Summary

In this engaging conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Camille Andres-Para, who shares his journey from being an e-commerce entrepreneur to becoming a millionaire through strategic acquisitions. Camille discusses his experiences with the Epic program, the challenges of raising capital, and the intricacies of valuing and selling businesses. He emphasizes the importance of confidence, knowledge, and understanding market dynamics in achieving success in the M&A space. In this conversation, Camilo Parra shares his journey of creating and selling online courses, discussing the strategies he employed to successfully navigate the sale process. He emphasizes the importance of leveraging relationships, qualifying buyers, and understanding the dynamics of private equity. Camilo reflects on the negotiation process, the significance of closing deals, and how his success has led to an evolution in his business strategy, positioning his agency to assist clients in both growth and sale.

Takeaways

Camilo's journey began with the Epic program, which provided him with confidence and knowledge.
He emphasizes the importance of product-market fit, particularly for businesses with at least a million dollars in revenue.
Camilo's agency, Brand Power, helps e-commerce companies scale through a full funnel approach.
He believes that confidence can lead to outsized returns in business.
The valuation of a business can change significantly based on how it is positioned in the market.
Camilo faced challenges in raising capital due to his lack of experience in logistics, despite his e-commerce background.
He learned that motivated sellers are crucial for successful acquisitions.
Camilo successfully increased a business's valuation from eight million to thirty million through strategic advice.
He highlights the importance of understanding the business's financials and market dynamics when selling.
The conversation underscores the significance of having a clear strategy and confidence in executing business deals. There were more than 20 courses released in two years.
The marketing strategy was not dependent on the creator's image.
Strong relationships can lead to successful introductions in sales.
Qualifying buyers is crucial to ensure serious offers.
Private equity firms are often the best buyers due to their cash availability.
Negotiating with confidence can lead to better deal terms.
The closing process can be swift if the seller's financials are strong.
Success in sales can change the perception of what is possible.
Evolving business strategies can open new opportunities for growth.
Understanding the seller's motivations is key to successful negotiations.

 

 Watch the Interview:

Transcript:

JON STODDARD (00:01.706)
Top M&A Entrepreneurs podcast today. My guest is Camille Andres-Para. Welcome to the show.

Camilo Parra (00:10.794)
Hey John, how's it going? Thank you so much for having me. Very excited to be here.

JON STODDARD (00:13.19)
Yeah, well, I'm glad to have you here because I want to talk to you about this post you made just recently on Facebook where Epic made me a millionaire.

Camilo Parra (00:24.618)
Yes sir, that is correct.

JON STODDARD (00:26.59)
Well, let's go back and kind of start with this story. You said it happened three weeks ago. Is this like the date where it made you a millionaire? But let's go back where this all started. Now, tell me the story.

Camilo Parra (00:41.054)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, technically where I started is when I joined Epic. You know, I was part, I actually went back and I joined back in 2020 or 2021. You know, I went through the whole process. I tried acquiring a company for six million. That was the first thing that, you know, after going through a program, the only things that I had was just the knowledge on the program and a bunch of confidence that I could just execute on this.

So I went on Microquire and there was this one company that I saw in the e-commerce space and they were listing, I don't even remember if they had a price for that. The point is that I reached out to the guy, he said, hey, yeah, we have it, it's for six million, would you like to talk about it? And I'm like, yeah, sure. I had nowhere near the amount of cash to go and acquire a company for six million, but I had all the knowledge from Epic, so I said, worst case scenario, at least I get to practice my lines.

At least I can get something out of this. And over the next three to four months, I talked to the guy and we actually became really good friends. I actually flew to Chicago to take a look at the company because it was a play between the e-commerce, the actual business and the real estate. And then once he came to, how much do you want for it? And the whole deal structures everything.

he was very hard said that he won 50% upfront. And you know, the whole... one of the premises of Epic...

JON STODDARD (02:11.582)
Well, let me ask you a question. Let's rewind just a little bit about who you are. Now, what do you do normally? What do you do in your ordinary world right now?

Camilo Parra (02:22.35)
Yeah, definitely. So I've been in the e-commerce space for about seven years. So I have an agency right now, the name of the agency is Brand Power, and we help companies. We help companies between one and 10 million just scale.

JON STODDARD (02:35.066)
Yeah. And how do you help them do that? You're doing SEO, PPC, what, conversion rate optimization? What do you do? Or all of them?

Camilo Parra (02:45.69)
Yeah, so we call it almost all of the above. So we call it full ecosystem control. So we come in and we act as a part-time CMO, if you will. And we have the CMO and we give a team to the CMO for the CMO to be able to execute anything that we need to grow that account, which 90% of the time is Facebook, running

Camilo Parra (03:12.426)
running the ads there, creating landing pages, doing email management, coming up with offers, coming up with angles, editing videos for new ads. We basically take a full funnel approach to what we do.

JON STODDARD (03:24.338)
Yeah, and how do those what makes a good client that the product have to be could be a trendy product or you know, something they buy quite often or does it have to be like your top criteria? It's got to have a gross margin because what we're going to do is going to spend money to get this more sales and more profits.

Camilo Parra (03:46.89)
Yeah, definitely. So at its core is product market fit. And we realized that a starting baseline for product market fit is about a million dollars. And if they have product market fit and they have made a million dollars, they probably already went through a lot of the hardships of gaining a company of the ground. They have an idea of what their finances look like and they have a mind for growth. And they're willing to test new things, which is basically perfect for what we do.

JON STODDARD (04:15.978)
So they gotta have something like a million dollars in revenue or a million dollars bottom line?

Camilo Parra (04:20.863)
In revenue, in revenue.

JON STODDARD (04:22.394)
Okay, and what do you see from these great clients, you know that make a good client or they just tapped out They don't know what to do next or they don't have an energy How do you know like this person's got a lot of gas in the tank and he wants to spend money and they can afford Your monthly payment. How do you know that?

