The #1 Reason I Was Able To Sell My Biz For $100m In Cash With Jeff Goldstein

Eric Beer 0:00
Hello, hello Performance Marketers! I hope you guys are all doing well out there. So today's episode, we're going to talk about how valuable it is to build your list. I have someone that's coming on today, who sold his business for nine digits in cash. In cash! A $100 million dollars in cash. And he's gonna tell us all about how he did it and what was the most valuable thing in why he was able to unload his company for that much money in cash. And you guys know what that's gonna be? Your list. We all know it. we all strive for it. Build your list. Build your list. The gentleman coming on. His name is Jeff Goldstein. He wrote a book. It's called It's Just That Simple. And he's now rolled out a workshop where he's starting to coach young entrepreneurs on how to survive in this dog-eat-dog world that we're living in. So if you're interested in seeing what Jeff's got available for you, you can go to ericbeer.com/jeffgoldstein, and you'll be able to get a link to see what Jeff's up to, and watch his webinar and get a lot of golden nuggets out of him. So let's dive in and listen to what Jeff's got to say.

I spent the last 17 years building my eight-figure performance business without using any of my own money, working with some of the most brilliant direct response marketers in the world today. Now I'm looking for entrepreneurs to join my affiliate army, built on ethics, transparency, good old hard work. Join me to change the perception of how people view the greatest business in the world, affiliate marketing, and follow along as I learn, apply, and share performance marketing strategies, working with some of the brightest people on the planet. My name is Eric Beer, and welcome to the Performance Marketer Podcast.

Jeff Goldstein, welcome to Performance Marketer. Let's talk about you and some five things that you're... Just... No one knows about you. Give us some fun facts.

Jeff Goldstein 2:22
Wow, fun facts. Okay. You know, I've been around for a long time, you know, I'm 84. Now, I'm a lot older now. A lot of plastic surgery, a lot of things, you know, and I have some secrets. I can't tell you how I do it. Uh, but no... I've been around the industry for a long time. And you know... From the very beginning, actually, so you know, we've, it's been an evolution. And that's kind of interesting, but you know, we started out one way. And as the industry itself evolved, we kind of evolved with it. You know, learning the different ways to monetize your products at the beginning, there wasn't much competition. If you remember, I know you've been around for a long time as well. Things changed as we go. And like you and I were just talking offline a little bit, it became more down the road, not just what you were selling, but who you're selling it to and what you did with those people that you sold it to then in the future because that turned out to be the real asset of what we were doing. We started out in the subprime credit market. And you know, that was amazing on the internet until about two that meet 2007 when the entire subprime credit market fell apart, which is good for me because I sold my company at the end of 2006. So that wasn't much, but not because I'm a genius, just because I'm lucky as hell. It just hasn't worked out that way.

Eric Beer 3:38
We'll take luck any day of the week.

Jeff Goldstein 3:40
I got a lot of it and use it but no, it's so we think but back then it was about the data and we realized especially in the internet, I mean, you pretty much have the whole world there and if you can break down your targeted market and what you're trying to do, that's where you make the money and that's what we did. Continuously remote Well, not much since our bedroom, multiple things after that. The biggest secret of I never say is like, I'm one of these guys, you know, these brilliant guys, later on, we're an industry matured, we had all these guys with their MBAs and come to Harvard or whatever I did, like I did go I have to give you see, I did go to a very high level of Princeton like school, very on the same level University of Alabama, which is very similar. At least in football, football. I didn't have the higher learning that you guys get up there in the northeast, but a Philly kind of figured it out. It was just a simple things like you and I were talking about earlier, it's really the simple things that really what makes you successful out there. And that's what I learned. You know, it was the data, it was basic algebra, pretty much you know, if you can get something to make $100 Well, but by doing what you're doing to x is $200 and 1000. x and you keep going that way. And it was pretty much how it worked. And it hasn't really changed that much. It's gotten more complicated with social media and everybody else in the market, but the whole concept hasn't really changed. Every time when I find myself going crazy with really new ideas and everything like that, I realize gonna just go back to the simple basic things. And that's what we that's why I always made our money in the past. And it's the same thing right now.

Eric Beer 5:12
Yeah. So that Yeah, I remember that. That was a good time. So that was back in 2006. Wow. That's a long time ago. So so from 2006 to 2020. What have you been up to?

