EP 92: How to Sell a Community Newspaper with Tom Britt

Ed Mysogland  0:00  
Today, I had the opportunity to interview Tom Britt of the town post network. And for two reasons. One, you know, I have seen Tom, you know, through pretty much throughout my career he has been, he has been in the publishing and tech world here in the local community. And one of the big things that I saw with him as he created this community newspaper called The Town post network. And, and I guess I, I have to admit, I was surprised that a print publication had lasted so long. And then recently, I saw that Tom had sold his own two locations that I that were his, his original babies. And so I saw that on LinkedIn and I reached out to a man I wanted to ask him how, as a seller, how did it work? And then as a franchisee? Where does the business create value? And how do other franchisees exit? Well. And as always, Tom was super generous with his time and with his information on and he certainly he certainly seen where the puck is going in this in this publishing esque type industry. And I think he's I think he's onto something. So I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Tom Britt of the tempos network. Tom, welcome to the show. How are ya?

Tom Britt  2:10  
Hey, thanks for having me, buddy. So,

Ed Mysogland  2:13  
before you came on, I gave a high level overview of you. And I've known you for a long time. So I guess where I'd like to start is a little background about you and how you got into town post and what you're doing over there.

Tom Britt  2:29  
Yeah, so a little background, I started out in publishing back in the late 80s. Back when desktop publishing was coming around, and

Ed Mysogland  2:37  
the good old days,

Tom Britt  2:38  
the good old days, waxers, that puts galley type and things together, in my first job out of Ball State out of college was working at a typesetting company, which are now extinct. But that was my first experience introduction into publishing, I worked on magazines at Weimer, typesetting, which is now gone, and just fell in love with magazines about six years later. So about 2090 93 I started my own pre press company doing magazine design and things. It's called progressive publishing. And that business was interesting, because it was all about desktop publishing, so democratizing the whole pre press industry and how magazines were designed. scanners were new, you know, high end printers were new. And so I was taken advantage of right in that way. But, you know, trying to develop processes and ways we could handle multiple pages for multiple clients. And then in 1995, they kept talking about this thing called the internet, you know, we're gonna airplane with Bing AOL disk sitting in my seat, and I was like, What the heck is this? So the more I read about it, more I heard about it and more I got on the internet service browsing around back in the early days. The talk was about how I was going to do away with print. And here I am in a company that is in the print industry, right. And so I thought, well, you know, how could we leverage this thing called the interwebs. And we started building websites. And we actually built the first e commerce site in Indiana was a dog supply company. According I quest. It was the first e commerce site in the state of Indiana. And it was so antiquated that when that the customer the guy that owned the company, we built the site for he didn't have internet but he had a fax machines, we had actually fax and orders online, so he could build them. So anyway, long story short, I built one site like that, and I was like this is a lot of work is there's no off the shelf stuff. We got to figure out a business model to actually monetize it some other ways. We came up with channel seek.com and channels equals a.com. That was really it Becoming the open source guide of what's being streamed online. So back then real player was the only was the first it was the only wants a time that could stream video and audio over the internet use compression on each end and have real player download. And Mark Cuban had just found as you go public with broadcast.com. And so I thought man, there's gonna be a need for a TV Guide and all this stuff. Because all those videos out there, nobody has a guide that has everybody's stuff. And that's what channel seek was. In the process of doing channel seek, I still own my pre press publishing company. So I had an office in Casselton on new road. And in one part of the building was pro pub, the publishing company, right. And then across the hall was our.com company. So we had two separate offices, two sets of payroll, I had an office in the channel six, I could have more room to grow. And in the process of doing channel seek, and starting to speak at conferences about convergence in internet, television, radio all converging right. I had a publishing company in the back of my head, that print would be a big put big, the big player in this at some point. And so we started building broadband portals for like sprint and ISP channel on the West Coast and cello in Europe. AOL Time Warner had our channel seat, guys. So we're building these broadband portals with Comcast, all these guys. And I saw a need for a local portal, I thought that the Internet would get more and more localized as more and more content came out there. I saw print as being a vehicle that would stimulate people to go online and maybe make purchases or people would trust print more than did the internet even back then. And so the US leverage print to get people to do things online. That's how that whole system would work. Right. And so in 2000, I sold the publishing company in the.com, and started consulting and I thought, you know, I should build my own local portal. I mean, I could do that. Sure. It's not that hard. It actually was harder than I thought, but always, I built@guys.com. That's where I live. And I was prototype it in my backyard, and to see how it goes. And I launched it in 2003, just a website. And about a nine months later, I started the magazine. And so my, my traffic to my website was fairly consistent, I would have you know, I don't know, maybe 500 to 1000 unique visitors per week. But when I started the magazine, that's when the whole script flipped, because the magazine was something people got in their mailbox that had the name of Geiser hop, I live in guys, I want to read what's happening in this guy's magazine. And that's when everything started to launch for us. So templates really started. The embryo started back in 2003 2004. But it wasn't until 2010, we started licensing what we were doing, because I remember my background was publishing in the back office. So I kind of brought that to how could we do more magazines? How can how can I get ed to be a Tom Brady in his community? And how can I help someone else be the Tom Britton their community? And so we started licensing what we were doing. And in 2012, we decided, you know, at the time, we had like, eight licenses going, and we decided, you know, let's turn this into a franchise. It's more equitable for our people in the system. It's more regulated, it's easier to sell down the road. Not only franchisees, but franchisor down the road. And so we made the leap, hired a great local attorney named Josh Brown, who is arguably the best franchise attorney. I think in the Midwest.

