How Sam Bass Is Matching Website Investors With Website Operators
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Where do you go if you want to invest money into a website but you don't actually want to operate that website? Or on the flip side, what if you are a skilled website operator but don't have a lot of money to invest right now?
Where can investors and operators find a match?
That's the problem Sam Bass is trying to solve with ChiefOperators.io. Chief Operators is a platform where website operators and website investors can get connected and decide if they want to do a deal together.
Sam summarizes the business as “a community that helps proven website operators that have experience in their niche joint venture with investors to buy websites.” So that's the main feature, but there are a few other side benefits as well.
In this interview, he shares a bit about his background and story but focuses mostly on what Chief Operators can offer the online business community today.
Read, watch, or listen to the interview to find out what type of operators they are looking for. Right now there is an abundance of investors and not enough operators!
And as a side note, Sam joins our guest host Jared Bauman on the podcast. Jared was a guest on this previous Niche Pursuits podcast episode (on how to grow a website), and so it's great to have him help me out as a host this week.
Interview With Sam Bass From Chief Operators
In the interview, Sam shares what he's trying to accomplish with Chief Operators and what critical attributes they are looking for in an operator.
He talks about:
- what skill sets they need
- what they actually do as an operator and day to day to grow a business
- and whether or not it is worth it for an investor to bring on an operator
Sam and Jared discuss whether it is worth joining with an investor if you're only a minority owner of the website. How does that compare with being 100% owner when you start or buy one yourself?
What qualifications do you need as an operator looking to match with an investor?
The main thing they are looking for is a proven track record. Before joining the Chief Operators community you will need to have a 15 min video call with Sam to evaluate your past experience.
If you are interested in this opportunity, you can register your interest on the Chief Operators website or DM Sam on Twitter @thesambass for more info.
Read the Full Transcript:
Spencer Haws: Where do you go if you want to invest some money into a website, but you don't actually want to operate that website or on the flip side? What if you have a lot of skills operating websites, but maybe you don't have a lot of money to invest right now. How do you sync up investors and operators? Well, that's the problem that Sam bass is trying to solve with chief operators.io.
It's a place where. Operators and investors can get connected and decide if they want to do a deal together. And so through this interview that you're going to hear a Sam explains of course his background and his story, but what he's trying to accomplish with chief operators and what are those critical things that someone might look for for an operator, what sort of skill sets are needed and what do they actually do day to day to grow a business?
And is it worth it for an investor to bring on an operator? And then of course, on the flip side, if you are, are, are an operator, what kind of deals do you want to get involved with? Is it worth it to jump on with an investor? If you're only, you know, a smaller minority owner of the website, instead of being a hundred percent owner, if you were just buying a web.
Outright. And so those are some of the things that are going to be talked about here. And now, before I jump into the interview, I actually want to mention that the person doing the interview is not me which will you'll quickly find out here. The person doing the interview as a guest host today, his name is Jared bombing and he is not a stranger to the niche pursuits podcast.
He was actually on the show just about six or seven months ago. He talked about growing one of his websites that he bought on motion invest and basically five X-ing the value of that website in a period of about seven months. And so that's one that you can go and you can listen to, again, his name is Jared Bauman and he shared that particular story on niche pursuits, but his depth and breadth of experience is much more than just that one website he's built.
He's grown many websites. He actually owns a digital marketing agency. And he's very well versed in this space, in, in the buying operating, growing niche, websites, digital marketing in general. And so I'm thrilled to have Jared as a guest host. He's going to do a, this particular episode and may do a few more here in the future to help fill in when I am not around.
And so with that, I hope that you thoroughly enjoy the interview with Jared and Sam. And if you do want to follow along with Sam in the future, please go to chief operators.org. Thanks again for listening.
Jared Bauman: Hello. Welcome back to the niche pursuits. My name is Jared Bauman. And I'm your host for today. We've got a great interview in store for you. I'm joined by Sam bass, who is the founder of cheap operator chief operators. Welcome. How are you doing?
Sam Bass: Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, I'm excited to, to be here.
Jared Bauman: Welcome on. I'm really excited for today's conversation. You and I were talking beforehand about some of the different things that you're doing at chief operators, and I think that it was going to get a lot of, a lot of cool insights out of this where whereabouts you joined.
Sam Bass: So I'm actually in Australia.
So just outside Byron bay which means times zones are funny, but it's a, it's a beautiful place of the world to live. So I'm pretty lucky in that regard.
Jared Bauman: Yeah. It looks like it's morning times there. Which means that hopefully we, we got you just after a cup of coffee and you're ready to go. Oh, sorry.
That's for the 16th, right? Coffee's such an American thing. Fair enough. Good. Well why don't you start by, by just telling us your background, if you could just kind of catch us up to where chief operators began and, and maybe, you know, what led to that in terms of your background with online websites.
Sam Bass: Yeah. So yeah, chief operators is kind of in the website investing space. But I don't come from a traditional investing space, like private equity world. I've pretty much been an entrepreneur, my whole life running different companies. And I have the opportunity for my largest company to be managed independently.
So had managers and whipping a CEO in now, actually and that gave me some free time to look at other ideas. And I was always been interested in websites and played around with some e-commerce stores and stuff. And yeah, I started at e-commerce store and as a little side project on the weekend, rather than like a, a dream to always run a big e-commerce store and it it went well.
Pretty quickly, which is what's good about e-commerce you can kind of get traction quickly. But then I didn't want to have the time to run it cause I was doing other projects. And so I looked for an operator and that's kind of how I stumbled through the the world of trying to find operators for website investments.
Jared Bauman: Â So is that, where is that when you created chief operators at that point?