Jeff Goldstein 5:27
Unemployment and maybe let me tell you those unemployment checks every I've been I've been out there, you know, first, I got stuck in first I had to stay with a company for a while. Did you have to do it? It was kind of let's see if I can recreate you know, the whole wheel. Let me just see if I can recreate it. And you know, I realized after a couple of years of trying to do the same thing, you know, you got to move on and you got to change. So I pretty much went into a lot of e-commerce cells a little bit different than the subprime credit, bringing out products, some of them back then from China. You know, getting all the Express cards. Do whatever and some of them some things, I had some inside sources here in the US and bringing out products and pretty much like, as I said, using the same type model, especially, I think, you know if you would agree with this or not, but I think really the game-changer, I say in a negative way some people would say in a positive way when our tire industry was, was when Facebook grew and became as strong as they were back in our day, you know, everybody had traffic and when everybody had traffic, obviously, it was a big competition. So it wasn't as expensive we're able to get email traffic or banner traffic or other things like that. But now one way or another, Facebook touches everything. And they're very good marketers and they know how to make money and they take most of the money. So I think more than ever, we had to learn that even if you have a brilliant product and checking out some pretty cool ideas that I was selling. It's very difficult to make money on that product alone and then the hole as they call it. Now funnels these call flows back in the funnel became even more and more important. So yeah, I can sell I had an entertainment product. I can sell that product. And look, I'm doing well. But when I tried to sell it on Facebook, eventually, Facebook made all that money, not me. So I realized, you know, the whole funnel thing became so important, you know, not just to sell this now I'm gonna sell you two or three of them at the same time. Now I'm going to try to upsell you on similar products. And most importantly for me, like it always was, was the data. And I want to make sure I collected much of it, and then use it to resell more of this product and then resell like-minded products. So that's kind of what I did for the past. I guess it's 14 years continue the same concept, but it but it's a little different, but still with the basic simple principles that had the beginning.

Eric Beer 7:38
Yeah. So one thing that I'll tell you that has not changed from how you built your business was all around data. Right? And you mentioned Facebook. To me Facebook is is just a vehicle to build your list outside of that. I want nothing to do with Facebook.

Jeff Goldstein 7:56
Funny you should say that I like you said I guess you're one of the very few people But saw myself is actually said that.

Eric Beer 8:02
Well, you know, at the end of the day, you want to use these platforms, because the number one thing in your business, the way you sold your business, the way you were able to monetize your business was all around what you just said, which was the data, which was your list, which was your email list. When you have your email list. Now you have the ability to present and communicate with those people at any time. Facebook, they shut down your ad accounts anytime they can shut down your Facebook groups or your Facebook Messenger, even if you're posting on your Facebook group, they only show it to like a very small percentage of those people. And then they want you to boost the post inside your own pages so that they can see it for everybody else. Right. So I mean, at the end of the day, I think one of the things that I think we should hit on here is what you talked about with your business and how you grew your business, which was on the data side. Because at the end of the day, you're like you said you're talking about a wrench flow versus the flow. Windows, which is the same thing in our minds, right? It's just how someone's defining it. But in the data side of the business, right, talk about how you were able to generate a click from an AED and talk about your goals when you get somebody to the flow, because I think it's very relevant to today on how people get a lead magnet, and then they have their Oto is on the back end. It's very similar to how you were doing this, but you were doing it with leads and lead buyers where you would try to break even. And then if you broke, even that was home run, because now you have the data, and you monetize your data, right? And that's ultimately what all these guys are doing today.

