EFP 171: Buying Online Businesses In 2018

Wow – 2017 was one helluva year.

We wanted to talk about it and break down some of the highlights for both Empire Flippers and the industry overall. We look at some of the areas of growth in the market for 2017, cover our overall numbers/growth, and make some projections on where we think this is all headed in 2018.

It’s been a pretty interesting year and we’re expecting that trend to continue in 2018.

If you’re curious about what’s been going on in the online brokerage industry and want to get caught up, this is the episode for you.

Check Out This Week’s Episode:

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Topics Discussed This Week:

What Happened In 2017?

• Just shy of $20M in sales
• eCommerce Focus
• More Visits
• Stepped up our conference game
• 23 Staff

Projections For 2018?

• 7-Figure Listings
• eCommerce/FBA projections
• SaaS?
• Increased multiples?
• Smoother customer experience

Mentions:

• EF Listing # 43895 in Amazon FBA and eCommerce In The Technology Niche
• EF Podcast Episode 160: The Value of a Steak Dinner
• Web Equity Show Podcast
• Spencer Haws @ Niche Pursuits
• Spencer Haws $420,000 FBA Blog Post

Spread the Love:

“You can’t argue with the process. It works by breaking it down quarter by quarter and having aggressive goals to do better..” – Joe – Tweet This!

So…what are your thoughts on 2018? Where do you see the market going? Let us know in the comments!
 
Justin:
Welcome to the Empire Podcast, episode 171. 2017 was definitely an exciting year for us at Empire Flippers. Our focus on growth led to some key hires who helped us get to just under $20 million in online business sales. In this episodes, we’ll look at what went down in 2017 and give you some key predictions about the industry as we head into 2018, so stick with us. You’ll find the show notes for this episode at EmpireFlippers.com/2018update. All right, let’s do this.

Speaker 2:
Sick of listening to entrepreneurial advice from guys with day jobs? Want to hear about the real successes and failures that come with building an online empire? You are not alone. From San Diego to Tokyo, New York to Bangkok, join thousands of entrepreneurs and investors who are prioritizing wealth and personal freedom over the oppression of an office cubicle. Check out the Empire Podcast. And now your hosts, Justin and Joe.

Justin:
All right Joe, welcome to 2018 buddy. How you doing?

Joe:
I’m doing well, I’m doing well. Happy New Year.

Justin:
You remember back in January 2017 and we were setting goals for the year, and we put down a number, right? We put down $20 million and we tried to break it up quarter by quarter, and we were like, “Oh my God, there’s no way this is gonna happen.” We actually felt a little sick. I think you were gonna throw up, right?

Joe:
Yeah. I definitely they were very aggressive goals.

Justin:
And we didn’t hit them, so there’s that, but we got awfully close. And I think part of our goal planning at the beginning of 2017 kind of drove us to do better and to be better, and to be a better company. So, we’re gonna talk about kind of how that played out in this episode. Kind of what went on in 2017, what were some of the highlights? And then we’re gonna give some predictions for 2018. We’re gonna talk about what we have planned, and we’re also gonna talk about the industry overall, which I think will be really interesting.

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, you can’t argue with the process. The process works of breaking it down quarter by quarter, month by month, and having an aggressive goal to push you to do better.

Justin:
All right, well let’s get started with that by paying the bills, buddy. Let’s talk about our featured listing of the week. What do you got?

Joe:
We’re talking about listing 43895. That’s an Amazon FBA and e-commerce business created back in October 2014 in the technology niche. The sales diversified across the e-commerce store and the FBA platform, and the products, it’s an add-on for a kind of very new and hip technology. I’ll leave it at that, and you can kind of think about what that means, but it’s a neat product. I talked to the seller a number of times on the phone, and how he developed the product was just by having a kind of good feel and a passion for this type of technology. The business is making, right now, almost $68,000 in net profit every month, and we have it listed just over $2.2 million as a list price.