Sam Bass: Yeah. So yeah, I struggled to find the operator. So I looked at my personal network, like, who would, I know who would be smart enough, even if they didn't have experience who has that talent to go and transfer it to running an e-commerce store.
But couldn't find anyone that was a really good fit. So I asked my kind of entrepreneur friendship circle and community circles, and they were like, yeah, look in your own personal network. And I was like, yeah, I've, I've done that. Been there, done that. Yeah. And so I then ask some more people and they said, yeah, it's hard.
So I asked some investors, cause it's like, these guys are finding operators a lot. And they said, yeah, it's one of our hardest things. And then I went up the chain to the private equity guys and they're like, yeah, operators as hard. And I was like, right, this is interesting. Like, this is, there's no way that everyone has the same problem.
It's a massive problem. And there's no solution. So it's been through a few iterations, but I really just sat out in the path to see if I could solve that.
Jared Bauman: So what, just for context, what are some of the problems that you were running into. So you have this e-commerce store, it's going well. You know, w what are the problems that you th that you needed someone to come in and take care of at that moment in time?
Obviously an operator can handle that, but what were the things you were writing up against?
Sam Bass: Yeah, so the actual operate just the day-to-day operations is pretty much I could, I could outsource some of it and keep it at the same level, but to grow it. And there's still lots of things that I was doing for reaching out to people for PR reaching out to people influencers and things like that.
So I was excited to bring your operator in to help grow that because I only have. However many hours there are in a week. And my, I realized that I kind of sat down and did some thinking, like, do I want to grow a big e-commerce store? I was like, it would be fine, but it's probably not my like ideal dream thing to do.
So I had other projects I was working on, but I didn't want to just sell the site cause it was still quite new. And I really liked the future of it. Like the traction. I knew it was a solid idea and that it was going well. So it was painful to sell it. I'd rather have an operator in and share in the future of it.
Cause I believed in it. And that's kind of yeah. Took us to a chief operators today.
Jared Bauman: Okay. So I have a, I have a lot, I have a lot of questions for you just from a brass tax standpoint. But before before we get into kind of some of the details, so that's where that kind of works. Chief operators began.
What is it today? Give us the, give me the overview who it's for those types of.
Sam Bass: Yeah. So chief operators today is a community and it helps proven website operators that have experienced in their niche joint venture with investors to buy websites. That's the main feature of the community.
There's a few other sites benefits to being in the community, but that's the cool core benefit for people.
Jared Bauman: The concept, it makes total sense. I think anybody who's had a website at any point and has grown their website at any point has, has probably wished that they could have access to an operator.
And then I know on the investment side of things, certainly nowadays more so than in the past few years, investors have been flocking to digital assets, looking for operators, people who are unfamiliar with running a website, whether it's a content site or an e-commerce site or an even FBA site potentially.
But the concept it's just, it really is cool. So let's let's do this. Let's tackle it.
Sam Bass: I was just going to, I was just going to explain one thing that I think I explained very well, that is that I started it as like running the site and then looking for an operator. And that's the original idea of like, let's try and do it that way.
What I found doing it is actually reversing it as it makes a lot more sense. So having the operators, joint venture with the investors, maybe before they find a website and then go out and buy a website so it's ended up changing slightly on the actual model. We do still have people looking for operators for their established sites, but I think the more interesting model is buying a site together with the operator
Jared Bauman: I was going to ask you, what's the typical use case you see? Do you see like an 80, 20, where 80% of the use cases follow a certain pattern? There's a certain type of investor. There's a certain type of operator. There's a certain time period when the relationship develops what's is there a commonality there?
Sam Bass: Yeah, there's a very rough commonality. The thing that I love about websites is that it's so broad. So we have people. The content space. E-commerce and SAS are like the main ones and each one of those has different how they set up deals is differently and the investors interested in different and things like that.
But as a core, I would say the operators are generally looking for equity instead of salary. So that's, what's interesting to them being able to get equity in a company. And then essentially they come in and put in there the best practices that they know being experts in their niche. And they're confident they can do that to grow it.
So they're willing to, to take a risk on getting equity and growing the company over time. That's the most common thing across operators. They're all in different stages of some have sold sites. Some currently run portfolios for salary. Some have their own investment groups that what they work with already or funds that they run and things.
But the one thing they will have in common is is equity, which I think is really. The smart idea, because if it pays off, it's going to pay off a lot. It could pay off a lot better than even a well-paying salary.
Jared Bauman: Let's look at it from let's look at, from an operator standpoint, let's say that I'm someone who might be interested in becoming an operator.
What would, you know, what are the qualifications I would need to have? Who are the type of people that work best for this model? What kind of things are investors looking for in an office?
Sam Bass: Yeah, it would make my life so much easier if someone just created like a degree or a course, and they got signed off as like, here's a proven SEO on freighter.
But everyone comes to building their own websites in a slightly different way and slightly different model and different ideas, how they're going to do it. So it's really hard to generalize that there's no standardizing in the website operator world. So how I've been doing it is everyone applies.
And then I talk to everyone. So on the video call, have a chat about their background and see what they've done. And pretty much I based the whole decision based on their track record. So what sites have you built and grown to a certain level or what sites have you purchased and grow into a certain level?
And that is really the key insight for investors because without a track record, it's really tough for anyone to give you money, to run a website. Because, yeah, if you're putting in a million, 2 million, you want to have, that's a lot of money to invest in, in someone as well as the business. So you want to have that risk taken out.
And that's where I think chief operators only having proven operators is the the most interesting thing for the investors.
