655: How to Earn $200k/Year in Semi-Passive Income Through Small Business Acquisitions

24:42There isn't a rule of thumb. Years and years ago, I knew a fellow that did mergers and acquisitions in this space, way bigger deals. I would pick his brain a little, and this was probably 15 years ago. His rule of thumb was for this small stuff was that it was around one to one and a half times gross on the hosting and then you know 0.5 0.75 on the product base now i think this day and age that's probably a little low it also depends on the size if you're talking about yeah you know 50k in revenue versus 500k the bigger fish is going to get a higher multiple uh even on the blend but if this little stuff if you're talking you know let's say around that 50K or under or above, you know, zero to 100.

25:28I'm trying to be probably, you know, a starting point one and a half on the hosting and maybe close to the point eight or one on the project-based. I've got a little Excel tool I made where I plug all this stuff in. And then I spend a little time looking at it because, you know, you got to look and say, you know, is this fair, right? Even if you, even if somebody is really motivated to sell, you still have to be fair and you can't, I'll just take it, you know, some, some people will approach and say, I won't put anything down, you know, I'll just, I'll just pay you and earn out. And unless we're talking like 10 to 15 clients, then I should put some skin in the game for somebody.

26:05I think that's the right thing to do. If you're talking$50 ,000 a year and say hosting revenue, that's good value. And then it's pretty sticky. So if that's a C panel and it moves right over into your universe, that's almost, That's pretty much almost all profit if you've got your hosting capacity in place. And that would be the equivalent of probably pretty close to a median income for your own 50 grand a year. Yeah. To just have that cash flow show up all of a sudden in your bank account instead. A fair price for that might be$75K, but you've kind of structured it in a way where you're not necessarily stroking a check for$75K up front.

26:45it's kind of this combination of, hey, I'll make you a down payment, and then we'll do some kind of performance-based earn out. And maybe we can use your first couple of deals as an example. You mentioned the first one was no money down, but maybe the second or third, let's talk through some of those examples. So 2017, I came back and picked up another one. I got a little more purposeful. So I had my focus shifted to the other side hustle, the real estate world from about 2014 to 2017. So I was not as focused on growing this at that time because my focus was on the real estate business. So when I shifted my focus back to this, I dusted my old letter, my old inkjet, and started sending letters out.

27:24And to be clear, hundreds and hundreds of letters, like a volume game. I'm trying to cast a wide net. I'm trying to make sure every hosting reseller in New England has heard my name. Yes, hundreds of letters. I mean, but by now, there's probably been seven, 8 ,000 letters that have gone out over the last 10 years. Okay. That's great. Yeah. It's a lot. Do you start now, do you start back at the top of the list and like, oh, it's been 10 years, might as well, you know, hit these people up again. I should. I also got emails. So then I started doing, you know, email, like, hey, did you get my letter?

27:53Or, hey, it's been a few years. Let me check in with you. And some people were like, hey, I sold it two years ago. Oh, dang, I didn't check in enough. That's right. Yeah. It's like trying to like keep the multiple touch points. You do. You got to find that balance of not being a pest. But in 2017, the first one in the most recent batch, I would say, was a fellow here in New Hampshire. It was a second career for him. He had about 35 customers, mix of hosting and project-based work. And his wife was getting ready to retire, so they were going to travel some. And he was ready to just have this off his plate.

28:25He had already tried to find a home for it with another company locally and did not have a good experience with them. And then, okay, you guys aren't a match. So he was primed and ready. And when we met, we hit it off. He's like, yeah, great. You seem like a good fit. Let's do this. So I offered him three deal scenarios. And I forgot the other two. But the one he picked was$4 ,000 down and 18 months of earn-out payments. And I think that was 50 % on the recurring or the hosting revenue. This is based on the gross, which is easier to track and more transparent. And I think 35 % on the one time.

29:03So just if you all clarify what that looks like, you know, it's January right now. So if$100 in hosting revenue comes in in January and$100 in project-based, February, I will make a check for$50 on the hosting and$35 on the project-based. So$85 check February 1st, and we'd follow that model for 18 payments. Okay. You're keeping more margin on the hosting because there's more margin there. you're paying less margin to the seller on the project base because that is requiring some labor on your front. It is requiring some labor and it's also not as sticky. So it's not as worth as much. So the hosting revenue is worth more and had better margin.