Justin:
So here’s the thing, these big e-commerce businesses, the seven figure plus, e-commerce businesses are often blended, right? So, you’ll see FBA businesses that are low six to mid six figures that are strictly FBA, but it seems like when you cross that seven figure barrier, it’s because they’ve done things like started selling themselves. They’ve created a brand for themselves, they’re starting to make it more of a fully fleshed out business.

Joe:
Yeah. This one is the number one brand in this particular niche for this particular product. He ranks number one for all of his keywords, and he’s really a leader in that sort of category. And that’s because he puts so much effort and energy into making sure that people knew that his brand was there, listening to the feedback. Heck, they even had a kick starter campaign for a little bit to get off the ground a couple of years ago. So, really interesting business. Check it out, especially if you’re looking for a larger business that really moves the needle and is a brand that you can take to the next level.

Justin:
I like the niche, it’s hot. And this isn’t the niche, but it’s kind of like drones or crypto or whatever where you see that this one is hot and it’s gonna grow over the next few years.

Joe:
Exactly.

Justin:
All right man, let’s get into the heart of this week’s episode.

Speaker 2:
Now for the heart of this week’s episode.

Justin:
All right Joe, we’re talking buying online businesses in 2018. I want to do this in two ways. First, I want to do kind of a recap of what went down in 2017. We’ll go over some of the bullet points, and then we’ll talk about some predictions. So, first off, in 2017, point number one, we were just shy of $20 million in sales. I know we set that at the beginning of the year as the goal, and we missed it. We’re not exactly sure what the final number is, which is why we can’t say, but we can say with some clarity that we didn’t hit $20 million, right?

Joe:
Yeah, we definitely didn’t hit $20 million. But just like in 2016 we didn’t hit $10 million, we came damn close. And that effectively makes us double our sales from 2016, which I think is, that makes me very happy.

Justin:
Yeah, and one interesting point about this is about half of the sales revenue came from deals over $150,000, and another half came from deals under $150,000. Obviously, there were more under $150,000, but in terms of revenue, it was pretty evenly split. So, that’s kind of the dividing line. The ones over $150,000 accounted for about half of it, and under $150,000 about half of it as well.

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, I think those under $150,000 deals are a great place for people to start, a great place for people who have maybe portfolios over a number of deals. And they grow into these larger deals, and so we’ve generated a lot of customers from that.

Justin:
Yeah. We’ve also been in a lot of new places and we’ve seen a lot of new faces, which just tells me that our marketing and branding push in 2017 was really effective. We have more to say on that in a bit. Point number two, our focus on e-commerce has really been paying off. In early 2017, actually late 2016, we said, “We want to make a push for e-commerce businesses. We think there’s opportunity there for both buyers and sellers. We think that’s a really interesting niche for us to be in.” And so in 2017 we sold more FBA and e-commerce businesses than any of our competitors in the space. So, I think our push there was smart. I think it’s paid off in terms of actually getting the deals and then ultimately selling those deals.

Joe:
Yeah, the physical product business definitely has its pluses and minuses, but a lot of people are very interested in this. The featured listed of the week, obviously a physical product business, and I’m excited to sell more of these businesses in 2018.

Justin:
One of the things that we looked for in 2017 were to get listings and sellers that didn’t know selling their business was a possibility or option. It goes kind of along with our make the pie bigger process, our make the pie bigger philosophy. So, if we could get sellers in the space that didn’t even know selling their business was possible, we’re not fighting for the same deals. It’s an open ocean, it’s a blue ocean for us in terms of snatching up customers that otherwise wouldn’t have been.

Joe:
Yeah, we always have to explore sort of new categories and new areas where people don’t know our name, and that’s so important if we’re gonna hit these aggressive growth numbers.

Justin:
Number three, nearly 50% more visitors to EmpireFlippers.com in 2017. We had just under 900,000 visits to the site in 2017, where we had about 600,000 in 2016. So, 50% growth. That’s bringing a lot of new people kind of into our industry, also bringing people back to Empire Flippers that had visited before or, again, are in the market to buy another business. Or they’ve sold previously, and they’re looking to purchase. A lot of that traffic came from a lot of links and mentions from friends, peers, customers, and partners that are out in the marketplace that are mentioning, “Hey, check out those Empire Flippers guys.” And this increased visibility means more listings and more buyers for all of our customers.

