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Add mentionDane Pan and his wife built Monet Brands to $1.3 million in revenue with two employees, selling a $24.99 skincare tool that cost them $6.10.
When they took the company to market in 2025, nine buyers cleared the proof-of-funds screen and four of them wrote an LOI. The best offer came in close to four times SDE with a holdback attached. Dane countered for all cash at close, watched two of his four offers disappear, and signed at 3.6
Published August 21, 2026
Colin Morgan So what are your non-negotiables? The things you're looking for in a deal that you will not trade away, whatever else is on the table. We have heard everything on this show from a seller who did not want the buyer moving their office to a seller who insisted the buyer purchase their shares rather than their assets. The most common one by far is the seller who wants to avoid an earnout. Whatever yours turns out to be, it's worth writing them down and getting clear on them before you sell. That is what our next guest did. Dane Pan and his wife built Monat Brands to $1.3 million in revenue with 2 employees. 9 buyers looked, or write letters of intent, and the best of them came in close to 4 times SDE with a piece of it held back against future sales. Dane had decided in advance that he wanted all of the money at close. 2 of his 4 offers went away. He signed at 3.6, all cash.
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About Built to Sell Radio
Built to Sell Radio is a weekly podcast for business owners interested in selling a business. Each week, we ask an entrepreneur who has recently sold a business why they decided to sell their business, what they did right and what mistakes they made through the process of exiting their business. Built to Sell Radio is the ultimate insider's guide to approaching the most important financial transaction of your life.
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John Warlow Dane Pan, welcome to Built to Sell Radio.
Dane Pan Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me.
John Warlow Tell me about Monat Brands. How did the idea for this company come about?
Dane Pan Yeah, so, so it was 2020, right before COVID My wife and I, we have always wanted to start a company. And right after she got— we got married, she decided to quit her full-time job as a marketing manager. And we looked at a bunch of different business ideas, right? Like having never started a business before, we were looking for something that we can leverage both of our skills. So we, we stumbled onto a consumer product. Side of things. So, so we started Monat Brands as a consumer product business and sold primarily on Amazon as well as Shopify. And we, we had 2 main product lines, one in the skincare tool space and then one in the home and kitchen space as well. And we grew that to, to $1.3 million in revenue with 2 employees plus both of us as co-founders. And then we exited the business in 2025.
John Warlow Wow. That was a quick run, 2020 to 2025. Was it always your vision to build to sell? Like, was it always, let's get in, build something and then sell it?
Dane Pan It was. Yeah. I think we have, we always had the exit in mind, knowing that ultimately I think she and I were, we love starting different businesses and having different, different business ideas. And yeah, I think knowing that from the beginning, we always wanted to eventually have a way of exiting. So, so to answer your question, yes, I think that was the end goal for, for the both of us.
John Warlow And you had one kind of hit product. It was— remind me what it was like, the Monat. Remind me what it was.
Dane Pan Yeah, it's the Monat Beauty Ice Globes. So it's a skincare tool that helps people absorb skincare products into their skin, depuff their skin, right? It's almost kind of giving people a spa-like experience at home. So, yeah, the product ended up being featured on Allure, all the different publications, and, and yeah, that ended up being our hero product.
John Warlow And so this product is something, just, just walk me through. So is it something you imported? You saw it in another country, you imported it, or did you have it custom made? Like, did you manufacture it? Like, what was the, how did you kind of create the product, so to speak?
Dane Pan Yeah. So we, we, we came across this product. It already exists in the marketplace, but it was used Primarily by estheticians, right? So we really wanted to bring this product to the end consumers that can, like I said again, use that spa-like experience at home, right? So, so, so we kind of made some changes to the design, made it a lot more appealing to the end customers rather than just looking dull and plain like a, like an esthetician tool. We made it like a fun skincare tool that people can use at home. So, so we, we have a manufacturer that we work with in China, and then we obviously, you know, branded it and then created a trademark around it as well, and then made that all offer to the customer in North America.