Jeff Goldstein 9:44
Absolutely. And it was a little different back then. But right now like 100%, it's essential. I don't think you could survive and thrive today. If you don't do that. with us. It was a little different. back then. Same principle but a little different. We started out we were just selling an individual product. Doing great everything's Cool. And it was really just by accident one day, you know, you know, just kind of, you know, looking at the thing, and I realized when I was talking to one of our tech guys, we were accidentally we accidentally back them when they would fill out the form was just a one-page sale page when they would fill out the form. If the guy filled out his email, which was our first question, we happen to be saving, I didn't realize so I said, hey, let's do the hell of it. Let's take the data that we got last few days. Give it to me, I'm gonna mail them back the same product. Just the hell we tried it. And no, and also we get sales. And I said, Well, this is odd. These people said No, that doesn't make any sense. Why the hell are they buying and then we created what we call back the squeeze page. People still call it a squeeze page, I guess. But literally, it's a page where Listen, all I want you to email so you put up there and I would come up with something like hey, just to make sure we have this in your area, whatever. Give me your name, email, zip code, something like that. And back then because we had our products were kind of expensive back then some of them were like before we were doing just leads product might have been about a 70 on the products. So we could Get up to 2020 emails before the one sale. And then and then they literally so then I would mail them out. And luckily, it turned out that I pay for that one sale, however much it cost. I have 23 people we go send an email to and probably get two sales from that alone, then we roll as hell do I know who these are, they have subprime credit, I'm going to bail on the subprime auto loan or a subprime mortgage, you know every other kind of credit type product or is, and instantly, we tripled our profit because it's all profit, I already counted the cost of buying that, that sale, and we tripled the product profit and not just so this is what I tell a lot of people today that I talked to, you know, you can build a great company with Facebook and whatever. But if you ever tried to sell that company, what asset value do you really have if you stop selling tomorrow, and you're done that one of the reasons that we sold for such a high multiple, the company that we sold back then is because we are an asset of all this data. So it's not just the money that you make on it, but it's really all you have, but I got a lot of friends that have affiliate networks out there. But what assets Do they have and, and they're all trying to scramble for an asset. And today it is so important to do this just for the reason you mentioned, I use Facebook the way the same way you do. It's just a data collector because if they know how to make money, they're going to make the money in the debt on the sale. You need to have the data by the way you can go you can only market it as you said a Facebook but you got to pay each time. Whether you're boosting your traffic or you're just hitting the retargeting. It's great. You can retarget we have to pay for it. When you get that name if you break even, this is what I tell people I talk to we're starting a business I say you shouldn't happen. So I'll tell you happy I'm breaking even you break even at Facebook. You are you're gonna be a multi-millionaire tomorrow. Because if you could scale into it because you've got everything. You get that free data tomorrow you market that guy who is extremely targeted, and you never have to pay a Mark Zuckerberg again. That is an amazing thing.

Eric Beer 12:49
Yeah, exactly. Right. And if you make $1 $1 an email per month, right, and you generate, let's say generate 100 leads a day. What does that 3000 Within a month, yeah, so 3000 times 12. Right. So that's 36,001. Exactly. So, yeah, that's cool. So tell us about your book that you wrote.

Jeff Goldstein 13:11
Well, I'm gonna put it this way, if you're looking for my Gone with the Wind, or, you know, Tolstoy type thing, and I am not Tolstoy again, I'm not even Jim Tolstoy, the guy lived down the street from me when I grew up. I mean, it's not that kind of a book. It's my first attempt of writing something and the name of the book is It's Just That Simple. which you probably can tell already by talking to me, that is the theory, not just of my business, but in my life. I kind of figured that out. Everybody, overcomplicate everything, no. Don't misunderstand. If you are studying to become an engineer, or a doctor, you know brain surgeon or rocket science, man, go on, learn it all complicated, learn everything you can. And what sucks about being in that business as I already tell people I say in the book as well, is you can't screw up and I'm the biggest screw up there is I'm gonna tell you right now. There's nothing that I've done that I haven't failed in it first. And when I say first, like 100 times more succeed in it, you can't fail if you're an engineer, the bridge is gonna fall down. If your heart surgeon, yeah, that sucks, you can't screw up. But when you have this kind of simple philosophy, just break down to the basic stuff and I am going to screw up. But I learned from each screw up that I do and each time I get a little better, but that's kind of what makes things work, especially in this e commerce business. We're not out it just to give you an example, I didn't go out like you can go and buy pizza parlor or whatever store that's a great idea but you spent 300 some thousand dollars on the location you buy it on Main Street, and if your pizza sucks, or the waitress is rude to somebody or you just can't get the traffic there, he can't change it to a yogurt shop tomorrow. I'm sure you've experienced this. I've screwed up every damn site I've built by the time that site made money it doesn't even look like resemble in any way what I started because I learned as I go You can't do that with a pizza shop. It's just too much money, but you can and online marketing so everything needs to be simple. It needs to be easy. And I go through in the book, different things that I did that are, you know, always overcome think I'm so smart, which I always say, Wow, I'm so smart. I know how to do things. So I overthink things. It doesn't work, because these two companies always go back to the basic stuff that we just talked about here to build a basic site to build a basic squeeze page funnel, traffic data, it always works because algebra always works. x times two is the same as x times four, as long as your costs don't go up.

Eric Beer 15:29
Absolutely. So this book now is transitioning into your webinar. Yes, yes. Tell us about what you're doing in the webinar and your coaching program.