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, the website obviously is very important. And having that sort of technology to attract people, right. I mean, it means the marketing is working, but it also means that our website is set up in a way that people keep coming back and people keep saying, “You should go to Empire Flippers to check out online businesses.” So, I’m very excited about that, and I’m very excited about some of the changes and plans we have in store for 2018 to make it even better.

Justin:
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that we want to make the pie bigger, and we definitely did that with some of our content and our approach online, but we also want to get more of the pie. I mean, I want to steal market share. I want to take down our competitors, and one of the ways we looked to doing that in 2017 was to step up our conference game. We attended nearly a dozen conferences in 2017, whether it was you or I or people on our team, Greg and Swig and James and the rest of the guys. But that was a big push for us in 2017, and the reason why, as we look around at our competitors and we say, “Oh wow, they’re flying around. They’re visiting these conferences. Why don’t we do that as well?”

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, you know me, getting on these long plane flights a lot of times, it takes it out of me. But it definitely was well worth it, the five weeks Magellan trip literally around the world was well worth the time, effort, and energy that I put into it. And meeting people in person, there’s just nothing better than that for solidifying a relationship.

Justin:
Yeah. We’re fairly well known in the kind of [inaudible 00:09:32] entrepreneur industry or area in Southeast Asia, but we have been kind of moving into South America, right? In Columbia, San Diego, and kind of making end roads there with people who haven’t heard of us or haven’t heard of us as much at least. So, I think that’s been really helpful, and we’re also working with our team on how to approach conferences, and we found some wins, right? I mean, the first win is we never go alone, so we don’t send one person to a conference. We also don’t go unless we have some kind of insight or inside deal, so we need a speaking position, we need to be sponsoring, or we need to be throwing some kind of party at the place which can give us a little additional visibility.

Justin:
One of the ways we do that are through stake dinners. We actually have a podcast on our stake dinner approach, which is a good one. I would really recommend checking it out. We’ll put a link in the show notes. But it’s basically taking out customers and partners and influencers, and treating them. Treating them to a nice stake dinner or a nice night out. That’s one of the things we’ve done as well, is the baller night out we call it. Where we take a bunch of influencers and take them out for the night, for dinner, drinks, cigars, that kind of thing. And you know, it helps. It helps at these conferences where it’s a memorable experience, and it’s one of those things that some of these influencers will mention throughout the conference and word gets around.

Joe:
Agreed. I mean, it’s fun, too. So, it’s always nice to be able to take somebody out, show them a nice time, and maybe talk some business, but just build a relationship there. And there’s a reason why people have been doing that in business since time began, and I imagine it’s been going on for a long time and will continue to be that way.

Justin:
Yeah. Greg and Andy did one of these baller nights out in Bangkok in December. And I just did a podcast interview with someone and they were asking, “Well, why did you do it? What was your purpose?” And I went into it and they said, “Well, I bet it’s actually cheaper than sponsoring.” I was like, “You’re absolutely right. It’s much cheaper to throw this crazy party and take people around in Bangkok than it was to get some low level sponsorship at that conference.” So yeah, we’re fans of that approach for sure.

Justin:
Sponsorships though, can be valuable. It really depends on what the audience is like and what you get for the sponsorships, and I found that it’s always worth negotiating because you can get … they’ll help you tailor the sponsorship to something that makes sense for you and your brand.

Joe:
Yeah, and I think the other thing about sponsorship is you can’t just say, “Okay, we sponsored our stickers on the wall and that’s it.” If you’re gonna sponsor, you’ve got to do a lot more than just that. You’ve got to sponsor, plus you’ve got to attend, plus you’ve got to have some sort of game plan. Whereas a stake dinner and a night out can be a little less planning and involvement and stuff like that.

Justin:
Unless they’re Nestle or something, and you just want your sticker on the wall. I mean, there’s guys that have those ridiculous budgets and they’re like, “Look, I just need to spend this money, put my sticker on the wall, I’m good.”

