Ep 369: He Sold the World’s Most-Visited Site – The Hidden Exit Mistakes You Can’t Afford with Nathan Gwilliam

I'll tell you one thing I will never ever do again. I will never again take a contingent payment that's based on the decision of somebody else. Once you sell the business and once they have the right to make the decisions for the business, your earn out cannot be contingent upon their decisions.

That's not fair. You can't have the accountability without the responsibility. If you have the right to keep making the decisions, then your earn out can be contingent upon the results. But if they get to make the decisions, that's not fair. And it creates a conflict of interest scenario.

Hi, my name is Jaryd Krause. Welcome to the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today I'm speaking with Nathan William. He is a serial entrepreneur who has created and sold three digital ventures, including Adoption.com, which is the world's most visited adoption platform.

Today, he heads up PodUp, which is an all in podcasting platform that recently raised significant funding and Nathan's unique journey building, scaling, selling, and acquiring and reinventing digital businesses has given him so much depth and insight into acquisitions and growth strategy and what really takes to exit for maximum value. In this podcast, we talk about some of the acquisitions he's done, some of the ventures he started and then added acquisitions on and how he has merged businesses in or bought businesses and rolled them up and sold them to large conglomerates.

We talk about some of his growth strategies. We talk about some of his acquisition strategies and also his exit strategies. We talk not so much just funds, but we talk about structures and just the value that you should be learning about what not to do when you're making an exit or acquiring.

And we also talk about how he in his 30 years of being an entrepreneur has gotten through so many challenges and what you can do. And I share some advice on this as well to get through some of the challenges you have facing yourself in business. Enjoy the pod. There's so much value in it. Speak to you soon.

Nathan, welcome to the Bob Podcast. So excited to have you on. Well, you just had a great conversation on your podcast and appreciate coming on your podcast. You asked me about podcasting and whilst I'm here, I just want to share my appreciation.

Thanks for having me here today, Jaryd.

Nathan you asked me such a good question. It's like what are some of the benefits you get from your podcast and I just want to share my love for all the listeners because this podcast has brought me so much in my life and it's also brought so much to other people's lives and I just appreciate being able to do this and appreciate all the listeners and appreciate everybody that's achieved great things from it as well. So thank you for prompting that Nathan.

Of course, and thanks for being a guest on the show. That was a phenomenal episode.

Podcasting is a real, real gift for even just like it has been for me in my life, but just as a listener to other podcasts, it's game changing. You learn some great things and there's been people that are part of my business that have done some amazing things because of the podcast without even talking to me. And it's just cool. It's really, really cool. you're an entrepreneur. You've been an entrepreneur for how long now?

Three decades, congrats. That's something to appreciate as well. It's not an easy route, is it? Sometimes.

Thanks.

Many times it is not. And it's lonely. You're around a lot of people that just don't understand.

Many times, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to bring you on because you've done some pretty cool things in terms of acquisitions and exits. Now you've done three, you've built three solid digital ventures and you've exited. Did you exit all three?

Yeah, I've built and exited three and I'm working on number four. I've been working on number four for about six years now. And then in addition to my ventures, I've done other ventures. So I've helped other entrepreneurs to build and sell ventures as well.

so cool. Why? Why sell them?

That is a really good question. I am an incurable creator and I love the creation process and I have taken a company public before it and that's just not my, not my thing. There's a certain size that I love and it just, fits my demo and some people may not be great at starting the venture and getting the traction of the venture, but maybe they're good at scaling that existing venture. I think I can scale a business and I would do fine with that, but I really enjoy.

The Creation Process Tool.

And obviously there's the benefits of like taking money off the table and then being able to like have resources to build something even bigger and better and funner, right?

Yeah, there's other reasons too, like two of my ventures, I exited because of partnership issues. And for example, I did a venture that I had a business partner and he got to a spot in his life where he wanted to quit his day job and he wanted to go start his own design firm.