Ed Mysogland  8:59  
He's been on the podcast, there's no one better

Tom Britt  9:02  
there is no way better than Josh and he was just really, he was a pup back then I say a pup but he was getting started specialize in franchising, and we're one of his first clients that really just say, hey, convert us and it took us a couple years. But in 16, we converted we registered as a franchise, we converted our buddy over to franchises. And now the Tampa's network is 18 magazines and 18 different communities. We have 11 franchisees and I just recently sold my two franchises. I started with my guys and fishers and I've done for 19 years. So I just recently sold those to two new franchisees Alison Ghats and Justin Beal and now I'm the franchise or so I can focus on just franchise development. But that's that's kind of the long story of how I got to where I'm at today. But it all started back in those.com days. The Wild Wild West of the.com. Well,

Ed Mysogland  10:03  
I, when I was I've had you on the shortlist. And I and I've been I've been wrestling with the, with the question, because as we were talking about before we hit record, you know, you think about a paper and and you wonder, you know, with the with the internet and and email newsletters and so on so forth, what's the viability of this? And and so I struggled with, how am I going to come up with? I mean, with the questions, because I'm sitting here going, Yeah, is there value here, and then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, I see you're selling you can I continue to see the press releases about adding new franchisees then I see that you sold that you sold the ones that that I knew you from? And so and so I'm like, Well, gosh, there's got to be something more here. So I guess that's where I want to I want to talk to you about is how does the value, I guess initially converge with print and digital in in today's world?

Tom Britt  11:14  
That's a loaded question. I'll answer it maybe in a couple of different ways. And maybe the course of conversation will help answer that question. First of all, just our print magazines, and I look at gross revenue year over year in the same number of magazines each year. So if it did, they started mid year, I don't even count the revenue, wait till the next year, and we roll them in. But just year over year, we've had consistently over the last five years over 20% growth every year, year over year for five years straight. That's including COVID years, that's not exempting them, that's including the COVID years. Okay, and that's just print. On top of that, we have added more digital services. We're now building websites we're doing SEO for folks, we're doing programmatic advertising, Google advertising, management, local SEO, we're doing a lot of digital services. And that's over and above the print stuff that's already growing year over year exponentially. So financially is viable. And I think what makes us different and what's really helped us is this, my prism that I look at things from right, so I don't I don't see print as the end all solution everything. I don't walk into a sales call and say what size ad Do you want? Usually, that's the last thing I asked. Right? Yeah, I would never come in your office say, Ed, Hey, um, you know, let's get the pleasantries out. Okay, what says as you think about this month, because really the size of the ad has very little to do with the success of your marketing campaign. It has more to do with all the other things you're doing digitally, socially. Other things, you're involved in your own client retention programs, those things all play and how successful you are. So what we do is we come in, and we're like marketing consultants, we're trying to figure out, you know, we play in a sandbox, where's everything? We're all the Where's everything buried in the sandbox? And what what do we work with? What's worked in the past? Are you using QR codes? Are you using couponing? Are you Devon app, you're trying to get people download? What's, what's the outcome? What's the measurement of success here. And because of that, I think it's helped us with our print sales, just because we're not looking to just print more paper, we're trying to be more efficient with our paper, and then leverage your other assets to make all this stuff work together. And honestly, if you look at it, you know, printing, printing magazines, or even newspapers or anything, printing them, the process of designing them, putting them on rolls of paper, cutting them out, stitching them, putting them in the mail, paying the postage, it's expensive, it's labor intensive. And it's a very high barrier to get into that business. But it also gets the second highest response and retention amongst all advertising mediums, second only to billboards. So we can do that well, and then help them on everything else and make them all sing together, then we can help the client be successful and it must be working because they wouldn't keep working with us if it didn't work.

