Selling a company is the entrepreneurs' dream goal, but what to do after the exit is daunting. Some sides say to stay away from building another business right away while others say it's important to keep a toe in the pool at all times. Today's episode is about what to do (or not do) after you sell your business. We discuss drive, purpose, and the type of work business owners want to do once they achieve financial freedom.

Today's guest, Nate Ginsburg, dabbled in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures before he got into Amazon and FBA about 4 years ago. About a year into his business, he took in a partner and sold off about half of the company to him. In 2018, they sold the US side of the business to a Chinese investor. When he sold the business and made a hefty profit, Nate found himself questioning what he wanted to do next. Today we get into the many ways he is fulfilling his need to always be doing something, both personally and professionally.

Episode Highlights:

The history of Nate's entrepreneurial journey.
The trajectory of his Amazon FBA business and how the sale came about.
How Nate and his partner structured the relatively atypical sale.
Nate's motivation for selling.
The importance of free cash flow in a business.
How Nate moved on from the sale to pursue new things.
What brought about the new deals he's involved in and what's next for Nate.
The importance of assembling the right team in moving your business forward.
How the helping and connecting pieces of what Nate is doing these days can play into future deals.
Focusing on the big picture in your business role – the recurring notion of working on your business rather than in your business.

Transcription

Joe: So you and I had a chance a few weeks ago to hang with Ryan Daniel Moran and talk to him a little bit. We had him on this podcast and one of the things that he talked about was what to do after you sell your business. He talked a little bit about planning in advance but his advice was take some time off; don't do anything business wise and that was his mistake looking back. You just had Nate Ginsburg on the podcast to talk about that very same thing if I am right … correct?

Mark: Yeah that's right. So Nate has an interesting story. He sold his business last year; not through us. It wasn't through a broker. It was a deal that just kind of worked out on its own. But he found himself after that sale questioning what he wanted to do next. It was a lot of this … you're so used to all this hustle, hustle, hustle, and the next thing you know you're just kind of left there wondering what is my purpose? What do I enjoy? What I want to be doing next? And so he really went on kind of an almost spiritual journey here of really evaluating how does he want to spend his days, how does he want to spend his time. And he came to the conclusion that he really wants to be someone who shares in helping other entrepreneurs and then also doing some investing as well. So this episode has a lot of layers to it definitely talking a little bit about general entrepreneurship and that drive that we all have to do things and that hustle. But also what do you do when that drive kind of dries up or when you aren't having that in front of you or maybe you're hustling for all the wrong reasons. So that's definitely the topic in this but we also have this interesting wrinkle in here that he's bought two businesses since then. One of the businesses he didn't buy entirely. He bought just a portion of it and is more of an investor. And I know a lot of our buyers they ask us about that. Do you have deals where an owner wants to stay the yacht and he's successfully done this before on deals. We've talked a little bit about that as well. So a lot of different layers to this, if you like just general entrepreneurship discussion that's really where this kind of falls into of entrepreneurship drive, finding your true purpose in life and your work, and purposeful work, and then finally getting into some more creative deals when it comes to acquisitions.

Joe: I think it's always great to hear people's stories and how they did it. It may not always directly relate to your life and what you're doing and what your goals are but you can always take bits and pieces of it and leave the rest behind. So let's go to it.

Mark: Yeah absolutely. Let's go.

Mark: Nate thank you so much for joining me.

Nate: Thank you for having me. Hello from sunny Los Angeles.

Mark: And now you're actually just up in my neck of the woods up here in Minnesota and normally I would tell anyone hey if you're up here in Minnesota up in the Twin Cities reach out. You did and I happen to not be here this past week so we missed each other.

Nate: Yeah we missed each other but I'm glad to connect now. And yeah Minneapolis is my hometown. I was back … I was in New York for the summer and then attended Burning Man and then after Burning Man I went to Minneapolis to hang with the family and kind of decompress and now I'm on the road again in California and then making my way back towards Asia where I spend a good chunk of the winter.

Mark: All right pretty cool. I've been following you on Facebook for a little bit now and I'm just kind of looking at some of your Facebook posts especially from your … I think you call it the summer of hustle 2018 New York City. And you talked in a few of your posts about your eagerness just to share some of this stuff that you're doing as an entrepreneur. And so I thought hey if you want to share we have an audience. Let's talk, let's start sharing.

Nate: Yeah.

Mark: I saw one of the images of you doing a photo shoot, a yoga photo shoot in the middle of the street.

Nate: Yeah. I mean … so after I sold the business last year and you know after that I had a lot of these questions around like what to do next and what's important and what direction do I really want to be going in? And that's where some of this … it's got all these questions of what am I good at, what's my unique ability, all these kind of things and really trying to uncover and understand what I'm best at. How I can add value, what I enjoy, and yes some of the things that I've … I mean not that this is totally new or not like new information but just useful to kind of like specify or articulate is that I do … I really enjoy sharing, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy helping others. And so that's in part of the Facebook stuff of trying to share more and post more and connect and help and inspire. The yoga stuff I'm also really into yoga. I've been practicing pretty regularly for the last five or so years. And I was hanging out with a friend of mine in New York who … I mean she has an amazing personal brand and Instagram following of 400,000 people. And she was just kind of encouraging again like you should do this and in the trying to stay with pushing yourself to do things even if they're a little bit scary. Yeah, I ended up doing this photo shoot in New York. I got some cool pictures in front of the middle of the street doing head stands. It was a little bit scary but also fun and people seem to like it.

Mark: It's pretty fun. It's fun to kind of troll around and take a look at what you've been doing in the past there and like you said pushing yourself which is always fun to talk to people that have been doing that. Let's back up a little bit, let's talk about selling your business last year. Was that the first business that you owned or how many businesses have your owned before you sold that business?

Nate: Yeah so that's the first somewhat significant one I've … over the last six or whatever years I kind of dabbled in a variety of things. I have actually sold a few small content websites. This was years ago but nothing that significant. And then I got into that business which was e-commerce, Amazon FBA. I guess I got into it three years ago now or four years ago or something and yeah that was the biggest, I made the most money, built into the biggest operation. So then that was the I guess most notable sale but I guess actually though just kind of back up I've kind of sold that business twice. And what I mean is I started the business myself three or four years ago and then about a year in I took on an investor partner. My friend and now business partner Travis. So then I sold him 49% of that business which was I guess kind of that type of a sale and then a year later is when we had the opportunity to … again we didn't sell kind of the whole thing. We sold the USA distribution side which is actually the one that was making basically all the money. And so we sold that which was for just under a million which is kind of what I was kind of posting more or sharing about but then are actually still operating the EU side of that business which at the time that we sold wasn't at a place or wouldn't make sense to kind of include in the sale but now hopefully going into next year or maybe Q1 or Q2 next year hopefully we'll be looking to sell that remaining side.

Mark: So how did that work as far as selling just a portion of that? I mean usually, you have these non-compete agreements in place. People typically want you out of the industry that you're in. So as the owner you know that business … that product really well. Usually, a buyer wants to take over the business and have room to expand and especially with Amazon, it seems like international expansion makes the most sense. So how did you guys … without getting into details you can't get into how did you structure that? And what was sort of the appeal of that?

Nate: Sure. So it's a good question and yeah I guess I'd say our sale was somewhat not so typical and I guess there's a lot of different ways that sales wouldn't be typical but yeah ours was not … this wasn't...