29:43So I put more value on that. Yep. Okay. And that total book of business, I think, was worth around$32 ,000 in gross revenue. And that feels like a, you know, we talk about mergers and acquisitions and like, you know, millions of dollars changing hands. It's like, you know, there are these little mini businesses, still great cashflow, especially as a side hustle. Like, oh, I could add$30 ,000 to my income next year with$4 ,000 down and a few hours of work every week. Like, that's a pretty good trade. It is. And I think for someone listening, thinking about this, what had helped me was that I was already in the space.

30:18So, you know, it may be a little harder to buy the first one on terms like this, because somebody is going to say, I don't know if you could do this, right? I'm depending on you to perform in order for me to get paid out. So this would not be deal terms out of the gate. Either you start it and you get in it, you can still do it on the side, but you need to have the experience or you might need to pay more traditional, I'm going to make fixed payments. And I think a seller would still carry payment, but you might not be able to do the earn out if you were completely new to this. And especially if they knew you were working a full-time job or, you know, think about it from their perspective, right?

30:57Well, I'm just about to turn around and like start looking for people in the Seattle area, trying to sell their businesses. But you're right. There's got to be credibility. Well, you got to establish some credibility and authority before you can structure something completely like this. And even if it's just setting up your own home base and, you know, even gathering just a handful of clients to get some practice under your belt. Correct. Because otherwise you're like, now it's trial by fire. And this person has entrusted me with their longtime clients and I got to figure this out. And you got to take that seriously.

31:29And I will say, you know, writing those checks, I never missed one, but I've written some big checks to people. And then that, you know, it hurts a little, but you know, when that period is over, you'll be able to keep all that. So your hope is that you can hang on to these clients and attrition is a horrible word, but it happens. And you do lose clients with the transition sometimes. And you're like, oh man, I just bought this guy and he's going out the door on month two. And is that my fault? Is he just not like me? Was he already on his way out? Yeah, especially if there's only 10 or 20 clients, losing a couple is a big percentage wise.

32:07You're like, oh shoot, I was banking on that revenue. I just paid for a multiple of that revenue. Yep. There was a deal in 2020 that was a company in Denver that did social media marketing. And they had a monthly recurring revenue of about$20 ,000 when I took it over. Only about 12 clients. So this was not hosting. This was more retainer-based work. And I took that over with nothing down. And it had employees. And we kept that brand separate. But by May, I bought it into January 1. By May, the doors were shut. So that had shed enough clients where I couldn't make the payroll, and I wasn't going to ride this thing down into the bottom.

32:50And we had to say, okay, that's that. And had I not structured it that way, I would have really financially found myself in a pickle. So it does happen. And that's sort of what brings us back to I like the hosting side because that is more like the power company, right? You know, when was the last time you called the power company? Probably when the power went out, right? Otherwise, we don't bug them. The lights are on. I'm happy. Yeah, it's a utility and it's priced as, hopefully it's priced as such where it's just kind of this low monthly recurring thing. If I want my website to exist, I just got to keep paying this.

33:25That's right. And if you don't give them a reason to go anywhere, they're not going to. Keep the price fair. keep the lights on and and uh you don't need to pay for staff or or your time to manage that so it's it brought me back to that service being a good fit is there anything specific that you do during that transition time to introduce yourself hey i'm link i'm taking over you know so and so is handing over the reins we don't worry you're a good hand i've been doing this forever it's going to be a seamless transition for you like what is what does that handoff look like to minimize that fall off.

34:00It's different every time, but I think some common traits are that you're going to lean on that seller in those first 30, 45, 60 days to follow their lead. They know those relationships, so they're going to know who might be a little more sensitive, who might need a little more hand-holding. You certainly want that seller to stay visible. Ideally, they are reaching out by phone and email to these folks, not just, boom, hey, I'm out the door. So how they leave that relationship sort of sets you up for you taking it over. And if it's straight hosting, then it's not really a big deal. But if they are used to more points of contact because you're doing some print design, you're doing some web maintenance, things that have more interaction, then you need to be able to slip into that cadence.

34:49and maybe you sit on a call or Zoom with them and there's a handoff. Somebody, as they're phasing out, you're phasing up. It's not necessarily, boom, here are the keys, Link. Good luck. Yeah, in most cases, they've got that 12 to 18 month earn out. So there's some incentive for them to make it a smooth transition so they can maximize their ultimate payout at the end. Yes, correct. That is a huge part of that. It aligns our goals. I want to retain. they want to maximize we we both want to keep these clients in the fold and happy so you typically do it as a i guess a percentage of what you collect rather than like i'm going to pay you the 75 000 purchase price and we're just going to stretch it out or it's like i'm going to pay you this much up front and then we're going to we're going to see what comes in and i'm just going to give you a fixed percentage of that if it if it grows great if it you know if it goes down that's that's what happens.