Ed Mysogland  14:22  
No 100% And, and that, and that kind of makes sense to me where I don't mean kind of it makes sense to me from the standpoint of, okay, you know, not only do we have this publication, but we also have all of all of the wraparound services that's going to maximize the value surrounding the paper itself, right.

Tom Britt  14:44  
It's great I get to write

Ed Mysogland  14:47  
so. Well. One of the things i i guess i i wanted to ask is from an avatar standpoint, the people that are getting the news Paper, you know, like, like, from from where I, where we sit, there are people in our that were sent, you know, we're constantly sending out different stuff to and, and so many people prefer getting paper prefer the envelope, I can't tell you how many people we've talked to that pull out our file of all of the collateral stuff that we've sent out over the years and they just and they just keep it and so there's so I know that there's those kinds of people. But What surprises me is and that's where I was going to ask what's the avatar of that reader for the for the paper? You know?

Tom Britt  15:41  
Right? So the avatars is actually kind of surprising. There's been a lot of research done, there's a national magazine Association, which, coincidentally is run by all the big magazines. Okay, so imagine that, but so you have to kind of take what they say with a little grain of salt. But surprisingly, it's it's my generation. So sort of this the 5067 year olds, but also the younger people, now hats are starting to adopt print more so than even the generation that came before them. And so when we look at the avatar, it's a homeowner Swetland, male to homeowners, and its business owners in these local communities. And so if you own a home, like I live in Fishers, when I get the fishers magazine, and it has fishers at the top, and it's got a picture of somebody on the front that I probably need to know who they are. And I started strolling through those ads, it becomes it becomes very obvious that I am an engaged in that I can't text and read a magazine, I can't watch television and read a magazine, it's I can't multitask, good point. And it's also some nice downtime from my screen. So that's why people like print publications is something they don't have to scroll on their iPad or Kindle or something to read. So I think it's people who I think digital and the oversaturation of digital and all of our lives, is actually making print a little more unique and a little more special, because you don't get as much of it as used to get the secondly, it's a much more intimate conversation with somebody in a print publication than it is on something else. The online people or people will remember and reflect and take action on something they've seen in a magazine 10 times more often than they would on something you've only seen online. Because if it's tangible share must be real, right? Yeah, no, no, I

Ed Mysogland  17:39  
get that. So I think it works. Well. And it's funny you say that because I was sitting there thinking about the, you know who I was thinking about it wrong, actually, because I'm for someone to to be 10 times more likely to take action. That's surprising, because my one of my next questions were, look, you're competing, you got your Facebook groups you've got next door, you've got all these, all these, you know, community, whatever, online groups, and I'm sitting here going well, that has to detract from the value, but when in fact, I think it does just the opposite, that people are going to the magazine and and it actually amplifies rather than detracts.

Tom Britt  18:32  
So yeah, it doesn't make sense. And the way I like to say that another way of saying it is that people like to have things curated for them and packaged and presented in a nice way. Yeah, it's like for example, and here locally. I'll use an example Angelo Brockman, who was a weather lady weather person, meteorologists on a local television station. I have an app on my phone called weather buck. Okay. I can see the weather it instantaneously at any time of the day, day and night. I can get current temperature dew point, sunset, sunrise, Moon, all that stuff, right? Yep. I will sit and listen to Angela Buckman curate the weather for me and package it differently than my weather app. And I sit and I enjoy that. Now why do I like that is because it's intent. It's intentional curation of content. And we're doing nothing different in print. We're finding stories. We're getting stories about local businesses coming to town, a new restaurant that just opened up a brewery that's going to open here in the yard. All of a sudden, we go interview them, we get pictures, we kind of tell their story in four to 500 words. We put on social media, we put it the magazine, people enjoy ingesting curated content. It was designed specifically just for them. And I don't think that's ever going to go away. And actually I would argue that because there is so much in here all this other data out They're, you mentioned next, Facebook, all these groups, that people like to stop every once in awhile and say, okay, just curious for me 100 100%.