Camilo Parra (04:43.53)
It is basically on the company, just come down to the actual company itself and the nature of the products that they sell. Because if we come in and we look at the website, we look at what they're doing on Facebook ads or on Google ads, we look at what they're doing on email, we look at the margins of the product, the shipping costs, the cost of delivery and everything that is there. And if we see opportunity and we see that the owner, the CEO that is running the company is very motivated.

to grow the company, then that's a perfect fit. We're able to spot the gaps that we can fill in with actual performance media buying on Facebook, following best practices on what is running a Facebook ad account. We understand marketing concepts. What can we do from a direct response perspective? How much do they know about their own finances? Is this a product that has a lifetime value or do we actually have to be profitable?

on the first sale. So we look at the 80% of the business, including the products, and then 20% the mindset of the owner, how they actually see their own company.

JON STODDARD (05:54.362)
Yeah, and what do you suggest as hey, you're going to be spending 3k a month or 5k a month not including our bill What is that? Is there a threshold there?

Camilo Parra (06:03.04)
I love you.

It really depends. It really, really, really depends because it depends on are they actually spending money already or have they made their first and when I say a million dollars, a million dollars in yearly revenue or are they doing that money on pure organic channels? Like how's their composition of their revenue, of their yearly revenue?

And based on that, we can backtrack into a and spend target or spend goal that if they want to do, if they want to do all the revenue, if they want to make an extra million dollars. Okay, let's look at your historical data. How much have you spent in the future? What is the return at spend on that? What can we do to make that more efficient? Because sometimes it's not let's spend more money, but let's make more efficient. Let's make, let's squeeze more juice out of your spend dollars to get you going.

further and based on that we can formula okay we probably want to spend 50k a month, 100k a month, 200k a month depending on their goals and their understanding of how MediaBind functions.

JON STODDARD (07:11.73)
Yeah, and how long you been doing this?

Camilo Parra (07:15.518)
Seven years.

JON STODDARD (07:16.338)
Yeah, did you ever propose like a percentage of revenue or was it just an agency for hire? You go, hey, let's put out these bids and.

Camilo Parra (07:26.71)
Yeah, we only do like a straight flat fee, which is why our businesses are successful. Because the ad agencies and agencies in the e-commerce space or anyone that launches Facebook ads, like in this day and age, Facebook ads is a commodity. Anyone can do it. So the magic doesn't really come from there. And the issue is that agencies over time for being not a particular fault of their own, they sort of...

became a little greedy on this. So they knew that, hey, if we put a dollar here, then we can expect two, three, four dollars out. Therefore, they started charging customers based on a percentage of ads. We do everything on a flat fee because we are very efficient with our costs. So we and we were not really incentivized to like clove you over the head just because we see you doing better than we feel entitled to your revenues or anything like that.

So that's one thing that really helps us stand the market. We don't charge for change of our ad spend. We don't charge for change of revenue. It's your money. You're high enough to make new money. So it's sort of illogical for me to go back to a company like, hey, you hired me to make you money, but the more money you make, the more money I'm going to charge you. Because at that point, they end up at the same place financially.

JON STODDARD (08:43.934)
Yeah, I want a piece of that revenue.

Camilo Parra (08:52.678)
three, four months if all the money I'm making then I'm taking it back like what's the point?

JON STODDARD (08:59.178)
So you're doing this and what was the impetus to start looking at getting into acquisitions, acquiring? What were you thinking then? I mean, by the way, let me ask you before that. Now, do you own this by yourself or is it a group of people that own it or you own 100%?

Camilo Parra (09:21.354)
For brain power, I do have a partner. I have two partners in brain power.

JON STODDARD (09:24.238)
Okay, yeah, and so what was the impetus behind this I'm gonna start taking these courses learn more about M&A Why did you want to do this?

Camilo Parra (09:32.966)
Well, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart, so we tend to have shiny object syndrome. So the moment that Roland came here and said, hey, you know, you can make like you can acquire company for ceremony out of pocket and it could be a multi-million dollar company. I'm like, huh, that sounds something that I can do. I can get behind that. Yeah.

JON STODDARD (09:49.91)
That's it for marketing. It's good marketing. Isn't it? Yeah, so let's go back to this micro acquire guy you had this conversation with he was insistent that You need to put three million down out of the six million down. So what would happen there?

Camilo Parra (10:08.622)
At that point, it's just picking up the phone and make some phone calls because that's the thing. The whole thing is, it doesn't necessarily have to be your own money. It can be used other people's money. So who do I contact? What friends do I have? Can the SBA agree to this? But it always goes back down to is the seller willing to accept the terms?

JON STODDARD (10:21.887)
Yeah.

Camilo Parra (10:35.698)
Ultimately, I couldn't make it happen. So the whole deal just fell apart. It just completely, completely fell apart. So at this point, you know, one to two years into the knowledge and I still haven't been able to do anything, but the knowledge keeps growing in my confidence in it keeps growing because that was the first time that I had a conversation with an entrepreneur of that caliber. Cause I didn't actually mention this. The person that was.

JON STODDARD (11:01.01)
Well, let me ask you before that, was that $6 million actually, the business actually worth $6 million? Was it the valuation correct? Or was it, I got to tell you, I've been on a micro acquire a lot of times and they, many of those people that post on their overvalue their business, way over.

Camilo Parra (11:18.238)
Mm-hmm. 100%. Actually, this was underpriced. And you know how depending on how you position the company, you can immediately change the valuation of the business. So I was valuing it as an e-commerce company, which they have depending on the time period in which we are, you know, anywhere between three to five-ish.

JON STODDARD (11:23.213)
Okay.

Camilo Parra (11:46.666)
But the business, the actual nature of the business is something that's called reverse logistics. So all of the products that get sent back, let's say you order something from Amazon, then the person doesn't want the product. It gets sent to Amazon. If that product is sold by a third party person, by another entrepreneur that they just use the Amazon platform, then Amazon has to figure out what to do with those products.

specifically function on eBay. So what the entrepreneur, what the owner of this company did, a brilliant guy, completely brilliant, he created and the company operates on eBay. So it functions a little bit different. He created an algorithm that he knows when a product gets sold, when the product is going to be returned, he buys all of those products and he released the product again.