He was a designer and he wanted us to exit so that he could have the money to start his design firm. And I have a philosophy that when you take on a partner, you need to be willing to make the decisions that are in their best interest, not just your best interest. And when it's right for your partner to exit, you should really seriously considering exiting even if it's not the best timing for you, because that's what good partners do.

Absolutely. I really like that philosophy. And what's on the flip side of that is if you don't do it, what can happen? Like the resentment that can be built towards your partner and the business and they can go away and try and build this in competition with you or like just these ugly things could happen depending on the relationship, of course, but that's what a good relationship is. It's like meeting in the middle and working out like what's best for us both and some and not everybody's going to get everything they want all the time.

Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of people that they have a hard time selling their cars. They have a hard time selling their houses. They just kind of hold on to things and the things they own are always worth more than what someone else is willing to pay for them.

And sometimes entrepreneurs get in that situation where they always think their business is going to go up. I had a COO that worked for me for my adoption.com company in the early days. Great guy.

And there came a point where he left and was ready to start his own business. And within 12 months of him leaving, he had an offer to sell that business, the brand new business, 12 months in for $100 million from Yahoo.

Yahoo had made the offer and he had a third of the business and he wanted to sell and his two partners didn't want to sell. And so they didn't sell. And a year later, they were out of business.

And I've seen this where the entrepreneur always think their business value is going to go up and it does not always go up. And there comes a point where you just, you take the money, even if you're not at the top value, sometimes you have to get up so you don't take the risk of it going down for sure. it just sucks when it does go down. Like I think most entrepreneurs have felt that, you know, where their business, he goes through a patch where it's just not going great.

And it's just so much energy to get it going again, because you're already tired of being in the business, depending on how long you've been in business for and what you've struggled, you've dealt with it.

Yeah, I agree. Like there's, there is the right time to sell and it's when you're, guess what I've had guests on here talk about it. It's like when your heart's no longer in it.

You know, and that can be a very subtle feeling that some people aren't completely conscious of until it's too late. And it sounds like your friend was not putting words in his mouth or anything, but it might be the case that he did feel that his heart wasn't in it.

He wanted to exit and they're in a good, good spot. Maybe his heart wasn't and he wanted also, yeah, it's a good offer. Maybe his heart was in it and he'd like, look, Yahoo could do bigger and better things with it than what we could, you know, and that could be a heart based decision too.

It was a good offer, right?

And if he could have walked away with that with 33 million, right? That's enough money for the rest of his life. He never asked to work again. And there comes a point where when you get an exit, it's enough money that you never have to work again. You might seriously consider that because if it goes south, you know, where does that put you?

Well, yeah, might be another 10, 20 years of work in your life versus taking the like, oh wow, okay, like it's a gamble. It's a risk that you have to think about and take. So yeah, congrats on what you've built.

Congrats on what you've sold. I think let's maybe just pick one for now, Elise, and talk about maybe adoption.com. You built that one up on the ground. You scaled it. I guess while we're talking about the exit, what was the reason for this exit? Was it, yeah.

I had a business partner that trusted me and put money into that venture. And it was about 10 years ago that he called me one Sunday morning. I was getting ready for church. I still remember I was in the bathroom. He called me in front of the mirror, getting ready with my shirt and tie. And he said, Nathan, you know, I'm headed to church. I could hear the car door beeping in the background. He said, I'm getting ready for church.

His daughter had been baptized the day before and in our church the day after you get baptized there's a ceremony called a confirmation. And so he's like, I'm going to confirm my daughter at church today and then I'm going to kill myself.

And I said, Will, you stay at that church. You do not leave that church. I'm going to send a couple of people there. And he was in the state, two states away from me. And, I had a lot of friends and family that were there and I called them and they were people that he knew as well.

And I sent a couple of people to him and I got on the first flight and I went and spent five days with him, got him institutionalized and he got himself out. And five days after I left, he did kill himself. And he left behind a wife and children. And I guess it goes back to a similar situation of that, the families.com business that I told you about where we sold when the partner wanted to sell.