Ed Mysogland  20:12  
And I get that, and that's kind of where my next question is, is, you know, I hear that. And if I'm, if I'm the, if I'm looking at buying this type of business, I'm going, Oh, geez, you know, who writes the stories? How do I? How do I deliver? How do I deliver a product that, you know, no one want, no one wants to read, you know, read an article full of typos. No one wants to, you know, read a grammatically inferior piece of content. So I guess that's the first thing is, you know, what, if you talk about the personnel structure, you know, how does that work? Now? I know, that's my first question. But coupled with it, is I think we're we're seeing that the creative community is only increasing, I think there's more people available to write your articles than then some of the some of the restaurants and some of the people, the businesses that are facing, you know, trying to hire people. So that's my question. So tell me how how, how personnel works in this type of business?

Tom Britt  21:26  
That's a great question. And actually, it's probably one of our strengths of our network and the way Tampa was set up, we are a true turnkey franchise, which means that, let's say, Edie buys a franchise, he wants to do a magazine in Timbuktu. Well, Edie comes in and gets trained on our cloud based system. We train you on how to onboard freelance writers and photographers, we actually take care of helping you get them into the system, so you can make them assignments, where we have our own designers on staff, we got our own editors, on staff, our own web, people on staff that make all the web updates, we even do social media on anything that you put in your magazine goes through our whole turnkey system. So Ed, and the franchisee is the salesperson, they're the mayor. They're the face of that community. And so their job is to go out and do the networking, do the sales, did find out what stories need to be written, and then assign it in the system and let our writers and photographers do that. And we even go as far as to actually do all your invoicing for you. So when your magazines ready to go, we do the invoicing for you, we collect all your payments for you, we pay all your bills, including printing, postage writers, photographers, everybody. And then what we do is once a month, we net out to you how much you made based on your collections and what you sold and what we had to spend on your behalf for the previous month. So it's a complete turnkey system. So when you say personnel is really just you, we have a couple franchisees that do have a spouse that assist them. One in northern Indiana, his spouse, and he are basically partners. He's the sales guy, and she does all the operations of getting things in our system and assigning writers and photographers, they work really well as a tag team. But most of our franchisees are solo entrepreneurs, they work from home, their wife or husband does something else. And with our back office, we provide all the systems and general support they need. So they're not really hiring anybody, I always tell people, it's just you and your home office and a laptop and you will be just fine. So that's kind of how the personnel works. It's, it's it is a true turnkey franchise. So you don't have to hire anybody. We've already got him on staff, and you just pay your production fees, and that's,

Ed Mysogland  23:57  
uh, but I think isn't the industry as a whole going that way that they're, that they are, you know, freelancing, you know, you know, I know, Forbes does it, you know, where they're, they're looking for contributors. And then they compile all this together. And that's, that's how they do how they do it. The difference in yours is, you know, you're selling, you're selling, you're the mechanics of the financial side is is advertising. Right.

Tom Britt  24:29  
Right. And to your point, there are a lot of publications out there who had moved to this model, whether they had to, or they just financially couldn't keep supporting full time writers and photographers anymore. We started out that way. We try to stay as lean as possible and our system is developed so that we can onboard freelancers that maybe write one story a month, we've had some that write 10 or 12 stories a month, across our whole network. And I say about writing because you can do a phone interview and you can be anywhere when you do the interview, or zoom or whatever, it's like us, right? Exactly. I don't even know where you're at. I don't care, right? Because we're having this conversation. And I can do that interview. So, you know, we we've leveraged that for the existence of our model during COVID, obviously, that we've already developed and design that way. So COVID was easy for us to get through. The only hard part for us is we had a new office in Fishers we just moved into. And our staff was all excited to have you have a community pool or and we have a parking garage downtown, we're right across the street from a brewery is like this is living, right or a youngster and COVID shutdown is all go home. But you know, everything's already in the cloud. So we just worked from home in the cloud, it was really just no different. We just missed out on the social aspect of it.

Ed Mysogland  25:52  
Yeah. So when you think about out? Who are the buyers of this type of business? And and what are they? What are they looking for? I assume it's, you know, the backdrop of every entrepreneur is freedom, you know, the freedom to do everything, but But besides that, what to do there has to be more the end, there has to end I know, I know that you have you have looked at all kinds of different buyers. I know you have a horror story to share with us on the institutional side. But, but I mean, how what is there any consistency? So if I'm if I'm, uh, I own, you know, a paper of some sort, how do I, what am I in? What do I look for in that type of buyer.