And he takes a margin and when you do that for hundreds of thousands of products Then the mat starts making a lot of sense and the things that he also owned the warehousing He owned the technology because he runs a hundred million dollar e-commerce business So for him to start this to start making you know, I think he was doing Three million a year just a complete autopilot. That was that was a weekend project for him

So when he explained it to me that way, that this is actually a reverse logistics company and the multiple for a logistics company is anywhere between four to eight, I believe the, the 6 million, it became very reasonable.

JON STODDARD (13:31.006)
Yeah, let me ask you about that just to clarification. Was he buying returned products kind of like in a pallet and reselling them on eBay?

Camilo Parra (13:40.018)
Yes, yes. So eBay, there's based on eBay's terms of services. If you sell a product internationally, let's say that the product gets returned. Sometimes the product cannot be returned to the owner. And but the owner got still compensated for that. So an eBay cannot release the product on eBay.

So eBay has to figure out what do we do with all of these products that we can't really list on the platform again? Well, let's sell the pallets to whoever is willing to deal with this headache that they have. And that's where they met the owner that I was dealing with, who was also very deep in the logistics world. So it made a ton of sense for them to do business with this guy.

JON STODDARD (14:21.067)
Yeah.

JON STODDARD (14:24.979)
Yeah, and just

JON STODDARD (14:32.458)
So he already ran a $100 million company, some other company. And this one was just taking up too much time or not making as much money. And he just wanted to get rid of it and make some extra money.

Camilo Parra (14:36.865)
Mm-hmm.

Camilo Parra (14:46.55)
Correct, yeah, because he was actually a serial entrepreneur. And also, he was very into the acquisition space, which is why he was so hard pressed to like, hey, the minimum I will take is 50% for this because he acquires businesses all the time.

JON STODDARD (14:58.674)
Yeah, did he did he buy his $100 million company to grow and or did he grow that from?

Camilo Parra (15:03.926)
No, he had... he grew up from scratch because he had been operating that one for like 12 years or so.

JON STODDARD (15:10.982)
Okay, yeah, so he had a great relationship with eBay to get these pallets somehow. Yeah Yeah

Camilo Parra (15:18.026)
Correct. Yeah. And then, you know, unfortunately, the deal, I couldn't make it work. I really, really couldn't make it work. But during that exchange, I got a lot of confidence because, you know, this guy that had purchased and sold multiple other businesses, run a hundred million dollar company, told me, huh, you sound like you know what you're talking about. You clearly know what you're talking about. And I was like, if I could buy, I would like...

And I remember telling him something like, yeah, this is not my first rodeo. And I was like, yeah, this is actually my first rodeo. Because I had never done this before. I had never spoken to anyone. Yeah. So I continue with the whole micro-quart thing, just chatting with people. And just like you mentioned, most businesses are very unviable. They're

JON STODDARD (15:54.666)
It's like, yeah, you can try it. Yeah, yeah.

Camilo Parra (16:09.714)
either super expensive or they're not even a business. There's really nothing to cash flow there. But that also built my confidence. Yeah.

JON STODDARD (16:16.146)
Yeah, yeah, there's not a real business. Let me ask you about the capital raising. You go, okay, I gotta go raise $3 million. So what did you do? I mean, do you know how to raise capital? I mean, I'm not asking a dumb question because raising capital is hard. So what did you do? What did you experience?

Camilo Parra (16:31.558)
Yeah, it is very hard. Yeah, so good thing is that I was in fraternity when I was in college and one of my buddies, he was the VP in Phi Gamma Delta, Fiji. And, really? And one of my brothers at the time, I've been out of college for about seven years now.

JON STODDARD (16:42.022)
Yeah, which one? Which fraternity?

JON STODDARD (16:48.298)
Yeah, we know the features. I know you and me are the features.

Camilo Parra (17:00.798)
And he ended up becoming the VP of a company, one of the largest lending companies in the US. So I just texted him, like, hey, dude, I have this deal on my pipeline. What are the chances of me getting approved from SBA loan on this? And we tried, we really, really tried, but it all came down to, he told me, like, dude, I love you, but you just don't look good on paper. Like, you don't have any savings.

Like you're trying to acquire a logistics company. I understand that you have a ton of experience in e-commerce, but if you're positioned as a logistics company, you don't have experience running a logistics business. It just, it doesn't look good for anyone to give you $6 million just like that.

JON STODDARD (17:48.026)
Yeah, yeah. So it was your, let's say SBA just determined it was too much of a risk with your balance sheet and lack of experience in this specific industry, even though it's e-commerce. Yeah. How much? So when this guy, let me go back to that. So when this guy sold these pallets, did, was he selling them on Amazon? Or was he selling back on eBay? Or what was he doing? Where was he making money?

Camilo Parra (17:59.81)
Correct, yeah. Exactly, yeah.

Camilo Parra (18:12.822)
Yeah, he will repost them back on eBay because eBay wouldn't be able to post them. So they will just offload the trucks to him. He will just get. Yeah.

JON STODDARD (18:18.591)
So he sold it off and then goes off and then... So what happened to that? Did he sell it off to somebody else?

Camilo Parra (18:25.77)
I have no idea, because it's been two years since then, I have no idea. But I do know that the listing is not on my require anymore.

JON STODDARD (18:33.938)
Yeah, oh, interesting. I want to keep you back. So let's go back to your story here. Then you that was kind of getting hit in the wall, spending a lot of time running yourself right into a brick wall and not get anywhere. And then you did what?

Camilo Parra (18:49.402)
And then I had the idea that, you know, I deal with a bunch of business owners all the time at the agency. And there was this one client that would just keep crushing it. Like the money just printed money. Like that is...

JON STODDARD (19:03.754)
So every time you put a dollar in, he'd get like $5 back. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (19:08.058)
Minimum, minimum. And so that was that, you know, in the marketing advertising space, there's the concept of channel demand, like outsized demand. And that was that company. There was just so much demand for those products. The scaling of that company was relatively easy. It was online courses.

JON STODDARD (19:32.278)
what kind of good luck to what products was it?

JON STODDARD (19:37.514)
Oh my god, really? Yeah. What kind of courses sell like that? What kind of courses sell so great?

