Increase Your Conversions. Get Recurring Revenue. Sell Your Business.

That’s a packed headline, isn’t it? But I had to pack a lot into this interview because it’s with Anne Holland.

As the founder of MarketingSherpa, Anne taught many entrepreneurs how to market online. After selling her company, she founded Which Test Won, which uses actual A/B tests to show how to increase conversions, and Subscription Site Insider, which helps membership sites grow.

So, I decided to pack 3 different topics into this interview: conversion, membership sites and business sales.

Anne Holland is the founder of Anne Holland Ventures Inc., a B2B publishing and professional education firm which creates content, events, and courses that help businesses grow.

 

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Full Interview Transcript

Andrew: Three messages before we get started. First, you might have noticed that many sites are using video. Here it is on SnapEngage right underneath the free trial button. You might have noticed they’re using video to increase conversions. Here it is on Freelancer.com.

Well, what do you do if you want to try video on your site but you don’t have production capabilities in-house? Well, you go to revolution-productions. That’s the company that created the two videos I showed you and many, many others as you can see on their portfolio site. Go to revolution-productions.com, talk to them about having your custom video created.

Second, if you need an online store, who do you turn to? Well of course you turn to Shopify. Well, what happens when your friends need stores? The people at Shopify know that if you’re listening to Mixergy, you’re the influencer that all your friends turn to when they have questions like what platform should they build their stores on. They are suggesting, and I’m suggesting, you refer them to Shopify. As you take a look at all these beautiful examples of the kinds of stores that your friends can create on Shopify, I think you’ll agree that they could have a beautiful store, and you know with the Shopify platform, they’ll have a platform that’s made to increase sales. Shopify.com.

Finally, if you need a lawyer, who do you turn to? Well of course, I going to say Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law, because I’ve been friends with him for years and he’s been sponsoring me for months and months. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out what Jason Calacanis, Neil Patel and many other entrepreneurs who you trust, they all say the same thing. Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law is the lawyer you turn to, especially it you’re a startup tech entrepreneur. Walker Corporate Law. Here’s your program.

Hey everyone, it’s Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart, and if you watch any of my hundreds of interviews you know that I usually like to have one big goal for the interview and then we spend an hour on it. But I can’t do that this time. I’ve got Anne Holland with me, and there’s so much that I want to talk about and she refuses to do a 24-hour interview. Not even a 20-hour interview. So we’re going to cram as much as I can into this short period of time.

And here are the three big topics; I’ve narrowed it down to three with her. We’re going to talk about M&A. This is the woman who sold marketingsherpa.com after launching and building it and making it into a big name in our space, and she’s currently building several sites with a sale in mind, so I’m going to talk to her about M&A. We’re also going to talk about subscription models. Most people say “paywall” as if it’s a dirty word, this is a woman who’s teaching entrepreneurs how to build them right, and I want to find out how to do it right and I want to bring those lessons to you.

And finally, the third big topic is, I want to talk about conversions. Whichtestwon.com is a site that many people in our space are turning to to get a sense of which kinds of landing page increase conversions and an understanding of what increases conversions. I’ve talked too much. Let me just say this before asking my first question: welcome, thanks for doing this interview.

Anne: Thank you, Andrew.

Andrew: Why don’t we start off with, there’s so much we can cover, let’s start going for conversions. And you’ve said that this is a topic that you know really well, you didn’t even want me to give you the list of questions before we started, so…

Anne: I’m not that arrogant.

Andrew: Well, when you have that kind of confidence, you don’t need the outline. So let me ask you this.

Anne: Yes.

Andrew: I got a viewer right now who’s watching us, who says “I can increase traffic; I want to now increase what happens with that traffic.” There’s so much that they could do to increase conversions. What’s the one thing that’s going to get them the biggest results, that they could take action on right now?

Anne: The one thing is going to be running an A/B test, that they can take action on right now. The key with an A/B test is, pick the page that gets the most traffic with some kind of conversion offer on it, and start running. If it’s a lead generation offer, and you’re running a series of A/B tests, maybe you’re testing three or four things, you’re probably going to get about a 40% lift. That’s a general baseline, a 40% lift in the number of leads you’re getting from the exact same traffic. So you don’t have to increase traffic at all. If it’s an e-commerce site, and you’re running just a series of basic tests on an e-commerce site, just to bring it up to best practices, you’re going to get an average of a 22-25% lift in sales.

Andrew: Lift in sales, 20% minimum you say, just from doing A/B testing without getting any more traffic, paying any more, adding more software, nothing? It’s just A/B testing?

Anne: That’s right. And we’ve seen that across hundreds of sites. Now of course, we’ve seen sites that got a much higher lift, but I’m going to promise you, if you’ve never done it before, you’re just starting out, that’s a typical lift that I see happening.

Andrew: OK. I’m going to ask you for more challenging things in a moment, because I know my friend Hiten Shah is watching us, he’s a big fan of yours, too, and I want people of his caliber too, to feel like they got a lot out of this interview, but let’s stick with this for a moment. You say A/B testing; I take a look at an A/B test and I go, “What do I test, where do I start?” I know this is supposed to help me but what’s the first thing that’s going to give me that highest impact to test?

Anne: It’s really super-easy stuff, that’s the nice thing. Generally what you want to do is put your computer on the page that you want to see.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Anne: Set it at the lowest resolution so that you can see it the way someone who’s got maybe a very small screen, they’re not really seeing much of your page, your typical user is looking at it in. You can look in your web log and see how your typical user views your screen.

Turn around, get out of your chair and turn around, step back to the back of your office or beyond your cube, turn around again and super-quickly glance at your page. And then turn your face back again. What do you remember? What did you see?

Did you see the headline? If you couldn’t see the headline, if you don’t remember what happened to the headline, make the headline bigger. Did you see, was there an obvious order area?

Often people will have an order area, you know, like way below the fold on a typical view. So the big things – is there an image on the page? Concentrate on the things that are really big and obvious for the people who come, and those are the things you’re testing. Later on you can get micro about testing, you know, bullet point and body copy and little offer bits, but in the beginning you’re testing the big obvious stuff that you could see at a glance.

Some of the most important tests are headline tests. I mean, it just boggles the mind, and it’s so easy. I mean, that’s the great thing. You don’t have to get the graphic designer; you don’t even have to get the webmaster. You can run a headline test using free or really easy technology on your own. Just swap out a few words in the headline, see if it’s a little more relevant, see if it’s a little more overt in the offer. Those headline tests work like crazy. Also maybe the headline in your order form. Is there a headline near the Buy Now button?

