1339: eBusiness Institute: Escape the 9-to-5 with Online Business Deals with Website Investor and Educator Matt Raad

Robert Plank 0:01 Are you someone who is looking for that way to perhaps build a multi million dollar portfolio? Have you thought or maybe haven't even heard of this idea of acquiring and buying and selling websites? Well, if you have, or if you haven't, let's dive in. Let's talk about this path to profits, this way that you can create the business that is maybe not putting it so hard on yourself, right? And the guy who's here to help us out is Mr. Matt Raad from E Business institute.com.au, he's all about this online income and assets and creating this investor portfolio where you can buy, build, renovate, sell websites for cash flow and build your empire. This is exciting stuff. This is something where we can dive in and duplicate his success and find out the secret. So Mr. Matt, glad to be speaking with you.

Matt Raad 0:54 Thanks for having me on Robert. It's awesome to be here.

Robert Plank 0:57 Yes, all the way from Australia and from America, and so what do they leave out in that bio? What just has you super focused and passionate and excited these days,

Matt Raad 1:08 basically teaching people how to do good due diligence and valuation of online businesses, because there's just so much opportunity out there at the moment for that, especially if you know, with the volatility in the world, it's a great time to be owning assets. I think it's really important in this day and age to have alternative digital assets as a backup. We see it as almost security, having digital skills and digital assets just people can do it part time as a side hustle. So that's the sort of thing we're really excited about sharing with people how we do that.

Robert Plank 1:41 Well, very cool. I'm excited to jump into that. And my understanding is that you come from the brick and mortar world where you you bought and sell businesses, and then we apply it digitally, and it the the landscape seems almost backwards, doesn't it? Because you figure, if you're looking to do, say, commercial real estate, right? It would it make a lot more sense to find a building that's already existing, it's already standing, and you buy it and you flip it, or you buy it and you rent it out. But if someone said, hey, my very first deal in commercial real estate, I want to find a blank spot of land and I want to build the building. And even better, I want to build it myself. And even better than that, I've never even built a building before, and let me do it. But then it seems like people apply that same logic to online marketing, to internet business. They they want to create a business, but they do something new and unimproved, and they want to do it all themselves, and it seems ridiculous. And for some reason, people are afraid of jumping in and kind of doing this more mature, grown up approach, which is the way that it seems you do it right, website, investing, finding something that's already working, buying it and growing it. And so what is the premise here? What is this journey like?

Matt Raad 1:41 Well, like you said that the beauty of buying an existing online business, because I'm presuming a lot of your listeners are trying to build one themselves, and there's nothing wrong with that. We we do both. We build websites. But the beauty of buying websites is that you are getting instant cash flow, or you're getting someone else's hard work. As you know, takes a while to build up a business, and so not only you're getting an existing business that's operating, but here's the big thing that we found, you can actually buy yourself bargains. So people will sometimes panic sell, or they will sell below value. And that is the gold as we know, you know, Warren Buffett world's most famous investor. That's how he makes his money. You know, he buys When, when, you know, at bargain prices. It's all about the buy price. So I think that's one of the reasons why we've been so successful with this. We started back in 2008 we bought our first website back then. And if you remember, that was the Great Recession, and it was an absolutely fantastic time to buy. So in some ways, I guess we got a little bit lucky. You know, we were able to buy perfectly good assets at well below market value. And that also, Robert, what we found with online businesses compared to bricks and mortars, a lot less risk. We're not buying e commerce websites. We don't buy any websites with physical inventory attached, because that was our background with bricks and mortar businesses. We used to buy and sell wholesale import businesses, and we don't recommend that for beginners, because it's just complex and you're tying up all your money in physical inventory in a warehouse somewhere. So that's the other big advantage for buying it's a lot lower risk. Not that I'm giving financial advice here. This is just my experience. You know, 30 years, that's all I've done, is bought and sold businesses for 30 odd years. That's what we found. Online businesses were a lot easier and a lot quicker than traditional bricks and mortar businesses,

Robert Plank 4:43 I like it, and so a lot less headaches and a lot more of the old school problems. And I like what you're saying here, saying that, well, it's it's really easy to just discount the entire idea. But if someone like Matt were to tell you, Well, what if there was just the right website for you, and the timing was good and the pricing was. Good and it was a bargain. You'd figure out a way, right? If Mark Zuckerberg came to you and said, Hey, would you like to buy Facebook for a million dollars, even if you didn't have a million you find the finance and you'd make it work. So these kind of great deals exist, and what you so you say that you don't like to do the brick and mortar, and you don't like to do where there is physical inventory, because that's even like it's next door neighbor. But as far as what you do, like, what is the criteria for yourself and others, as far as what makes a good candidate for buying a business?