Jared Bauman: And you had talked to, you mentioned a bit about SEO earlier. What are the primary growth channels that operate, sorry that investors are interested in from operators does does an operator, you know, I realize it's probably open to negotiation for each investor, but is our operators really looking at growing these sites through SEO?
Are they also required to say, you know, also be an expert in paid ads, also be an expert in running a staff, also be an expert in, in hiring and firing and managing, you know what are the typical roles that an operator would need to.
Sam Bass: Yeah, I think what is most interesting to me anyway, hopefully it's interesting to other people, but about chief operators is that the roles are completely reversed.
So the operator literally says, here's my experience. Here's what I'm good at. Here's my track record. And here's my sweet spot. So like what size websites that. Have best experience or just enjoy running, you know, if they enjoy taking site from 500 K to a million or whatever the equivalent would be for them.
So the investor more goes along with the operators. So traditionally the investor buys a website, says, I want you to do this and then finds an operator and like, Hey, I reckon you should do this to grow this site. You know, just focus on PR, just focus on SEO keywords whereas with the operator model, the investor kind of joins the operator.
So whatever way the operator wants to go, the investor kind of comes on board assess, right? You've got the experience, the expertise. I'm going to give you the money to do it, buy back you because of your track record to keep doing the same thing as you're doing. And that's where the track record becomes so important.
Jared Bauman: So you're recommending, it sounds like you, whether from experience or just from from learning from, from your own experiences, but it sounds like what you're saying is that the best situation is when an investor and operator come together before. There's actually a deal on the table. Is that, is that, is that, is that basically what you think is the best scenario here?
Sam Bass: Yeah. Yeah. We have two sections in the community. One is investors that have websites that are running successful, or even just entrepreneurs run a decent sized site, but they're looking to step back looking for an operator. That's one side and that tick, that solves a problem that way for people.
But they're the really interesting one to me is yeah. Partnering before you even have a investment lined up and then going out together and looking at opportunities. And the reason I think that is interesting is because the operators I've seen it a few times, not all the time. It's not the most common way, but an operator can bring a deal off market.
So they're in like the CEO slack group and someone says, Hey, I'm looking at sending this site. I want to reach out to you guys before I list it publicly. Cause I don't want to go through the hassle of doing all the public stuff. They might see that deal and go, oh, that's awesome. I just don't have the money to put into it, but I can go raise that through chief operators and partner joint venture together, have a chat with them and get everything set up for and that's the best case scenario for the investor as well because off-market deals you can, you're not fighting with the marketplace for time and multiples.
Yeah.
Jared Bauman: That is really, that's really interesting. I mean, it goes back to kind of your story and how you, you got the site or you built it, but you built the site and then realized you needed someone to help operate it. And you're in such a different position than if you actually were able to address the situation from the get-go
Sam Bass: Yeah, you're right. If you have money, that's such a interesting way to go, like to invest. If you're looking like we've had people, entrepreneurs with successful exits looking to invest, you know, a million, 2 million, whatever. That's such an interesting way to go is actually go and talk to the operators first, because that is the hardest part.
It's actually really easy to go and buy a website. And it's fairly easy to start a website. I mean, depending on your background and skills, but there's so many brokerages like you've got micro crier and all the big brokerages to buy websites. There's so much money now with investors. Like more people have more money and are more willing to put it into web place.
They're becoming less seen as less like more common and less risky. But the hardest part is still finding an operator. So it's easy to buy the website. There's plenty of money to buy the websites, but the hardest part it's still get the operator. If you want to be passive. And the interest I'm going to say really interesting and exciting a lot.
Just tell me if it gets boring for them. The thing that excites me is that there's so much money on the sidelines here. There's only a small percentage of people that have the money, the experience, and the knowledge of buying websites, like those three things to actually go and buy websites that currently in the market and run them themselves.
But there's so much money on the sidelines that would, would like to get the returns of buying websites, but want it to be passive. And that's where the operators is is key and that missing a missing link to get that money to come in as well.
Jared Bauman: Yeah. I would agree a hundred percent. I run a marketing agency and a lot of my clients will find out that we, that I also have a website or two on the side that we monetize and whatnot.
And the first thing they always want to talk about is, oh my gosh, that's such a fantastic investment opportunity. And then they quickly realized. You know, oh, but I don't know how to that's I I'm hiring your agency to help me with my business. Why would I ever buy an investment? And then I'd be in this exact same problem again.
Right. And so it's that the, the day-to-day of running it is what tends to, I find scare investors from making this something that they want to invest in and other investments, perhaps you'd call it more traditional investments. Not only they're quote unquote safer, but they're also just easier to manage on a day to day, year in, year out basis.
And, and, and that's where the conversation will typically stop for them. So it's it does seem to be the solution that can bridge the gap. Let me ask you about that. So you mentioned it and clearly, you know, multiples are going up when it comes to websites and their, their, their, their sale price.
I know on this podcast, we've been talking a lot about flipping over the last, maybe six to nine months. It's certainly a very intriguing topic. You mentioned more investment coming into this space than ever before. More investors seen this as not as risky as it used to be. So there's all this interest.
What do you see specifically speaking? Not just in the investor space, but also as it relates to investors and operators, like, what are you seeing right now? Is that the trends.
Sam Bass: Yeah, definitely. Well, it's obvious to everyone that multiples are going up and are going up quite quickly, I think, et cetera, to COVID.
But I think the general return, if you look back over the last few years, there's multiple sale value of websites has gone up significantly. Like I think last year it was 75% or something, according to one of the brokerages, like the average sales value that year which is crazy. If you think of that in real estate, if how's, it suddenly went up 75% and everyone would be going nuts.