John Warlow Got it. So you controlled the brand, the packaging, like the customer experience, but someone else did the manufacturing. And I know that we've done a few people in, you know, Amazon seller interviews, and I know there's this always this tension around Amazon because on one hand, it's an incredible distribution channel, obviously, On the other hand, you become somewhat beholden to the algorithm and, and, and, you know, you've got what we refer to at ValueBeta as Switzerland structure problems, meaning you're overly dependent on one platform or channel. How did you reconcile that in your mind? Was that something you thought about?
Dane Pan Yeah, it certainly, it certainly did come across our mind. So I think how the business was structured was, we kind of built it from the ground up. for the Amazon marketplace, meaning it's optimizing a way that it provides a lot of value, right? Where the perceived value is really high, but also at a price point that it was really, really affordable to the day-to-day consumers. So like knowing that our entire strategy is kind of built around that flywheel, right? Amazon flywheel. Of course, to your point, kind of Amazon, because they have the customers. In return, you don't really get the customer email list. You can't really retarget to the same customers that bought from you before, right? That's the downside of selling majority of your traffic on that one platform. So So, so that's definitely come across our mind. And then that's actually, I think, one of the reasons we decided to, to sell towards the end.
John Warlow Interesting. I want to come back to the decision to sell, but before we get there, just walk me through your margins. So what did you sell, the Monat ice globes for? Like, what was the, what was the consumer paying? And then what was your cost? Like, just walk me through the margins.
Dane Pan Yeah. So the product was selling for $24.99. On Amazon as well as our Shopify website. Our landed cost is roughly $6.10-ish. So that is—
John Warlow Landed cost means, means you've paid for shipping, you've paid for any tariffs or fees associated with bringing the product into the market. And so it's like in your warehouse for $6 apiece. Is that what you mean by landed cost?
Dane Pan That's right.
John Warlow Okay. Got it. Okay. So. So more than what retailers would refer to as a keystone, like your 4x the cost to you, but I'm assuming you had to buy like a container full of these things to get it down to $6 each.
Dane Pan Yeah, I think definitely we, we, we, we had negotiated like a volume discount with our supplier, right? If we're able to hit this roughly this number, they gave us preferential, more discounted pricing on the per unit cost. So that was definitely worked into the final numbers.
John Warlow Got it. And how did cash flow work? Did you have to front the money to bring the container over or did they send you some credit or how did you make it work financially?
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so like any, you know, D2C or consumer-based products, I think cash flow is, you know, every operator's like nightmare, right? Because your cash is held up in your inventory. You don't get that back until you start selling it. And especially on Amazon, they hold, they hold your cash for 2 weeks before they pay it out to you. Minus any returns and other, other fees, of course. So yeah, I think the first 2, 3 years it was challenging, right? Like you pay 30% down to start a production. Production takes anywhere from 30 to 40 days. You have to pay in full when you pick up your inventory. Then it sits with a freight forwarder, sits on a freight forwarder ship, right? It takes another 30 to 40 days. So eventually we went to China, we met them face to face because we've been working together for so long. And then— We're able to negotiate that a little bit, right? So towards the end, we're able to lower the deposit from 30% down to 20%. And then we still have to pay the inventory when we pick it up. But I think there were some things that we did negotiate to help us free up our cash flow a little bit more so that we can make better investments in the business.
John Warlow And where did you get the cash to start a business? Did you have some money outside or did you bring in investors or?
Dane Pan No. So we completely bootstrapped the company. So it's funny because when my wife and I got married, we cleared out our savings. So we actually borrowed roughly $35,000 against our home to start it. We actually lost it all on the first failed products. We can talk about that later, but, but yeah, everything is bootstrapped. We, we reinvested every single penny back into the business.
John Warlow How'd you lose the 35 grand?