35:44Yeah. It has always been variable because otherwise they're just making me alone and I need their incentive to help with retain because if they're going to get their 75 grand, no matter what, they just have to wait for it. That puts more risk on my side. I want them to know if Bob or Sue leaves, they're walking out the door with revenue that affects both of us, not just me. And that does require you building a lot of trust because they're thinking, link are you going to take this seriously are you going to screw off or you're going to jack the prices i mean so i i will even write in the agreement i'm not raising prices during the earn out i'm you know i will i'm willing to agree to certain non-boat rocking okay if they've got a ploy or i can't promise i'll keep employees but freelancers if they're client facing and it's a good fit i'll i'll try to hang on to that and just kind of keep things as same as it can you know the money goes somewhere different.

36:42That's the only different Mr. Client. More with Link in just a moment, including handling those project-based requests, a day in the life of running this business, and his plans for the future right after this. One of the tools I've personally seen make a huge difference for business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone. It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. So Quo, formerly OpenPhone, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications.

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39:02Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle.

39:11Yeah, that brings up the next point of like when, you know, the project-based stuff comes in, And that's great if they had somebody on their team who was already doing that. It's like, sure, just let me pass along that same project over to you and be the manager, reviewer, overseer versus, well, now somebody's asking for this redesign and either I got to figure that out or I got to go find somebody who's qualified to do it. I've had pretty good luck maintaining a good long-term relationship with various contractors and freelancers over the years. So some of them which have teams behind them so they can scale.

39:49Certainly, if you're going through one of these, I'm going to tell the people that I'm working, hey, do you have more capacity? Do you want more work? If not, I'm going to need to tee up that. And so one of the last ones I did in 2023 came with a whole bunch of print design work. So I needed to find a print designer to help with this. And so because the previous owners was a husband and wife team and the husband was doing the creative designs. So I don't know how to use Adobe InDesign. I don't want to use Adobe InDesign. So I needed to find someone to help with that. And, you know, again, it takes a little due diligence and find – just like you're finding an employee.

40:27But I've got a good person now who works stateside and same time zone and takes the design projects. And it's been working well. You know, you have enough runway. And in that case, those owners still did contract work for me for a good six to 12 months of a 24-month earnout. So that was a very gradual timeline. They wanted to keep the revenue. They wanted to let the dust settle. They were not web people, so the web stuff I took over right away. But they hung on to some of the print work, and they stayed more client-facing. And we gradually moved those relationships over on their timeline, and that's worked out well.

41:04Yeah, this is a big question mark. I think for a lot of business owners is like, what is the exit strategy? And if there's a way to draw down and slowly reduce your hours while still getting some income, that probably makes a lot of sense because that's not something you think about day to day. It's like, no, I'm just doing my thing. And then it's the question of like, how long do I keep doing this thing? You know, it's like, so if somebody like Link comes along and says, hey, I'm offering you an exit plan. And it's like, oh, I never thought about that. Like, oh, okay. So it could be, pretty attractive.

41:38I did want to ask if, if this is purely like a war of attrition where it's like, okay, I bought 30 clients at the end of two years. I hope to have 20 of them. Like, does it grow? Like are new people signing up or it's like, we had a guy from Philip Morris come and like talk to our group in college. And we're like, are new people starting smoking anymore? It's like, no, you know, this business has been around for a hundred years, but it declines 3 % a year, three percent a year and it's like okay so it's like slowly dying and they're trying to diversify like whatever but it was it was just a weird like yeah we openly admit that it may not be around forever but like it's still you know a huge business it just is like slowly declining is it is it similar here where it's just trying to do the best to keep what you have at the small end where i have played for the most part i'd say yes you're you're buying a client list so you're not usually a brand.

42:35Just because they had a logo and a trade name doesn't mean it was a recognizable brand. The owners were the brand. They were the business development people. They were the lead generation team. So when that is gone, especially if it's not local, you might get some referrals possibly, not necessarily in the hosting piece, but on design work if someone is happy. and they're not going to refer you until they get to know you. But if it's going well by month six to nine, they might be a referral. But I have found that the attrition of acquired client batches is higher than what I've organically got.