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Anne: And of course there’s the famous button test. Everybody loves the button test.

Andrew: What’s the button test?

Anne: Everybody says, “Oh, let’s test what the button looks like!” The killer button test (and this is the secret of all button tests), the killer button test is to make the button stick out more. So there’s no one perfect color, there’s no one perfect, like, [??] on the button. What there is, is, the bigger button!

I’ve seen buttons that were as big as, like, 5 inches across. Huge buttons! And you’d be surprised – a bigger, more obvious button works. That doesn’t mean that you can have a million obvious buttons on your page. People with a lot of offers on their page have actually had problems with that because then you have competing buttons. So you pick the one you want and then you make it just big, sticking out.

Andrew: Big button, change the headline. Any tools that you recommend specifically for doing these A/B tests?

Anne: You know, on our site, Which Test Won?, we do have a free vendor guide and we list 37 different testing tools.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: From very cheap to the very expensive. And you can go and you can even surf by client name, so you can see which of your competitors is using who.

Andrew: And this is – oh, I could see which of my competitors is using which tool?

Anne: Yep. And you can even search by, we also have a brand-name list where you can see who’s run a test, and if we’ve got a copy of their test on our site. We’ve got more than 160 tests.

Andrew: And this is on WhichTestWon.com, right?

Anne: Mm-hmm, whichTestWon, W-O-N.

Andrew: W-O-N. I’m going to get to Hiten Shaw and blowing his mind in a moment. My researcher told me told me to ask you about non-variables to include on the landing page and five dimensions to rate them on.

Anne: Oh, my golly, that’s complex!

Andrew: How about just giving me the big three variables that we need to consider, and we’ll let people go do research on the web.

Anne: The headline; the button or the response device; and eliminating distraction. If you, can you strip off in your nav bar? Can you strip off, you know, there shouldn’t be any other Google Ads. There shouldn’t be any extra – often, you know, even getting rid of any extra images. I know people who will let their graphic designer kind of dress up a landing page by putting, like, a stock photo of a pretty girl or something on it; or an executive looking at a computer (we’ve all seen that one). Often if you take that off the response rate goes right on up, because you’ve reduced the distractions. People are only looking at your landing page for sometimes just micro-seconds. So if you’ve got anything on there – any words, any images, any lines that aren’t needed for the conversion, it’s going to suppress results.

Andrew: OK, Hiten Shaw, KISSmetrics. He’s all about increasing conversions. He’s a listener and a fan and a friend, and he’s the guy who’s told me, “Andrew, make your interviews more actionable.”

Anne: [laughs]

Andrew: So I’m imaging him sitting in the audience saying, ‘Andrew’s making it more actionable, but what’s in it for me?’ So let’s picture a guy like him.

Anne: Yeah.

Andrew: What can he do that he’s not doing; the guy from KISSmetrics?

Anne: Now, of course, I’ve been on KISSmetrics’ site; it’s a great site. I have not come there from a pay-per-click ad but I bet a lot of people do.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: If they’ve got traffic coming from a paper flick ad, hopefully they’ve got their headline in their ad to be dynamically designed so that it slams in the keyword or a relevant keyword to the headline. So it’s not just a generic headline. I’ve seen that work incredibly well. So, you know, whatever their searching for, they know they’re in the right place, they’re following that sent, as Brian Asenburg [SP] always talks about dissent, and he’s right. If you cant dynamically design your keyword, at the very least what you could do is maybe put a little plug above your headline that says, you know, search results from Google or, you know, as seen in Google, or whatever, just kind of referencing where they came from. That can also work for some of your top affiliates.

Andrew: Oh, that’s great. OK, I see. Now, that’s great because you’re right. Sometimes we can’t dynamically make adjustments and you’re giving us an idea of how we can think about a landing page when we can’t dynamically change the variables. Now, when I’m saying heat and I’m saying guys who are pretty far advanced in these tests, are you telling me that guys who are that far ahead often don’t know to change the variable on the landing page based on the keyword that somebody searched? No.

Anne: Oh, yeah. Very… it’s crazy. I mean, some people are very, very sophisticated but I’m surprised that the companies that aren’t doing the testing that they could.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: You know, less than 35% of American marketers are running tests. Even the online companies, you’d just be stunned at how few are routinely running tests. Very, very few are routinely running tests and doing a good job with it.

Andrew: OK, how about this. The guy who is kind of like a sniper in the audience. Brand new site and sees this big guerilla, someone out there in the market who’s doing really well and they say I want to take them down and I would need AB testing to do it. What’s the thing that they should be thinking of, or not AB testing, to increase conversions that will help them compete with, like if their new shoe company compete with Zappos. If their new funnel analytics company compete with Kiss Metrics. How do we get an advantage over the big guys by using conversion?

Anne: Well, of course the key would be to differentiate yourself from those guys. You know, and you’re not going to say we’re not Zappos, but you’re going to say what is our special angle on this market? You know, you’re not just… maybe you’re the only one with, I can’t even imagine what Zappos doesn’t have, but maybe you’re the only one with videos about shoes, or whatever. Come up with something that’s a special angle. The other thing you need to do, because there are so many sites that are competing right now, is make sure you don’t look like, you know, somebody in his basement from Eastern Europe. So you need to, you know, put all those credentials on there. Even if you don’t have, you know, an early credential. Can you get a testimonial from a customer? Can you get, I know it’s hard, you haven’t been in business for a long time, so you can’t say in business since, but an in business since actually helps out a lot, too. Once you’ve been in business for a year, you can get a Better Business Bureau logo. That Better Business Bureau icon really works.

Andrew: Really.

Anne: I’ve known people who tested it, and oh, my God. Really, really helps. That little BBB. But you do have to be in business for a year to be able to qualify for that. So, you need that credibility and that kind of, I guess I would say almost nichiness so people believe that this is a real site, these are real people, they’re in a particular specialist niche that maybe the big site isn’t specializing in. There’s something special about them that makes them better suited to serve me. People will go with a niche site as opposed to a big mother site a lot of the time because they feel like maybe the niche site knows more about their needs, will serve them specifically better.

For example, you know, Amazon may not have all of the details about, you know, how do you decide between two different types of, you know, armor casing or, you know, blenders or whatever. But if you can say, we’ll advise you on this, it’s the best advisory site on this, then they feel safe. So what are you doing to make somebody feel really safe?