Dane Pan So, so we, we found this one product in the beginning. They're, they're actually magnetic eyelashes. I don't expect you to know what that is, John, but that's what we talked about. But we, in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, right? But we kind of looked at a bunch of YouTube videos, looking at what's a good product to sell online, right? So that product kind of checked all the boxes. It has strong demand. They were not so saturated yet, meaning that there wasn't that many reviews. There weren't as many competitors, and the sales numbers were growing exponentially, like month over month. We're like, We landed on a home run, right? Like, let's just pour all of our capital into this. I'm sure it's going to be successful. We spent months and months and come up with a unique differentiated product offering. We perfected the packaging, the insert card, like every single detail you can think of. It took us 6 months to launch the product. Okay, so after it launched, the market's completely changed. The competitors that used to have a pack of 2 now have a pack of 10. So our differentiation was we're going to use a better material. So again, not knowing, not expecting to know the differences, but synthetic lashes are fake, right? They're made out of fiber. They're not real. They're heavy. So we decided to use a material that's mink hair, meaning it's natural hair that feels more natural, that feels more premium. But when we introduced that product, all the competitors have moved from a set of 2 to a set of 10. So— Every customer wanted more variety versus a better quality for the same price. So we ended up only selling, I think, maybe 200 units out of almost 3,000 that we ordered.
John Warlow So if I need fake eyelashes, you've got like a bunch of them in your garage?
Dane Pan That's right. I still have a couple boxes of
John Warlow Them. Awesome. Awesome. Well, that's, that's great. But I mean, you're to your right, to your point, when you're starting out, you don't know what you don't know. So, but you had a great hit with the, the Monet ice globes. Fat margins. Just walk me through, by the end you got to $1.3 million in revenue a year. What proportion of that would've been Amazon versus Shopify versus some other channels, broad strokes?
Dane Pan Yeah, it's roughly like 88% Amazon, 9 to 10% Shopify, a very little bit of wholesale. So roughly 2 to 3% of wholesale orders.
John Warlow Got it. And you alluded to the Amazon dependency as, as sort of one of the factors that made you wanna sell, like, Maybe walk me through that. What, what were you thinking there?
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so I think the tipping point, like, like I mentioned in the beginning, right, our goal is always to exit the business. I think the question is a matter of when. I think like many business owners and founders I've talked to, right, it's everybody asks when is the perfect time to sell. I think it's like the stock market, right? Asking when's the perfect time to buy a stock or sell a stock. You just never know when that time is. But, but for us, I think 5, 5 years into it, at the time we're still growing roughly 10% year over year without introducing any new products. So the business is still profitable, it cash flows well. It's a really good lifestyle business.
John Warlow How much profit would you clear on that $1.3 million? Like how much profit would you clear before tax?
Dane Pan Yeah, we're roughly 18 to 20% after tax.
John Warlow Got it. Okay. So you're a couple hundred grand or so? Yeah. Okay, cool. Sorry, cut you off. Keep going.
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so I think for us is really looking at, because the business is so Amazon dependent, do we see ourselves running this for another 5 years? And I think sitting down with my wife and co-founder, we talked about it. We're like, we don't really see us investing more right into this platform in the next 5 years, because again, like that dependency, right? Well, what if one day something changes or Amazon makes a policy change or something happens, and that could be 89% of your business. that you built, spent all these years building, just completely gone, right? So, so I think that that's definitely a big reason for us to, to want to market, to sell the business in 2025. And then the other reason was, I actually had a stroke at the age of 30, 34, a week after my son was born.
John Warlow So— Sorry to hear that.
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so I think those, those 2 things, it kind of created the timing, like, yeah, like we're going to do this eventually. Why not now? So, so that, that was kind of like the realization on why we decided to sell.
John Warlow Well, I'm sorry to hear about your health issues. You clearly made a full, it looks like you've made a full recovery. Like I can't, I did, I wouldn't have never known until you, you said that. That's so glad that you made a full recovery. And I can see life-changing events like that to have a profound impact on somebody's sort of disposition for sure. It's funny. It's not funny. It's the wrong choice of words. It's interesting how oftentimes external events The birth of a child, the death of a parent, in your case, a medical event does trigger the sale of a company. It seems to be a fairly common thing that some sort of act, nothing to do with the business, some sort of external, you know, thing happens. And
Dane Pan I
John Warlow Mean, did you like, what was the impact of having a stroke on your relationship to the business? Was it? Like, how did that, how do those 2 things, you know, relate to one another?