Camilo Parra (19:39.462)
Yeah, in a very niche space that...

Camilo Parra (19:46.018)
Those are the things that because of NDAs and paperwork, I can add this close. Yeah. And you'll know, you'll know exactly why. But it was a tremendous company. And the year after year after year just kept growing. Like when we got a hold of that company, when they became a client, they had made 700 grand the first year. And that was like, not even trying.

JON STODDARD (19:49.054)
You're under an NDA still. Okay, all right. Thank you.

JON STODDARD (20:10.986)
First year, zero to 700 grand. OK, so that's actually in the course business, that's a home run.

Camilo Parra (20:14.35)
Correct, correct. That's how much demand there was.

Yeah, exactly. 100%. So then we come in the second year, I think we landed at 3 million. And then the year after that, I think we landed at...

JON STODDARD (20:30.783)
How much did you have to spend or how much did he spend to get to that three million?

Camilo Parra (20:36.291)
Not that much, not that much. No, it was.

JON STODDARD (20:37.654)
Stop.

What would you say? It's like I spent a dollar and I turned it into three million. That's three X from the 700 to two.

Camilo Parra (20:48.811)
If we, cause that's the thing. He was outstanding at actually running the company, like understanding how do I get eyeballs on my products. So the SEO, you know, the organic traffic, when someone puts on Google, he had a ton of that, he would release a bunch of blog posts that will rank very high on Google. So 50% of all sales would just come.

automatically like every single month we'll just

JON STODDARD (21:16.554)
This guy you're mentioning, I don't know who it is, but he's done this before, hasn't he? He sounds like he's... Yeah. Oh, he hasn't!

Camilo Parra (21:23.562)
According to him, he has. But in terms like he owned multiple businesses, but online, true 100% online business, this was the first one. The thing is that we're in the marketing space, which is super saturated. When you go into a space in which there's no one really doing marketing, and you're the one that says the complete opposite thing that everyone expects you to say.

JON STODDARD (21:35.38)
Okay

Camilo Parra (21:50.13)
which attracts a lot of people, that is like that's a recipe for success. So that's basically just putting the premise here that it's like you going to the real estate market and then selling and assuming that there was no marketing done in the real estate market. It was that it was just the perfect storm at the perfect time with the perfect message, with the perfect product that just brewed this company that it was very simple.

JON STODDARD (22:19.756)
Would you say blue ocean kind of deal? Yeah

Camilo Parra (22:22.266)
Exactly. That was pure blue ocean. That was pure, pure, pure blue ocean. And, you know, if we're talking about like numbers, it was like the revenue, the monthly revenue, the percentage of ad spend will be like 10 to 20 percent.

JON STODDARD (22:41.278)
Wow. Normally it's what 30 to 40 percent right?

Camilo Parra (22:42.706)
Yeah. Normally, we've seen it up to 40, 50, 60, depending on the company, specifically in e-commerce. E-commerce is very expensive.

JON STODDARD (22:53.586)
Oh yeah, it's a course business so you know it has a great gross margin on it. Yeah, so the profit just went in the back bottom line. Right. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (22:58.331)
Exactly, exactly.

Correct, yep. Yeah, there were no hard goods, there were no shipping costs. I mean, there was the transaction fees on Stripe, but you know, that was as much.

JON STODDARD (23:09.734)
Yeah. So how did that proceed? You had this conversation with this, and you're doing wonders knocking out of the park on the guy. And what did you ask him?

Camilo Parra (23:21.362)
I asked him, hey, the question that they tell you to ask, ever thought about selling your business? Just like that. I was like, hey, have you ever thought about selling your business? And he sat on it and coincidentally, it's like sometimes, and I've heard this lately, which is really good and I want to say this because I've really said that I've heard this from very successful people a lot lately, which I can attest that it was the same thing to me.

Luckily, out of pure luck, he had a life event happening that said, Hey, you know, I've been thinking about selling the business. I want to do it. Can you guys help? I'm like, sure.

JON STODDARD (24:03.626)
You mean like a life event, divorce or death or something or moving? Yeah, yeah.

Camilo Parra (24:07.778)
Yes, something along those lines. Yeah. And it was a live event and he said, yeah, I'm motivated. I'm like, sure. So I sent him a very long email with everything that I had learned that like, here's the M&A process. Because, you know, in Epic, we learned how to acquire companies. But doing the opposite is selling a company. So it's just like, hey, you know, I have a ton of knowledge on how to do this. I just need to...

think in reverse and then we'll end up in the same outcome. And the same thing, like the confidence and the knowledge, like I could walk in into any room and everyone will think like, hey, I have at least 10 acquisitions under my belt. And, you know, that was not necessarily the case. Yeah, because that's the thing, something that I've always believed in, which is like one of my mantras.

JON STODDARD (24:53.663)
Yeah.

But you didn't. You kind of like fake it till you make it kind of thing.

Camilo Parra (25:06.21)
There's nothing in the world that you cannot do with an absurd amount of confidence. So I've always taken action based on that belief. So if I believe that I'm willing to help someone and I believe in myself that I can execute and do good for everyone, then by default, at some point, I'm going to hit a lucky stride and, you know, I'm going to get outsized returns.

JON STODDARD (25:27.187)
Yeah, that's gonna make a great YouTube short, Camille. It's like, there's nothing you can't do without an absurd amount of confidence. I love that, yeah, yeah.

Camilo Parra (25:32.221)
Yeah.

Camilo Parra (25:36.91)
Correct. Correct. And that's basically what happened. I had the knowledge, he had the business, he was the number one piece always, do you have a motivated seller? This was a motivated seller. So at that point, we started and, okay, what do I need to do? So he agreed for me to become his advisor.

JON STODDARD (25:49.781)
Yeah.

Camilo Parra (25:59.734)
How can I be the best advisor? Because you hear all of the myths in the industry. Brokers are very inefficient, or brokers only care about their fees. Brokers are just very inept, and they get in their own way. So I always had those things in mind that it was... And I knew it's not about me. Like it's never about me. And I'm doing this because I truly believe that I can help this company get sold. And so I will never put my needs above the fact that I...

