Ben Leonard is an Ecommerce Consultant and the Co-founder of Ecom Brokers, a brokerage specializing in helping ecommerce brands with exit plans to sell their businesses for the best possible price. In 2016, he founded Beast Gear, a fitness equipment brand that he scaled to more than seven figures in revenue and sold after three years.
Ben says he’s the classic millennial entrepreneur because he started a business from a laptop in a cupboard, grinding away in his spare time. In 2019, Ben decided to spread his knowledge about achieving profitable ecommerce exits to other entrepreneurs. That same year, he bagged the Elevator Awards’ Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [02:08] Why Ben Leonard is back running another ecommerce brand after selling Beast Gear
- [03:37] How Ben is approaching building an ecommerce brand today
- [04:46] What makes an ecommerce brand valuable and sellable
- [08:41] Pillars of creating a transferable business
- [11:17] How to improve the defensibility of your brand
- [14:54] Valuing your ecom brand
- [22:07] What does the process of selling your business look like?
- [25:31] Deal structures for exits
- [30:00] Routes to selling your ecommerce business
- [33:27] How to think about selling your brand
In this episode…
The ecommerce industry has seen significant growth since the pandemic hit and has remained a thriving business. However, many ecommerce business owners still struggle to achieve the level of success their counterparts are reporting. It comes down to one thing: not building a sellable business — even if you don’t plan to sell.
How do you build a sellable ecommerce brand? What goes into preparing your business for a big exit? And when you’re ready to sell, what are the routes to consider? Ben Leonard can show you.
Find out about these and more on this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where Joshua Chin talks with the Co-founder of Ecom Brokers, Ben Leonard. They discuss the criteria to becoming a valuable ecommerce brand, making your business transferable, valuing your brand, and lots more!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!
Our team of passionate email marketing experts has helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.
Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.
If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the ecommerce industry and take an in-depth look at the struggles and successes in growing ecommerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:21
Josh Chin here I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts and founders in the ecommerce industry and go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes in growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you run a direct to consumer ecommerce brand is ready to scale and unlock the next level of growth and unlock your optimal customer lifetime value through email marketing, and retention marketing Chronos is your company, we’ve helped hundreds of brands get over $70 million in return from email alone and our clients get an average 3500% ROI through our efforts worked with brands like the Oodi, Truly Beauty, Ally Skin and many more. Now the next step is to email us at sales@Chronos.Agency or you can go to Chronos.Agency to learn more. Today’s guest is a returning guest, Ben Leonard. He is the founder of Beast Gear, a fitness equipment brand, which he scaled past multi-seven figures in revenue and sold it after three years. today. He is an Ecommerce Consultant and a co-founder of Ecom Brokers, a broker specialize in helping ecom brands find successful exits of their own. So the last time Ben was here on our show, we talked a little bit about his history, why he sold his business, how he sold his business. And today’s conversation will be all about how you can achieve the same level of success as Ben did, and the process and thought processes of selling a business and why it’s so important to gear up your business or an exit. Even if you don’t plan to exit one day. Then Welcome back to the show.
Ben Leonard 1:59
Thanks for having me back on the show. Josh. It’s good to be here and good to see you again.
Joshua Chin 2:04
Awesome. How have you been since we last? spoke a
Ben Leonard 2:08
couple of busy. Yeah, great. busy, but good. So I have two main hats really well, three hats, I guess I I’m consulting, I got the brokerage but but the third hat is really important because I’m still an ecommerce business owner myself, I’m building my own brand. And that’s important a because I you know, I enjoy doing that. And I want to build brands and scale them and sell them. But be in order for me to do what I do with the brokerage, I need to have the current lived experience of understanding what it is like to be an ecommerce business owner. There’s a lot of brokers or, or consultants out there who don’t really have the, the understanding of being in the shoes of their client. And I don’t think it’s good enough for me to say oh, well, I used to be a ecommerce business owner, but I sold my business, I still need to be one because the industry is evolving so quickly. And so that’s why I’ve been so busy building my own brands and helping others sell their business and Ecom Brokers it’s it’s certainly been an industry I’m grateful to be in during during the pandemic because it has exploded,
Joshua Chin 3:12
as we all know. Absolutely. And now not only have one exit under your belt, and you probably have a little bit more insights into how you how to build a business that’s sellable. From day one. How has it changed from your experience building vSphere and today building your new brands? What are you doing differently? Are you? I guess, yeah, when you first started,
Ben Leonard 3:37
when I started Beast Gear, I didn’t have a background in ecommerce. And I actually started it as a hobby to give me something to do while I was recovering from about an illness. And so I never had an exit in mind. Luckily, I was able to rectify that mistake, because I did begin to plan for an exit in advance of finally exiting. If I’d known what I know now, I would have always intended for my business to be sellable. Even if I didn’t want to sell it or if I wasn’t sure if I was going to sell it. Because the happy side effect of having a business which is sellable, neat and tidy and Built to Sell which, incidentally is the title of a great book people should read is that it scales because it’s more efficient, it’s easier to run. It’s easier for your customers to use. And so Had I known that I would have made my first business sellable from day one or certainly been moving in that direction.
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