Dane Pan Yeah. Yeah. I think we're lucky where, you know, at that point we're kind of systemized the operations to a point where we're spending roughly like 1 hour a week on it. So even though, you know, I was in the hospital for a couple of days, I couldn't really respond to my team. The business was able to operate kind of without, you know, our oversight day to day. So I wasn't too worried about that. But I think, yeah, having that healthcare, right? Like no one, especially in your 30s, I don't think anyone with that kind of medical history in the family, like it just kind of hit me out of the blue. Right. So that kind of changes your perspective a little bit. I think for me, it's always about like, you know, life is so precious. Life is so short. Like you want to do everything you want to, but there's been so many situations and people that's very, very close to me in my life. They always have these things planned, right? I want to do this when I retire. I want to do this when I'm in my 50s, but their circumstances can change at any time. You just never know. You can't plan for stuff like that to happen. So, so yeah, that, that was definitely a big wake-up call. I, I don't think that was the primary reason why we sold the business last year, but it's definitely contributed to, to the time.
John Warlow Yeah. And was there something that you were excited to go do that you couldn't do while running the business? Just down, you know, if you were down to 1 hour or 2 hours a week, you had lots of time on your hands. So like, or was it just the feeling of being more financially secure? Like what was it that that you were hoping you would get out of selling?
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so, so I think we, we love the consumer products business, right? Like we, because our brands, like the 2 brands I mentioned at the beginning were all natively based on, you know, for the Amazon platform. It's very, very hard to pivot because if you want a profitable D2C brand, the pricing structure that you will optimize for Amazon is not going to work for D2C. So, so for us, we always wanted to build a sustainable brand that, that makes a big difference in our customers' lives. And we can own that whole customer acquisition lifecycle end to end, meaning that we can build a strong brand, we can resell other products within a brand to the same customers that we can control that, that narrative. So the goal is with the exit, we want to start another brand, which we're in the process of right now. And then there was a second business that we have since started as well. So in the, in the services business.
John Warlow So you weren't planning to retire and go to the beach or learn to play golf or anything like that. This was a take the win. Maybe it's a single, maybe it's a double to use a baseball analogy, take them and then roll it into something else that's maybe less dependent. Okay. You know, this is a pejorative way of saying it. I don't, I don't mean it to sound this way because it diminishes what you built. Having said that, I've heard this term of like a training wheels business, meaning like, this is a great business, a success story. Right. But it's not going to be your forever business. Like it's a, it's a win. You learn a few things and then you go on, take the lessons to another business. Like, is that the way you were thinking about it? Like I've heard that other people have sort of used that term. I wonder if that's applicable here.
Dane Pan Yeah, that's 100% correct, John. I think like for us looking back, yeah, I'm sure every, every, every business owner or founder that has exited a business probably felt the same way, right? We always dream about the exit. Like, what would that day look like when the money hits your bank account? But I've talked to many founders who have exited, like, they all say the same thing, right? You might celebrate it for a day or two, you might go on that dream vacation, sit on the beach for a couple of weeks, but then after that wears off, you're— the wanting to build something else, that feeling comes right back, right? So looking back on all the things that we enjoyed, it was truly the journey, right? I know it's cliché to say that, but you know, looking back at the very first sale that we, that we hit our Shopify website, like the very first time we hit $10K a month, $50K a month, $100K a month, hitting those milestones and overcoming the challenges, right? Like we had competitors use black hat tactics trying to take us down, like overcoming that, like, like things like that, right? That's kind of like what really drove us and continued to grow the business. So, so I think for us, it's not— it's never about retiring and just sit on the beach and play golf all day. It's about what kind of impact can we do it again in another vertical or in another space?
John Warlow Okay, so let's get back to Mone. You're $1.2 million in— $1.3 million, excuse me, in revenue. You're roughly 20% profit margins, so it's a profitable business. Did you have any sense before you took it to market what you thought it might fetch in the way of a multiple? Like, did you have any sense of that before you went to market?
Dane Pan We did. Yeah. Again, I think like many founders, right, you kind of look at what are some of the other business are being sold in your space at how much, and then you start to kind of do the math in your head. Yeah, so it's roughly like 3 to 5x EBITDA. So that's very, very common for Amazon FBA-focused businesses. So I think that's what we had in mind going in.