43:14And so it is, race to the bottom isn't the right term, but because some of these hosting clients I've had for 10 plus years. Yeah, it can be super sticky. Other things happen. They go out of business or they, I have lost people because there's someone more local or they're, hey, these people do email marketing and they want to take over our hosting as well. I mean, it goes both ways, no matter, even if you're doing a good job. So now I would say a bigger company in this space, the bigger they get, the more there may be a brand. The last one I did was the biggest I've done that has generated some new business that have come through referrals.

43:53Okay, even after its transition, because of the reputation that they had built, people were still reaching out to them for new websites, new hosting. I think the better play here is to arrange terms with that seller of, hey, if you get a lead that is not – so when I purchased it, we list out the clients one by one, and this is all you're getting paid on. So if you have a website and something new comes from that, that's mine. But if you get a lead personally and someone reaches out to you from your sphere of influence, that has value and I'll pay a commission, like say 20%. If that's a$10 ,000 website project, that's two grand I'll pay you.

44:34It's business I wouldn't have had and I want you to know that that has value. So sometimes that is a way to help close evaluation gap to tell a seller, okay, maybe this isn't quite as much as you want, but if you want to stay in the fold and sell a little, maybe you don't want to manage and design, then we can create revenue there. Or if you think, hey, Link, I haven't raised prices in 15 years. These guys are all paying$10 a month for hosting. Maybe it should be$25 because I've seen that. And I'm like, look, man, you're charging way too less here, a little. But I can't raise that on the day one because that's not going to look good for me.

45:12So you need to think about doing that before. Yeah, like the new apartment owner comes in and raises everybody's rent. Yeah. But you also know that if you're looking at the long term, you're like, all right, in a few years, I can slowly bump these guys up once they're feeling comfortable with me and established. So it is future revenue for sure. Will they leave you over an extra$10 a month? Yeah. A couple might, but most won't. I don't know if we talked about this recently on the show, but I was telling somebody about this, where my, you know, the podcast editing service, podcast, Fast Track, they said, hey, you know, this was a couple years ago.

45:47So they're like, Nick, you know, we appreciate your business, been a client forever. Thank you. But, you know, new clients, and we haven't raised your rate, you know, since 2016, new clients come in, they're, you know, paying up here. And so we need to get you a little bit closer to that. But what we're going to do, because, you know, it was like, probably a double or, you know, 50%. It was like a big jump. And, you know, had they immediately gone to that, I've probably been like, oh, you know, let me, let me go look for some alternatives. They said, here's what we're going to do. Every quarter for the next 15 months, we're going to stair-step you up there.

46:19So eventually you're going to get to, you know, whatever our new rate is. And it was so incremental. It's, you didn't even notice. It was like a frog in the boiling water. We had, you know, one of these other softwares I use, like, you know, same story, like, hey, you've been grandfathered in at this rate for 10 years, but now we're going to push you up here. And it was like, double. It was like, it made me so angry. It was like, had you just done it incrementally, probably would have never noticed, probably would have, you know, yelled and screamed, but instead, you know, wasted a whole day trying to find alternatives and just like, fine.

46:50It's like, they get the stranglehold on you and you're like, the switching costs are too high. And it's like, you know, it makes you so mad. But there's something to that, you know, stair step That may help the upside valuation. It's like, okay, I'm buying this current level of recurring revenue. But in today's fair market value, like, okay, if I'm able to increase those rates 50%, 100 % over the course of time, all of a sudden it could be worth a little bit more. Or I can pay it back sooner. Definitely. I mean, that timeline, you might agree not to do it while you're making payments for them.

47:23That seems fair. But longer term, you may step it. But I mean, I took over accounts that were at$10 a month, and I was charging$25,$30. And I remember people like,$30? I mean, that's 300 times. Yeah, but it's still only$20 a month. And there's one or two people that will just rip your head apart. And then you realize maybe that's not a customer I need to hang on to over$20. But we all have a habit of underselling ourselves. and you start to realize, all right, I'm providing value here and I'm not competing with the discount dollar hosting because I'm value adding this by being accessible and knowing them when they call by name and not just a number.

48:05So that is worth something. And will everyone pay for that? No, but there's enough people that certainly want that personal touch. So you learn to lean into that a bit. And so day to day, it's, you know, responding to customer inquiries, it is putting out any technical fires that might come up, I imagine it's relatively low maintenance, and then it's trying to either fulfill the design work or the project work that comes through or kind of oversee the, you know, find somebody to do that. Like, do you have a sense of the hours per day, hours per week that goes into it at this point? I think generally, on a good day where there's nothing unique going on, I think it could be a couple hours a day of mostly, like you said, just moving emails intersecting between a client and the developer on projects.

