Online course business sold for $180,000

May 14, 2024
​Read on web​

What if you don’t have an interested buyer who’s willing or able to pay cash up front for your business?

One option is seller financing, whereby the seller essentially finances the deal, allowing the buyer to pay over a period of time. This approach can be risky for the seller, but it also opens doors to buyers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to commit.

Today’s story is an example of a deal with that structure. Gina Horkey sold her virtual assistant training business, Fully Booked VA, to someone in her immediate circle: her business coach, Stephanie Hayes.

The company was bringing in about $15,000 per month at the time, or annualized revenue of $180,000.

The buyer bought the business for 1x revenue, or $180,000. Hayes agreed to make 36 payments of $5,000 each, with a balloon interest payment at the end of the term.

Here’s more about this sale, which closed in August 2023:

​Seller financing opened an exit opportunity for the founder of this VA training company​

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Please tell them you came from They Got Acquired.

Behind the business (of TGA)

Something smart you can do whenever you’re building up to a launch, even if it’s months away:

⭐ Create a landing page to collect emails ⭐

Two examples of how we’ve used this to grow They Got Acquired:

1) Ahead of our launch of the site and newsletter, I spun up a landing page using Carrd. This was back in 2021, before I even had a team:

Over a few months, by sharing the idea on social media and in relevant communities, I managed to collect 1,000+ emails.

That meant we didn’t launch to crickets. We had readers from the get-go.

​This post explains exactly how we got those emails.

2) Now, as we head toward launching* our M&A intelligence platform, we have an email sign-up at the top of that homepage.

It’s all manual; I haven’t even connected it to our email service provider.

But when someone signs up to indicate they’re interested, I email them back and ask why they want access.

Sometimes that turns into a demo. Other times I add them to our free newsletter, so they can learn more about us and hopefully trust us before the platform launches.

We’re getting a consistent trickle of sign-ups, about two each week. And because this is a high-priced product, that small volume of warm leads is meaningful.

We’re also not driving much traffic to the page yet. But when I mention the platform here and there (like right now in this newsletter), I have a place to send people if they want to learn more about the platform, and this allows us to capture interest we otherwise wouldn’t even know about.

By the time we launch, we should have a pipeline of people who are ready to buy: founders and buyers and brokers who want access to buyers and comps for 6, 7, and 8-figure deals.

***

It can feel strange to ask for emails before you’re ready to share your product.

It’s tempting to say, let’s wait until we launch.

But the best time to capture that interest is when it’s HIGH, at your FIRST interaction with that potential customer.

As you’ve seen with my current setup for our data platform, it doesn’t have to be fancy, and even a small number of leads can make a big difference.

What are you building that you could start collecting emails for now, before you’re “ready?”

*We’re actually doing an anti-launch for our platform, and slowly adding paid users instead. More on that soon.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​