John Warlow Forgive me, I don't know the acronym FBA. What does that stand for?
Dane Pan Fulfilled by Amazon.
John Warlow Okay, got it.
Dane Pan So So when you think about Amazon business, there are a lot of different types of business, right? There's wholesale, like there's, you know, there are just a lot of different models. FBA just means like, Amazon is the one that holds your products in their warehouse. And then they're the ones that, that's responsible for fulfilling the orders to the customers, handling returns and all that good stuff.
John Warlow And is there a group of buyers out there that buy FBA businesses? Like, is there a natural set of acquirers in that space?
Dane Pan There are. Yeah. So it's a, it's a giant, it's a gigantic business, right? A lot of people don't actually know this, but 50%, more than 50% of Amazon's revenue coming from their marketplace are sold by a third party, like, like brands like us, right? Individual sellers or, or even aggregators that own a bunch of different brands. So, so there's a, there's a big ecosystem of acquirers that can acquire these kinds of businesses.
John Warlow Okay. And so you make this decision both because you had this dependency on Amazon, you figure, hey, let's take the win. You have this medical event, you decide to sell. What happens next? Did you hire an M&A professional? Did you take it to market yourself? Like, what was the next step in the process?
Dane Pan Yeah, so, so we work with a fractional CFO and a bookkeeping firm. So I think step one for us was to get our books in order, right? So we kind of knew that going into it. I know, like, the typical advice is you gotta prepare 12, like, maybe even 18 to 24 months before you sell. But we kind of, you know, decided we didn't have that kind of runway. So, so yeah, the first thing was like have a meeting with my fractional CFO and say, look, we're thinking about going to market, right? Anything else we need to tighten our books on, making sure that everything, all our financials are in order. And then the next thing we did was we interviewed a couple of different brokers in the space. I think the benefit of going through a broker is because we're selling for the very first time, Uh, and I think for, because of the size of our business, it didn't really make sense to bring in like an M&A firm or even like a, like a professional firm to help us go to market. So I thought, we thought the best way is to pick a broker that already kind of have an existing network of buyers that can kind of help us in the due diligence process, right? Like we don't really need to hire a team rather than just lean on a partner.
John Warlow Were you looking for a broker who had a specialty in selling FBA style businesses? Is that what you were looking for?
Dane Pan Yeah. Or, or the ones that at least have a lot of experience selling like online-based businesses. Right. Or that, that can have a network of buyers that's in that space. So that was, that was, yeah, that was a big consideration for us. Like we, we, we didn't want this to become like a 6 to 12 month process where it's going to completely take over our day-to-day, almost become a second full-time job just to go through this process. So we decided to go down that route and it ended up working really, really well for us.
John Warlow And did you give your broker instructions to say, like, time is of the essence here? Like, I don't want this to be a protracted process. Like, did you, did you communicate that to your broker?
Dane Pan I didn't really specifically say that to the broker, but they did, they kind of give us their, like, expectations, right? Like, typically when they work with a business like us, this is the process, this is the rough timeline. And yeah, and then we're okay with it. So. We ended up obviously picking the one that we most aligned with in the end. But I don't think we were on a very, very strict timeline. It has to sell by this date, by this time. We obviously wanted, I think the terms and the amount was more important for us. So ultimately I think that kind of drove the decision on which broker that we ended up going with.
John Warlow Yeah, that's a really good point. Terms and amount. Like I've heard people say, you know, when you're going to negotiate something, you should negotiate a basket of Your terms. Don't negotiate one at a time, collect the entire basket and try to find the best collection of terms. So I'd be curious to know what your deal breakers were like. Did you have like, these are the 5 things that it, that, you know, the terms that were most important to you?
Dane Pan Yeah, I think number one, for a business our size, we didn't want any holdbacks, right? We wanted cash upfront. I know that was a deal breaker for a lot of potential buyers that we met with. But that was something that, that we really wanted, right? And then I think we, we wanted to sell to somebody that already kind of have experience running a business like ours before, because I think for us, it's not all about just the amount, right? Or getting what we want because we spent years building this business. To my wife, it's literally her baby as well, because she came up with a lot of these product ideas, perfected it. And we want it to be in the hands of somebody that can continue to grow the business and kind of continue to grow the brand, right? Like we had hundreds of thousands of customers that bought this product before. We wanted to end up in somebody's hands who can take it to the next level. So that was, that was an important decision for us as well. It's not just about getting what we wanted, but also kind of continuing the brand and kind of adding value to our customers that trusted us all these years.