Matt Raad 5:33 Yeah, really good question. Our classics are information style sites. So like what you teach. So the great thing for your listeners, presumably they should be listening to your podcast and learning. Membership sites are very, very powerful, and they take a bit more to set up. So that's why we actually love buying existing membership sites. So that's kind of our big one. The other big ones are the classic ad sense or advertising sites, but these days, they're more morphing into because print media is dying, we're finding there's a lot more opportunities, even with small websites, to get direct advertisers on there who might spend, you know, $1,000 a month being a sponsor of your website or having an ad on there. So traditional advertising websites and also affiliate sites are still good, even in this day and age of AI, there's lots. There's still plenty of money to be made there. So they're kind of our three go to so none of those involve physical industries. Always selling is leads, literally just clicks. And so, you know, they are very capital light. Once you've purchased them, they do take work to keep up and running. But the great thing is, for someone learning this, to me, the way I view it is, it's just a knowledge risk these days. It's about most people don't have a lot of digital skills. Where we come in, we teach them how to do the due diligence and and the valuation. And then what you teach and what people can learn off your podcast is the different ways to monetize that individual knowledge of how to, you know, maybe make money off a membership site or, you know, off AdSense sites or affiliate sites. But they're our preferred three, three models. The other one that we have, we have seen take off, particularly anyone that's good at sales. There's two other models that do work really well. So once you've got these skill sets the world your oyster. One is lead gen for local businesses. It's incredibly lucrative once you know what you're doing. It works really well in America. We we learned that with American businesses, even though we're here in Australia. So you can be location independent wherever you want. So just figuring out how to build sites drive leads for local businesses, and very closely aligned to that is actually building websites for local businesses. We have a lot of success stories in our community, of people quitting their jobs in under six months, under 12 months, just doing that. And it's a great at you know what? It's a great way to earn while you'll learn this skill, and again, low risk that there's not much startup costs for that. So we're all about making sure people are because we made lots of mistakes. Robert in our early days, that's a whole nother story, but you know, we got it completely wrong when we first got into business. We bought a business that was way overvalued. The due diligence was done very poorly, because we didn't know what we're doing, and we trusted the accountant, and so ever since then, we've been on a journey to dial in how to do due diligence and value businesses properly.

Robert Plank 8:28 Well, very nice. And I like your approach to this, because you're saying that, well, if the math makes sense, then that removes the risk that maybe you build into it emotionally, right? Because there are these fears that will if I buy the membership site, then the videos or the information might go out of date. And I imagine there's a plan for that. And if there's that affiliate or that AdSense site, then the there's a worry that the traffic will dry up. And well, I'm sure there's a plan for that too. And what you're saying about these types of the local websites and the lead gen websites? I found that to be very exciting, because even in this day and age, right? You think, you think that all the websites are made, but then, if I as a homeowner and looking for a contractor of some sort, even in town, there's only a handful of contractors, of like sprinkler repair, HVAC, etc, where they have an actual built out website that's more than one page. And even then, there's only a few where if I contact them, is there a form? Do they call me back the same day? And so, like there's, there seems to be just so much low hanging fruit. Where, if someone knew what they were doing, which they they can when they get trained by you, then they can really just find all these untapped resources, and I really SMOKE the competition. So we've mentioned these keywords already, that there's this idea of due diligence and valuation, and I imagine that that sounds like some scary accounting term, and it can be, if you try to approach it yourself, right, without a guide, a Sherpa, such as yourself. Who's already done it. And so these terms, due diligence, valuation, you feel like you know what they mean, but in the actual technical sense, what are those?

