#294: Turning a Lifestyle Content Business into a Sellable Asset with Alexis Grant

Have you ever wondered why certain brands have started investing in content marketing? This episode will shine some light on that question. Alexis Grant shares why her first and second exit were so successful because of her great content marketing and how she believes other business owners can increase the value of their business by focusing on more than the multiple—by focusing on the "story" of the brand and how it really reaches its market.

This entrepreneurial story is about growing true value in your business using high quality content, without sacrificing good business sense. Alexis found the entrepreneurial bug after starting her career off in journalism and realizing how important a personal brand was when she struck out on her own as a freelancer. Growing and selling her first business, a content media company dedicated to growing businesses with blogs, showed her that brand matters just as much to companies as individuals. Maybe more so.

Tune in today to learn what you might be missing on the brand side of content marketing.

What You Will Learn

Why companies buy teams rather than other assets (called 'acquihire')
What led Alexis to choose the acquihire route
The benefits of running a company with a small team and why Alexis likes that approach so much
Why Alexis chose to pivot from the content space to the M&A space
How content marketing helps companies gain the trust of their customers
Why increasing your multiple is not the right metric to solely focus on when selling
What impact branding had on Alex selling her second business
Why certain aspects of your digital marketing strategy can be worth more to a buyer than others
When content should be your biggest expense as a business owner

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

Bio:

Alexis Grant is a media innovator who specializes in building content teams and growth marketing. From 2015-2019, Alexis led the content division at The Penny Hoarder as Executive Vice President of Content. After joining the company as the third employee, she worked alongside the founder to scale, growing their audience to tens of millions of readers, developing their brand reputation as a leader in media, and building infrastructure to support 100+ employees. After selling her company, The Write Life, in early 2021, she began building They Got Acquired, a media brand that focuses on acquisitions of online businesses and is her current venture.

Interview Quotes:

07:07 - “I was only at that day job for a year before I started to realize, ‘You know, that side thing has a lot more potential and I’m really starting to get into it.’” - Alexis Grant

07:25 - “I was never interested in business but then I realized, business is figuring out how to make money yourself, without having to wait for someone else to give you a paycheck. And it’s really challenging and really fun.” - Alexis Grant

23:25 - “But then I just realized, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. It felt like who I was ten years ago and I wanted a new challenge.” - Alexis Grant

25:14 - “I think a lot of times (especially with so many people on this show and people that I talk with), finding out what they like… I’m crazy shocked at how hard that is. So people will just do things until it’s a breaking point. whether it’s emotional, or stress, or finance.” - Ryan Tansom

25:35 - “Figuring out that I didn’t want to do it was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out what I want to do instead. ” - Alexis Grant

32:35 - “It can be hard to find professionals that will support a six to seven figure sale, just because you don’t know where to look.” - Alexis Grant

45:12 - “E-mail list is huge because that’s your owned audience. That’s what they call it, is an ‘owned audience.’” - Alexis Grant