John Warlow So obviously the valuation was important. But so was the fact that they were gonna continue to run and build the business after you sold it, as well as the cash versus holdback proportion. You were looking for 100% cash. Were there other major variables that were important to you?
Dane Pan I think those were the main ones that stood out. Yeah. And then we also, again, like I mentioned earlier, didn't want to prolong the process, right? Like, like the broker can help us with putting a lot of the the due diligence documents together. So we wanted a relatively fast close. Again, we didn't have a deadline on when we wanted to sell, but we wanted the process to be seamless, right? We don't want it to drag out for months and months. And so we were looking for a buyer that's quite serious as well.
John Warlow So
Dane Pan I think that was, yeah.
John Warlow Okay. So you wanted a motivated buyer for sure. What was the reaction like from the marketplace? So you engage the broker, they take it to market. What happened next?
Dane Pan Yeah. So we got listed in May of 2025. So in total, we met with 9 different buyers that showed interest. And then again, for the buyer to show interest, they need to have like proof of funds. They need to show that they actually have the ability to close. So I think that's the broker's requirement. So out of the 9, we had 4 LOIs. And then finally, I think we ended up connecting with a buyer in August. And then the whole process only took about, I think, 3 months— sorry, 3 weeks after after we signed on the LOI that they provided. And it was a relatively straightforward process to close, but the whole process took about 3 to 4 months in total, meeting like those 9 different buyers and going through the process.
John Warlow Got it. So let's walk through the 4 LOIs to the extent that you are able. Walk me through, you know, multiple— let's start with valuation. So multiple of SDE. Can you gimme kind of a little, or sorry, multiple of SDE is kind of broker lingo for seller's discretionary earnings, but kind of profit that before tax, also includes your personal compensation. Walk me through sort of low-end multiple to high-end multiple. You'd said that these businesses were trading at sort of somewhere in the 3 to 5 range. Like what did you find when, like what were the LOIs coming in at?
Dane Pan Yeah, out of the 4, I think it was between like 2, like the lower end was 2%, sorry, 2x. And then on the higher side it was 4x.
John Warlow Okay. Okay. And then the second variable you talked about was cash versus holdback. Where did they land on that dimension?
Dane Pan Yeah, I think 3 of the 4, there were some holdback components. Like 2 fell apart because they weren't willing to budge. Right.
John Warlow And holdback meaning like earnout or escrow or like what was the holdback that they were?
Dane Pan Yeah, it's, it's earnout. Correct. So we have to hit like certain performance metrics at a certain time period in order for us to get the remaining, say, 20, 30% that was—
John Warlow And those earnouts were tied to sales or profit?
Dane Pan It was tied to sales because profit is pretty straightforward. So it was basically, I think one had like a growth kicker to it. The other one is just to maintain what we were doing for the last, the trailing 12 months in the business. But the one piece of advice I got from my fractional CFO is obviously treat that earnout as a almost like a bonus, right? That you have to be able to accept that. Like, are you okay with it if you never receive that money post-close? And, and again, I think because of how our business operated, it was predictable enough, but we, we, we didn't want to hand it over to someone else and have them having full control. And then, you know, obviously not hitting those metrics, meaning that we won't, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be able to get the full amount that we asked for. So, so yeah, unfortunately I think 2 of the LOIs fell apart because we weren't able to budge on that.
John Warlow Okay. So that left you with 2 players in the game. Walk me through the experience those 2 players like had. How did they both have experience in the direct-to-consumer fulfilled by Amazon world?
Dane Pan One did, the other one didn't. So we ended up selling to the one that did.
John Warlow Interesting. So that was the tiebreaker in addition to the cash and the multiple. And if you, if you can share roughly where you landed in the 2 to 4 range, where did you actually end up landing?