We were in a spot with this partner where the remaining partners felt that it was in the best interest of his family that we sell the business, right? So that there was an exit there. so that was one of the big reasons why we decided to pursue an exit. It was the right thing to do at that time.

Yeah, wow. Definitely the right thing to do and so sorry for your loss and the family too. Yeah, that's big. haven't and it's a it's just real. Like it's a life circumstance and this is, you know, it's a very tough share. Some people just think like if you're selling a business or something wrong with it, there's life situations so far outside what people think financially that's like why people would sell a business, you know?

And so I think there was another, there's a couple other reasons we were looking at why it made sense too, but I think I had reached a spot in my life where, and that business where we were number one in the industry.

We weren't just number one in the digital adoption space, but there wasn't a close second anywhere in the space. And I think we had the number two result in Google for adoption as well. were number one and number two. there comes a point where, what do you do for an encore?

You could put in a lot more time and effort and get a 20 % increase, right?

Just fighting yourself really you don't have right it is to out the right.

There comes a point where I felt that that business was worth more to someone else than it was to me. We had built the largest media company in the adoption space and it was worth a lot of money to an adoption agency.

And we weren't an adoption agency. We were making money wholesale, right? We made money off of clicks, right? People came and the adoption agencies bought the clicks and they bought clicks for like a dollar.

And then they sold adoption services for 50 or $60,000. Right. And so they were making retail and I was making money wholesale. And so there comes a point where when a business is worth a lot more to someone else than it is to you, that's also a time to consider a sale.

And I felt like I had learned so much over the years. I kind of wanted to go. I felt like I could make more time more. can make more money if I took that capital and I started something new instead of just spending all of my time growing the existing.

Absolutely. And in that range as well, where a business is worth more to another company than say you, because they're selling retail, like they can pay more for it and it can increase your multiple and you sort of meet in the middle. Obviously they're not going to buy it for super cheap or you're not going to have an outrageous multiple, but you can meet in the middle and make the deal happen where it's like, it's a win-win for both. So congrats on it. You you handing that over.

That's right.

For somebody to just, I mean, the largest media company in adoption and then giving it to, know, a beautiful thing, beautiful thing.

The largest adoption agencies.

It's kind of like the Home Depot buying the Home and Garden channel, right? Where you have the retail provider then owning the media company.

Absolutely. And so with adoption.com, did you buy businesses in that company and merge them in? Because we did talk about this prior to airing that you bought a couple of other brands and merged them in. Yeah, did. Adoption.com? Yeah.

Yeah, so into adoption.com, we had a competitor named adopting.org and they were a pain in the butt. They were hurting our business model. They would go in and undercut us and drive our prices down on everything that we sold. And they competed with us on price, just being cheaper.

And it was really interesting because we were not competing with them on price. We got to a spot where we knew how much money we could make per page view, right? We had built our revenue streams and we made money a whole bunch of different ways, you know, with advertisers and the sponsors and the e-commerce and the subscriptions and the directory listings and stuff.

And so we knew per visitor, per page view, how much money we could generate. And if we had twice as much traffic, we could make twice as much money. And we were capped by the amount of traffic we had on how much money we made.

So we were able to go to our competitor, we figured out how much traffic they have had, and we knew how much that traffic was worth to us. And they were only making far less than half or a third of the revenue that we could make off of that traffic. So it was very easy for us to go buy them.

And in fact, we were able to go structure a deal where we paid it over, I think, three years of time. So we were able to go structure a deal to buy them, do a contract to pay them over three years, a certain amount, but we made enough money off of the increased revenue off of the asset to buy off the asset. So it worked out really well for us and it worked out really well for the seller because she made a lot more money than she would have otherwise made during that period of time. So was a good win.

Yeah, do you share numbers? Are you open to sharing numbers or do normally keep that disclosed?