Andrew: All right, I’ve got a few questions about that. The first is this: you say adding a Better Business Bureau logo really works.

Anne: Yup. I never heard of anybody who didn’t do well when they tested it.

Andrew: I created some kind of a, or Bob Heiler [SP] who works with me created a checkmark and virus shield and says we, not virus shield, spam shield. We will not spam you.

Anne: Yup.

Andrew: Now, I have a smart audience. They fix my WordPress installation. They come up with ideas that are way… they could create an iPhone app for me in a week. These are really far ahead people. Adding that we won’t spam you shield increased my conversion by over 10 maybe even 20%. Why do smart people still consider virus shield to be that important. I mean, if I’m a spammer, I could just as easily put that on if I’m spamming, then it’s not that much worse to put that logo up.

Anne: Well, you’re not thinking. Again, people aren’t really thinking a lot when they get to your site. Again, it’s a microsecond decision. And all sorts of little things go into that microsecond decision. It’s sort of like, well, if you’re dating and you meet a guy or a gal in a bar and, you know, there’s little, all sorts of little things go into that very quick decision about whether you can trust that person, whether that person’s intelligent. You know, whether this is a decent person. Whether this person is a good match for you. And that little shield, you know, button, clearly helps. By the way, I’ve seen, you know, a lot of the trust shields and various companies will say, oh, you got to pay to use our shield because we’ve got all these case studies showing improved results. I have never seen an AB test where somebody actually tested out the different shields against each other. I think to some degree, it’s just the presence of a shield-like object.

Andrew: That’s what Bob said. He said you know what, I saw…

Anne: Kill me, you know, if there is data, but I haven’t seen it.

Andrew: He said I saw a test that a shield increases conversions, I don’t think people understand which shield is what. I’m just going to make one up for you, and he did and it lifted us. Here’s another thing, that we did a copywriting course here on Mixergy…

Anne: Too many shields is not a good thing, either.

Andrew: Oh no. He just put one that he made up.

Anne: OK, because I have seen people who are like, one shield works, 20 will do you now. That’s called clutter. Clutter kills. Clutter [??] conversion.

Andrew: We did a course with Dan Maxwell here on how to do copywriting right and he said, look, if you’re a brand new company and you need the logos of big guys, let’s suppose New York Times and so on. He says…

Anne: Yeah.

Andrew: …I don’t want to misquote him, but I think it’s something like you could say we offer the kind of tool that these companies use and then you could put the logos of it. And I thought…

Anne: You’re going to get socked by logo police.

Andrew: Who’s… what’s logo police?

Anne: Well, it depends on who the company is, but a lot of companies are very careful about where their logos appear.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: So, you need to go and check their terms of service or check, you know, often it’s on their site how you can use the logo, and sometimes you have to call investor relations, or…

Andrew: And say, can I use your logo.

Anne: Yeah.

Andrew: You know, I mean, he showed examples…

Anne: Take it down.

Andrew: You know what, I don’t even know if it was necessarily him, I don’t want to say that this is him, but I believe what he did was he showed examples of sites that were using it, popular sites and when you look at the text, over the logos, it says… It basically you could even say, we are not trusted by these companies, and then put their logos on, and still that increases conversions.

Anne: I know. Their logo is copyright protected.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: It is something they own. It’s intellectual property.

Andrew: I see. So you can’t just go and slap a Mixergy logo on your landing page.

Anne: Right, and why do something a little bit slimy? Whenever you do something even a little bit slimy, somebody… it does reduce your, you know, truthfulness. It reduces your brand. Over time, that’s not a good thing. It doesn’t help internet marketing as a whole, either.

Andrew: I got it. OK, all right. And let me take it back and say that I don’t know what Dane specifically said, but I wanted to come up with a challenging question on this topic and also plug my course here with Dane.

Anne: I mean, there’s a lot of great ways to improve your conversions without, you know, lying.

Andrew: Is what, I’m sorry?

Anne: There’s a lot of good ways to improve your conversions without hedging the truth, let’s say.

Andrew: Ah, I got it. What’s the most…

Anne: Another one, as seen in works very well. In marketing [??] for years to give ourselves some credibility when we weren’t as well known, back when I owned that company. We had gotten mentions, and these were actually in some cases fairly brief mentions, in some major press. And so I added a line to the top of the page that said, praised by. And all the mentions were to some degree, so I wasn’t hedging, I wasn’t saying oh, we weren’t praised by. They really were, you know, praised by. And it said praised by the economist, praised by Harvard Business School, praised by Entrepreneur.com. So, we had those three up there, and, you know, we had obviously contacted them all and triple checked we could do that, but that made a real difference over time. So if you can do a little PR in the beginning, even if they don’t praise you, you could say, as seen in.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: As seen in is really powerful. As seen in the Wall Street Journal, as seen in, you know, Good Housekeeping. That sort of thing works really well and often the publications will let you use the logo, as seen in Cnet. Sometimes they charge you for the use of the logo, sometimes they just let you have it. And that’s very, very powerful and you’re not saying what they said. You know, you’re just saying as seen in. But you immediately get that credibility.

Andrew: Hey, did I read on, did I read. Did I read here in my research that on your blog you said you retired after you sold your company, that so far early retirement rocks? And then you came back? What was retirement like and why would you come back after that? And we’ll come back to conversion, but.

Anne: It was fun, and it was a very good six months, and then I went nuts.

Andrew: You said three months?

Anne: I was retired for all of six months.

Andrew: Six months.

Anne: I’m only 45, I mean it was, I was young and it was exciting. I went to Nepal. I lived in Nepal for a while. I lived in Europe for a few months. And then I came back to America and I went insane. I just thought this is crazy. You know, I love business too much. But I did something different the second time around launching a company. The first time around I thought, I’m going to grow it really big and I’m going to do it myself and I ended up with a, you know, a large staff, but, you know, it’s all on me to be the president. And the second time around I thought, you know what, now it’s a lifestyle choice to be an entrepreneur. To be a, you know, a business person. And so the second time around, I went out there and got a business partner from day one and brought them in as an equity partner. And that was very important in picking somebody who could then have that energy and that excitement and for them it was their first launch, and I had all the knowledge and the wisdom. And now, the pressure isn’t as bad.

So, it’s great to do the second time around, to bring somebody in as a partner. I don’t know if I would do it the first time around but definitely the second time around.