Compromised with someone to help them exit their company at the highest valuation possible My goal was always I'm gonna sell this business for the highest value possible And I told this to a seller because over over time I had the chance because the business was doing so well To increase the value of the company multiple times and I will go back and I will say hey my only Reason the only reason why I want to do this

Two things, one, because I know we can, because I know what the profits are and I know what the multiple for a business like this goes. Two, because I took the business from eight million valuation to almost 30 million valuation and I don't. And two, my main motivation is because it's a lot cooler for me to say that I sold a company for eight figures than for me to say that I sold it for seven figures. So if you agree with that, if you're open to the idea of

potentially losing buyers because we're increasing the price and you're willing to stand behind me and I can every day, any day of the week, I can validate this price if you're okay with me doing that, then let's go. I promise you we're going to sell this company. Just have faith that we can do it.

JON STODDARD (27:48.702)
So you thought it was worth between 8 and 13 million. Is that what you told him?

Camilo Parra (27:52.462)
Uh, no, no, no. So we started when we started conversations, he said, Hey, I, I want to, I want to, I want six. If I can get six, I'll be happy. And I'll okay. We can a hundred percent do that. Then I listed it for six and I, you know, I asked for all the documentation, can you send me your balance sheet?

JON STODDARD (28:10.77)
Let me ask you a question before I get clear. Was this business dependent upon his personality type? Because a lot of courses are. It'd be difficult. No, it wouldn't be difficult to sell a Tony Robbins because he's got his image there. But if it was a smaller guy, nobody knows him, but it's all about what's inside this person's head, it's difficult to sell that course business.

Camilo Parra (28:33.962)
The thing is that at that point, there were more than 20 courses that had been released.

JON STODDARD (28:41.578)
He's done 20 courses in a short, like what, a year, two years? Or what was it? 20 courses in two years. So he's like, just make more offers.

Camilo Parra (28:47.183)
Two years, yeah, two years. Almost every...

Camilo Parra (28:53.73)
Exactly. Yeah, it wasn't one course that just went skyrocketed. Like it was just.

JON STODDARD (28:56.894)
He was like, and he kept pushing in, he was putting money behind it. He was just like, you know what? I'm gonna reasonable another, let's see if this one works. Let's go do another course. Yeah, yeah. That's your ascension program right there, man. Ha ha ha.

Camilo Parra (29:03.706)
Exactly, exactly. So at that point, you know, you can see.

Yeah, exactly. So at that point, he said that he wanted six. To answer your question, the dependability of the price in his image, for example. Since we were managing the marketing, we knew that we could have, and we had very strong arguments that is not dependent on his image, because the actual ad units don't include a picture of his face.

There's actually nothing that includes a picture of his face. It's only the voice. So, you know, it goes back to like, how persuasive can I be on the argument that, hey, if we're running ads with his face, if his face was shown in the video, if you could go to the website and see his face anywhere, then there's an argument to say that it's dependent on him. But it was the opposite. The images, they're having it.

JON STODDARD (30:02.802)
Yeah, did he intentionally do that?

Camilo Parra (30:05.89)
Um, I'm not sure. Uh, it is yes and no. I'm going to go with a yes and no. Uh, because one of the things is that he just, yeah, he, yeah, yeah. He just didn't want to be in front of the camera, right? He just didn't, he wanted to be very private about things. So it worked out at the end of the day.

JON STODDARD (30:14.186)
Well, you're half right.

JON STODDARD (30:19.967)
Yeah.

JON STODDARD (30:27.039)
Yeah, we're looking at the post-mortem. Yes, that worked out.

Camilo Parra (30:31.378)
Yeah. So when we started, you know, he said, Hey, I want six. Then when he said that, you know, about a week or two later, he sent me, you know, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statements. I looked at everything. I did research in the market. I'm like, huh, we've been, we've been really crushing it. Let's list it for 8.1. So that was, that was the price that we went to market with. We got...

JON STODDARD (30:56.274)
Yeah, when you say listed and go to market, where are you going to market at? Are you good to put this by sell and what?

Camilo Parra (31:01.614)
Uh... We went back full circle. I went back to MicroKai.

JON STODDARD (31:08.362)
Oh, you watch the back of a cork wire, that's cool. Okay. Now they don't take any commissions on that, right? You just post, you could post for free and something or what was, yeah.

Camilo Parra (31:11.229)
Yeah, yeah, so listen to there.

Camilo Parra (31:21.03)
Right now, right now there's no commissions. I know pretty soon they're going to start charging. I think the number they're going to throw around is like 4% commission.

JON STODDARD (31:29.426)
Yeah, he hired some broker dealers. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (31:33.706)
Yeah, so we listed it, we got a ton of attention. And you know how small the world is, because we got a ton of attention. But based on the nature of the business, I remember how I worked on a very similar account. So I had another agency, like three, four years ago, and I sold my portion of that agency. And while I was at that agency, I serviced a...

company in almost the same exact space, almost the same exact space. And I have really great relationships with my clients. So when I realized, okay, we're going to sell this for 8.1, I remember that when I was at the other agency, the account that we had that was in a very similar space, we stopped servicing it because the company got acquired.

So I pulled out my phone and like, hey, I call my old client. Like, hey, how's it going? Do you remember how we work together? So and so. I remember that your company got acquired and we were working together. I have a company in a very parallel space like that I'm very confident that whoever acquired you can also acquire this one. Would you be willing to make an introduction?

And he said, yeah, just send me information. Can I get some sort of commission for making the introduction? I'm like, absolutely. That's completely. We negotiated 1% of the deal.

JON STODDARD (33:05.406)
Yeah, what did you offer? Yeah.

JON STODDARD (33:11.594)
Okay. Bye.

Camilo Parra (33:13.83)
So he made the introduction. We started having these conversations and.

JON STODDARD (33:20.287)
Before you go on this, let me ask you about, it's still on microacquire. You're fielding these calls. Are you getting any qualified buyers? Are you getting, hey, I'll give you no money down kind of deals? Or what kind of calls were you getting from microacquire interests?