I do have non-competes that prohibit me from disclosing some of those numbers. I'm and if I can tell, I'm happy to tell.

Okay.

I might ask what your final exit was and maybe what you purchased some of them for if you're open to sharing. What was the structure on this one? What did you put down 50% down and then the other 50 % over a three year period?

We did not even put 50 % down. We just basically said, here's the purchase price and we're going to pay it in 36 installments. And we knew that we could make more, we could make at least that much per month from the asset. it was the definition of a win-win. Yeah. No brainer deal.

Okay.

So you alluded to how you merged that in. Yeah. I mean, you use that traffic to sell your products that you're getting three X on basically. How did you do that? Did you keep that domain name and then just change the products around on that site?

Or did you push traffic to Versa from each site? Like what did that look like in terms of a merge being most of the website clips? would say probably.

We continued to run it separately because we wanted, we didn't want it to lose the SEO value. didn't, it had a lot of pages on it. we cross promoted a lot of our things from it. We leveraged that traffic as much as we could, but we tried to keep it a separate identity short. Were there other businesses you acquired as well? It seems like you kind of did a bit of a roll up in this one.

Yeah, we did. You know, an interesting one that I'd like to share is I was doing a venture called families.com. That was one of the other ventures I did while I was doing adoption.com. And we actually went and bought.

You were building this venture.

Yeah, so while I was doing adoption.com, I did a side hustle and I built another venture called families.com with some different business partners. That partner that needed to exit, that was the families.com business.

And so what we did at families.com to help accelerate the growth, because we wanted to build this kind of community and social network for families. So we actually went and I think we bought three existing communities. bought three existing family related communities and then merged them in so that we would have this critical mass. one, and it was good.

We built it and we sold it and we had within 24 months of starting the venture, we had exited the venture and Walt Disney internet group offered to buy it. They were one of the offers. They weren't the highest bidder, but it's kind of fun. I've had, I've had Disney make buy two of my ventures and one of the ventures that I helped build for a client.

So it's fun when you build something from scratch in 12 months that Disney is trying to buy, you know, 24 months. It's a good little strategy when you can do these acquisitions and roll them in and helps you get to a spot that can accelerate your growth a lot more than if you did it organically.

I cannot. I can't disclose that one. Unfortunately.

Yeah. That's fine. But families.com was a different exit than adoptions.com and everything you bought and under that banner.

The Adoption.com exit didn't happen until 2019.

Was that a seven or eight? I'm not able to say as well.

It was multiple millions and millions of dollars. It was not eight.

Yeah, up there. Congrats. Awesome. what did you sell with adoption.com? Was it the adoption.com you compared it up and were the other ones that you acquired as well that went along with it.

Yeah, yeah. we had bought, so we had adoption.com. We also had adopting.org, which is the one I told you about. We also had another one called adoption.org that we had acquired that had been a competitor that we had built up.

Yeah, there were a variety of different assets and there were some interesting side benefits that came from those acquisitions that we had not counted on. Before we bought adopting.com, we were trying to launch this adoption community and we were building it, but we were just, we were having a hard time kind of getting traction, right? We would put effort into it, but it wasn't really this viral community.

And after we did a couple of those acquisitions and their communities merged with our communities, we hit that point of critical mass to where the community really took off and it became by far the biggest adoption community that was out there and had a life of its own.

Sometimes it's really good to take your biggest competitor off the table for many reasons. They're not competing, undercutting you on ads. They're not cutting you undercutting on subscriptions. Their community traffic comes into your traffic. You're not splitting that. So we saw a lot of benefits that flowed through to us from those acquisitions.

Yeah, absolutely. Congrats. The economies of scale, it really comes into play when you buy out your competitors and adjacent businesses.

And there's so many things that only work when you hit a critical mass, especially with these digital businesses, when you're communities and social elements and when you do these acquisitions, it can help you reach that critical mass much faster.