48:58If there's not an outage or something, I mean, that stuff does happen, or where humans and technology mix, or something updates, somebody's website's broken, or I forgot my email password. it. I mean, so there's a little bit of that stuff, but it's very – it's not brain surgery. It's not rocket science. Not everybody has to be responded to in five minutes or less. So you do learn to triage, oh, my site's down. Okay, well, that's important. I better take a look. Or can you add these pictures to this page when you get a chance? Sure, we'll get that done in the next day or two. And I've got a great – I use something called Zoho Desk.

49:38So it's a web-based ticketing tool. So you try to train your customers just to send an email into this. It creates a ticket. I've got my team that can just get assigned to that. And I started allowing team members years ago to be client-facing so they could reply to the client, hey, we got those pictures added. And just taking myself out of some of that communication on a day-to-day basis has certainly freed up my time. because if you're focused on acquisitions, you do need to have some time to be able to take those calls. And then you certainly need to have time when you're integrating. You can't have the time to go on vacation when you just added 30 or 40 clients to your fold.

50:15You've got to be on call and ready just to make sure, especially if you are migrating servers from where they're at to you, there's plenty of things to go wrong there. And you don't want that first impression to be, oh, my site's down now with this new guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a whole technical side that I probably don't want to get too deep into the weeds on that, but something to be aware of. Yeah, I've been there. I've been in those moments where something didn't go right and you've got an egg on your face and you just want to crawl under a rock those days. But those are not the norm.

50:48Yeah, so it sounds like the work is front-loaded. And all the technical stuff is figureoutable and the support. It is. And you learn. You learn. I definitely know better the more I do. like you know times a bat and anything you're learning better to okay this is what happened last time we're going to do it this way this time and to mitigate that for sure and that's sort of what helps with the retention is that relationship that you wouldn't have with hostgator not mean to pick on hostgator but if i'm just hosting with them yeah it's it's strictly i need the service as a utility but if you have a relationship with a your web person it's a little more full service versus the hostgators are more what I would think the DIY, right?

51:32You have a little more technical knowledge. You can just buy space to host your website. Yeah, it's that kind of in-between sweet spot between that DIY person and then that other somebody who maybe has somebody in-house. Yes, it is. Doing their web. So it's like kind of that middle of the market and they're used to paying$30 to, I imagine, maybe$100,$200 a month. It's just kind of their website budget to keep it online. Exactly. You are their web guy or gal, and they take comfort in knowing that they get those domain name things in the mail. Is this real? Nope. They get spam. Should I click on?

52:11Nope. Yeah, that's the only direct mail that I get. It's like domain registration scale. Your thing is going to expire. You're like, well, yeah, but it's set to auto-renew. What is this garbage? Yeah. So that is part of the value. you're there to, hey, I didn't think I should click on this. Nope, don't click on that. You're just there to kind of help them with those questions that come up. And if your email can be part of hosting, an email is a little more certainly high maintenance. It's certainly a critical service. People will lose less sleep over their website being down for an hour or so.

52:42But if email's down, it's a bigger deal. But it's also sticky. If you're good at keeping the lights on, there's value in those services. The one that I had briefly thought about trying to acquire was this virtual assistant service in the Philippines because I had this virtual assistant site at the time. And I want to say it was the Empire Flippers. It was like their in-house agency that they were trying to spin off. And I forget what they were. It would have been a relatively low acquisition cost or asking price for it. but they may have only had two clients or three clients. It was like, okay, if this one guy leaves, that's like half of the business.

53:23And it didn't feel super diversified. And it's like, there's a lot of labor and manager, like lower margins, still had like recurring revenue, but it was more of that service-based business area. But that was one that I had briefly considered. I mean, I've learned a lot by going through these and talking to so many companies, even the ones you don't end up doing anything with. I've seen lots of profit and loss statements. I can't think of another industry that is so diverse as this one in terms of how people set stuff up. The margins are all over the place because if you've got a brick-and-mortar office and you're paying W-2 employees, your labor could be 70 % of your revenue.

54:09Yeah. And I'm not saying one's better or worse than the other, but there's just a lot of places for, I think, creativity and also thinking about it from a different angle. You know, lawn care probably is much more similar. Lawn care is lawn care, right? You know, looking at different lawn care companies. But in this space, you've got remote hybrid, in-office, you've got a whole wide range of services and pricing. and so it's not really the Wild West still, but it's still quite a range. And so I think that's where you can find some opportunity. I like it. This is cool. What's next for you? Where do you want to take this thing?