Camilo Parra (33:39.29)
So the process that I created, remember this is my first time doing this, but I've also done a ton of lead generation in the past. So I knew that, yeah, exactly. So my process was, okay, I'm gonna put a very marketing driven description on Microquire. Like the headline, it was extremely important for me. So I put something along the lines of,

JON STODDARD (33:48.27)
Yeah, you put them through a qualification process, right? Yeah, yeah.

Camilo Parra (34:05.61)
like something it was a percentage like it was something business for sale in the education space with x percentage margins and I knew I was gonna get a ton of hits it was like the perfect like if you're looking for a cash flow in business online online online education

JON STODDARD (34:22.322)
I'm sorry, what industry? I missed that. I gotta go back and record. What industry did you say?

JON STODDARD (34:29.886)
Oh, okay, online edge gets here.

Camilo Parra (34:31.97)
Yeah, so like I knew it was just like, I just need a real demand. I just need a real demand. And the way that I set up the microquire thing is that they had to apply for me to be able to send them any sort of information. So I was able to actually vet them and go on their profiles and see, okay, do they have money or do I have money? Because I need to sell this and I'm not going to take any epic people from this, unfortunately, because I'm pretty sure that my client is not going to want that.

JON STODDARD (35:01.566)
You can buy a company with Epic, but you don't sell a company with Epic.

Camilo Parra (35:06.498)
Yeah, exactly. So, so once I saw a couple qualified people, I will approve them. I will send them a link. I had a script that was something like, hey, thank you for your interest. If you want to get access to this, just click here to sign the NDA. They will sign the NDA. I will send them a professional presentation that I designed. It was like a 14 page presentation. I Google Doc with with everything at Slash show that I designed.

I will send it to them. On the last slide, if you're interested in continuing the conversation, click here to book a call with me. I will get calls, book on my calendar, I will vet them, we'll have a conversation, and if I felt good about them, then I will loop in the seller on the conversation, and that's when I will start doing the introductions and whatnot. So I did.

JON STODDARD (36:00.89)
Yeah, so what kind of question do you ask them to qualify to see if they had four million bucks at least 50% down? How did you say how did you find that out?

Camilo Parra (36:11.364)
Um, it was mainly on their LinkedIn profiles. Like I wanted to know who, who am I, who am I speaking with? Um, so we'll go on their LinkedIn profiles. I got a, I got a, most of the hits that I got were from, um, were from a P firm from private equity firms or just a fund.

JON STODDARD (36:31.292)
Oh, is that right?

Camilo Parra (36:32.974)
Yeah, or just funds that had just gotten started and they're looking for investments. Like there was this one guy that I spoke to, like, yeah, we just raised $30 million and we're looking companies to acquire and this seems to be. No, no, I've heard of that name. I've heard that name, but.

JON STODDARD (36:45.174)
Is that Michael Gurnow?

No, no, yeah. Yeah, he just raised $30 million for a fund.

Camilo Parra (36:55.394)
Yeah, so yeah actually I was quite surprised and I was quite pleasantly surprised because you know I'm a micro choir so I didn't really know what to expect in micro choir but there's there's there's some heavy hitters in there.

JON STODDARD (37:06.858)
So PE funds are kind of hanging out, trolling over on MicroQuire, yeah.

Camilo Parra (37:13.699)
Yeah, they are and they in my experience and of everyone that I spoke to, they are the best buyers, absolutely the best buyers. They have the cash, rarely available, they don't need to go get financing. They've done this multiple times. So you're also speaking to someone that's very sophisticated.

but they also know how to negotiate and they respect and understand when you negotiate back and you push with them and then you hit them with the, with the famous phrase, have you heard of the law of pricing terms and things like that? And it, it, we ended up selling the company to a P firm on outstanding terms. It was, it was a very, very, very happy ending, for everyone involved.

JON STODDARD (38:01.126)
Yeah, so at any point did you list the price where they anchored on that price?

Camilo Parra (38:08.494)
I don't remember that I don't remember if I actually list. Yeah, I believe we had to have listed on Microquire. But remember the guy that I told you that it was my friend I called the old client? They, they, they're a P firm and something that I learned about P firms. If you can bring them, you know, it's not about the company, it's about the deal. If you can structure a really, really good deal.

JON STODDARD (38:20.05)
Yeah, you're gonna give me, yeah, you can like, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

Camilo Parra (38:38.09)
You can almost ask for anything and everything as long as it's a good deal and you understand what they want. I was, you know, I'm bringing them a highly profitable business that just brings cash in their space. I knew I had a lot of wiggle room. And I also, I got a really good relationship with the M&A manager. Like we just completely, completely hit it off. So that's something that even the lawyers mentioned like during one of the calls. They're like, you?

have a really good relationship. They really, really like you. And I'm like, yeah, we know how to negotiate very well. It was, it's crazy to say, because this is something also that I learned is a lot easier. It's so much easier to sell a company for $10 million that it is to sell a company for a million dollars. For a million dollars is pulling T, the pull of buyers is completely, completely different. For 10 million and up, it is, it is simple. It is very simple.

JON STODDARD (39:36.926)
Yeah, capital is actually cheaper at lower middle market. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (39:41.386)
Yeah, exactly. So we actually, you know, we had such great relationship and they were aware that we had taken the price from 8 to almost 13 million and they, you know, the whole thing that I remember like a phrase that they told me, if you can show me that the numbers are what you say you are in

JON STODDARD (39:43.156)
Yeah.

Camilo Parra (40:10.11)
It's a done deal. I'm like, dude, if he, he's the income statement, he's the balance sheet. Yeah. Yeah, we'll buy that at the as price.

JON STODDARD (40:13.902)
Is it done, you know, to what? We'll buy it or we'll buy it at the 13th of it. Yeah.

JON STODDARD (40:22.21)
Okay Let me a lot of private equity firms are some are pretty small and they're not taking over management of the business who's who's coming over To run the company is he coming with it the seller or you and your team? Coming over with the company, too

Camilo Parra (40:40.138)
Yeah, we still kept our contract. The seller is going to stay running the company for 12 months. And after that, yeah, because it's a fairly large P firm. They had teams on top of teams on top of teams. So they only need the transitional period.