Andrew: All right. That then brings me to merges and acquisitions. You told me, you say, “Andrew, when you launch a company, think about the sale. Keep it in mind.” How do you do that when I’ve got to tell you. You personally are so connected with your properties. I said to you when I talked to you about doing this interview, “You can talk about anything.” Usually, I structure the interview. I said, “I know my audience. I know the kinds of people who watch me, and I know the respect they have for you.” I said, “Come on here.” The downside of that is you are identified with your product. I think your picture is on your website.

Anne: Yes.

Andrew: It’s the reputation that you personally have that connected. How do you build the site to sell it when you’re that connected?

Anne: It’s a terrible thing. In fact, a lot of entrepreneurs like ourselves are very personally connected with our brand. The problem is when you begin launching a site, and for credibility it helps to have again that human face, like you said. Initially, with all of my sites even my head shot was part of the logo, and I was actively blogging and speaking and all of that.

What I did was I realized you can’t sell it, as you said. If you’re the brand and you can’t sell yourself, and investors were coming and saying, “Oh, this is a really great property, but you’re too associated with it.” What I did was a transition plan, so Marketing Sharpe. I brought in people who would be my successors, but I brought them in as speakers, as head shots, people you saw writing columns and blogs. So that after a while they became more associated with it or as associated with it as I was, and that was very important.

In particular, this might not be legal, but I hired males because I’m female. I found initially when I hired women to be spokespeople and to be in front, giving the speech and being an editor and being a columnist, everyone saw the woman’s face and assumed it was me. So, it was no good. They just thought, oh, she looks different.

I actually, literally went out there looking for guys. I was like, I needed men. And then, we did a whole transition plan where if I was at a convention, I had my male counterpart co-giving the speech with me. And then, the next year he went and gave the speech himself. It was very much on purpose, and you began to hear. Whenever I did a webinar, it was a male-female voice, and we did the transition that way until slowly I kind of edged out of it.

With this site now, the sites we’re running now, we’ve done the same thing. Initially, my head shot was in the logos. It was clearly an Anne Holland site, and then it began to build the reputation of the editors and the people behind it, giving them webinars, giving them convention speeches, et cetera, et cetera.

In fact, next week in New York I’m doing a convention speech at a conversion conference, and I’ve got the editor and I together speaking, trying to build her up. That’s very much on purpose. You’ll notice my head shot is now gone from the site, and that was a six month plan. I put it up there, get the traffic I would get from the name recognition and then pull back and then start promoting the other editor.

Andrew: I’m going to have to ask about the mechanics of the business, too, but I think the personality is important to talk about. What happens when you start to create these super stars, and frankly by virtue of them being around you and getting your stamp of approval, they become super stars. What happens when one of them says, “I’m going to go off and be able to do my own thing now? I’ve got my own brand name. I’ve got experience speaking. I’m blessed.”

Now, you have to fight with all of these stars. You’re suddenly like NBC trying to keep all the Friends together so that they could have more episodes on the killer product.

Anne: It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. This is a special danger actually if you’re doing content licensing. A lot of people launch subscription sites this way. You’ll go out and you’ll partner with somebody who’s a category expert, like Dr. Andrew Weil. You’ll say, “I’ll do your site for you” and that’s a business model for quite a few people.

And then, the problem is the good doctor gets tired of doing the site or wants to go with a different partner. You’re left with no product. So, if you think someone is going to be a big star or you’re planning to build them as a big star, you do have to put them under contract. Obviously, there’s three months where you’re deciding whether you’re going to work together or not and then you move forward and et cetera and clauses when you want them. But they need to be under contract.

And you also have to build your business model on spreadsheet so that if they walk out the door at some point and you lose the whole site as a result because it’s too much built around their brand, you’ve made your money which means you’ve got to have all your money coming in early and fast. It can’t be a long-term play but a catch.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: It’s got to be quick upsells, right? When the customer comes in, I’m going to upsell them five times that day and I’ve got a very good back end and I’m not counting on a lifetime account. Whereas if it’s a generic brand name, you may be building customers for a long-term lifetime account. And I can sell a company like that. I can go to an investor and say, ‘Well, we’ve got 25,000 customers who are paying us an average of $1000 a year, and they’ve been with us for eight years’, boy that’s sexy.

Andrew: I know the person who’s listening to us is not going to be famous as you, and frankly now that I got a little bit of attention, hopefully not even as famous as me. But they do have succession issues, and they do have issues where they have to think about organizing their business with sale in mind, even if they’re never going to sell. What are some of the behind-the-scene things you want to keep in mind when you’re building a business so that it stands apart from you?

Anne: One of the things I think a lot of entrepreneurs get focused on is building their tech. They’re like “Oh I’m going to do this fancy thing for the site, or I’m fixing our content management system” and they’re investing a lot of money in the tech behind the scenes. Unless your product itself is the tech, not on a tech platform, unless you’re selling software in other words. Don’t spend a lot of money on the tech, try to hold back on that. Usually the person who’s coming to buy it isn’t buying your lovely content management system, isn’t buying your lovely technology you just spent $100,000 on to do this or that.

What they are buying is your customer list, your traffic, and they’re basing everything on last 12 month EBITDA. And EBITDA, of course, is earnings before depreciation, earnings, tax, and interest. So that’s basically your net after all your costs are in there. When you see public analysts talking about company sales in public, they’ll often say “Well, it’s 10 times gross income” or “3 times gross income”. But in reality, when someone’s coming in to make you an offer, they don’t base it on gross, they base it on net.

Andrew: EBITDA. Because depreciation, for example, is a sunk cost. It’s not like that’s influencing anything in the future, it’s just a tax item that you need to be aware of, and an accounting item.

Anne: Exactly. So you’re going to say, “I want to sell my company 12 months from now”, hopefully you’re thinking at least 12 months out. Therefore, you’ve got to begin things to make that EBITDA look really nice. You’re not spending all your time fixing the tech that drove you crazy. Also, sometimes you may be jettisoning a few employees. Generally when you’ve gotten to stage where you want to sell, you probably have a fairly large staff at that point, whatever large means to you, and there may be a couple of people who came on in the beginning who maybe they’re not totally pulling their weight, but they’re there because they are friends of yours, and they’re great old guys. Those are people you may can just because you need to make the EBITDA look better.