Joe:
Right.

Justin:
All right, number five. We ended the year with 23 full-time staff. So, we’ve built quite a team man, a couple dozen people. We’ve also got three managers in place. We’ve got a manager for sales, we’ve got a manager for operations, and we’ve got a manager for marketing. And part of our plan, we’ll get into this when we talk about 2018, but part of our plans was relying on them much more heavily and working with them to help mentor and train the people that work for them.

Joe:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that we did a good job of getting that middle management in place and training them up, and giving them enough experience to grow to the next level. I mean, I think it would’ve been a mistake to hire in a middle level manager and have them just kind of be the middle manager from the beginning. It’s better to hire someone in and let them grow into that position.

Justin:
Yeah, that’s our approach. Let’s talk about that Joe, just for a second. This is a tangent, but we develop managers. That’s our approach, and I’m much more comfortable about it. It feels right to me, it feels right in our business, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not like if you don’t, that’s the only way to do it to be successful. Other people hire those experienced managers to come in and manage the company. Why do you think it feels wrong for us? Why would that not work as well for us?

Joe:
Yeah, I think because we’ve been able to have our fingers on the button, and we know the machine a lot better than maybe most business owners do. So that’s part of the reason why just hiring some middle manager to come in and try to take things over might be difficult for them, and it’s better for them to come in and grow along the business into the role. And the other thing is, larger businesses-

Justin:
We’re smaller. Yeah.

Joe:
Yeah, exactly.

Justin:
We’re smaller.

Joe:
Larger businesses don’t have the time or the effort to be able to do that so easily. But at the same time, I would say also the biggest thing, well not the biggest thing. But one of the biggest things about our business is that it’s a complex business. It’s not like we’re selling widgets, right? Every product we sell is essentially different because every business we sell is essentially different. And there’s a lot of things to understand in the business before you can really knowledgeable about how the business works. And that’s kind of the nice things about being an online business broker, is there’s a mote. You have to learn how things work before you can kind of do it well.

Justin:
No, I’m with you. Yeah, so there are a lot of moving pieces and every business is unique, and there are a lot of different scenarios to run through. So, having them come on and gain that experience and then we can take them once they have that and they see the kind of, they’ve got a picture of the industry. Then, we can help develop them into managers. I we took someone that was just a manager, they may know how to run people, but they may not know how to run our business, right?

Joe:
Exactly.

Justin:
All right. That was a good answer, man. I don’t know if I’m interviewing you on this one. This is interesting, because I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about that particular piece, so it’s interesting to hear your thoughts. We’ve also added heavily to our operations and our support staff to match growth in 2017. Again, I’d say in 2017, like 2016, this was a bit of a challenge, right? I mean, we were behind the curve a lot of the time, so we were playing catch up a lot with staff in 2017 to keep things afloat, right? To keep things running.

Justin:
And I think we are a little slow to hire, partly because hiring people, it does take a lot of heart, time, effort and energy. It takes a lot of our managers’ time, effort, and energy, so it’s a hassle. And we don’t want to over hire, right? We’ve been in situations where we’ve over hired or other companies have over hired and had to lay people of, and that can suck. So, for a couple of reasons we’re hesitant to do that. I think that’s changing a little bit, and we’ll talk about that, as we get into 2018, which we should do right now, man. Let’s talk about some projections for our business and the industry for 2018.

Justin:
So, the first is you’re likely to see more seven figure listings and sales, I’d say across the board, but particularly at Empire Flippers. We’ve made a focused approach to reach out to seven figure entrepreneurs and the communities they hangout in. So, we’re getting connected to those people through partners, through peers, and through previous customers that are starting to spread the word. And so I’d expect a lot more seven figure listings from us in 2018.

Joe:
Yeah, I mean look. The reality of the situation is if you want to move the needle as a business broker, you simply have to sell seven figure deals in order to hit these aggressive goals. You just have to. At the same time, I don’t think you should neglect any side of the business. And we can use the same strategies that we used on the low end on the high end, but just a little bit differently to make sure that we attract the larger sellers, and it’s working. They’ve started to come in in 2017, and I think we’re gonna do more in 2018.

