Matt Raad talks with Jason Barnard about the double exit.

Matt Raad, the CEO of eBusiness Institute and Website Investor, discusses the concept of a "double exit," where entrepreneurs can grow a business using their personal brand and later exit without diminishing the company's value. Matt reveals proven strategies for acquiring, growing, and selling websites.

Jason Barnard and Matt Raad also discuss the challenges and strategies for businesses heavily dependent on personal branding when it comes to exiting, with a key highlight on the discussion on transitioning personal brand-centric businesses to new owners. Matt underscores the importance of planning and communication, suggesting collaborative efforts between buyers and sellers for a seamless handover.

Learn how to identify undervalued digital properties, transform them into profitable assets, and execute successful exits while preserving brand value. Jason Barnard and Matt Raad conclude the episode with an assurance that even seemingly tricky personal brand transitions can be managed effectively.

What you’ll learn from Matt Raad

00:00 Matt Raad and Jason Barnard

01:21 Matt Raad’s Brand SERP

01:35 Liz Raad’s Brand SERP

02:01 Jason Barnard Highlights Matt and Liz Raad’s Google Learn About Result

03:40 What Does It Mean to Flip a Website?

03:48 How Long Does It Take To Transform a Website Into a Profitable Exit Opportunity?

04:03 What Does eBusiness Institute Do?

04:14 Who are the Ideal Professionals Seeking to Transition Into Digital Entrepreneurship?

04:23 How Do Professionals Learn to Build Profitable Digital Assets While Keeping Their Jobs?

04:48 How Long Has eBusiness Institute Guided Professionals Toward Digital Entrepreneurship?

04:58 What Does it Call When a Business Sets a Bold, Ambitious Goal for a Multimillion-Dollar Exit?

05:31 What is the Strategy for Turning Neglected Passion Sites Into Profitable Assets?

06:46 What is the Term for Buying Good Websites Under $5,000 and Transforming Them Into Six-Figure Assets?

07:14 What Can a Business Do if They Want to Turbocharge Their Website Renovation Beyond Standard SEO?

08:19 How Does a Low-Cost Website Renovation Turn It Into a High-Traffic, Revenue-Generating Asset?

09:25 How Can Someone Profit From Acquiring Passive Income Websites Without Being an Expert in the Niche?

10:41 When Should Entrepreneurs Start Planning Their Exit Strategy for Personal Brand-Based Businesses?

11:10 Why is Rushing to Sell a Business During Burnout a Critical Mistake to Avoid?

11:21 How Do Entrepreneurs Systematize Online Personal Brand-Based Businesses for Successful Exits?

13:21 How Do Successful Entrepreneurs Smoothly Transition Ownership to New Buyers?

14:15 How Long Should Entrepreneurs Stay Involved When Transitioning Their Business?

14:56 How Do Entrepreneurs Introduce New Owners to Search and AI Assistive Engines According to Jason Barnard?

16:45 What Does a Business Owner Need to Do to Ensure a Smooth and Successful Exit Strategy?

19:28 How Can a Business Owner Ensure a Successful Handover When Selling a Passion Site?

22:25 What is the Primary Focus for Buyers When Acquiring a Business?

This episode was recorded live on video January 28th 2025

https://youtube.com/live/9hkrffVZ0N4

Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-raad/recent-activity/all/Matt Raad

Transcript from The Double Exit - Fastlane Founders with Matt Raad

[00:00:00] Narrator: Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard. Each week, Jason sits down with successful entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives and get them to share how they mastered the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. How can we quickly build a profitable business that stands the test of time and becomes our legacy. A legacy we're proud of. Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard.

[00:00:31] Jason Barnard: Hi everybody and welcome to another Fastlane Founders and Legacy with me Jason Barnard. And a quick hello and we're good to go. Welcome to the show, Matt Raad.

[00:00:43] Matt Raad: I love it. Thank you for having me on, Jason. It's great to be here.

[00:00:47] Jason Barnard: Yeah, Matt, you're all the way over in Australia and we actually almost met because I met Liz, your wife and business partner.

[00:00:53] Matt Raad: And business partner, that's right. And she interviewed you many years ago for our community, which was awesome.