Matt Raad 10:09 We're just it's actually reasonably easy. Once you know what you're doing, it's due diligence is about making sure, okay, the facts stack up, and are there any red flags in the business? And by the way, in all my so I've been buying and selling businesses for 30 years, and every single business I've looked at, there's always skeletons in the closet. There always is, and that's what due diligence uncovers. And then due diligence, particularly with online business, here's the cool thing about online businesses, due diligence is about discovering, not so much, the red flag. We need to check that, and we need to make sure that what the seller is saying is true, but it's more understanding the opportunities for you and what, and therefore, what's the value of that website to you? How much are you prepared to pay for it, and what can you do with it when you take it over? So is there a renovation opportunity? Because something you just said, you know, in recent years, it has been tricky with some content sites and things with the Google updates and AI, but now there's new opportunities opening up, and if you understand those, then that's what you're looking at in your due diligence lens, and that's also how we determine the value of it. So someone might be selling a website for, you know, $50,000 or $10,000 and you might realize, Hey, I've had experience in that niche. I've already made, you know, a significant six figure income there that's really cheap. If I put that into my portfolio, I can really ramp that up. And so to me, that website might be worth a lot more money to in my hands than it would to a total beginner. So that's why you also see these variations in prices of website assets being sold. And it's very, very powerful. So it's not all whilst I said at the beginning of the interview, it's the big opportunity is when we can buy bargain websites. It's not always about getting bargains. It's about understanding what's the opportunity. Because the golden spot, and what we've been obsessed with, which we've loved since day one is those multi million dollar exits, and that means buying small and exiting to a big corporate. And big corporates love online businesses. If you're listening to this and you have recurring revenues in your online business, you are laughing. That's that's what you want to zero in on. That's kind of the, the holy grail of online businesses, and that's what the big corporate, although not big corporate, big cashed up buyers who are spending, you know, millions to 10s of millions on these websites. That's why they're buying them up. They want those recurring revenues. So that all goes hand in hand with understanding valuation as well and the assets that you're sitting on. There's a very exciting space. And, you know, we've got stories in our community where people have bought little website, I think, and Nathan Alexa, they're laptop lifestylers. They're actually coaches for us now as well. But they bought a gardening site of a guy here in Australia, Robert that they were literally outreaching, looking for backlink opportunities. And they noticed this guy hadn't touched his website for five years. They just said, Oh, would you be interested in selling? And he said, Sure, I was just going to close it down. Going to close it down. And it was about Native Australian gardens. They got it for $400 that thing now makes four grand a month, net, nice. You know that a bargain buying, and that will then they own another gardening site, so that forms part of their portfolio that they could potentially sell out to a more commercial or bigger player down the track. But hey, four grand a month net is, by the way, they own multiple sites like that. That's how they make their living. But that's the sort of thing that we think is really powerful when you're doing due diligence, seeing the diamonds in the rough that other people are missing. That's what that's what the power of this knowledge is.

Robert Plank 13:41 Yes, that is amazing. And you think about, I mean, so many metaphors pop into my head as you're talking, right? You think about, like, say, there's like, a great neighborhood, and there's that one run down house, and it's, it has a good foundation, but it's a little rundown. It's painted. And you look at it, and you say, they can get a new paint job, get fixed up, and then someone else will love living there. And the past buyer was just about to bulldoze it, demolish it. And so everybody wins. And so it's it's great to think about just that. There's these businesses that maybe are not kept up the way that they could be. And you get in there and you do a little reorganizing, you find that the diamonds in the rough, you fix up the list, the accounting, the website, the SEO, the traffic, you kind of do all this digital marketing, and then you find a bigger fish who really wants a nice and tidy, well oiled machine. And that is just man. That is such a path to success. And in these last few minutes, here of our conversation here, Matt, I want to make sure that we we talk about the drama, the roller coaster, the ups and downs. Those are always fun. So is there like a struggle story that you think is relevant here, either with yourself or with your client, that really like paints a picture as far as just the up and down struggles of entrepreneurism?