Tom Britt  26:46  
So we have a couple, I guess, kind of buyer profile so and so let's look at one and that would be more of like a new franchise territory. So Ed wants to do Timbuktu comm or Timbuktu magazine, and there is no Timbuktu magazine, he's gonna start from scratch, and we're gonna get the same train, get him off the ground and launches first magazine and foremost, that buyer profile is generally somebody in their late 40s, early 50s. They have a lot of b2b sales experience, not necessarily magazine, or even print or even, you know, radio or television media, but just good b2b sales, ethics and tactics. One of our top sales reps for a couple of years or top franchisees was in pharmaceutical sales. And so you know, their use of cold calling and trying to get appointments and then trying to go in and close them on the appointment and walk out build the relationship with that client. So people that are that are really good salespeople, they have enough experience where they feel confident in their capabilities, they don't have trouble getting in front of anybody and talking about their business and asking you about how they're doing. And developing that relationship. Those people are really good candidates for us. Because what we can offer them is a turnkey franchise system, that they're going to own their territory, they don't own their magazine. And the only thing we get out of it, when they sell it down the road is $10,000 to transfer to somebody else, but they keep the net proceeds of that franchise system that franchise territory. So if you're working for yourself, if you want to work for yourself, have more flexibility, how quality of life, be able to work from home, because your your kids, your family, maybe your sales rep has been on the road a lot and you're just tired of traveling, he's gonna do something in your backyard. This is a great profile view, the second profile, the second type of purchase would be somebody who is looking to buy an existing territory. So the ones that I just sold were existing territories they were they weren't corporate owned, because we owned them separately from town pose, but they were original to those profiles. One of them was in real estate. And the other one had been executive director of a of a startup nonprofit that was founded here in the city that she bought. And I think, you know, nonprofit, you're selling sponsorships, you're working with sponsors, you're you're trying to do the labs, not a lot of people, not a lot of resources. Really good networking, on the real estate side, again, networking, working on your contacts, staying in touch with people follow ups, you know, being there when they're ready to sell that after five years. I've just sold them the house five years ago. So I think a person buying a territory. We've got a couple other territories kind of in play a little bit that people are talking about wanting to maybe sell or some buyers trying to inquire about if they'd be willing to sell but they all kind of fit that persona there. Okay, I got 45 to 50 year old, got some experience on the belt and their RAID array to own something of their own and spend the next 10 years building something they can exit on Sunday.

Ed Mysogland  30:10  
And that brings us to the next buyer that comes through the door. So the next buyer says, Okay, what am I buying? Buy? And in your case you guys are you guys are a little bit different. I, I know you well enough to like, you know, good organization. No one, no one in this community sweats that. But if I'm if I'm looking at, at this, I'm saying I what am I buying you because you control the process you control, you know, all the people, you control me whether I live or die, right? So so, so if I'm selling something, now I've got to now I've got personal relationships with every with all these people in the community. Now Now I'm I'm almost like the, you know, like my doctor that just retired. He has, you know, he has all this personal goodwill with all these people? How do I get it to the next person? So I guess that's, that's what I wanted to kind of bring around is alright, I see I see the value of the earning stream of of what you're selling. I'm just I just worry about it from a risk standpoint, if I'm the new buyer. So how does that work?

Tom Britt  31:21  
So a new buyer meaning like the current territories I just sold, right, right. Okay. So in that example, what they bought were the existing contracts that we already have. So most advertisers were monthly magazine, most advertisers are doing more than one month a year, they do 12 months, a year, six months a year. Okay. Most of those were contracts that we've had for multiple years. In guys, for example, where I started, I had two advertisers who had been with me since the very first issue I did in 2004. So it's so good. So what were they? Who are they? Yeah, well, what they're buying is that name, that recognition that the community has with the brand in the community, but they're also buying relationships and companies that have committed to this for multiple years. And they're buying the fact that they're probably going to continue with those relationships going forward, as long as they're, you know, they don't go and mess something up, they can go and keep that going. And so that's kind of what they're buying. It's also there buying some, as with existing territories, or buying some assurances that this thing is going to be here for a while.

Ed Mysogland  32:33  
No, I totally get that the prep

Tom Britt  32:37  
prices paper has been lots of crises and praying, as we all know about paper shortages. And there's a paper mill in Europe that shut down and during COVID through the whole thing in a tailspin during COVID. And we survived all that now papers coming back and the pricing is staying about the same, but start is going to go back down again. And so that's the ability stability in that market. We've weathered that already. We already weathered two recessions. Yeah, a pretty big one, and oh, 809. So we've kind of weathered those storms, and we're still here, and we're still growing at a 20% clip every year. And I think that's what they're buying into is, I want to do something that I own. But I also want to I could do this for 10 years and maybe exit and make more money on it and still monetize it during that 10 year period.

