the hockey niche and dominates its sales through specialized Amazon marketing. Within six years, Josh has built and exited both brands with a multi-million dollar valuation.

While this may appear like a short time to build and exit a company, it took Josh 15 years to acquire the knowledge and experience that helped him successfully scale both his ventures.

Why You Should Consider Selling Your Business

Before we jump to how you can sell your business, let's cover why an entrepreneur might want to give up their corporate child. Every entrepreneur is aware of the risk and rewards of running a business. Cashing out means you eventually reap the rewards of your hard-earned labor.

Change is the only constant, and every product has its lifecycle. So if you can sense changing regulations or restrictions that will affect your business, it's a smart idea to consider selling out.

Your personal life is another great reason to consider calling it in. Sometimes the reason to sell can be driven by your personal circumstances. For instance, if you're looking to retire, spend more time with the family, or even if you want a new challenge to chase after.

Growth is one of the most common reasons entrepreneurs consider selling their business. There comes a time when you need to stop and ask yourself if you're satisfied with not taking money out of business. If you find yourself in a constant crunch with cash flow each time you try to grow, it's a sign that you should be considering selling your business, especially if it's stopped giving you personal joy and returns.

When To Sell Your Business

You've decided to sell. That's great! But, how do you actually know when's the right time? There's never a clear perfect time to make these decisions. However, there are certain factors that can help business owners make a more calculated decision.

You have to start by evaluating and being truthful about yourself and your business. And it's really important because if you cannot answer why you want to sell, your buyers will get skeptical.

You also need to ask yourself if you have the bandwidth to sell? Once you've got your answer, you work backward and start calculating the value of your business, predict its growth trajectory, and your goals post-exit.

How To Prepare Your Business For Selling

You need to have all your data points in place and books in order before you consider selling your business. Think of selling your business as a marathon; it requires patience, persistence, and perseverance!

Once you have decided to sell your business, step back and focus on your exit strategy. You can't be planning for growth if you're constantly occupied with the day-to-day runnings of an office. Every decision post the decision to sell should be focused on how you can maximize your business's current value.

In order to do this, businesses first need to get their books in order and shift from the cash accounting model to accrual accounting.

Businesses also need to reevaluate their expenses and goals. You need to consider whether an expense will benefit in short-term or long-term growth. If it's a long-term growth benefit, you need to stop and consider how this will affect your profitability at the time of sale. While selling, the focus needs to be on maintaining profitability, not on product development, unless a business owner is planning to retain their role or maintain some involvement in the business post-sale.

The last piece of advice would be to analyze your data and identify trends. As a business owner looking to sell, you need to know what your profit, add-backs, and sellers' discretionary earnings are. You should also be able to identify trends.

For instance, your profits for the last 12 months will affect your business's valuation. So if January of the previous year was your least profitable month, you can take that month off your books by waiting until April of the current year since your trailing 12-month period would be February-April.

There are a lot of resources and help available to business owners looking for assistance with selling their company. If data and negotiating aren't your strong points, you can look into bringing a broker to help you facilitate your deal, do keep in mind that this would be an expensive ordeal. Alternatively, you could also do some more research, network, and consult other business owners that have made a successful exit.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Ecom Show. If you're interested in knowing more about selling your e-commerce business successfully, make sure you check out Josh Dittrich's playbook.

You can also check out BrandedSeller for more information on selling your business or reach out to Josh Dittrich.

We come out with episodes that venture into new avenues in eCommerce every Tuesday and Thursday, so stay tuned!

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