You’re not running it for yourself anymore, you’re not running it to surround yourself with a circle of your friends. You’re running it for the EBITDA, so you look really good for those last 12 months, because those last 12 months are everything. One other thing to realize, the investors, unless they come from a straight internet background, mostly are classic, especially in media company buying but other ones as well, they don’t see value in prospect lists, and they don’t see value in the size of your email list. You and I know that it’s critical to have a nice big growing email list. But for some reason, the money guys don’t. So don’t say “Oh, I’ve got a list of million names, what’s that worth?”, because unfortunately it really isn’t worth anything to somebody else unless they’re really in your niche.

Andrew: So traffic is even more important than email lists, and we know that email is more significant than traffic.

Anne: We know the recent opt-ins and showing a pattern of opt-in is, but the money guys often don’t. They’re often just looking for customers and recent customers, and if you can prove that customers re-buy, that’s more valuable than a one-time customer. They’re looking for a healthy, large, growing customer list they can then monetize.

Andrew: Do you talk publicly about much you sold Marketing Sherpa for?

Anne: No I don’t, but I can confirm it was definitely in the millions.

Andrew: It was definitely in the millions. So you don’t confirm the exact number, and of course you’re not going to say the sales numbers. Others who aren’t doing interviews, who aren’t as open as you, aren’t going to do it. So if the person listening to us right now is thinking “I want to sell my business, I know that I need to do a multiple of earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization, but how do I find comparables so that I can know what to price my business at?”, what do we say to them? How do we tell them, now that you’ve got your EBITDA up, think about the multiple, how do they know what that multiple is?

Anne: The multiple to a large degree is based on how large your company is all together. Annoying but true, if your company is really large, in particular if you’ve got an EBITDA of above $3 million to $5 million, it’s going to be a larger multiple than if it’s below that. If you’re below $1 million, it’s going to be much smaller, which is annoying because if you’re small already you want a bigger multiple, but you’re not going to get it. Investors like to buy companies that already have a large enough earnings flow that they can then make a lot of money off it very quickly. The other thing that could affect your multiple is going to be whether or not you’re prepared to accept an earn out. An earn out is where you’re going to say, well I’m not going to take my cash upfront, or maybe I’ll just take a little bit of my cash upfront, but then you guys can pay me over time, and they may even use the money that the site makes or your company makes to pay you back.

You can sometimes get a much higher amount out of an earn out because of course you’re taking a bit of a risk, and they don’t have to front it so there may be something there.

Andrew: I do have multiple people in the audience who are going through the process of selling their businesses.

Anne: Oh yeah.

Andrew: They asked me for advice on how to figure out what the numbers are. I’ve got one guy who’s got a million dollar profit already, how does he know what multiple is right for someone in his space, and I’ve got other questions for someone like him, but…

Anne: Well, first of all, to say roughly if you’re at least $3-5 million gross baseline, and that’s not [??], that’s gross, go through a broker.

Andrew: Go through a broker.

Anne: Do not doubt yourself. That is one of the biggest mistakes that people make. I, myself, have made that mistake. I know it very well. We are so used to being kings and queens of our own empires and being the go-to person, and being able to figure it out ourselves and being smarter than most people in the room that we don’t realize that we need to go to a broker to sell our business.

I really recommend you go to a broker. Trust me. That person will earn their money and then some. If that’s the one piece of advice I can give someone selling their business, once you get $3 million in gross, for goodness sake go through a professional broker who has brokered a lot of deals, in particular, if possible in your niche. They could have brokered larger deals, they’re going to get you more money, and they are going to take you through the due diligence process, and they’re going to save your ass.

Andrew: How do you find the right broker?

Anne: If you have a subscription site, if you’ve got a paywall site or anything like that, we do have a list of them on Subscription Site Insider, which is one of my other sites, and we even have an M&A section on there. Other ways now are just to look at recent sales. If there is anyone that you know who has been sold, most of the brokers have little tombstone ads on their website that talk about the recent sales that they’ve brokered or recent investment deals. Look for someone who has been doing it in your niche.

Andrew: OK. I see. Right. If, for example, I’m SCO Book and I find out that Rand Fishkin sold his site, I go and find out which broker did he use and that’s the right broker for me to consider talking to.

Anne: Actually, Rand because he’s doing a subscription site, I would go to any media broker who’s brokered a business to business online company.

Andrew: Gotcha. It doesn’t even have to match up two SCO companies, it just has to be similar enough. Gotcha.

Anne: He’s the content company. They know people who tend to buy that kind of company. If you’re a trade show company, go to someone who has sold trade shows before. It’s a general line of business. If you’re a software company, go to a broker who specializes in software companies.

Andrew: What if they’re smaller? What if it’s $1-3 million?

Anne: I might even try to find a broker then and see what they think.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: It might be worth getting a little mentoring from somebody in the community. Sometimes you can still get some business valuation done. There are general business valuation services. There’s even an association of America, The Business Valuation Association, I think, the BVA, that can help you with some of that.

You are going to have to partially do it yourself, though. It’s harder. Be prepared for due diligence. Even for $1-3 million, due diligence is a bear. That means your books have to be in order, you’re going to be asked for marketing reports and staff and HR files and all sorts stuff that you probably don’t have because you’ve been busy running your business and you probably didn’t do all the paperwork.

For example, for my site for Marketing Sherpa, I had to prove that I owned every piece of content on that site. I needed some kind of contract or copyright or something from everybody I had ever done a webinar with, or a speech with, or an interview. Anything where I had any piece of their content. If they gave me a PowerPoint slide, did I have copyright to hand over to the other person?

Also, all contracts that you have with freelancers and programmers. Did those give you the right to convey? There are all kinds of legal things around it that you’re just going to have to dig through your files and organize the living daylights out of. I had a really good assistant. I would have a VA for this. You need to have someone in your office to basically go through and get all the paperwork together. That was a full-time job.

Andrew: We’re talking about maybe a year of putting all this together to make sure that it’s all cleaned up and…

Anne: Clean up your books, clean up your marketing records, get yourself cleaned up. Yeah.

Andrew: I remember once American Greetings was considering buying one of my companies and just flying out there was, not a waste of time, but it took up a lot of time, you know? They want you to come and talk to their team, they want to come and see you, and that time is just draining.

Anne: Oh, yeah. We had people marching through the office and of course if you’ve got employees they’re wondering what’s going on and thinking they’re all going to get fired.

Andrew: What do you tell your employees during the process?

Anne: I did keep it secret for awhile because I didn’t want people to be scared. You know how it is, if you’ve got less than 15 employees and you lose somebody, it could be a big hole and slow you down and hurt everything. So if you’re a small shop it’s difficult.