Jeff Goldstein 15:40
You know, I always just say, you know, those who couldn't do teach that was always nice. I said, I thought was really cool. I got on college, but okay, I've already done so I don't feel bad teaching the house. I don't, I don't feel bad about it. So I wanted to go into it getting out of Listen, we have actually done this for multiple decades now. So it's been around for a long time. So I figured Know what's next? Yeah, I can build another gadget and so send it out there. But I think this is kind of cool. And I, it seems like you're kind of in the same space with your life now to a unit. It's cool to kind of direct this to others, you know, because you talk to people, you know, and say, well, they could do this, why Can anybody do this? And if you break it down, simply anybody can do this. And that's what's so cool about it. So I put together more of a workshop than a webinar, same, it's the same thing, where I try to go through and explain, want to break down people's apprehension about getting into their own business, you know, because then it's like, Listen, life is fine. You know, you, you got kids, you got a family and you got a nice house, a white picket fence, do I really want to risk it? I started when I was younger, so it was easy to risk. But yeah, you can risk it and not risk everything. You can go out and do a little bit cheaper job. start a business. It's so I don't wanna say easy, nothing is easy. There's a good bit by the way, there's a big difference between simple and easy. And the difference between simple easy is life, life. Just take simple and just it nothing. It becomes easy after that, I mean, you know, you got to pay the bills or kids got to go to school you want to go on vacation. So it complicates everything. So what I hope to try to accomplish in this webinar slash workshop is to show over the break it down that you with all your worries that you can't sleep at night with because I got plenty of myself can do this. You can, even if it means that I even bring out a simple you know, China we talk about China a little bit I know things are gonna be a little different after what's going on now. Even if it means you get a product on Ali Express in China, you start with it, do some testing to see if it works later on. You got to buy the product yourself because delivery times are too long. In China, you can build a product and if it sucks, switch it from selling a flashlight to a radio to you know, funky sunglasses tomorrow. And you can do that without losing your shirt. And without you know quitting your job and make things happen. That's what I kind of tried to show you in this workshop. And then we move into a coaching product where my goal is I'm not hanging up on my Getting rid of you until you're done with me, where I'll be with you to the end and hopefully give you something that I've gained in last 20 years to help you succeed in business. Yeah, that's really cool. So how would someone go about contacting you and finding you and working with you? What's the process? Well right now I'm hiding in my basement now like, you know, in the bunker, I guess, because I, you know, I'm too scared to come out. Normally I'm easy to find, you know, one I don't know if you put a link up here when we put this thing up if I get him link is Jeff Goldstein. You can see me on Facebook and everywhere else, and I talked about this, but it's really it's making put up a link somehow I get your link or Yeah, we'll get you a link because it's you know, even if you go through the whole webinar, and you say, you know, this isn't exactly what I want. I'd love to get in touch with people. My goal is to do whatever it takes to build other people as successful obviously, that makes me feel good but also helps me because you're, hopefully, will give me a reference one day and say this guy's not a total idiot. But not total idiot and you don't want a little bit.

Eric Beer 19:04
Yeah. So we have to say this, you got to tell the guys some numbers on what you sold your company for. and get them all excited on what the upside is and why someone should be talking to you. Right? Let's create some credibility here.

Jeff Goldstein 19:18
Well, here's the thing interesting about it, because I tell people that you know, what I sold the business for is Oh, wow, you know, you're like this that got some Snapchat those guys miscreants, but no, we actually made money before we sold this business. I mean, we were making by the time we sold the business a profit. I mean, we the top number might have been only been around 40 million a year but the bottom number was about 16. And we were putting that in our pocket. So it wasn't like you know, we went to sell a company. You know, when we came with this great idea and sold it. We sold a company right about 100 million. And it luckily at the time, because what we discussed earlier What time was about to occur, it was cash. So that made a big difference because The link into 2006 and mid-2007. The entire subprime industry took her crap. And for a long time, but it was good. And we've sold over small companies as well. So smaller companies, but that was the big one. And um, you know, but as I say, it wasn't one of those, you know, Instagram type things. I wish I wish I could do that tomorrow, but it's having been lucky.

Eric Beer 20:25
Selling a company $400 million in cash is pretty, pretty good man.

Jeff Goldstein 20:29
Most of them buried under the house with me where I'm sitting, right, I just keep it every year.

Eric Beer 20:35
That's great.

Jeff Goldstein 20:36
I got 40 bucks left, literally 40 bucks left. That's what I'm trying to get out here do more stuff. You know, this cost money right here. So we're gonna make this kind of quick. I'm paying for the internet right now.

Eric Beer 20:44
That's great. So take us through when you were going through the process of selling the business, right? We talked about building up your list and having data and then you now are able to sell this business for 100 million dollars. So proof is in the pudding. Right? So How many names did you have? That you were able to now sell this business for 100 million.