Ed Mysogland  33:29  
Yeah. So so what I heard is, look, you're you're buying recurring revenue you're buying you're buying a dependence on the results that the paper itself gets you as part of this whole process, right? And so and so if I'm and we know who the buyers so now the buyers between 45 and 55 ready to put the hammer down and and make a good run for the next the next decade. So where do I find the money to to buy basically one ginormous intangible asset?

Tom Britt  34:11  
Well, I'm so in the existing territories. They got their own financing lined up. They were able to use the financials and historical data. We did get a valuation done by a professional company that does business valuations. And one of the one of the industry that wastes the Midwest leading valuation experts gave us a valuation So based upon that valuation, taxes, history, the banks were very market but they gave him the money for it. When you're talking about new franchise territory, our new franchise rate is 35,000 per territory. That's the 2023 rate that could go up with their listing this later on And most of those people are they have that money kind of set aside. I think our FTD asked them to have about 50,000 of liquid assets, including the 35. They're gonna pay us just to help them get through that first three to four months as cash flows pick up, but that's, that's about what they need on the financial side.

Ed Mysogland  35:21  
So when you go to reset to resell, or go through the resale process, what and again, the avatar remains the same, or does the financial picture of that buyer change?

Tom Britt  35:35  
So resell a territory, so we've only had four territories resell, okay, we had actually five, two or corporate owned, that we resold to new franchisees. My two, and there was another territory that we had a franchisee, who had some health issues that came upon him unexpectedly. And we did an ask, he did a sale to some ways already in our net worth, somebody was already working with us, and they bought it and they're now running that territory. I think the if you had a look at an avatar or tried to describe them, what we found so far, and this is again, this is five transactions over the last seven years. Most of these buyers are people who live in these communities. And there are people that we already knew or already had some kind of relationship or knowledge of town posts. So these are people who worked with us. One of them was an advertiser who had worked with us and bought ads in a buying territory. One was a photographer, who had done some freelance work for us on his own photography studio, but just really had a passion for the territory that he was photographing and said, Well, what would it cost if I just bought this? And so they're usually people that we know now, you know, as we get bigger, you know, we got 18. Now we got a couple on the horizon. But if we have, you know, 50 to 100 franchises, I'm sure that's going to change a bit because then the brand is going to carry a little more swagger can have a little broader net, and you probably will get more institutional type buyers. So people coming through brokerages or some kind of a middle person that will be probably more apropos. But right now we're just kind of dealing in Indiana, Kentucky, it's very contained. And those buyers are right in our backyard. We're praying mainland to them. Now.

Ed Mysogland  37:33  
I get it. In fact, that's funny you say that, because there was a recent study that, you know, businesses, I want to say it's 600,000 in revenue and below. No, I take them out, it's a million dollars in revenue. And below, the buyer is within 10 miles of that business 10 or 20 miles. So So you're right. I mean, regardless of and in this in this study that I'm quoting, I mean, we're talking now industry agnostic, it's, it's that's that way, just based on revenue,

Tom Britt  38:06  
I'll tell you a funny story about selling guys and fishers. The two I just sold. I put a listing on bizbuysell. Myself, I wrote it, we had the valuation done, we knew what we want to put and what we want to ask for we put on bizbuysell.com which if you don't know that's a national website, you can list companies to sell and you also can wonder and buy companies on there. The listing I put on there was a 90 day listing I did not want to renew it. I thought I'm gonna give it 90 days and to see what happens. So I listed on this buy sell two weeks into it. No one inquired about it at all. So then the third week I put a listing, I will share the listing on my LinkedIn profile thinking that other business people on LinkedIn might see it and inquire about it. I got several people that messaged me that said, Hey, I can't afford to buy it. But I'd love to work for you. I want to write for you or I can do sales for you if you want to decide to keep up so I had a lot of interest but they weren't buyers. They were just like people are interested in maybe helping out which is great. That went on for a couple of weeks. And really nothing came out of it. Finally, the beginning of week five. I shared it on my Facebook profile. Now on Facebook, I've got about 5000

Ed Mysogland  39:31  
Friends,

Tom Britt  39:33  
right all all of them are friends. We're all Christmas cards 5000 every year. I put on Facebook, and literally within three days I had four people wanting to buy the magazines in three days. Now, the reason I tell you that is because we started on the process and some new people came in some other people kind of opted out. This went on for about a month but I closed It's on fishers. And I closed the day before my 90 Day listing was expired. So not only that, I sell them and list them on Best Buy Sell, but actually, it was Facebook that actually sold them. And I wanted to get them sold and close all within that 90 day period.