Justin:
Yeah, it’s funny Joe. Same, same, but different when it comes to how you treat an $80,000 business versus a $1.8 million business. I mean, there are some things that are similar. But in terms of customer experience, we’re finding that some of those things need to change, which is what we’re working on in 2018, is to provide a smoother process that can match the expectations of someone selling their 2, 3, 4, $5 million business as oppose to a $50,000 affiliate site. We’re also getting some better insights into what buyers are looking for. So, we’re talking to kind of the heavy hitters, the whales in the industry that are buying seven figure businesses. We’re looking to getting their feedback and then particularly targeting those types of businesses. So, if we can basically test demand and then go and fulfill that demand, it’s a win for us, right?

Joe:
Yeah, agreed. And that’s kind of the way that we should approach almost all levels.

Justin:
Point number two, I don’t see e-commerce or FBA listings going away. I’d expect that to continue pretty heavily into 2018. Our industry, the brokers’ industry, kind of lags the particular niche industry itself. So, FBA got more popular in 2017. There are even more businesses out there now, I’d expect even more exits, more purchases of these e-commerce businesses in 2018. And we’ve been setting up some partnerships and agreements with people that should really help with that, that should really drive e-commerce and FBA through 2018. So, I’m looking forward to that. I’m excited with the business we’ll be listening this year.

Joe:
Yeah, I talk to buyers every day and there’s always someone who says they want to hitch their wagon to Amazon. There’s cons to that, there’s downsides for sure, but a lot of people are willing to look through that and they see the possibilities of the future of working with Amazon and having an FBA business as critical to their success.

Justin:
So, as good as we’ve done in 2017 and as well as we plan to do in 2018 with e-commerce businesses and we’re tooting our own horn about that, one place we’re week is number three, and that’s with SAS listings. I’d say through today, we’ve been weak in the SAS listings in terms of SAS listings we’ve had. We’ve had some smaller ones, we’ve had a couple of six figure SAS businesses. But we’re weak in that area, and I think that’s something we’re really gonna work on in 2018. So, we’re gonna get more involved in the SAS community and we’re gonna look for more and more SAS listings that would be a good fit for the buyers we have. And there are a lot of buyers, and that’s based on buyer feedback, right?

Justin:
There are buyers that are looking for these SAS businesses that want to purchase and want to purchase from us if we had the listings. So, that will be a target for us in 2018, but it will also, it’s probably not … we may help drive the market there, in terms of making the pie bigger, but it’s also a move to make our slice bigger. Some of our competition, I think, does better than us in the SAS base, and I think we can start to make inroads on them in 2018.

Joe:
Yeah. And I mean, I think that there are buyers out there that exclusively look at SAS businesses for whatever reason. So, being able to appeal to those buyers and bring them into the Empire Flippers process and show them how buying a SAS business through us is actually a better deal for them, I think is going to be an exciting challenge in 2018.

Justin:
Point number four, increase multiples across the board. Now, for Empire Flippers, this is likely to happen due to us having larger businesses, more seven figure listings. Also, a focus on SAS businesses, which typically have higher multiples, will likely increase the multiples on the listings we have. But industry wide, there has been an increased interest from SBA lenders in getting involved in this space. So, with more loans and more funding available, we’re likely to see multiples increase due to leverage being introduced to the system.

Joe:
Look, I say it every year to buyers, especially when they’re dragging their feet, when they don’t know if they should buy a business or not. Multiples are going up, and there’s a lot of reasons why. I think in general, there is more demand in the marketplace, which means you can just have slightly higher prices. But then, like you were saying, if there’s gonna be cheap money out there where buyers can go out, get financing, and pay a lower than 5% interest rate, then they can do all cash deals at or very close to list price, that’s gonna be very good for multiples going up as well.

Justin:
Obviously if you have a large business right now and you need to sell for whatever reason, you’re buying in a partner or you need out of the industry or you’ve got another business taking off, obviously we’re here for you. I have to say, if you’ve got a very large business and you’re wondering whether to sell, stick with us. We’ll be back on this podcast letting you know what’s going on with the multiples and kind of where the industry is at to help you get top dollar.