So we're still at the early stages where that growth is just massive, like super exponential early. The thing that I personally think is interesting is the kind of 200,000 to 1.5 million somewhere around there, that sort of range of buying websites under 200, or definitely under a hundred, you can have personal money.
So if I have the skills and had money, I could buy a website just off of personal income or even just a couple of friends or family. And then above the kind of 2 million, you start getting into private equity, high net worth individuals buying a site. They're not going to want to buy five, 500 K sites.
They'll buy a bigger 3 million. Hopefully it has a team and they'll run it that way. So there's not much investment or there's not as much investment in the 200 K to 1.5 space. And I think pairing with operators and investors, I think that's really interesting. That's a, if you have experienced growing up, doubling a site in that space, then you can say that as the multiples grow, you get a great return and you can keep working in that space or choose to progress up and go bigger deals as well.
Jared Bauman: So what if I'm an operator, or if I'm someone who has taken a website from say, you know, a hundred thousand dollars value to a $500,000 value or from a $200,000 value to a 500,000 or 500 a million, whatever it is, I've operated a website in that space, that price space. What's what would be exciting for me to.
Joint venture with an investor rather than just to go out and do it again, you know, rather than just to do it on my own. W what's in it. Why would, what are you seeing in terms of why somebody would want to do that as an office?
Sam Bass: Yeah, I think the benefit depends on what you want to do as an operator.
Some people would be better off just doing it themselves. If they have the systems and they're happy with how it's running and they have the money to do it awesome that you get a hundred percent of the equity, that's the best, the ideal way to do it. Other operators, I've common things I've seen is this is rare, but sometimes they just enjoy a certain arm stage of the business, you know, 500 K to a million before a team's put in place.
And they like to be involved in all the different areas. That's depending on the industry, it varies a little bit across the vertical. That's interesting cause they just get to work in that specific bit so they can just buy sites in that range, do that and then repeat and keep doing it that way.
But the other more common one is just capital. An operator might have experienced building their own site up to 200 K or something like that. And then they want to go to the next level and partnering with an investor and lets them go up to them. High six figures, do you know, 700, 800 figure deal.
And that's exciting because they get to scale that all the stuff that they'd love to do, which is like running experiments for how things work. They get to do that on a bigger scale. You know if you have a content site, you get more data for your link tracking and stuff like that. E-commerce you get to build a bigger community around your brand or, or whatever you're interested in.
And I should also clarify that when I talk about operators, their role is to grow the website. So I view a managers traditionally on a salary, and they're always to keep the business flat, like just to make sure the wheels don't fall off, like just run this website for me. I don't want to see any drop off.
Whereas the operator is looking to actively grow that website and basically do everything that a CEO or owner would do.
Jared Bauman: Yeah. It seems like you'd go hire a manager. Just, you know, payment, hourly rate to keep the check, everything over, keep things the way they should be, make sure that everything's happening the way it should and operator grow, get the site to a certain, multiple, and then there's that experience behind them to get them there.
Sam Bass: Yeah. And that's why you split the equity because it doesn't make sense to give them equity. If they're just going to keep it at the same level if they can grow it, then you've got aligned objectives there. You both want to grow it because you both own the company.
Jared Bauman: So let's talk about that.
Whatever you're comfortable sharing or whatever data you think is pertinent, but you know, what are the typical types of splits? Is it 50 50? Does it, is it, is it based on a threshold that you have to hit? Is it, is it all over the map and what would a typical arrangement look like between an investor and an operator?
Sam Bass: Yeah, I can give like a super general overview. So I would say very roughly it's kind of 60% investors, 40% to the operator as like a super, super basic starting point. Obviously. I try, usually the operators put in some of their own cash. So say around 5%, something like that, of the, of the deal so that they have some skin in the game.
And obviously it varies there depending on the operator. Yeah, much they put in, sometimes they put in a lot more than 5% and depending on the size of the deal, as the deal gets bigger and more investment that that percentage might change. And the other common thing is putting terms in there for progress goals.
So if you hit milestones of monthly revenue or whatever your milestones are, then you are a lot more equity as well. So there's a few different terms around there, but it gives you a kind of a starting point of like what to expect as the investor or an operator. Yeah. Yeah. That seems to be the most common sort of splits.
Jared Bauman: So one of the questions I would want to ask if I, if I dunno if it's an awkward question for people when they're talking about, but I imagine when you get to the investor level, it's probably something that's pretty common, but what's the risk factor for an operator? Do they stand up? I mean, obviously if they put in 5%, they have 5% of the investment, but aside from what they put in, is there any, any, any ties to performance?
Is there anything that could happen if something goes wrong? I mean, we're all familiar in this world with the haphazard, but frequent Google update that can come in and change something. Or, you know, maybe you're in SAS and a competitor changes and disrupts the industry that you're in. I mean, what's the what's the situation on the downside risk for an operator?
Sam Bass: Yeah. There's websites. So just inherently risky in that sense. I don't think they're as risky as some people think, but I think there is an element of risk for every different vertical of a it's different for each different industry, but there's definitely risk and it's not guaranteed when it's like a high returns, but there is still an element of risk.
Investors which is a good thing to be aware of and why we tend to work with investors who are already in the space. There's a lot of money sitting on the sideline waiting, but we'll grow to that at the moment. It's a lot easier to explain these things to people that are in the space already and know it have run their sites already.
And from the operators risk I think operators would have a good handle on the risks going in. So that's not as big a factor to educate them on that. Like they know what the risk is being in there in their niche. But definitely getting that onboard with the investors is, is important to say there's certain things you can control and certain things you can't.