Jeff Goldstein 21:05
Well, interesting. And as United just a little earlier, names were different back then we utilized our list a little bit different. It depends what you're doing subprime credit was such a, it was hot, really big, it was hot, we probably had about active, you know, we had more names that we go back and mail every once in a while, we probably had about an active list of about 5 million names. But you know, the ones that the ones we're really making money on are probably about 20% of that. But these were just so interesting about these people and why this was so good and why it's great advice anybody's getting in this vertical that you were in is the most important thing, like people talk to me all the time. Like I have this great idea for a product and they tell me is great, but the most important thing, at least for me get in a vertical getting in a market where there are multiple things you can sell like you know, or new mothers. There's always going to be new mothers and they grow into you know, teen teenagers and teenage kids eventually Get into a market where your data can be used over and over again, if you're just selling some unique product, it's a one time sale, you're gonna have a problem. Our data back then, in this company, was subprime credit, which represented a huge percentage of people on the internet that time. If you needed a credit card and you weren't subprime, your bank could send the offers all day long, for great products in your mind. You had subprime credit, and you needed stuff. You could rent a car, you could get an auto loan, you couldn't get insurance, auto insurance, you couldn't get anything. So what was so interesting about ours is the vertical was so large, and so what, why not just people, so why we were able to really monetize that data. We have people I mean, I'm probably someone to give to you and some other people all over the place that actually we had partners that would monetize our data for us. And I remember one time this is true, sitting back as it was in the heyday when things were going well and realizing that day that we had 16 million pieces of email going out on our data. Okay. Oh, that was Oh, sorry. Was that We 60 million pieces that I sell. That's not bad. And you know, at the time, I was thinking, I remember I was in the beach and I was half drunk sitting in a beach chair think, wow, that doesn't suck what's not bad. You know that that is important. It is important, not just with the money you make on it, as you just mentioned, but that was the asset. And that was the important thing, help selling that company and help increasing the multiples was the fact we had an asset like that?

Eric Beer 23:25
Well, at the end of the day, right, if you have 5 million names you sell in the business for 100 million. So each email was valued at 20 bucks.

Jeff Goldstein 23:33
If you look at it that way, it is. This company had another reason for us. They were a debt company, they needed the data, they needed a company they needed because they were the build a package and sell even bigger. That didn't happen, by the way. So that extra money I could have gotten did not happen, because the times changed, but I'm not complaining... That much.

Eric Beer 23:51
Yeah, well, you got to pivot, right? You got to figure it out. But that's really cool. That's a... That's an exciting story. Well, whoever gets to work with you is going to be very lucky to get the experience that you've had. There's not many people in this world that's had the ability to be through the old internet and understand how to fight their way into generating some traffic, build up your database, break, even monetize your data on the back end. I love what you're saying about keeping it simple. I couldn't agree more with that. I mean, at the end of the day, I think people just get in their own way, including myself, by the way. It's just... You know you got sometimes you got to like, talk to yourself and be like, just chill. But, uh, yeah, this is cool. I mean, good luck to what you're doing you I think, you know, a lot of people are gonna get lucky enough to be spending time with the Jeff Goldstein.

Jeff Goldstein 24:43
Wow, man, I hope I meet him myself. I'm excited. I don't know him that well. Awesome. No, I appreciate this. This is great. And I appreciate the whole concept, the whole interview.

Eric Beer 24:52
Yeah. Cool. I appreciate you coming on. Good talking to you. All right, be good. Later.

There you have it, Performance Marketers. You just heard from a gentleman who has sold his business for $100 million dollars in cash and the number one thing that he believes allowed him to do this was the fact that he captured his data and had built his list. I will not stop telling you guys how important it is to build your list. This is the asset of your business. It is everything. You do not want to be handcuffed by other platforms. You want to have the ability to communicate with your tribe at any point in time. So take it from Jeff, take it from me, start building your list if you haven't done it already. If you did, start scaling your list and start getting more people on your list. And you'll be able to do that a lot better with my survey platforms SurveyDetective when that comes out, I'm pretty pumped. It's coming along guys. We'll have it soon. Stand by I promise, Performance Marketers are going to be the first ones that have access to it. So with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed the show. I hope you guys got some value out of this. Be well, stay safe, and we'll talk to you next week. All right. Bye-bye.

Would you like to learn how I built my business using other people's money? If so, then go join my 21-day challenge at performancemarketerssecrets.com. I look forward to meeting you and welcome you into my family. And remember, results don't lie, but the people who don't have any tier. Thanks for listening.