How did you merge those communities? Was it through a Facebook group or yeah, how did you merge into one big community or did you just, are you just talking about you had a large community and they're all in their own sort of like groups?

We merged them in. So I think we used the bulletin or something back then, one of those technologies and they had four, this is back in the day when the forums were really popular, right? And so we took their forum site and we took the users and the content and we merged it into our forum site so that we had a lot more content and a lot more users.

With these exits, how did you find the buyers? Did you list any of these for sale through brokers or is it through network? How did you, yeah, how did that work?

Yeah.

We tried to do families.com ourself and we got some bids including from Disney, but I think it hurt us that it wasn't in a competitive environment and they weren't offering top dollar, if that made sense. they were offering some pretty, sometimes buyers offer and they offer you these kind of contingency buyouts where your buyout is dependent upon how the asset does after they take over the asset and they make all the decisions.

So, so it's easy when you're not in a competitive environment, when you're just negotiating one and one, it's sometimes a little harder to get the right sales price and the right terms. And so, and so we ended up going to a broker for families.com and we, sold it through a broker and did just fine on that exit. then adoption.com, we also sold through a broker and that one, the broker did a great job.

He did a good job of, we gave him strategic buyers and he did a good job of canvassing the strategic buyers and helping us negotiate with the strategic buyers. So a lot of the strategic buyers we'd already done business with, you we'd been doing adoption.com for 20 years. So they were agencies that they'd already advertised with us.

We'd already find those strategic buyers been to their offices and had relationships with them and gone to conferences and been speakers at conferences that they'd been at. And so they knew who we were and we knew who they were. And I guess that's the advantage of kind of working in an industry and building relationships in an existing industry.

Congrats. What are some of the things that you think through these exits that you've learned about getting ready for an exit or lessons that you've learned? Are you like, Whoa, okay. I wouldn't do that again. Or somebody should avoid this in an exit or yeah, some tough ones.

I'll tell you one thing I will never ever do again. I will never again take a contingent payment that's based on the decision of somebody else. So once you sell the business and once they have the right to make the decisions for the business, your earn out cannot be contingent upon their decisions. That's not fair. You can't have the accountability without the responsibility.

Right? If you have the right to keep making the decisions, then your earn out can be contingent upon the results. But if they get to make the decisions, that's not fair. And it creates a conflict of interest scenario had a friend who I spoke to maybe a couple of weeks ago.

He's been trying to sell his business, e-commerce brand, Red Light Therapy products. And his main manufacturer is looking at buying it. Very good strategic acquisition for him, for them just buying out a sales distribution channel. And they have a deal where they took over the business and they can dictate how much they spend in marketing spend.

Yeah.

And then based on how much revenue it makes, then he gets that much. Yeah. That you cannot do the deal. It's worth it. You should take 25 % or like 25 % of the money or 75 % less of a deal to avoid that situation. Like it would be instead of getting a whatever, a $4 million earn out, I would take $1 million at the sale time instead of taking a $4 million contingent offer because you're not the master of your destiny.

And then that person has a conflict of interest where he's, I'm not talking about in any of these comments they make, I'm not talking about any of the specific people I bought a business to. I'm just talking about the hypotheticals of those scenarios. And in those hypothetical scenarios, that person could have a conflict of interest where they want you to make less money because then they have to pay you less of a turnout.

That's you, you always want to do a deal where your interests are aligned with the interest of the other person incentives are aligned. Sure. Yeah. I said to him, was like, look, man, you can do it, but I wouldn't advise on it. And you could go and sell this business and sell it for more. And I'm not trying to get your business. don't need to broker it.

I don't need to sell it for you, but you could go to a different broker. yeah, it's a tricky one though, because then you've got, once you've started this conversation with the manufacturer, of the products and then you go, not going to, I don't really like this deal. No.