Dane Pan Yeah. So, so they came in, I think closer to 4, but because we, we asked for 100% cash upfront, we ended up going down to roughly 3.6. That was agreed upon. So 3.6x SDE, and then the inventory was on top of that. So.
John Warlow Right. Because now when they priced the inventory, was it based on the $6 per unit that you paid? Would you say cleared customs or whatever it landed? Is that what you call it? Or was it based on the retail value of the inventory, like the $20 No, it
Dane Pan Was at cost, our cost.
John Warlow Okay. So it's like, hey, we got 10,000 units here at $6 a unit, that's $60 grand. That's basically, I'm making those numbers up obviously, but the, but you were, it was based on your cost. Got it. Okay.
Dane Pan My cost. Yeah.
John Warlow That's helpful. That's helpful for sure. And, and what was your, you know, when, when the LOIs came in, you and your wife sound like a real partnership. In, in every aspect, what, like, what was your reaction as a partnership to seeing the LOIs?
Dane Pan Yeah, I think for us, because we talked about like the, the ideal outcome going into this, right? So obviously, you know, we kind of looked at every single one and weighed out the pros and cons, and we kind of discussed which options, you know, would be the best for us to move forward with. So, so yeah, I think that process is definitely very stressful, right? Because You're like, okay, well, we like all these things, but we don't like this. Like, so we have to go back to the buyer and say like, yeah, we can accept these things, but we're not okay with this. And then they will come back to you and like, well, we're not okay with this that you're asking for. Can we meet in the middle? So, so there's a lot of back and forth and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I think luckily for us, the best offer ended up being like the most reasonable, like the buyers were super easy to work with as well. So it ended up, I think, working out extremely well for, for, for both sides.
John Warlow Did you ever, I mean, you had a very unique business in the sense that you were only working an hour or 2 a week. Did the thought ever occur to you and your wife, well, maybe we should just hang onto it?
Dane Pan We did. We certainly did. Right. Because it almost like ran it without us. Right. Like our, our, our, our weeks look like basically 2 biweekly 15-minute one-on-ones with our staff. Look at the P&L, make sure that— yeah. Like Like some of the folks I met with, like they're never seeing like a 7-figure business where like there's literally no work being put into it, right? And then that's the decision I think ultimately that we landed on.
John Warlow Well, congratulations. It's amazing. 9 potential acquirers, 4 of which made an LOI and all within sort of a nice healthy band. And you came away with full cash at close, which is, which is kind of every entrepreneur's dream. So congrats. It's a, it's a real win for sure. Are you up for a quick lightning round before I let you go? A couple of just questions that I ask everybody.
Dane Pan Yeah. Yeah. Happy to answer any questions.
John Warlow Okay, great. So what's the one thing you wished you had known about selling before you started the process that you now know today?
Dane Pan Yeah. So looking back, I think one thing is definitely started the process a lot earlier, right? Rather than waiting until when we're ready to sell, because one thing that we, that we learned in the end is every single expense that you had, like that affected your, whatever the amount you sell at, the multiple, right? So. So there were some subscriptions that we weren't using. There were, you know, the freight forwarder that we use, we ended up realizing they were 22% higher than, you know, some of the other comparable options. There were like the packaging that we use for our products that we can optimize a little bit more. So the shipping costs and then the Amazon fees would have been lower. So, so a lot of things that happened that we definitely will keep in mind, because those were all in the back of my head, right? Those are all the things I knew I needed to do. But Because we're so comfortable, I think what we were, we're like, yeah, we'll just wait. We'll just do that later. But when you're selling, you can't— when you at least when you want to sell at the time you want to sell, you can't be like, yeah, let me do this now and wait another 12 months to go to market. It doesn't work like that. So, so I think looking back, like even in any business we start in the future, always have your, like the fundamentals right. Check regularly by your CPA or your CFO or, you know, accounting that you work with. So. Yeah.
John Warlow Yeah. It's, it, you know, like if you're gonna get 4 times profit for your business, every one of those dollars is, is a meaningful savings, right? Like it's worth 4 times more than just the annual profit that you save. So worth, worth kind of cleaning things up before you go to market for sure. What was the emotional high of selling your company? Like, do you remember the moment where you, you reached the, the, the kind of apex of the, the hype emotionally?