Matt Raad 14:53 Yeah, where do I start? Robert? There's so many. I'll have to come back and but I guess the easiest one for me, and the reason why. In this interview, I keep talking about the power of due diligence. Is Liz. Liz and is my wife, the very first business that we bought, nearly 30 years ago. Talk of struggle town. We had no idea we're from the country. We grew up in rural Australia, and we wanted financial independence, and we realized business was what would do it. So we bought a small manufacturing business, and because we're in a rural town, we had no idea what we're doing. No one in my family's entrepreneurial, and we made every single mistake in the book. It looked awesome. You could, you could outsource a lot of the manufacturer, but once we got into it, within a week of owning it, we realized this thing's going bankrupt, and the problem was, for us, we relied on the advice of a local accountant who, I don't know what you call it in America, but here they're called pubs. That's where his office was in the local pub, which is, you know, where they sell beer and things. So when you call them in America, that he was old, yeah? Bars, yeah. So he was old school. So you can imagine, in a country town picture it's in rural America, that's literally where the accountant, his office was next door to the pub. He had the red nose. He was a chain smoker. That should have been, you know, like, Okay, this is not good. But it was just through, you know, my dad said he's the guy you go and speak to is, you know, he's the accountant, because he drank with everyone, and sadly, he just completely messed up. Like, said, he told us it was a really good business. And when we got into it, we went, This is not good. And there were when you know what you're looking for. And I think what's important about that is it set us on a path we've got to get this right. And the way we turn that business around, by the way we we didn't, well, we did panic. We were thinking, we're going to go bankrupt here if we don't sort this out. So we started reading a lot of sales books, and we just literally turned it around through sales. And it was hard slog. And people hear my mind Liz's story, and I think it's, you know, it's amazing and stuff, and it's been easy. I should point out that particular business took us 10 years to get right before we did the exit. So we did build that business up. We were manufacturing spare parts for outdoor power equipment. We'd export it to America, and we had client and Germany. So that's why we're not fans of when we got online, we went the opposite way to e commerce, because we don't like exporting. Having all our all our net worth, tied up in a warehouse. We went bankrupt nearly twice because of that as well. So it's really hard as a young entrepreneur. So if you're listening to this and you're starting out in business or you want to do a side hustle, I would recommend be very careful of businesses with high inventory costs, particularly in these days, with the tariffs and stuff, it can get really tricky. So that was our story. It was struggle. It was very difficult, but throughout that, we're very grateful in that we're able to make that business successful. Systemize and we bought and sold. That's when we started buying and selling other businesses. We got so good at it, we refined it, and that business allowed us to also network with some very successful, very high net worth individuals who bought and sold businesses for a living. And that's when we decided that's what we want to do. So it kind of all worked out well in the end. But I tell you, it was tough and very scary multiple times throughout the journey. Anyone that's got a similar stock based business knows exactly what I'm talking about. There will be times when you come very close to the wire,

Robert Plank 18:17 but you made it on the other side and live to tell about it, and you're here to help people. Yeah, and there's some great lessons there, right in saying no to those wrong opportunities. And what I really get from that is how important the people are, right? You find that good deal. It's about the people you find who to sell to. It's about the people who to take advice from, who to operate the business once you own it. It's about the people, and especially finding a mentor such as yourself to to navigate all this, all the sea of information, right? Because you could research and get confused and twisted 10 different ways all day long. But it helps so much to have an actual guide, a mentor, to show us the way. And so as far as getting to that, as far as some next steps, if someone says, Man, this guy, Matt, he has it dialed in, Where can someone go to get some next steps, get some guidance on this website, buying and selling process.

Matt Raad 19:05 Pardon me, they can check out our website, E Business institute.com.au, which you mentioned at the beginning of the of this podcast. There's lots of stories on there, success stories of our clients. And also, we've got a free master class you can learn if you're interested, you can learn more about our process through our free master class, which is goes for about 90 minutes.

Robert Plank 19:28 Well, very cool. And so I think it's helpful to get educated, right? And any problem you're trying to solve, if you if you're stressed confused, like, do some learning, and then when it comes time to take action, say, All right, this guy, Matt Raad, he's the guy that I need in my corner, Matt and Liz from E Business Institute, where you can learn from experienced online investors how to buy, build, renovate and sell websites for cash flow and portfolio. You go there, you read around, and there are many amazing stories about the possibilities and the techniques. So. As e Business institute.com.au, and before I let you go, Mr. Matt, it's time for the scary part of the show where I try to put you on the spot and ask you for a quote or lesson that has served you. So what do you have, as far as a helpful quote or lesson,

Matt Raad 20:14 the one that guides us, and we love telling people, because they don't think about it enough, and it's so obvious, it's not just learned due diligence, but a mentor told us, one of those high net worth mentors that used to buy and sell businesses, he taught us, go for cash flow first. Always cash flow. Get the cash flow up. People you know they want to, he said, don't start investing until you got your cash flow sorted. That was one of his examples. But in any business, when we look at businesses with him, it's all about the cash flow. You want high cash flow businesses. And to this day, that's what we live and breathe by, and that's why we love online businesses. They are the highest cash flow businesses we've ever seen.

Robert Plank 20:53 Very nice, a great goal. Goal is get that cash flow business figured out. Mr. Matt from E Business institute.com.au, go and check out that website, look at the success stories, enroll in that course and get that cutting edge content, practical training and high dollar outcomes from experienced trainers to find out how you can maybe make this online journey not so hard on yourself and make it not so risky by buying and selling websites that are already proven that cash flow and thanks Mr. Matt, for stopping by showing up and helping us out here.

Matt Raad 21:26 It's been a real pleasure being on here today. Robert, thanks so much for having me all.