And then you go to sell it and lock in a contract for a couple of years with them to continue manufacturing. you want to sell that with that contract. might be, you don't want them to not sign a contract, which can kill a you know, a different buyer. It's, really need to like, have somebody that's very good and very smart and can hold space quite well where they can go to that business and be like, look, this is why this isn't really fair. Like if we can meet in the middle, it would be great.

These relations and then add one of those options being maybe you just don't sell it to you. And maybe I give it to somebody that can grow it over a three year period and it's more financeable for you then. And maybe we just lock in a manufacturing contract where there's two, three manufacturing content. I sell it to somebody else and that could be just one of the options or let's meet in the middle a little bit more versus me taking on the risk of your operations without dictation on how it can look.

Yeah, you've got to be master of your own destiny.

Got it. Yeah.

Are there any other big ones that you like? Some lessons that you've learned through exits or some of your acquisitions even.

Yeah. So the Nick, the Nick's biggest lesson related to exits actually goes back to the original structure of a business, right? And I would never ever, ever do a 50 % ownership deal again, because when you do a 50, then both of you have to agree. And, um, and, we had a different business that the Walt Disney internet group made an offer to buy it an 18 times multiple. Like it was a great deal.

Wow. Wow.

And I had a partner that said revenue or net profit.

It was 18 times EBITDA was that deal.

Yeah, cool. That proposal. that's right.

And at a partner that would refuse to let us even pursue the negotiations. Like they were coming to us and he wouldn't even let us give him financials. And it just really sucks all the wind out of your sail when you put your heart and soul into building something and you finally get that great offer.

Cause you're 50-50 with this guy.

Yeah, that's right. And so I would, if you're going to do the venture, there's got to be always one person that can make that final decision.

Yeah, for sure. What about with your acquisitions? how did you, did you just find your acquisitions because you're like, these guys are annoying, let's buy them. Or did you end up doing searches? Did you, and then what did you learn through the process of acquisitions that you feel a first time buyer should learn? Even if it is just coming from the lens of a strategic acquisition, you know?

Yeah, the biggest acquisition we did was because they were annoying and because they were, they were hurting us and they were undercutting us on price. And we knew we could make more, more money than they were making off there. Just like my adoption business was worth more to somebody else.

We knew that their business was worth more to us than it was to them. So if somebody is selling you something and it's worth the same amount to you than it is to them you probably shouldn't do the deal, right? You should. The best deals are the ones where you have the ability to make it worth more than what they've been able to make it worth. Right?

Yeah. And it may not even just be the skillset or the ability and maybe just that at least the energy of like, okay, they've been in this business for 20 years and they're kind of done from the standpoint of the acquisition might be equal value, but I am hungry and I have money where I can reinvest into this and time where I can reinvest this with skills and time and all that sort of stuff. I agree on that.

Yeah, that's right. Or you come up with a series of things that they haven't done yet, right? Maybe they haven't built out their own media platforms. Maybe they haven't leveraged AI, right? You know how you're going to go in and make that asset be worth more.

One thing that I at with digital businesses is that they might have an email list and they just don't do anything good with their email list. you're like, there's so much money on the table right there, but just tweaking a few things with email automation. And you can literally work out what the value is that's left on the table by them dropping the ball on just email marketing.

That's right.

It's the same with something that's, you know, they're super leveraged with ads or sorry, super leveraged with just SEO or organic content, but they haven't really got, they're not using ads.

You can just spend a little bit of money on ads and really increase it. So, or another distribution channel, like they're not selling on Amazon and the competitor, they're crushing it on Amazon. So yeah.

That's right. Absolutely. If you can step in and identify what you're going to do different and if they're already optimizing everything and you can't find anything you can improve, that's maybe not a great situation to acquire.

Absolutely.

What metrics do you chase when you're growing a business? Like lot of people, you know, chase just revenue. Are there other metrics that you consider success outside just revenue?