54:44What are you excited about these days? It's a great question. It's a hard one to answer because I do find myself sort of at that, as many of us do, I guess, the crossroads of having been doing this 25 years and getting to that age or an age where you think, Like, is this what I'm going to be doing forever? And it could be okay with that. Somebody's going to send you a letter after this. It's going to be great. They might. But other things I want to do, and I think what I'd like to do is diversify what I do, continue to do this, but maybe pursue acquisitions a little bit bigger. I'd like to acquire some companies in some different industries as well, some brick and mortar.

55:25For me, there's a valuable and something tangible that you can do with your hands. And I fixed this. I built that. I like that aspect. And also, I think, like you said at the beginning of the show, my interest in real estate, diversifying one's income stream, I'd rather have 10 side hustles all making 10 grand a month than to have one making it all. I guess I sleep better at night with diversification. I find it interesting. It keeps me engaged. So I do think looking at some other opportunities or some consulting work, other ways to stay sort of in the lane, but layer that and use the marketing in other places.

56:04That's a long-winded answer, saying I'm not quite sure. But us entrepreneurs get a little stir-crazy if we can't mix it up a little, right? Having$10 ,000-month inconstries sounds pretty awesome. I don't know. I just threw that number out. It could be$1 ,000, right? But I guess diversification, and maybe that'd be a crazy problem. You'd go nuts managing it all. But I'm a big believer in finding good people to work with that you are not having to tell them what to do and they can manage and lead and do things on their own. So that independence. So I truly believe that you can find a way. You can create anything you want.

56:41You just got to make the path. Yeah, again, super interesting, super creative way to go about it and to build this multi six figure income for just, you know, ongoing and an ongoing level just a couple hours a day. That's, you know, I think, you know, a lot of people excited, like I said, maybe somebody will send you a letter, but imagine some some letters are going to start flying after this episode. Windhill.com. That's where you can find links design agency. Link Moser.com is the home base will also link up his LinkedIn as well. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation 2025 edition.

57:15Number one tip, hands down, just get out there and do it. All this stuff is a contact sport. I'm sure it's been said many times before, but you're not going to get a side hustle, a business, a job, a boyfriend, a girlfriend by sitting on the sidelines. You just got to get out there, accept some risk, know that it's going to be uncomfortable and scary, and you're going to make some mistakes, but you'll learn and you'll pivot. So we're still January. It's still the beginning of the year. So I say, make your goals, share them with someone else, make it known, and then just start hitting it. Make it real.

57:48Give us some accountability out there, but get out there and do it, right? You can't play the game from the sidelines. This is similar to the 2022 tip, which was don't look at failure as a bad word. As long as you're failing forward, you're learning something from those mistakes. It all adds up to that cumulative experience and hopefully some forward progress there. A couple of takeaways for me before we wrap. Number one, this is kind of a game of right place, right time. So it's this volume game of sending out a lot of outreach. And the more you can personalize it, the better. But trying to do that at scale and hopefully get a few bites, like Link said, 10%, 12 % response rate, really, really strong for that personalized outreach because it cuts through the clutter.

58:29Then it comes kind of this diligence phase, looking at the revenue pie and really valuing that recurring revenue a little bit higher. and then this trying to build those relationships quickly and concisely and build up rapport, both with the existing owner, because they have some incentive to do that handoff right, and then with the existing client base for continuity for that recurring revenue. If you liked this episode, I think you'll get a kick out of Ryan Golgoski in episode 550. We talked about his web design agency. He wasn't growing through acquisition per se, but had set it up for recurring revenue.

59:03I think maybe$200 a month was his average price for web design and ongoing maintenance for targeting almost exclusively pressure washing companies. It was like, man, it was a super inspiring episode. I think he was doing crazy, like$90 ,000,$100 ,000 a month in recurring revenue, building websites for pressure washing companies. And then a brick and mortar example of this inserting yourself into a cash flow that's already happening was Hannah Ingram in episode 571, where she went out and found this kind of semi-dilapidated brick and mortar car wash in town, no money down deal, owner financing, bought herself this cash flow and she was doing really well.

59:42It was kind of an interesting, inspiring angle to go look at. She was maybe doing a half hour a day worth of work there in exchange for that income stream. But big thanks to Link for sharing his insight. Once again, you can also check out Link's previous episode on the Side Hustle Show. We can link that up. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in.

1:00:14If you find any value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire up that text message to that friend of yours who's always looking for those little life hacks, those creative ways to build Extra Income. I think they'll like this episode. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.