But for the actual downside, I think that would be an agreement between the two parties. So the community really connects people. It doesn't take an active part in setting up the deals for people. So what, how they choose to do a deal on the downside would probably vary based on what the investor sees as the potential risks and how they want it.
Oh, they want to stop, stop those right.
Jared Bauman: Suffers from happening. Yeah. It seems like for an operator, a big component is, is the value of your time, right? I mean, you're working for equity and you're not having to put in very much money to create this potential upside, but you have to do a significant amount of the work to get it there.
And so if, if something goes wrong down the road, you put in significant out of your time that doesn't have the same level of return that you might've been you're marking.
Sam Bass: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the high go, ah, contents of a little bit different, but in general, if you go to a bigger site, it gives you a bit more variety.
You know, sometimes you're not as reliant on one channel as you get up to the high six figures or something like that. You have a bit more. Ability to withstand some of those, some of those shocks, depending on the industry which is gives a lot more credence to the investor of a bit safer investments.
Typically, as you, as you get higher, there's less reliance on single things, which is good for everyone.
Jared Bauman: It seems like going back to my question, I'm almost answering it myself. The upside for an operator is that websites, whether, again, whether you're content, e-commerce SAS cafe and these types of verticals, they take time and they'd hit cash.
And when you partner with an investor as an operator, you're probably putting in a lot less cash than you normally would have if you're building your own site, you know, maybe just a little bit in the front from that point on. And so for someone who knows what they're doing and has a track record, they could probably get results quicker or without as much of their own money.
With an operator in a relationship versus if you, you know, if you've done it once before, you're going to have to put all or some of that cash back into your next investment. Otherwise if you don't partner with an investor.
Sam Bass: Yeah. I think that's, that's exactly right. I, how I view it in my head is that you can S you could start a site and build it up, but it takes time, but it's profitable.
Like you can, if you've got experience, you can definitely do that. If you buy a website that gives you a head start, because you can buy a site that already has a bit of traction. And then on the other end, if you partner with investors, you can buy a bigger site that gives you even more attraction and more of a headstart.
So you've reduced your time a lot by. By buying, being able to access the, the company biggest stage already.
Jared Bauman: Yeah. I'm seeing it. So I have a couple sites as well myself on the side and I've flipped a couple of websites and I, you know, get all the listings as well and see all the posts about them in different Facebook groups.
And there's some sites you look at, and I don't know if it's just me, but I look and I'm like, oh boy, I feel like I could really double or triple that site quickly. But I'm like, I don't really want to put in $150,000 into that, you know? And so, or a hundred or whatever it is. Like, I I'm confident, but I don't know if I'm that confident to put that much on the table.
And there's always that friction there. And so you know, having an investor relationship and one that you've quartered and can trust. And then when you start looking at those listings, you can look at it from a potentially a different angle, right? I mean, you can start to say, I'm very confident my skills to take this 2, 3, 4, 5 X.
And now I just have to evaluate it from a standpoint of do I think it's worth the investor's money to invest in this, but it changes the conversation a bit. I imagine at least in my mind it would change the conversation when it's not just my money going behind it, but I'm actually stewarding somebody else's money.
But looking at it from a business standpoint of, I think I could viably grow that site.
Sam Bass: Yeah. I think yeah, from an operator point of view, your still choosing it based on the growth. So what you can see on the growth and because you don't really make any money, if it doesn't grow like if they sell the site, you would get your, the percentage that you put in back.
If that makes sense. So you wouldn't get the straight 30% or 40%, whatever you've organized, you get kind of the equivalent if you just sold it tomorrow. So the only way you're going to make money is if you can grow that site and get returned. On the sale price, you know, if the sale price of that site grows and that's another thing, actually, you can consider how long you want to exit, you know, whether you want to run it for two years, maybe if you're an operator you want, you have a timeframe that you want to set to I'll, I'll do this for a year or even the investor.
I want to get return after a year or you go, I'm going to cashflow this forever and put it into a, a portfolio. And the last thing that's interesting for operators is that chief operators is kind of the start of like connecting with investors. But if you find an investor you get on with, you can just work together in the future.
Like if the investor has more capital and then you build a relationship where they trust you, that can lead to bigger opportunities down the track as you build those, those relationships in the future,
Jared Bauman: right? Yeah. You could leverage that, you know, down the road beyond just the relationship you have right now with that current website or that current investor.
Sam Bass: Yeah, definitely
Jared Bauman: a feather flock together. Right. So I'm sure investors.
Sam Bass: Yeah. There's all the investor groups. And obviously the biggest recommendation is like a personal referral. So if you can. Like something, well with current investor they can group together and then you can go bigger or yeah, whatever you choose.
Jared Bauman: I want to talk about the investor side that I have a couple more questions on the operator side I'm guessing you're going to say, well, it depends on the agreement with this next question. So fair enough. But let's try it. Well, I get it. I'd probably say the same thing if I, because it really is.
You're, you're the you're, you're kind of the, you're the you're the, you're the person who introduces the blind date, but you're not responsible for how it goes, you know, in dating terms. Right. But you know, like, let's say, as it relates to kind of well, going back to what I said earlier, brass tacks, let's say I'm an operator and I sign up, what am I responsible for?
If we want to put out, say. 50,000 words a month. Do I have to have that all written myself or pay for it to be written or is that an expense? The investor picks up link-building Pinterest management. I'm just trying to go through all the different PR these different types of things in my, the operator.
And am I typically responsible for furnishing all of that and paying for it? Or is, is that a model where the investor pays for that on top of the arrangement? How does that work on a day-to-day basis a month to month basis? Typically?