So social impact is very important to me. I've taught a university course called How to Change the World. it's social innovation, how to change the world. And the course is about how to use business as a vehicle to make a huge difference for good in the world. You you think of Tom's shoes, right? And buy one shoes, give away a pair of shoes.

You think of nonprofits and how they do it. There's lots of different vehicles and different ways you can use business as a way to make a profit and provide for your family and also make a difference for good in the world.

And I'm really big on that. each venture I try to create, we try to find that where you find the financial contribution and you find the impact contribution. I think that's really important for each of us as we create businesses.

Absolutely, of what you've done, yeah.

So like at Adoption.com, we kind of went into it and we, the best business model I think that ever has happened online, that's ever used online is the freemium business model where you give something away for free and then you make money off of something else.

And so we went in and we just said, what's the good that needs to be done? Let's do that first, regardless of how much money we want to make. And then let's make money off of something else. And so for example, at Adoption.com, we created a photo listing of children.

So children in orphanages around the world, children in foster homes around the world, around the US that needed to be adopted. We created this big database where the social workers could go upload the pictures and then the families could go see the kids and read information about them and then contact a social worker about adopting them.

And we did that as a free community service. And that drove so much traffic to our website. We were then able to do lots of other things. So we didn't do it for that reason. We did it to just help and make a difference, but ended up being one of the big drivers of the Adoption.com website.

Bore short and the more value you give, the more it's going to come back you in other ways. You know, just give me that away. I offer a free due diligence framework that people use and as being the main driver of leads and traffic for our business. it's just insanely valuable.

People can literally listen to my podcast, use that framework and not even need to buy my products and services. Obviously there's still risk of them doing it themselves and not knowing how to buy businesses and what risks to look out for, but you can still do it to yourself to a certain extent, know, same with, you know, helping people find parents and whatnot with what you've built.

Was leaning towards your 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur. Like I said, at the start of the pod, congrats, it's admirable. It really is. What are some of the mental habits and frameworks that you have built that have gotten you through some tough times in business?

Yeah, because there's those downs, you know, and there's those challenges. What are some of the things that have helped you get through those periods?

Yeah, the thing that has helped me the most is having God as my business partner. So before I create a venture, I consciously make the choice and I consciously involve him and maybe even make a commitment to him based upon the success of a venture. Of what I will do back and I pray over my businesses, you know, multiple times daily and I ask for the help that I need and I receive it. And there have been.

I like that.

story after story of where I've seen God's hand, where I could not. There is zero chance I could have gotten through a situation on my own. And he sent me exactly the help that I needed at exactly the right time. There's no way I could not acknowledge him and give him credit for all of the success that has happened in my businesses.

So the most important advice for an entrepreneur, whatever faith you are, if you're a person of faith, involve God as your business partner and try to do his work, try to help other people and do good with your business and ask for his help. I think you'll be surprised how much he's willing to help you.

Absolutely. Can you give us an example of like something has been challenging and you lean to him and yeah, there's been something really stupid that I did back 30 years ago when I was a college student and I just started my first business adoption.com. I don't recommend anybody do this, but this is what I did.

I applied for every credit card I could and I used those credit cards to kind of get that business off the ground. And I, I maxed my cards and it was a Thursday night and, and a payroll was the next day.

And I did not have any money in the bank for payroll. Like I did not have any ability to pay any of the payroll the very next day. And I worked really late that Thursday night and I came home and I went and picked up the mail and there was a letter in the mail that said one of my credit card companies had extended my credit. There was a letter from my credit card company saying, we just extended your credit and was by just enough money to fully cover payroll the next day.

And I did not miss payroll. And I mean, I don't recommend you do that, but it was, was, I definitely saw that as God's hand getting us through that really tough situation.

Do you attribute, because I'm not a person of faith in terms of God or what God that you may have in your life, but I'm a big believer in faith for sure. Do you have faith that for me, I have faith that the universe is going to give me not what I want, but what I need, and I'm going to be able to get through those periods because I trust and believe in that. Is that dissimilar to you with God?