Justin:
All right. Point number five man, we’re working on a smoother customer experience. We’ve been changing process and communication around a bit in this first month of 2018. And we’ve got a lot of changes there in terms of structure and process for our customers, both on the buy and the sell side.

Joe:
Yeah, I think that obviously adding more staff is really helping that, and that’s gonna be doing it. Then also, as time goes on you’re able to fine tune processes and you realize that there’s a slight hole here, a slight loop there. As you gain more experience, you see some of the negatives and some of the weaknesses in those processes, and you’re able to strengthen them. And that’s just a part of the maturation of Empire Flippers in general.

Justin:
Yeah. One of those holes is the vetting team, right? So, with the increase in listings, we haven’t really been able to increase our team there. And so that’s part of what we’re doing here. In early 2018, we’ve hired four new vetting specialists I think, and we’re changing the process there to where we’re gonna be able to handle a higher volume and definitely take on more of the larger listings. Particularly the SAS businesses and the larger e-commerce businesses as we head into the middle of 2018.

Justin:
All right Joseph, those were our five points. Do you have any kind of bold projections or claims hot money wants to make in 2018? What are we looking at, buddy? What do you got?

Joe:
Wow, putting the pressure. Putting the screws to me, huh? For a 2018 prediction.

Justin:
I’m sorry, what are we doing?

Joe:
I’m gonna say that someone is going to cash out of these cryptocurrency ICOs and buy a big business from Empire Flippers in 2018. So, you’re gonna see somebody-

Justin:
All right, so you want to see big cash either converted to Fiat as they call it, as the cool kids call it, the Fiat money, and then buying a business? Or are they just gonna buy it straight up? Buy a large business with bitcoin? We’ve sold plenty of businesses and paid out in bitcoin, but you’re saying they’re gonna buy a big one. How big? Are we talking $500,000 plus?

Joe:
Yes, over half a million dollar cryptocurrency transaction through Empire Flippers.

Justin:
All right, man, that’s-

Joe:
In one gulp, one gulp.

Justin:
That’s a claim. I’m gonna throw our goal out there for 2018. Our goal is 40 and 4. That’s $40 million in sales, $4 million in upfront fees, which sounds, again, it hurts my stomach a little bit. It sounds like a lot, like a lot. Literally dude, don’t lie. You were just telling me right before we got on this podcast, you’re like, “I don’t know, man. These goals sound ridiculous.” Weren’t you?

Joe:
They do, and you definitely need to close those seven figure deals in order for them to happen. It takes a lot of $50,000 deals to get to that sort of level, but I think we have a plan. It’s not like we’re coming in and just hoping and praying, we do have a plan and we’re gonna get there.

Justin:
Yeah, well it still sounds ridiculous. I have to agree with you, but I think it’s a good goal.

Speaker 2:
You’ve been listening to the Empire Podcast. Now, some news and updates.

Justin:
All right man, let’s do some news and updates. First off, let’s talk about the new team, buddy. Literally we hired a football team, it’s crazy. We’ve got a ton of people out here in [inaudible 00:25:07]. Eight new people have just started with us, just started their training. Four as vetting specialists and four as business analysts on the sales side. So, we’ve got eight people in training in our [inaudible 00:25:20] office here in [inaudible 00:25:20]. And I wouldn’t say it’s going amazing, but it’s going. It’s going one way or the other. Mostly, it’s getting them all bogged into everything and giving them kind of overview. We’ve got all of our managers and supervisors doing overviews of their departments, but you know how it goes with these guys. They come onboard, and the first couple of weeks they’re like, “Oh my, this is so much information. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” It takes them a good couple of months to get up to speed.

Joe:
Yeah, and I mean it’s just gonna take eight times as longer to do all the little stuff when you bring on that many new people. But I’m excited, again, we have a really good plan to bring these guys onboard quickly. The good news is is that you and I don’t have to do a lot of the detail training. We have managers for that, and these guys have been with Empire Flippers for a while now, so they know the deal as well. So, there’s staff to support this kind of new blood in the system.