One thing I did when we had finally picked a deal, and as you know, once you sign the deal papers, you still have up to a year before the darn thing can close. Usually it’s more like 4-6 months, but still, that’s a period of time in which if you lose somebody, you can really get screwed up.

I actually promised people a certain bonus if they stayed on for at least 90 days past sale, and that bonus was built into the sale document that I was going to pay that out of the money that I made. They knew they had it, and people stayed. I also built into my deal, I picked my partner based on who would keep certain employees.

You have to make a decision about that. Do you want your people to be guaranteed a job when you leave? Or do you just say, “Hey you know what, it’s the real world folks, good luck, it’s a cold hard world, good luck finding something else.” You can make a decision. I actually had in the deal documents a requirement that I wanted every full-time employee to be given a job for 12 months after I sold.

Andrew: 12 months?

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Oh, wow.

Anne: Now, partly because we’re in Rhode Island and Rhode Island isn’t an easy place to find jobs and I felt [??]. One thing I could have done though is just given them all big enough bonuses that they had living funds. I could have worked it a few ways, but given the company we were, we had companies mostly from Boston and New York and they were just going to fire everybody and move it up there.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: So I said no, you’ve got to keep people on.

Andrew: Why is it important for you when you’re launching these businesses to think about a sale? It’s something that when I was talking to you about your businesses you said, “oh yeah, and I’m also thinking of selling every one of them,” why is that important to do right now?

Anne: Maybe it’s being an entrepreneur. I think we all have A.D.D. You’re always thinking, you know I’m 100% dedicated to this. You can’t always be thinking about your exit when you start. You’ve got to be passionate. You’ve got to be building it because you’re so excited. At the same time, you’ve got to be saying, well where am I going with this?

I know myself personally. 5-7 years is my limit. Then I get bored, I want to move on, I want to change my life. I want to go to Nepal, or whatever. Knowing that, that made me set it up so I could do that. Some people also, and often entrepreneurs are like this, where you know you’re really good at a certain level of size of company.

Some people say, “I’m really good, but once it gets to about 20 million, it’s just no fun for me to run anymore,” or “It’s just too big, once we get to 100 employees it’s just not me anymore.” They know that, but they want their baby to grow so they kind of say, “OK, I know what my personal life cycle with this company is, so what does that mean for the structure that I set up now?” Including, am I hiring a lot of virtual assistants to run it, or am I hiring a couple of really good strong people who I am bringing in pretty early so they can continue running it later on, or maybe even they’ll buy me out.

Whatever it is, you have to think about all those things even in the beginning when you’re starting your hiring process.

Andrew: What an interesting model too that you have multiple companies now, multiple sites, that each one can stand up on it’s own if not today then at some point soon and you can sell them out. This is something that I think you’re the first entrepreneur that has talked publicly about this, but I’ve had other entrepreneurs who’ve had side businesses, side businesses isn’t really the word for it because they became huge, but they spun them off with the idea that they’re going to sell it but they don’t want to talk about it publicly.

Anne: Mm-hmm. No the other thing that we’re doing right now is of course, we keep the accounting separate. We have the corporate accounting, but for each product line we are keeping the books separate. That’s important too because I know someday I’m going to want to be able to say, “Oh here are the books used for this product.”

Andrew: I see. All right. You said that having subscription based customers, people who pay you month in month out or year in year out, those are the ones that make your business most valuable because an acquirer can feel like, I can count on this revenue.

You launched this business, you’ve launched a subscription site insider.com with the idea that you’re going to show people how to build a pay wall. Does it bother you, by the way, that we still call it a pay wall? That it’s like it’s blocking people. I remember Fred Wilson did a piece on look at how the New York Times has grown with traffic since they added a pay wall?

I thought, don’t call it a pay wall anymore because it’s not a block to increasing business. What do you think about this whole subscription payment model? Tell me about that before I ask for tactics.

Anne: Sure. One thing I want you to bear in mind is that the whole pay wall, of course there are four different terms that are used for this industry interchangeably: pay wall, subscription sites, membership sites, and reoccurring billing sites. They’re all pretty much the same thing but people use different words.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: One thing I want you to bear in mind is even though you’re going to be running a subscription site or you’re planning on running one of those, you should always have multiple revenue streams. I would never, ever launch a site that was going to be a single revenue stream any more – and in fact I haven’t for about 10 years.

Andrew: What do you mean?

Anne: It’s much safer both in terms of being more valuable for the person who’s acquiring it, it’s a much stronger company for you as an owner. You’re not dependent, utterly dependent on just one revenue stream, you’ve got multiple. Also once you’ve got your hands in a customer’s pocket or they’ve got their eyeballs focused on you, monetize it in multiple ways. Why waste that customer?

You know, once somebody’s bought from you or once they’re reading you all the time, they’re going to come back. They’re going to buy more things from you. So don’t just throw away that relationship, you can sell more.

Have a back-end, have an up-sell, have other products. All of our products now (and all of our products in the past) have had a little bit of advertising and or sponsorship, have had some subscription, you know, reoccurring revenues; often we had trade-show spin-offs. Often we had e-books or actual print, physical books. We even had classifieds, we had multiple revenue streams. And all of my products right now have multiple revenue streams, so that’s really important.

That said, love subscription model, in part because investors love them. On the MNA [SP] front it’s a sexy thing because they love that reoccurring revenue, they love that ongoing revenue. So I really love those.

One key for that; there’s one little secret, kind of dirty secret for that world that I’m sure you’re interested in, and that is these days, 20-30% of your people who are leaving your subscriber base are involuntary churn. It’s the horrible Achilles heel of the pay well world. What that means is their credit card went bad. One of the reasons is 55% of consumers are buying online subscriptions that could be like a dating site subscription or a New York Times subscription – 55% are using their debit card or a pre-paid debit card they bought at like 7-11.

Now think about it. Your debit card? You know, you’re going to hit that limit. Even if you’re rich, often you’re going to hit that limit. I mean, even the economists and the FinancialTimes.com, run by wealthy people, have problems with this debit card thing when you’re doing reoccurring billing. And right now none of the systems can tell you whether or not, when a card is charged whether it’s a debit card or a credit card. They are working on stuff, there are solutions coming very fast, but it’s a monster problem.

Other monster problems are, you know, people’s expire dates doing bad, people hitting their credit limit. I mean, there’s all these different reasons. But there are huge problems and you need to have a real expert on your team, or you need to have researched a lot of this, know what you’re doing with credit card processing before you get into subscriptions. Or if you’re into subscriptions already, that’s the number one thing you research before you research anything else, because that’s the cash.

