Thomas Smale is the Founder and CEO of FE International. He is a serial business entrepreneur and M&A expert, having built the industry leading firm in the $1-100M global technology sector.

Smale is an authority source on e-commerce, and in fact established the very category of M&A advisory for online businesses.

Smale began building and selling online companies in his early 20s as an interest. When he proved to have a natural talent for increasing the value of these businesses, this became his full-time career.

Over the last decade, Smale has grown FE International into an award-winning global M&A advisor of SaaS, e-commerce, and content businesses, completing acquisitions for thousands of founders, owners, and acquirers and advising on over $500MM in lifetime acquisitions.

In this episode you will learn:

* The elements that drive value/price.

* Reliability and consistency.

* Find out the things that people don't care about such as SKUs.

* Approach relationship between revenue/gross profit and # SKUs.

* Preparing for a sale the best way to increase the value of your business.

* What to do when buyers come in and look at everything.

* Things you do to exit your business.

* The middle ground between no planning and a plan.

* Difference between Brokers vs Aggregators.