How to Buy & Scale Businesses

Hey, thanks for joining for another week of New Venture Weekly.

This week, I’m partnering with Microns - a marketplace to buy & sell businesses - to help show how you can find hidden, undervalued gems and grow them into profitable money-printing machines.

I’ve been a paid subscriber for nearly a year, and it’s my favourite platform for finding unique opportunities, so I reached out to Microns to sponsor this newsletter.

I’m going to break down the strategy I would use (that I’ve personally seen work in the real world) as well as show you some businesses I would buy if I had more time.

So let’s jump in!

Microns

Looking to buy or sell a bootstrapped micro-startup without the hassle? Microns.io has vetted listings that cut through the noise.

Check them out and discover your next venture today.

 👀 Things Worth Checking Out

The best businesses solve specific problems, so I’ve created an ever-expanding database of problems that are begging for a better solution. Check it out here - I’ve added some examples, including the one that inspired this week’s newsletter.

Are you struggling to find the perfect business idea? What if you could consistently generate profitable business ideas, anytime you wanted? The Idea Factory is designed to help you do exactly that.

🔥 Strategy:

The strategy for buying businesses is simple:

What do I mean?

So I used to work for a company called Vision Direct, they’re now Europe’s largest contact lens DTC brand.

They were initially bought by a group of investors who saw the potential to grow the business by focusing on just one channel (to begin with).

The business was already validated but they weren’t utilising SEO or Google Ads effectively.

They bought the business, doubled down on SEO and Google Ads and eventually sold it to EssilorLuxottica. When I left they were a £120m per year business.

What does this mean for you?

Step 1: Find a business that addresses a clear need and has existing sales.

Step 2: Identify one marketing channel that they aren’t currently using or aren’t using well that you can scale.

Ideally, you want to have experience in that channel but it’s not always necessary. But if you’re a wizz at Meta ads then you’re gonna have more of an advantage than most other people.

Step 3: Buy the business and go all-in on that marketing channel

🧐 Opportunities:

Microns has loads of micro-startups that you can buy right now. Check them out here.

I’ve listed some of my favourites below (by the way, you can negotiate the asking price):

SEO Indexing Tool:

• Asking Price: $7k

• Ways to Grow:

  • Newsletter - Create a newsletter for people wanting to improve their SEO.

  • YouTube - Create YouTube videos showing how you can instantly index thousands of websites and blog posts to rank on Google faster. Showcase testimonials and examples of results.

  • Reddit - Find every Reddit post asking how to index a site or blog post faster and comment something of value that points to your tool. Buy upvotes so it’s the 1st or 2nd comment.

Cloud Storage Platform:

• Asking Price: $12k

• Ways to grow it:

  • Choose a niche - for example, I’d make it the cloud storage platform for marketing teams to organise their marketing assets.

  • Cold email - I’d cold email marketing managers offering a free trial and a guided demo of the product showcasing why it’s better than Google Drive or Dropbox for their marketing team.

  • Redesign the site - I’d redesign the website and write better copy that focuses on this niche

Info Products for Entrepreneurs:

• Asking Price: $20k

• Ways to Grow:

  • Newsletter - Write a newsletter that educates entrepreneurs on fundraising for startups and upsell your products to this audience.

  • YouTube - Make videos about fundraising tips, interview people who have raised money already, and explore interesting fundraising news - you can use Crunchbase or Pitchbook for this.

  • Redesign the Site - I would also make the landing page and website look better by using Framer.

🚀 How to Grow:

Here are some marketing channels you could use to scale the business:

• Meta Ads - This is probably the quickest way to scale most brands but it does cost money. Film the ads yourself or partner with creators.

• Google Ads - Likewise, this is one of the quickest ways to scale a brand, but again it does cost money.

• Short-Form Content - If the business solves a need or fills a desire, or if you can tell a story well, make short-form content. This is one of the best ways to build a brand and create long-term loyalty.

• Newsletters - Build an audience in the niche of your new business and use your newsletter to upsell your product. For example, this SEO tool would be a great upsell for an SEO newsletter.

• YouTube - Create long and short-form content for YouTube, educating customers on a specific topic related to your niche. For example, this guy made $1.6m per year uploading Zoom calls to YouTube.

• SEO - This is getting harder and harder with AI but it’s still one of the best channels to get free, organic growth.

• Cold Email - Great for service-based businesses or SaaS tools that solve a business need.

• Email Marketing - Maybe the acquisition for this business is easy and they’re doing it well but the churn or returning customer rate is really poor.

• Reddit - You can get loads of traffic to your site by posting valuable content on relevant subreddits or commenting on high-ranking `Reddit posts.

🤯 Recommendations

Bootstrapped Growth

The best strategies, tools & resources to supercharge your SaaS growth.

Every Tuesday, you get 3 marketing examples, 2 free resources, and 1 growth strategy breakdown.

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🔥 Cool Stuff

(Bookmark these)

• Find problems that need business solutions - Access the Problems & Pain Points Database.

• Want to grow your business? Here’s a database of tools that can help.

• Want to promote your startup for free? Here’s a database of free places to promote your startup.

• Want to turn your idea into a business? Check out this business idea checklist.

• Want to differentiate from your competitors? Check out this Differentiation Strategy Guide

• Want to run ads for your business? Use these proven psychological ad positioning strategies.

• Like the newsletter and want to show your support? You can buy me a coffee here.