Andrew: Really? That’s the cash. We lose cash; I don’t understand what you mean by this debit card reaching their limit. What happens if a person – you’re saying that if a person has a debit card, they might’ve spend a little too much on the holidays or accidentally spent on a gym membership that he thought was going to get charged monthly but was charged annually, and the account has zero balance? Your system’s about to charge them for the third month in a row and they can’t charge them. Why don’t you come back the next day, or you’re saying that’s it, they’re gone from the system?

Anne: Well you do try. There are processes that you do. You come back; usually it’s 3, 7, and 21 days. But if each time you go back, maybe they closed that bank account; maybe they paid their mortgage and now they’re in trouble. Maybe they – who knows, maybe they switched banks. There are all different reasons why that card might work. Especially, you know, if they got a card, a pre-paid card at say, 7-11 or something (and right now, that’s growing to be almost 20% of those cards) it’s huge. You know, think about those people. Average amount is only 39 bucks on that card. They’re not recharging it; you’re not getting much money off of that thing.

Andrew: One of the things I admire about you is, you tossed out a number. You said, “The average amount is $39.” I love how you research these things.

Anne: It’s true!

Andrew: And you’ve got it there at your fingertips. I would say, “The average amount is somewhere under $50; you can go research.” But you’ve got the number!

So you’re saying that if we could figure out whether it’s a debit card that the person’s paying with, or a credit card or a 7-11 debit card.

Anne: Yep!

Andrew: Then we could refuse the ones that aren’t the right ones for this model.

Anne: Or up-sell them, and say, ‘Oh, I’ll give you this extra premium if you just give me a different card number.” Or up-sell them: “Oh, it’s a debit card that has a $39 limit, so although this is $29 a month, I’ll give you the whole year if you’ll give me the whole $39 now.”

I mean, there are lots of different ways you can come at them. The big credit card processing companies are working like crazy on a solution. They are going to be actually announcing it at the Subscription Site Summit in New York on October 24, yea! So if you’re interested in that you can come to our summit and learn about it. It’s very interesting but all of the big, you know from Authorized Net, Amex, Vindicia, all the big backing people are working like crazy on this. It is a real problem.

Andrew: This is your summit, your event. What’s the name of it?

Anne: One of our product events, yes, Subscriptions Site Summit, How to Sell Subscription On-line, and the Financial Times and a few other people will be there and they’ll be discussing things like this.

Andrew: That’s an example of another revenue model for you. I’m so lucky that I talked to you, because you know what, I’ll tell you what, I’ve got these sponsors that are going to be playing before people watch you right now. They will watch the three sponsors, and I thought well maybe I should just get rid of the three sponsors, I’m doing well with the premium membership, who needs the sponsors? Let’s focus on the one thing that does well. You’re saying no.

Anne: Keep the sponsor.

Andrew: Why?

Anne: Because you want multiple revenues streams. Again, if you’re ever planning to sell, oh my God, that’s gold to an investor’s ear, multiple revenue streams, it sounds so much more stable. Think about a three legged stool instead of a one-legged stool.

Andrew: Right, you always have to balance and you have to awake.

Anne: Exactly. Have those multiple revenue streams but add in the subscription level because, you know what, subscriptions are a beautiful thing. Understand the payment processing. For goodness sake, don’t go to PayPal and by the way, this is just one small tip, if you’re ever planning on selling your site, no matter what kind of site you have, you should not be using PayPal for payment processing.

Andrew: Even as like, as an option, your suggesting?

Anne: No. Not if you can possibly help it, because you cannot sell that account. PayPal will not let you transition that account to a new owner, it’s against their rules. I know.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: Yeah, I know people who bought, like, three million dollar sites, they were all PayPal and PayPal would not let them transfer, it was agony.

Andrew: Oh, wow. OK, so if we have to, first put a button for buy and somewhere underneath hide the PayPal option so only people who absolutely, positively need PayPal can hunt for it and get what they want, but.

Anne: Exactly.

Andrew: Reduce it as much as possible. Do you accept PayPal at all?

Anne: Nope. No, I mean I don’t want to deal with it.

Andrew: Well, you practice what you preach. What about this?

Anne: Yeah.

Andrew: Fred Wilson, one of the most admired Venture Capitalist backs Twitter, he says not just Paywall, but he’s not in favor of charging. We’ve got this system, what I’m trying to say, it trains people on-line not to sign up for anything where they have to pay, that says you’re not supposed to pay for anything at all, with that in our customers minds, what do we need to know to get them to say, I’m going to pay?

Anne: OK, well, I want you to bear in mind there that there are a lot of people that are philosophically against paying for content. I say philosophy be damned. You know what, there’s almost sixteen billion dollars worth of subscriptions being sold in America this year.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Anne: People are paying for content, you know, I philosophically I don’t care, what you say philosophically. It’s a business model. It works. People are making money with it. Why not use it? People always pay for content. People buy books, hello?

Andrew: How do you overcome that resistance that even if it’s just a philosophical issue that they have, that they don’t really ever live by, that they say I will not pay for anything using a credit card, but they do.

Anne: Yeah.

Andrew: How do you get past it?

Anne: There are like five percent of consumers who just philosophically won’t do it, fine, you know, you’re not my customer, you know, great.

Andrew: I see.

Anne: There’s probably X percent of customers who will probably never buy NFL tickets, it’s not going to stop the NFL from selling tickets.

Andrew: OK.

Anne: That said, you have to make sure that your content is incredibly compelling and fills a paying point for the customer. You’re going to lift them over the payment hump because I’m just dying to get at it. But you have to have something their dying to get at. And how do you know that? Usually, it’s by market research and it is by surveying the living daylights out of a perspective market. At any one time I have three different subscription sites launches under way and generally only one makes it. Sometimes, only one out of five makes it. That’s because we survey the living daylights out of that marketplace, including calling them on the phone, meeting them in person, reading their blog. I mean we are just constantly looking.