JON STODDARD (40:46.282)
Thomas, yeah.

JON STODDARD (40:58.066)
Okay, so you you prove that it is making what you say it's making and then what? Well, what happened here with this, you know phone call or email? Okay, we'll give you that price. What did that look?

Camilo Parra (41:11.794)
Yeah, it was just basically that. And like, hey, this is what's happening. Because the things that when we listed for 8 million, that was around August. Right? And then we're talking to buyers, talking to a lot of people, due diligence process, getting LOIs, then Black Friday happened, Christmas happened. And we...

crushed it. We absolutely crushed it. So that's when I went, hey, I asked the seller, like, hey, can you send me the latest financials for the company? Because that was back in August. We're still in negotiation with multiple parties, but I know we mega crushed it for Black Friday. So I have a very strong feeling that we should actually increase the price.

And yeah, he sent me the finances and we had, you know, because it was almost everything is profit in the business, you know, because it's online, online course. Yeah, exactly. So we were able to.

JON STODDARD (42:13.906)
Yeah, it should be 90% profit plus. Yeah.

Well, hold on, let me rewind just a tiny bit. What did you ask for an M&A advisor? What would you ask for a commission, like 10% or? 10%, okay. Cool.

Camilo Parra (42:27.266)
10%. Yeah. And that's the thing. Now, at this point, we've done this multiple times with other companies. And we always get pushback from the seller, which is completely understandable. You're always trying to get the best deal possible. The thing about Alceron, our approach to M&A, is that we can almost guarantee that the company is going to sell.

for way more than they want it.

JON STODDARD (42:56.798)
Well, when you say he got pushed back from the seller, was he originally asked for six million. Now he's pushing back like, oh, let's see where we can get more.

Camilo Parra (43:05.85)
No, no, no, in terms of the commission, of the sales commission.

JON STODDARD (43:10.195)
Oh, okay, okay.

Camilo Parra (43:12.126)
Yeah, because I don't know. And you know, I've dealt with this all my whole life, even this company that we're trying to that we're in the process of selling 25 million. Like when you tell them that you're going to that they're going to have to pay us two and a half million, they're like, what do you mean that I have to pay you two and a half million for, you know, a couple months worth of work? Because they don't see it that way. They don't see the value. They don't understand the process because they've never done this before.

And the thing is that we've been very lucky that we are relationship driven. So we have very strong ties with people that have a lot of money, not at this stage in the space that we can.

JON STODDARD (43:56.786)
It's better to have buyers ready to go with money, isn't it? And sell a product, through those buyers with money. So much better. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (44:00.497)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So at that point, it's like, and usually by the time we get them, they had already dealt with a broker, they had already tried marketplaces and they were very unsuccessful, or they got very low ball offers. So here we come actually raising the price because we're the ones that most of the time set the price for sale. Here the ones that are raising the price, doing all of the negotiation, asking the seller, what is it that you want? This is what a potential

If this looks okay to you, we can get you this. We just need to understand what is that you want. We can get you most things. We cannot get you everything, but we can get you at least 80% of the things that you want.

JON STODDARD (44:47.098)
Yeah, so let's go back to these like so you crushed it in December. You got the new financial report cards due to the private equity group and what? I mean, how long did it take them to get back and say, okay, we'll do the deal.

Camilo Parra (45:02.266)
24 hours? Yeah, because that's the yeah, 24 hours. It was like, if you can show me, I'm like, here's all the documents had the data room ready. He's like, here's everything that you need to know. And yeah, we jumped on a couple of calls. And within within 60 days, we had closed the deal.

JON STODDARD (45:03.802)
24 hours. Well, that's what happens when you crush it, right?

JON STODDARD (45:24.43)
60 days close the deal and that was they had an asset purchase agreement in place and it didn't take very long for his attorneys to go over it and what was it look like hey we'll give you 50% down or was it 60% you need to keep 30% because it's a private equity.

Camilo Parra (45:29.922)
Correct.

Camilo Parra (45:43.594)
Actually, we had negotiated with other parties during this time, right? And they were aware that we had negotiated with other parties. Since I knew what the seller was willing to do, I had a lot more power for negotiation. And I knew that one of the offers that we had gotten one of the LOIs, it was that he was going to keep a percentage of...

equity in the company. So, okay, if he's willing to do that, I'm talking to a PE firm, will they be open for instead of a percentage of equity on the company, a percentage of equity in the PE firm, which is more powerful than the company itself. And they agree to that.

JON STODDARD (46:32.798)
Yeah, they usually do that in the negotiations. It's a rollover. And they'll tell you, this is the Adam Coffee that I, he says like, you know, we can go buy an HVAC firm for $25 million and we only buy 60% of it. But when we sell the portfolio to a larger private equity firm, that original seller will make more on the second bite of the apple than he will the first one. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (46:36.813)
Mm-hmm.

Camilo Parra (46:56.586)
Yeah, correct. And that was the motivation and that was the way that we presented to him like, hey, we can actually get you a second exit.

JON STODDARD (47:05.55)
He's probably going to make more.

Camilo Parra (47:07.642)
Oh, a hundred percent like the company is on an outstanding financial position. Like we knew, we also knew, you know, because I'm learning a lot of things. The quality of the buyer matters more than the actual purchase price or the terms of the deal. Why do I say that? Because then I'm pretty sure that people are thinking, well, if they have the money, doesn't that make them a qualified buyer?

Because if they drive the business to the ground, then no one gets a second exit. And yes, we could have walked away with the money, but that's ultimately every owner that has a successful company. They want their company to be as successful in the future as possible without them. So with this buyer, we knew that, okay, yeah, we took it to 6 million. They're probably going to take it to like 20, 30, 50 million easily in a couple of years. So, okay, this is, this is.

JON STODDARD (48:04.946)
Yeah, and you're still under contract to do that, right? Yeah.

Camilo Parra (48:08.514)
Yeah, they kept our contract. So yeah, besides the payment, we still have the contract at the agency to service them.

