How giving to charity helped this biz grow 🧡

September 8, 2023
​Read on web​

Meet Chad Maghielse, who traded the confines of real estate for selling pet products like dental spray for dogs and oatmeal shampoo.

Inspired by his French bulldogs and a mission to help pets, he launched his boutique pet supplies company, Pets Are Kids Too, with $3,000 in credit card debt.

Two tactics helped Maghielse grow his business and attract a buyer:

🧡 Giving to charity

The company donated some proceeds to medical care for pets, and Maghielse got his customers involved to foster brand loyalty.

When customers bought his products, he’d ask them to send in a photo of their pet with the product they’d purchased. Then he would donate a portion of their sale to a pet with cancer, and email them back a photo collage with their pet and the pet their purchase helped. He called it “Pets Helping Pets.”

“Very often, those customers would then post that image on social media, driving traffic to our brand,” he told us.

📈 Sweetening the deal

To entice buyers, he pre-sourced the next two products that the new owner could launch: dog tear stain remover and waterless shampoo spray for dogs.

“I had heard that many people who buy businesses stall in terms of growth because they don’t know what to do next,” he told us. “I tried to eliminate that ‘buyer fear.’”

As a bonus, he then had a roadmap if he ended up not selling the business.

Our full story explains more, including how he minimized taxes when he sold the company:

​He started a pet e-commerce company with $3K and grew to $2M annual revenue​

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Plan your exit when you start the business

Content entrepreneur Joe Pulizzi just sold his third business: a newsletter, The Tilt, and event business, CEX.

In this 6-minute podcast, he shares how he thinks about exit planning when he first starts a business.

One of the keys, he says, is partnering strategically with other brands. Yes, they'll help you grow the business, but they might become more than that later. Indeed, his most recent buyer was a partner, a frequent sponsor of his newsletter and event.

I'd make one addition to his advice: You should focus on revenue and profit from the beginning, too.

Strategic partners will only be interested in what you've built if you can deliver true value. Sometimes that value isn't directly financial — Joe's buyer was likely interested in the audience he'd built, for example — but the most obvious way to provide value to a buyer is through your bottom line.

This sounds obvious — of course your business should make money! — but it can be tricky in the early days, especially for smaller businesses that are still figuring things out. You might find yourself balancing investing in growth, for example, with paying yourself. Or maybe you care more about building around your lifestyle and values than bringing in as much cash as possible.

The path looks different for everyone. But think ahead about maximizing your financials so when that strategic partner wants to buy, you can command a selling price that feels good for the effort you've put in.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​