Sam Bass: Yeah, typically the most common ones I've seen is they, you set up a separate entity and that entity is the one that organizes all the expenses through that.
So that it's essentially a company expense for the all the requirements for that, for that website. So you don't have to personally pick up those extra costs and then the actual, your probably best degree. A plan on what you're going to do with the website, you know, how much you're going to reinvest into the website for a certain period of time.
So that the investors on board, okay, you want to grow this? We're going to put quite a lot of money in for the first six months or something, just reinvest the profits, or if the investor wants to put an extra money, but that's rare. It's usually reinvesting profits because the sites, the good thing about the sites is that they're making money, which gives people options.
So you can reinvest, you can go, Hey, I'm afraid. I think we should reinvest into link-building for six months. And just get as many links as we can, high quality links. And then after that, then we can start kind of cash flowing a bit more. Or if they want to sell in a year, you just go really hard on what you think would give you the best return after a year, you know, six months of links and then let them at the mature over the next six months or whatever you want to do.
So
Jared Bauman: typically, maybe as an operator, a typical scenario would be that I am responsible for. Organizing the content and having it written and then taking that and having to publish or keyword research and then having that written or link building targets, and then having that, those link building targets executed by, by someone else, or am I that's, that's typically more of what it's like
Sam Bass:Â Yeah. On the sort of lower end, it's a one man band. You're kind of doing everything. Cause there's not enough salary to bring on a team of like an extra team. You might have content writers and things like freelances and stuff like that. As you get bigger, the operator often is more in charge of that team.
So they might not be doing everything themselves, but they're definitely setting the keyword research the strategy for growth. Like what channels are you going to invest in? And then they're kind of outsourcing all of the actual day-to-day stuff.
Jared Bauman: So it's really just based typically on like, Here are our profits.
What are we going to do with those profits this month? And how are we going to, you know, what's the plan for those? And then as profits grow and it opens up more and more.
Sam Bass: Yeah, exactly, exactly the same as if you were the owner. Like if you, if it was one of your sites at the smaller level, you're doing more stuff.
And then as you get bigger, you kind of outsource some of that stuff. And but you're still in charge of setting how you're going to grow.
Jared Bauman: Awesome. Last question from me on the operator front, unless I think of something else. So what advice would you give anybody thinking of being an operator? You know?
Sam Bass: Yeah. Again, a lot of people wanting to be an operator and it's hard to be an operator without a track record. It's just really hard to to go straight into the million dollar deals. You just have to have to build up a track record. I would say the, the most interesting way is do it yourself.
Or one of the interesting ways is do it yourself on a smaller site. And then you can kind of progress up the chain to the bigger sites. Actually the, probably the best way is by a site and do it yourself and then sell it because you can say, Hey, I bought this site I've grown it to this, and then I've sold it for this multiple, or it's valued at this multiple.
There's a lot of things when you first buy a site that you think you would know, but you just learned from buying the first site, just small things that it just makes it a little easier for buying a second site. And the multiple doesn't really matter. If you can buy a smaller site, it's basically the same process as buying a bigger site.
It's just the numbers change on, on all the info on the contract and information and stuff. So that's probably the best advice. The only other advice I'd have for chief operators is there are a few that are like it's in there. Nice. So they might have a day job at a current company, but they know that mini vertical super well.
So it's like really highly niche down and they have experienced, you know, they'd been in there for 10 or 20 years, so don't actually have experience running a website themselves, but they've got that sort of real niche knowledge. So that if a site comes up in that niche, that would be really interesting for an investor because it's hard to get that anywhere else.
Oh,
Jared Bauman: that's interesting. Yeah. It's almost like getting an expert in your camp as an investor rather than maybe just an operator and you're getting a little bit.
Sam Bass: Yeah. And that's when I think it makes sense, like as an investor to go in and say, okay, what operators are in there? What are they doing? And what interests me say, if an operator is like super experienced in like habit tracking for sleep or something like that, and you can be like, okay, this could be interesting match for this app doing that.
He would have the connections and stuff, but you might not think of that as an investor. You might, that's probably a quite obvious one, but there's some more Nisha niche ones that even think of, but are interesting. I bet.
Jared Bauman: I mean, it makes a lot of sense because when you're evaluating a site that you want to, you know, there's kind of two different ways to look at a site that you want to buy there.
There's kind of the arbitrage model, which is just. You look for sites that have opportunities. You're a bit agnostic about what niche they're in, what, what vertical they're in what expertise you need to have. It's more just, you're almost doing arbitrage. You say, oh my goodness, there's a bunch of opportunity with that site.
So I'm going to buy it. I'm going to take advantage of the opportunities and then flip it versus a model that says, okay, I'm an expert in this space or I've flipped sites in this space. Or I have access to writers in this space or fill in the blank. This is the space I'm looking for. And I'm not so concerned about getting a good deal on it or getting a low multiple.
And I know that I can take a site in this space and grow it. And so you focus on just looking for sites in that space. It, it speaks more and more to the concept you present at the beginning, which is investors operators working together before a site is acquired before an asset is purchased and then finding out who works best before that.
And then going after a specific site, once you make that change.
Sam Bass: Yeah, I think that is exactly right. And I think that's, if you're like new in the operating world, or like running your own website as something to just keep in the back of your mind, like, what track are you going down? I think it's really good to go and try lots of different things early on and see which, you know, what niches you find work best for you and which ones you actually enjoy running the contest side.
So and then cause if you go down a track of running a certain type of site or something, it gets a lot easier to raise investment and keep going on that track. So yeah, definitely consider what track you're going down. And if you want to go down the investment sort of path in the future at first
Jared Bauman: sight I ever bought to flip a was in a space.
