On the show with me today is Mark Daoust, founder of Quiet Light Brokerage and in today's interview, Mark and I spent about an hour discussing how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light is one of, if not the leading brokerage for online businesses, and Mark and his team have seen it all. Unfortunately, most buyers and sellers haven't, and as a result, they are often very poorly prepared to engage is such an important transaction. If you are thinking of buying a business and want to learn the right way to buy an online business - or you are thinking of selling yours - you are going to love all the knowledge bombs that Mark shares in this episode. The Questions I Asked Mark: Company Overview [04:29] What does your company sell? [08:10] What made you pick the niche you are in and how did you research it? [10:23] Tell me about the landing page you created [11:46] How did you do the targeting on Facebook? [13:00] How many emails did you capture? [14:20] What was your cost per email? [15:15] How many emails do you need to make a sale? [16:13] How did you figure out if the business was going to fly based on this first week long test [18:03] Tell me about how to be successful on crowdfunding [19:04] How did succeeding with crowdfunding affect your company in the early stage [22:31] How did you end up raising $300K on the crowdfund? [24:41] Tell me about the product and what you have done to make it unique and memorable [26:01] What do your gross margins look like? [27:48] How much money did you raise? [28:30] How did you raise the money? [30:53] Why did you shy away from institutional money? Marketing Related [32:02] What is your YOY growth rate? [33:07] Why did you launch the throw blanket [34:50] How did you do the keyword research for search term frequency [35:30] Where are you getting most of your new customers? [37:29] What are you doing to engage in direct dialogue with your customers? [39:55] What is your best marketing activity? [40:20] What other activities do you do? (SEO, Social, influencer marketing, paid traffic, etc...) [42:40] How many people do you have in the marketing department [46:32] What is your CAC? [48:08] Are you profitable on the first sale? [50:21] What is your AOV? Process Related [53:20] How much effort have you put into creating SOPs so far? 5 Quick Facts 1. What is your favorite business book? 2. What is your favorite online tool for growing your business? 3. Hours of work / week? 4. Family situation? Resource Links: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ https://centurica.com www.ecommercelending.com/ https://amzn.to/2pMyi05 https://ahrefs.com www.marketmuse.com/ Show Notes: https://brightideas.co/mark-daoust-interview/