He sold his company... then bought it back

December 13, 2022
​Read on web​

When J. Money and his fiancée bought a $350,000 home in 2007, the 20-something couple realized they needed a budget.

A quick Google search introduced them to a whole new world: money blogs.

Inspired, J. Money decided to start his own personal finance blog, which he named Budgets Are Sexy after Justin Timberlake’s chart-topper “Sexy Back.”

He wanted to talk about his money transparently, including sharing monthly net worth reports and details of every job he’s ever had, so he adopted the pseudonym J. Money for privacy — and has used it ever since.

J. Money didn’t intend to turn Budgets Are Sexy into a business. But within a few months, advertisers began reaching out.

Two years after launching the site, he quit his job to run the bootstrapped company full time.

And then, in 2019, he sold it.

This is usually where the story ends... but not for this entrepreneur. In a unique twist, he bought back his site three years after selling it.

Here's how it all went down 👇

😮 After selling his money blog, this founder reacquired it 3 years later — for a fraction of the price​

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Behind the business

We published a story recently about how to separate your company from your personal brand to make it more sellable.

But here's the crazy part: leaning into your personal brand when you start a business is actually a good move.

People trust people more than they trust brands. So when you're first building a company, it's smart to show people who you are... and over time, you can transition that trust into the company.

I thought about this a lot when launching They Got Acquired.

I knew I wanted the business to (eventually) run without me. I wanted it to be about more than me. Plus, my strengths are in setting a strategy and running a team; even though I prefer to keep my teams small, I'm not a "creator" who enjoys doing everything myself.

So I picked a company name that was not based on me, and grew a team of writers and reporters to create our content. I am the glue that holds this business together, but I'm not the business itself.

To support this goal, our plan in the early days was to focus this newsletter solely on our content. We never envisioned it as including insights from me.

But then I thought about all the newsletters I look forward to most, and they're all from people, not brands. And I realized that making this newsletter a little more personal would go a long way toward both growing this audience and helping you more deeply understand our ethos as a brand.

One challenge of adding this personal section is that I write it myself. But here's what surprised me: I love writing this newsletter. I should have expected that, because I've been sharing updates online around how to grow a business for 13 years now. But I was so focused on doing what was efficient that I almost missed out on a lot of fun.

When you get to know me, you get to know our brand. You trust our process for sharing information, because you know accuracy is important to this brand's leader. You trust our motivations, because our mission — to lift up founders — shines through everything we do.

This brand is about more than me, but it's infused with my worldview and my values. The tricky part is to keep that ethos as we grow, as I become an increasingly small part of the company.

Over time, what might have previously been traces of a personal brand become simply, the brand.

If this resonates or you want to stretch my thinking, press reply and we can continue the conversation.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
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Our mission is to redefine startup success by showcasing companies that sell for $100K-$50M. Learn more about us or follow us on Twitter.

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