I knew absolutely nothing about, but it was one of those sites where I just saw that it had a bunch of things that had been done wrong and were, you know, pretty quick fixes. And they turned out to be pretty quick fixes. And then with a bunch of content, the site grew and I sold it about it about a year later.
And that was fun, but there's a little bit of, you know, it, there's a different tension that exists when you're outside of your comfort zone with the subject. Matter than if it's something that's in your sweet spot.
Sam Bass: Yeah. And I think content is always an interesting one. It's always a bit different to the other sites in that you can sometimes partner with someone who's an expert and kind of get them to write the content and you do the best practices for the actual website.
E-commerce is kind of where you see the kind of expert angle being interesting or the influence anger being interesting. And then SAS is probably the really interesting one, like if you know an industry and how it works and what you can bring to it or what's needed in that industry. There's so many SAS opportunities that people don't know about because you only know about them, if you're an expert in the industry or have all the contacts and things like that.
Yeah, so I think content, so. Always an interesting one for experts because you can often apply the same basic principles and do and do well. Whatever it's worked for one site in general, you can apply that and probably get similar results with slight tweaking if the other site went well. So it's very transferable skills as you go up the chain with with content size, what is this,
Jared Bauman: would you say on average that people, that investors and that operators are working together on between content sites, e-commerce sites, SAS sites, is there a predominant one?
Sam Bass: No. It's kind of changed over time there, probably about even I started off with a lot more e-commerce there seems to be probably more e-commerce operators in the space. Just I'm not sure if there's more e-commerce stores, but yeah, definitely more e-commerce operators. Then we had quite a few content operators and now we're getting a lot, a lot more SAS operators.
But it's probably even between on the operator side between how many there are, and investors is probably similar there's investors that are agnostic. They don't mind, they just want the best return. And then there's investors who are only invest in SAS or an invest in content in a certain niche.
Well, let's talk about
Jared Bauman: investors. What are the type what's the investor profile you're typically seeing, what's the type of person that's coming as an investor that would be attracted to an operator.
Sam Bass: Yeah, that's always good questions. Cause it's, so that's why I like websites is that you've got people from such different backgrounds.
You know, it's not just a channel where they get pumped out from one place and then come and join you. You know, they come, they've made money in lots of different ways. The exciting ones for me to talk to the entrepreneurs that have had a successful exit, you know, they built up a site, they know that website returns on rail cars.
They've done it themselves. Which is awesome because it does my sales pitch of like website, right. Investing is worth it. And so they're just looking to reinvest back into websites. I found interesting. They often invest in a different one than they made their money in. And that is interesting.
Yeah. That is interesting. You would think, oh, I've got niche expertise. Sometimes they get, they go different. They kind of see the grass is green neuron, a different model. Which is it has been quite interesting. I didn't expect that. And then you've got high net worth individuals as well. So people.
Have money in real estate, but looking to diversify say wanna split, especially now with other investments, they're looking for those high return investments, which is why a lot of money's on the sidelines that we'd love to get in to diversify their money. Which I think is the future. I think that's definitely going to come with more education of how you buy websites, what operators, what to look for in operators, how to do joint ventures.
And then there's obviously private equity firms as well, who are always interested in putting operators in as well. For portfolios
Jared Bauman: that was going to be, that was actually kind of, one of my questions was, do you see people who have the expertise, they could do it on their own. Maybe they've already done it.
They've already flipped the website. They've already sold an asset. And so they they're, they're they're coming at it now from an investor standpoint, it would seem that it would be a lot of people though. My, my, my take on it would be, it'd be a lot of people who don't have the expertise. See it as a, a different path they've already invested in real estate.
They've already invested in a variety of other channels is another channel they can invest in. But you're saying there's actually people that come in that have experience in this area and that that have flipped them and are looking to maybe, you know, pick up an operator instead of doing it all themselves.
Sam Bass: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think those people are, are just looking for a passive investment. They want to put money in and their options are, you know, real estate stocks whatever other private investments crypto and then websites. They will have different risk reward things, but they know the website space they've been in that space running their own site.
So they want all the returns of websites, but they don't want to actually do the day-to-day. They want to, you know, enjoy that exit. And but not just have their money to endure. They want to still see it return. And I think websites is awesome option for that because especially those guys are really good at qualifying operators.
So saying they know from their experience what they did and they know other friends who are in the space often, so they know, okay, this guy has the skills to be an operator I'm willing to back him with some or her with some money. Yeah.
Jared Bauman: Do you have do you find there's a bigger need out there for operators or for you know, investors, like, are there more operators on your site looking for investors?
Are there more investors in your site looking for operators?
Sam Bass: There's way more investors, way more investors like investors banging down the door to get access. The I think there's still a lot of operators, but I think the difference is for chief operators is that we only want the proven operators, which means you need a track record, which means you need to have been in the industry over the last few years to have to be able to build that up.
So I think that is a lot rarer. The experienced operators or the proven operators model is there's less of those definitely. Compared to like, if you looked at the amount of investment and then the number of those operators, just unlike a well population thing, the skew would be completely off.
Yeah.
Jared Bauman: Fascinating. And it just speaks so much to this, this industry we're in. And just to the, the, the future kind of, of of this space, you know, I mean, I always talk about it with my family or my friends. It's like the future just seems to continue to be up and up. Not only in terms of I have no crystal ball, by the way, I'm just commenting, but not only in terms of multiples, but in terms of the amount of dollars that are going to come into this space in terms of that, the investors that are coming in and, and the fact that you're saying that there's really by and large, if you take a step back, no shortage of people looking to invest in this space and the shortages on the experts to run that that's really encouraging for us.