Maybe not. There's lots of different names for, for God out there. Many of my employees are Hindu, right? And they, they pray to a different God than I pray to, but I believe it's the same God. And, I believe the God I believe in is the God of the universe, right? The God that created the universe and all things in it.

So when you talk about the universe to me that resonates as being the creator and being the same God that I believe in. And I think as we strive to believe in our God and follow our God and to do good and help other people and love other people and be more like even the people that as you believe in the universe, I assume that you believe in doing good and helping the world and making a contribution.

Yeah. And as we do that, we're doing God's work or we're doing the work that would make, would please the universe, right? And I believe that when we're doing God's work or we're doing that divine work, we're being the angels or we're being the hands of that work, I think when we're on God's errands, we deserve God's blessing and we will receive God's blessing.

Love that. I call it love based decisions. Yes. love based decisions versus fear based decisions. And when you make love based decisions, you will just get back what maybe not what you want, but what you need. And if it's a tough life lesson or a business lesson, it's out of love. You're getting that out of love to learn from it and to make you stronger or to pivot from it or build upon it or whatever it is.

That's where I come from is like, believe in doing good and doing the best for others as well as yourself equally and making love based decisions versus fear based decisions. Entrepreneurs out there that, and I admit at times I've made fear based decisions. When I first started, I'm just chasing the dollars and trying to get out of a certain situation and stuff like that.

But when you start to have a bit more faith and become a bit more abundant, because you do need faith to be abundant, you then can start making better decisions and helping people in a better life.

Yeah, I love that concept of making love based decisions. My favorite business book of all time is called Love is a Business Strategy. And it talks, it's really good. In fact, there was a long time we made all of our employees read that as like their first assignment at work, and then come report to me on it on what they learned. So that concept of making decisions out of love, right, as we make decisions about how to treat customers, making them out of love, make decisions about how to treat our employees, making them out of love.

I think that is the most important thing we can do as a business owner is to make decisions out of love. And then even going back to that question about is the God I believe in the same thing as this universe? Well, if your belief in the universe is leading you to make love-based decisions, the Bible teaches us that God is love, right?

And if you go back to when we were kids, like that is a verse, that is a verse of Scripture that says God is love. If you go back to when we were kids and we were in math class, you know, in junior high, and you saw a story problem and it had the word is, right? What would you do? You would replace the word is with an equal sign in the story problem.

So, God equals love. Those are interchangeable properties, right? And the more we love, the more we're being like God. And the more we try to be like God, the more we're gonna love. I believe that the strongest faiths in God are the faiths that lead us to life.

I love that. That's amazing. Yeah. Love based decisions, lead with love, love as a business strategy. I love that. Love that book title. That's really cool. Nathan, it's been a pleasure. I've spent a bunch of time with you on this morning and I've really enjoyed connecting and I'm sure people listening would enjoy connecting as well. You lead up Pod up. So it's an all in one podcasting platform. People should definitely check that out. Where else can we send them to see what you're up to?

If they go to PodUp, they can get a free 30-day trial of our software. have this all-in-one podcasting platform that has 70 different podcasting tools, and they can get a free 30-day trial, and they can get a free 30-day podcast launch course. In addition to that, if they have a business and they want a podcast, but they don't have time, they can go to podallies.com, P-O-D-A-L-L-I-E-S.com, and they can look at our services there.

Have more than 40 different podcasting services where we'll create, grow, and monetize your podcast for you, book you on shows, book your guests, help you develop monetization strategies, do your ads, give you a guaranteed amount of traffic to your show each month.

And if you go to podallies.com, you can schedule a 45 minute podcast growth and strategy call. At least for right now, those are still all with me and I can help you figure out your podcast strategy, whether or not you end up booking working with us or not, can take it and use it however you like.

What a gift. Thank you, Nathan. And thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate you and everything you've shared. And congrats on what you've achieved. It's awesome.

Thank you very much.