JON STODDARD (48:16.602)
Yeah, so how long did it take to get your tech deposited from the private equity firm and your cut?

Camilo Parra (48:25.914)
The moment that the deal closed, like that we jumped on the call with all the lawyers, we signed the contracts and everything, I think that that happened at 9.30 a.m. By 7 p.m. I was a millionaire.

JON STODDARD (48:40.083)
Ah.

JON STODDARD (48:44.348)
So was this with your partners too or was this separate from your partners in the selling?

Camilo Parra (48:48.682)
Um, they also got cuts. They also got cuts, but since I was the one leading this, I got the majority of the pack.

JON STODDARD (48:51.262)
Yeah, okay.

JON STODDARD (48:55.846)
Yeah, so what did you think? I mean, what did you feel when you got that deposit?

Camilo Parra (49:01.77)
It's immense happiness at the moment. Not necessarily, I mean, the deposit helps, but in the fact that, because mind you, my partners actually didn't believe that we could do this. They actually didn't believe that we could sell a company. And it was the thing that like, in my mind, it's like I got rewarded for having an absurd amount of belief in myself. So it was... Yes, exactly.

JON STODDARD (49:26.454)
Absurd, absurd amount of confidence. Yeah.

Camilo Parra (49:31.55)
So it was one of those things that I was happy about it, about the accomplishment. The next day, or the, yeah, the next day, like once I woke up, like life felt a little different. There was a breath of fresh air. And yeah, by the second day I was like, shit, now I have to figure out what I'm gonna do with this money.

JON STODDARD (49:54.258)
Yeah, yeah. So what did that teach you? I mean, did you just say, you know what, we're changing our business plan. We're not a marketing agency anymore. We're a marketing agency that goes by our clients or helps them sell our clients to private equity firms.

Camilo Parra (50:09.862)
Yeah, because right now we call them a full life cycle agency that we can help you grow as much as you want. And once you're ready to sell, we can also help you sell. So we've been also helping multiple clients do that ever since.

JON STODDARD (50:28.518)
Yeah, yeah. Do you ever think about taking a bigger equity position in the sellers versus just a broker commission?

Camilo Parra (50:38.246)
That's the thing. It's such an interesting thing to me that technically, me taking a 10% equity in the company is the same thing as taking a 10% sale in the company. It's a lot easier for me to ask for a 10% commission on the sale than to ask for 10% equity. The

Camilo Parra (51:06.91)
Very, very, very different. Because we've tried it in the life of the agency. We've gone to multiple people before this whole epic thing. It was like, okay, we'll discount our rates. And the difference is gonna go into buying equity into the company. We've always got a nose. We've always, always got a nose. But when we go and say, hey, we'll sell your company for a 10% commission, okay. I mean, we may get pushback, a lot, that sounds like a lot, and so on and so forth.

But we can usually overcome those things.

JON STODDARD (51:38.562)
Yeah, you haven't earned it yet In their eyes, I mean it better be if you make this transaction happen You'll get a piece of the because of the transaction you created. Yeah Yeah, have you ever seen that movie air? with about Michael Jordan, I mean It's it's pretty good because you know back when he signed his contract with Nike it was unheard of for any celebrity to take a portion a percentage of the revenues

Camilo Parra (51:55.613)
No.

JON STODDARD (52:09.279)
But now that throws off, according to this movie, $400 million to Michael Jordan every year.

Camilo Parra (52:17.022)
I did see a clip the other day somewhere on TikTok that it was a famous NBA player that said, "'Hey, Nike offered me a deal "'and they're gonna pay me X.'" But Michael Jordan told me, "'Hey dude, only take half the cash "'and ask for the other half or ask for a percentage "'in equating the company.'" And the guy said like, that made me 10 X what I would have gotten back then.

JON STODDARD (52:34.195)
Yeah.

JON STODDARD (52:40.282)
The reason I'm asking you that is because you took them from 700,000 to six million dollars in revenue And it was only because of you the celebrity were able to do that now It's his product, but the Mike the Bulls were there they were already there the team was there But it was a perennial loser until Michael Jordan came along He's the one that took him to six championships and then Nike and what he did. So it was it. It's a good movie

Camilo Parra (53:05.436)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was, you know, it's a gofer, gofer.

JON STODDARD (53:09.909)
So what's the plan now? Are you just cultivating these types of clients to be able to sell them? And are you finding them or do you think this is kind of a one-off? Like, wow, this is once in a lifetime deal or do you think it's gonna come around every month or couple times a year?

Camilo Parra (53:29.463)
Every software, because something else that we learned about PE firms, there are certain PE firms that they acquire companies in multiple industries. There are PE firms that we talked to that acquire firms in five different industries. And if we know what those targets are, then that's five times the opportunities to go come back to them and then just sell them a company.

JON STODDARD (53:50.63)
Yeah, so this is interesting because I have a friend in Canada that does this. He has, he works with about 20 private equity firms, ask him what's on their menu, and then goes out and finds those companies. You know, he'll ask him, he'll start that relationship, but then he'll also get himself in front of them like writing content in their trade publications to stay on top of mine. And when they're ready to go, he goes, yeah, I got a buyer for you.

He's a private equity buyer and it happens in 60 to 90 days. Top price.

Camilo Parra (54:23.614)
Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, that is brilliant. Yeah, so that's the next plan that we have. Like now that we have this like taste of heaven, so to say. Now we know we can come back. It's going to be easier. We know how they negotiate. They know how we negotiate. We know how the structure deals. So it's going to it becomes easier as we go. The number one thing, the number one issue has always been the seller. And you probably, you know, you

probably aware of this as well. 90% of the chances of why a company doesn't sell is probably because of a very unreasonable seller. So that's the hurdle that we always have to overcome. If we're able to overcome that hurdle then it's smooth sailing almost but it is.

JON STODDARD (55:10.921)
Yeah, well you got one under your one in your pocket now pretty pretty big successful deal, right? Camille, thanks so much for sharing your story on this. This is brilliant. Love it

Camilo Parra (55:16.265)
Yeah.

Camilo Parra (55:20.894)
Yeah, thank you, John. Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.