Dane Pan Yeah, I think it actually wasn't when the, when the money hit the bank account, it was when, when the right buyer came along where we're like, yeah, this is, this is everything we asked for. They are the perfect fit. They already have a couple other brands in the space. We know that they can take it to the next level. It's like when we know that the business is in great hands and we're getting exactly what we wanted out of the deal, I think that, that was like the peak moment where, you know, we're like, this is, this is the best outcome that we, that we, that we wanted and we ended up getting it. So. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, it's definitely a great feeling, but like I said, nothing beats like all the milestones and the challenges you had to overcome to get there.
John Warlow What was the length of time between receiving the first LOI and receiving the fourth LOI?
Dane Pan Roughly 3 months. Yeah, the first LOI was beginning of June, and then the one, the final one we ended up moving forward with was end of August. So just under 3 months.
John Warlow Got it. So there's a bit of, bit of time there. That's interesting. What was the emotional low of selling your company?
Dane Pan It's the, yeah, it's the moment when the account transferred over, like, because with Amazon-focused businesses, you get paid every 2 weeks, right? Like it hits your bank account. And that, when that moment stopped, yeah, that was definitely like, this is real. It's gone. Right. So, but, but, but it was also relieving in a sense that like, okay, these are all the things we wanted to do right now. Now it's time to kind of go out and execute on what we have always planned with this exit. So that was the, yeah, that's definitely the low.
John Warlow Sounds like the Amazon community was super helpful for you in understanding what the prevailing multiples were in the space, but I'd be curious, were there any other resources that you turned to to educate yourself? You know, a course, a YouTuber, a book that you could point our listeners to that they might benefit from? In terms of educating themselves about the process of selling a business?
Dane Pan Yeah, I would say because I think we were so, we were so closeted in a way that it was just my wife and I. We never really kind of, you know, took external help in growing the business. So we didn't really have a lot of support from that perspective. I think our fractional CFO and the Booking.me team definitely helped us there. And I can't remember the company, but we went to this e-commerce conference back in, I think, 2023. And then they, there was a, there was a keynote speaker on the stage. I think they, they run an advisory firm helping companies in the e-commerce space exit. And then they gave a lot of framework on, you know, preparing you for that. Right. So, so I think that kind of gave us a little bit of idea on, on what we can do to prepare ourselves for, for, for exiting. I mean, had I known, obviously, build to sell and some of your framework, I think that would have been super helpful as well. But, but yeah, I think looking back. There wasn't too, too much support that we had.
John Warlow But I'm glad you raised industry conferences because I think they're actually one of the hidden gems for— oftentimes you'll get conference speakers that'll talk about it, exhibitors, even just talking to people in your peer group at the event can be very illuminating. So I'm a huge fan of being at the industry, that's for sure. Last question, what did you buy yourself, you and your wife hopefully bought yourselves as a trophy for Commemorating the win?
Dane Pan Yeah. So for us, we're big on experiences. So we booked a bunch of trips after the money hit the bank account, like, because we also have a relatively new newborn at the time. He was 6 months old. So we booked a trip to Hawaii. We booked a trip with her in-laws to Singapore and Thailand. I got them business class tickets for the very first time. And then we booked a trip to Europe and we just came back, back in April. So So yeah, I think like creating memories, that's always kind of a big thing for us. I don't know if you read the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. The memory dividend, I think that's something that's really, really important to us. So that's something that we definitely splurged on.
John Warlow Yeah. Well, between Hawaii, Singapore, Thailand, and Europe, like that's pretty good for one year.
Dane Pan Yeah. Yeah, totally.
John Warlow Well, congratulations. And if people want to learn more about you or maybe connect with you, Is maybe LinkedIn the best place to find you or what's, what's the best place to connect with you if they want to reach out?
Dane Pan Yeah, I'm very, very active on LinkedIn. They can reach me by email as well. So happy to provide that to your listeners.
John Warlow Great. We'll put your email and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes at builttosell.com. Dane, thanks for doing this.
Dane Pan Awesome. Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.