[00:00:59] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. And today, stick around because we're going to be talking about The Double Exit and Matt Raad is the double exit guy. It's going to be really, really interesting and using your personal brand to build a business and then exit with the personal brand intact without decreasing the value of your company. I'm really excited to hear about that because I think it's something that's incredibly important. But here we go. Before we start, here is your Knowledge Panel on Google and when you search your name, you look like an absolute superstar, which means your digital footprint is relatively well organized. And we see a lot of Matt and Liz Raads. So I thought I'd look up Liz as well.

Hers is more difficult to find. If you search a name that doesn't pop. I actually had to dig into our data in the Kalicube Pro database to find Liz's Knowledge Panel, but that's looking pretty good. And if you look at the top there, if you know what generative AI is, AI overviews, that has been around for four or five years and that is generative AI. Knowledge Panels have been full of generative AI for four or five years. So at Kalicube, we've already mastered it. And this is the good one. That's Google Learn About. And I don't know if you've seen it.

It's in America. It's an experiment. And this is where the world is going. You can see here it's a learning experience. It's understood who Matt and Liz Raad are. It's understood that you're all about buying websites, optimizing websites. It explains all about you, gives some opportunities to listen to you, gives some explore related content and then follow up questions. What are your main business interests and how did you get into Internet website flipping? And that, if you look at it, is a funnel.

I start with your name and it's going to draw me down the funnel and it's going to convince me that you're a superstar if you've organized your digital footprint correctly.

[00:02:44] Matt Raad: Wow.

[00:02:45] Jason Barnard: But that's not the topic for today.

[00:02:47] Matt Raad: Well, it is kind of because your listeners can use that funnel. I'm just sitting here thinking, wow, we could, you know, with websites, online businesses, you can, you should be using that sort of a funnel for any online business that you have. And as you said at the beginning, that can add to the exit valuation down the track.

[00:03:07] Jason Barnard: Right.

[00:03:08] Matt Raad: I think that's super important, what you just showed there. For any online business.

[00:03:12] Jason Barnard: Yeah. I mean, what was interesting is a couple of years ago, Fabrice Canel from Bing, who builds Bingbot, and when they released Copilot was saying, actually what we're doing is building the funnel. And we're building the funnel, bring the user down the funnel to the perfect click. So you'll get less clicks, but the clicks you get will be straight to purchase.

[00:03:32] Matt Raad: Oh, nice. Okay.

[00:03:32] Jason Barnard: Isn't that cool? Anyway, onto your topic, which is you help white collar workers learn to buy, build websites and then flip them. And flipping a website means selling it onto somebody else. Who do they generally sell the website to and how do they build it up?

[00:03:47] Matt Raad: Well, it takes time. Flipping makes it sound really quick. And I'm sorry, for any listeners, I know you want to hear the magic stories of. And we do have plenty of stories of people that have bought them and flipped them. But what you're right, Jason. What our passion is is teaching people how to buy websites effectively, do really good due diligence, and ideally get out of their nine to five or typically these days it's five to nine. We typically work with high performance people, professionals earning a lot of money, so that journey takes a little bit longer to replace their income. And we teach them digital skills.

We love SEO, even though SEO's changed dramatically. And what the journey looks like is we get them basic skills first and then we get them started to buying small little sites so there's no risk they can still keep their daytime jobs. And they do it as basically, it's a very American sound term, but it's really effective. Do it as a side hustle. And we found that that worked really well. We've been doing this for now, teaching people for 15 years. Fifteen years we've been teaching people and we love it, absolutely love it. And we've got amazing clients and but a lot of our clients do have what we call the BHAG, the multimillion dollar big hairy audacious goal, the multimillion dollar exit.

[00:05:08] Jason Barnard: Right. So we've got our white collar worker, they built up a website and you're saying they build it around community, a unique approach and their own personality, which means personal brand is hugely important.

[00:05:22] Matt Raad: Well, what we're teaching now, this is really interesting because SEO has changed, we're teaching that now. So where you start is a foundational side. What our actual strategy is, and to this day it's still the same strategy, is find what we call fallen angels on neglected websites. But ideally they're passion sites. So they're passion sites that someone set up many years ago around golf or cooking or guitar, learning how to play guitar. So that, and I know to someone that's not online, you probably,