Ed Mysogland  40:18  
That's awesome. And good for you. I mean, as as we've talked, I mean, it's it in our world tends to be closer to a year to get that done.

Tom Britt  40:27  
And I expected that be honest with you, you know, and, but good,

Ed Mysogland  40:30  
good on you. And, you know, it's funny, the, one of the I had a an expert about selling health clubs and, and one of his techniques is that he put he looked at who, who comes to the gyms the most I would the hardcore people. And he sends him a letter and says, Look, you know, this thing's going great. I'm looking at perhaps taking on an investor, would you be interested it? Yeah, that was and that was his hook. And that's how we got these people. He's like, Yeah, you know what? Yeah. Have you ever thought about owning your own? Absolutely. And that's how that's how he, he did it and, and good for him. So

Tom Britt  41:17  
yeah, you always I think people that are closer to it are the best, you know, and the most obvious candidates to buy. As we start growing, and we start going national, you know, we are licensed in 42 states right now. We're looking to go beyond Indiana, Kentucky, we're getting ready to launch Florida here this fall, our first one in Florida. So as we started expanding, that avatar is going to change and we're gonna try to have you know, that's kind of the the million dollar question is, what's the perfect candidate? What are they doing now with their profile, that if we can find more people like them and sell more franchises, that makes tempos even more successful? Yeah,

Ed Mysogland  41:53  
I agree. Well, I'm bumping up on time, and I want to be sensitive to share the time I promised you. So. So I'm just, I'm curious to know, you know, as as you move forward, I, one of the things I really appreciate, appreciate about you is that you are thinking about value you are thinking about exits your business owner. And you're, and you're doing the same for for your franchisees. So I guess that's where I, I'm looking to you to explain to me on on the value, as you're, I know, I know, you're pitching an earnings stream, but there has to be a saleable asset at the end of whoever's ownership journey. And I guess I just want to talk a little bit about how are you? How are you positioning those franchisees that they have a saleable asset?

Tom Britt  42:50  
On a man? Yeah, so there's, there's really two things that we can do to impact their sale price, right. So one is develop strong and systems and training systems, so that a potential buyer down the road feels comfortable that when they buy this asset from one of our franchisees, that Tom and Tom post is gonna be there to take care of them in perpetuity. That's one piece of it. The second piece is building a strong town post brand, that people want feel like they want to be a part of. You know, McDonald's doesn't sell hamburgers, they sell their brand, right? Yep, town post wants to be able to sell that brand. The people say no, yeah, these guys get to work from home, I see them in the golf tournaments. They have great quality of life, they're making great money, but they love what they're doing. And they're building value in something that is going to be worse, something down the road and ready to exit. So those are really the only two levers that we can control. And those are some some things that we are spending a lot of time on, as we speak. I mean, one of the reasons I sold the two franchises I had was to spend more time on getting town post systems in place, getting training better and more memorialized. So I can run you through a script and you know how to do this versus having to do so much one on one training with everybody. So that's, that's what they're buying into. And I'm hoping as we go down that path, we're going to find more people that just want to join town posts that are already doing magazines. I mean, if you think about it, if you're doing Timbuktu magazine out of your house right now, on your own, you're negotiating you're printing your one guy by him printing through your print you're the last guy that printer wants to hear from that month because you're gonna pay more believe me. You probably have an analog do the editing you got your Matthew your son doing the website, you got somebody else doing social media, you're trying to do sales, but you're also have to have new billing yourself and QuickBooks, and people are behind but you're so busy trying to bill you can't catch up on the receivables. It's hard. It's very hard, it's very lonely business. So what we're doing now is we're actually talking to a lot of people who are in that situation. One is to become a friend, one of our franchisees, and basically, we've converted them into a town post franchisee. And now, they not only know our systems, we take care of all their back office for them, so their nephew or their neighbor can now go do something else. But we also give them economies of scale, we also give them a better exit, because who wouldn't rather buy a franchise of Timbuktu magazine from town pose than a magazine from Ed called Timbuktu? And Ed wants to go to Florida, and he's not here to answer my questions, because now he's important. Now. I got it. Well, that's kind of the one that we're actually talking, we've got a couple magazines were discussions with now, there's a whole vein of these types of publications out there. And we're just starting to make headway now. But I'm hoping, by the end of the year, we'll have a couple of announcements about a couple of we're onboarding in some other states that we can convert into franchises,

Ed Mysogland  46:00  
I always believe, you know, I always believe, you know, growth through acquisition is is is the quickest way to, to build brand. So that's awesome. Well, I, at the very end of every interview, I always ask, you know, if you had one piece of advice to give listeners that would have the most immediate impact on their, on their business, and as it relates to an exit, what would it be?