What we do is say, what’s the paying point, that’s the thing that you’re just going crazy trying to find, that you really need or that would really make your life so much easier, right now, that you can’t get? And then I’ll build that. And often you’d be surprised, it’s easy to build. Even when I built Marketing Sherpa, I mean there were a million sites on marketing out there and they were all free, you know, it was Click Z, it was everything, out there. But I went to every single marketing trade show for about six months and I asked every marketer I met, what do you want that you can’t get. And they all told me. They all said, case studies. And I’m like, OK, well, we can do that. So, you know you just find out what the paying point is and you build to fit. So it’s a tailored content. A lot of subscription site entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to build something based on their own personal passion, you know, I’m crazy for shoes so I’m going to put up a website that’s all about shoes and their going to love it. Well guess what, if they don’t share your passion, they’re not going to buy it. You have to find out what they care about. So if I was crazy about shoes and I wanted to do a shoe website, I would be out there surveying, talking to shoe lovers and find out what they’re dying for that they can’t get and then I’d build that.

Andrew: OK. We talked earlier about three things to do to increase conversions. Let’s talk about three ways to get people to buy into a subscription model. What are three big ideas that will help my audience, my precious, precious audience see results if they take action on.

Anne: Sure. Number one, don’t make your paywall hard. So in other words, when people hit your paywall, their option should not be buy or don’t buy. Their option should be opt-in. So you should be saying, maybe it’s step one. Your paywall maybe should not have all of the offers on it. Maybe it has a, ‘enter your email to get started and then click for step two.’ So at least you’re getting an email. That way you can try to continue to contact that person and convert them. Too many people don’t ask for that email up front. You should also use overlays to get emails as well. Someone’s lingering on your site, hit them with an overlay. Try to get that email. So the step one is that.

Step two is you should be A/B testing that conversion page. I mean that paywall, you can be getting anywhere and I said anywhere from $25 to $45 and I’ve seen a lot higher. Most paywalls I’ve seen are horrific. I mean they’re just awful, awful, awful. Step three, if you can make it dynamic, that’s always great. What I mean by dynamic is. Let’s say you’ve got one of those websites where you’ve got a whole bunch of headlines, really cool stories, and ‘Oooh teaser, teaser, teaser’ and then thy click on the teaser and bam they hit the paywall. I want that paywall to continue to have the teaser on it. So make it dynamic. Say, ‘Oh to get to this thing that you were clicking, trying to get at.’ It makes a huge difference in conversion rates and that’s been tested by a lot of people.

Andrew: And do you put your price on that second page, first page asks for the email, second page sells?

Anne: You have to test it. I often put it on the second page. I also often will offer them an option in price. Either I’ll say you can pick month to month or you can pick year. Another thing that a lot of people do is, is do the trial with credit card. You have to enter their credit card to get seven days trial or 14 days trial. You usually don’t need to get more than that. That tends to work extremely well. The biggest mistake I see people doing is I see people saying, “Free trial, but I’m not going to require a credit card.” Philosophically I’m against. I hear people say that and I’m like, “Philosophically, why would you want to lose money? Philosophically I’m against that.”

So ask for their credit card with that trial and then great at the end of the trial ping the credit card, but during that trial hopefully you’re emailing them and contacting them to let them know. Remind them that they’re on trial.

Andrew: I got to tell you this. This has been one of the most useful and enlightening interviews I’ve ever done and also the most intimidating one of the interviews I’ve ever done. To understand that there’s someone like you in the marketplace that’s thought this stuff out so well, feel’s like the competition is really good. Not that you and I are competing with the audience.

Anne: No.

Andrew: But it feels like, “Boy who knew that there was just so much to learn.” What I appreciate it all, though, is the way that you’ve put out your ideas is if my audience, the person who’s listening right now on a run or on computer while they’re building their company, just takes one thing. That alone they could implement right away. They don’t have to take it all, they can take that one thing and add and add and add. If they want to go to the next, next level with you . . .

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: I’ve got a lot of websites here. I said Which Test Won [sounds like], W-O-N, subscription insider. What’s the one place that you think I should tell them to go?

Anne: Well, you know, I think everybody should be A/B testing. So even subscription sites, you know, you’re going to raise your sales. So I would go to Which Test Won, you can do, it’s free to sign up. It’s free to check out every single week we post a new A/B test. We’ve got a library of more than 160 A/B tests. Like I said you can go on, search by brand name, look at what your competitors are doing, look what they’ve tested. And you can also steal ideas from the tests for your own design. You can say, “Oh jeez look at that button, I like that one better.” You can show it to your designer, show it to your copywriter. It’s very, very useful and we do have the vendor guide there, it’s free as well. You can check that out.

Andrew: Yeah that’s one of the smart things. I wrote down here, look right here, ‘Talk to her about resource guide . . . everything you do has a resource guide, which is a reason to keep coming back. I didn’t get enough time to do that. So I’m going to say to the audience. Go research on your own. Check out her websites. Which Test Won is such a fun website. Even if you’re not into conversions, just what you do is you show . . .

Anne: It’s a game.

Andrew: Yes, you show two pages and you say, “Which one won?” and we pick and you tell us instantly which one won and it’s such a simple way to do it. I wish I would have thought of it. Not that I could have acted on it, it’s not in my model, but such a simple, elegant website. Click the one you think won, get the instant result, come back next time there’s another one. Check out Which Test Won. Guys, if you’re a premium member on Mixergy and you tell me if I’m doing this right or but I’ve started to actually tell people in the interviews, if they want to go to the next level with me. If you’re a premium member, you want to know how to organize your business with the idea that you’re going to do a sale, I’ve got Nick Green [sounds like] the founder of Ivy Insider. Told us how he organized and structured every part of his business before a sale and he showed us computer screens so you can see all his employees and what they do at the company and how he organized them and made sure that the next person who bought it had full control of the business. If you want to know how to ask questions of your customers, figure out where their pain points are. Cindy Alvarez [sounds like] of KISSmetrics said, “Here’s how I found the people with the biggest problems and here’s how I got them to rant about their biggest pain points.” She gives you the scripts and tells you everything that you need to know how to do that. If you’re a premium member, it’s part of your membership. Go in there, grab it right now. If you’re not a premium member, hope you join us because you’re going to get these and so many other courses that are going to get you in-depth results. How did I do with that?

Anne: That sounds fantastic.

Andrew: We’ll find out when people go check it out.

Anne: All Mixergy.com content.

Andrew: The last word has to go into WhichTestWon.com. Probably you all have seen it, but go back and check it again because I’m so grateful for you doing this interview about this stuff that you’ve been putting online. Actionable, actionable, actionable and we’ll keep seeing results thanks to you. Thank you for doing this interview.

Anne: Thank you Andrew, it was fun.

Andrew: Thank you very much.

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