Justin:
Yeah. Our managers, oh man, these guys are … I mean, ’cause it’s way worse when you bring new people on, right? ‘Cause you still have to everything you were doing before. And generally, when you’re hiring you have a need. We have a need for these people, we need their help. So, these managers are then training these guys all day and then going off and just having to work their butts off afterwards. I keep telling them, I pat them on the back, I’m like, “Guys, it’ll be all right. Just get through this, get these guys up to speed. You’re gonna be much, much happier.” And they’re like, “I know man, I know. I gotta get through it.”

Justin:
You and I had that same thing when we bring people on, right? We’ve got all of our work to do and getting these guys, these apprentices and these young guys to come up to speed? It was rough, but we got through it, and we’ll get through this one as well. The second bit of update or news, we started season four of the Web Equity Show. I know people were asking me about that. When’s the show coming back? We’ve started recording. It’ll likely be released in late Q1 or early Q2, so we’re thinking late March or early April. So, if you were wondering about that, look out for that. It’ll be talking about bigger businesses. It’ll be talking about seven figure and eight figure purchases, exits. We’ll be interviewing other people that own portfolios, how to build portfolios, how to run teams of people that run your portfolios. So, it’s gonna be a really great show and aligns with our goals and Ace’s goals in terms of what we’re looking to do this year.

Joe:
Yeah, and I’m looking forward to hearing from Ace about his 2018 outlook and that kind of stuff.

Justin:
He’s got some big goals over there at [inaudible 00:27:40]. I’ve been talking to him. A lot of things he wants to do. All right man, let’s do some listener shouts, also known as the indulgent, ego boosting social proof segment. First up, we’ve got Josh on Twitter said, “Hey Empire Flippers. Digging your work. Based on your comment earlier in the year about FBA businesses peaking in the website selling space, does that mean it’s realistically too late to enter the market in 2018 and begin setting up FBA businesses?” Well Josh, if you’re listening to this episode, you’ll hear from us that we are absolutely expecting FBA sales to continue through 2018 pretty strong. I do think it’s more difficult to get started in FBA. So, if you’re looking to get started right now without all the benefits and review clubs and all of the kind of things that people were doing to get started, it’s harder today than it was before. And there’s more of a mote between those that are established and those that aren’t. That being said, I know people that are getting started in it again right now.

Justin:
Spencer, our buddy over at Niche Pursuits, is looking to start up a brand new FBA business. He’s getting some products going, that’s in 2018. So, I know people who are doing it. Some of them are gonna be successful, I just think it’s more difficult than it was, than it would’ve been in 2015, 2016.

Joe:
Yeah Josh. The two things really I think you need to focus on, which haven’t changed so much if you’re gonna start an FBA business, number one is product selection, and number two is inventory. How much to buy, how little to buy, inventory management is so crucial. If you can get those two things right, you can still be successful with a new FBA business in 2018.

Justin:
Speaking of which, I’ve got a buddy in the FBA space. He’s got a really cool branding company, and he’s looking to sell in 2018. He was dancing with the idea in 2017, but he decided hey, I’m gonna continue growing it out. And he’ll be selling his business in 2018, so I’m excited for him. Speaking of friends selling their businesses, we had Spencer over at Niche Pursuits sell his $425,000 FBA business with us. He did a really nice write up over at NichePursuits.com. I’m gonna link to that in the show notes, but if someone wants kind of that behind the scenes details of a nearly half a million dollar FBA sale, Spencer did a pretty nice write up. All of you check that out.

Justin:
All right man, that’s it for episode 171 of the Empire Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We’ll be back soon with another show, and you can find the show notes for this episode and more at EmpireFlippers.com/2018update. Make sure to follow us on Twitter @EmpireFlippers. See you next time.

Joe:
Bye bye, everybody.

Speaker 2:
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Empire Podcast with Justin and Joe. Hit up EmpireFlippers.com for more, that’s EmpireFlippers.com. Thanks for listening.