Tom Britt  46:29  
Um, the one thing I would recommend is this getting, always having your hands and your mind around your numbers, and keeping a close eye on the numbers that matter the most to a potential buyer down the road. I see. I think, I think a lot of people entrepreneur, I'm gonna speak from entrepreneurs, that's what I am, I built this business from nothing. And here we are, you know where we are today. In every entrepreneurs journey, you start out with this great idea, and then you try to do a proof of concept. And then you start monetizing it, and you think, Oh, my gosh, I think I can make this work, people will pay me money to do this idea. And then you go the next stage, you start trying to grow and make more money by making the idea better and bigger, and the broader footprint. And I think at some point in that journey, it usually happens after a little bit fatigue starting to set in, because you start realizing it's harder to grow than you thought, or I've started to lose part of this market, because somebody else started up and I gotta, I gotta pivot now and do something a little different. But at some point, that journey had to stop and say, You know what, I want to sell this someday. And nobody's gonna buy this from me, because I'm the center of it. I was the idea guy, and I got it off the ground, but I can't get this plane above 10,000 feet, and nobody's gonna buy a plane and like, goes 10,000 feet tall. So when you start paying attention to numbers, and start looking at your books, and start looking at them from the eyes of not just how well you're doing, but what a potential buyer would look at those books as and say, I want to buy this. That's when you start, I think, start really adding some value to your business and you realize that you need to be detachable. A business will not if a business won't survive without you, you're in trouble. You have to make it survivable. Without you, you gotta get systems in place, people in place that are key people, and you have to build it so that you can unplug yourself someday and go into somebody else's garage and work. And I think that's, that's a that's my only recommendation give to anybody. And to be honest with you, I'm in that position right now. I mean, now that I've got town posts as my full time gig, and I'm focused on franchising, and we've got digital thing we're spinning off. Now that I'm focused on that this is my top of mind every day is how am I going to build this my exit someday? Sure. And, and you just have to be always, always, always thinking about, where's the back door on this thing, if you don't know where to add, clutter the clutter, so you can find it, because you need to be able to do that at any given time. You just never know when the offer is going to come around either. I mean, 100 and my.com days, all these companies are after killing it and going for things and and then I'd meet with them one day, and the next day they had sold out and I'm like what the hell happened? You never told me you know, sell it. Well, this guy approached me a week ago and made an offer we couldn't refuse. You know, you just never know.

Ed Mysogland  49:29  
And that's what we do. I mean, it's like, you know, when we do valuation work, it's like, Look, you never, you never know when someone's going to show up at your doorstep with with an offer. So knowing understanding what creates value in your business, at least, at least you're in a position to, you know, to understand whether or not you need to take the next step and figure out who's going to come along and be your deal team. Right? Yes. So what's best where we can connect with you?

Tom Britt  50:01  
Well, yeah, so, you know, town pose to wn E. Pls. t.com is our public site. We also have a franchising site franchising dot town. post.com has more information about how the franchising process works, what territories are available periods we're looking at here in the Midwest, those are the two best ways to get a hold of me. I also, you know, my phone number is on those sites as well. So what I recommend for people to do either text me and say, hey, you know, can you give me 30 minutes and just do a phone chat. I always tell people, they're looking to buy a franchise or maybe looking to buy one of our existing territories, or even looking to convert their franchise or their business into our franchise system is, I'd much rather talk you out of it than talk you into it. Amen to that. You know, so that's, that'd be my recommendation is reach out to me through text or email, and that'd be the best way. Got it? Well,

Ed Mysogland  51:00  
I'll have all of your contact information and all of the places that they can find you. So Tom, hey, thanks so much for for hanging out with me it you know, it's been too long. It's been too long since we got to visit.

Tom Britt  51:13  
Our past volley crossed again. It's been great,

Ed Mysogland  51:16  
right? Well, I'm, I'm certain the listeners will have gotten a lot of value out of this. So I can't thank you enough.

Tom Britt  51:25  
I hope so. Yeah. You're welcome.

Ed Mysogland  51:27  
All right. We'll be seeing you soon.