Probably for the majority of people who listen to this podcast.
Sam Bass: Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you want to see evidence of that and I think for the website multiples empire flippers, do their state of the industry report. You can see how multiples have gone up consistently over the last few years, and you can break it down by each industry as well.
So content, SAS everything, and also check out, have you heard of empire flippers capital, their capital model they released?
Jared Bauman: Yeah. I still decided empire. And so I think it was right after I sold a site. They had that bottle the day they, they rolled out and it was, it was, it was a little bit different though, is it's more of a, an investors are putting money in, they're kind of investing in a pool of sites, right?
Sam Bass: Yeah. I think the investors get to choose. I think there's six or seven operators and they, the investors get to choose which deals they want to do. But the aim is to diversify and do multiple deals because there's a chance, some deals might not work and some deals will be better. But they've had I think each operator raised a million to 2 million each and then.
Raised all those funds is six or 7 million that have gone in, in a fairly short spirit of time, I think January to March or somewhere around there. So yeah, there's a lot of money coming in and that's I think they're doing their second round and stuff, so there's a lot of interesting things happening in that, in that operator world for investors.
Jared Bauman: So let's talk about chief operators and the roles that you guys play in bridging that gap. What specifically does chief operators do you, you've touched, talked about how it's a community, it's a platform. What are, what would a typical, like let's say, I think I have the chops to be an operator. Or I think I have the funds to be an investor.
What, you know, what what's that process look like and where does chief operators, you know, how do you guys play a role in that relationship at the start and going through.
Sam Bass: Yeah. So either operators or investors just to play through the applies through the website there's application form on there.
And then we usually have a short 15 minute chat about their background, what they're looking to do, if there's anyone I could recommend they connect with. So if they're looking for specific people like an investor for a specific opportunity or operator for a specific investor and sometimes operators to me, other operators, it's quite interesting for those guys to connect and see compare notes.
They might be going different strategies in the same space, but there's always interesting to learn from other people in a similar sort of level. And then once you get access in the community, there's two main sections. So investors posting their websites, looking for operators and then operators, or then a joint venture section.
So operators or investors can say, Hey, I'm looking to do this. And then there's list of intros where you can see everyone's background, what needs they're in what experience they have and what they're looking to do. For future projects. And then the community just pretty much, there's also some, some guides and resources in there and building those out over time of like people that are case studies, people that have done deals resources on how to do deals, like how to set them up how to find deals off market and things like that to try and help people anything useful to people to help do deals.
Jared Bauman: And if is it for, is it like a fee to join or is it based on when a deal happens? Where does that come in?
Sam Bass: Yeah, at the moment it's all monetized. So it's purely there's no fees for either the investors or the operators. My goal is to put together some case studies. So I want to hit three case studies of people that have done a deal with, through meeting on chief operators.
And then I've got some monetization options down the track of a most likely a paid community. But if people want more help with deals, there might be an option to do a brokerage fee or even a finder's fee to help connect people or to help actually do the deal and take a cut as a, as a broker. But I think the patient community is the most interesting model.
Just get lots of people in there connecting and literally in the community, all you do is connect. So you just see, Hey, that person has an interesting background. I'd love to have a chat with them, reach out to them. If they're interested, they can set up a time to do a call. And then everything outside of that is outside of the, of the platform at the moment.
So people are open to do whatever they would like with her.
Jared Bauman: Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of different opportunities. I could, I could see there being a great, a great. It could be being a great platform for, for deals to also be, be done together. Not only just to set up people in owner-operator agreements, but also in, in in terms of finding deals and, and kind of being a platform for those deals.
Sam Bass: Yeah. That's what I'm super excited about is people are finding value in the community at the moment, but it's still quite new. So as we as we grow, it's going to get more and more valuable. And then the opportunities in general, in the website investing space are really interesting, like compared to real estate where it's had a hundred, 200 years to actually set up structures and systems and jobs and for website, for our real estate investing and communities as well, actually you know, there's probably a real estate investing group for every major city in the world.
Website investing doesn't have any of that structure, or it's not approved. Asset class yet in the same way as people think of real estate, but it has all the same. It's exactly the same model. It's the same opportunities, the same structure. It just doesn't have any of the investment structure. Yeah.
The wild, wild west here. It is at the moment it's becoming a it's it's growing quickly and it's quickly becoming there's more standardized things. And hopefully I asked my chief operators can come in as kind of offer a opportunity that standardizes finding good operators. And that's hopefully how we can have value.
And I think if we can do that, then that'll be valuable for lots of people.
Jared Bauman: Okay. You're at the, you're at the tip of the spearhead in terms of literally. So where do you, like, what do you, what do you see in the future? You talked a bit about it, but what do you see in the future for for, for, you know, for website investing?
Do you see the current model changing a bit? You know, I mean, this is, I think I'll make a statement, but I, I, you probably know better, but this is predominantly. An individualistic environment right now. Right? Like people start websites, grow them on their own or with their own teams. They sell them, they cashflow them.
But the website investment space is maturing. Where do you see it going in the future? I mean, I'm going to guess, you're, you're going to say something about investors and operators pairing up more. So, but in the big picture, outside of just, you know, outside of, outside of just chief operators, where's this space going, you think?
Sam Bass: Yeah. There's people doing really interesting things in the space. Some of the things that I'm seeing that are interesting is well actually I think Don Wells was on the podcast, but he is taking his company public of content sites is every different vertical is, seems to be there's someone rolling up some sites in that vertical and then looking to go public.
So that'd be an interesting model, I think, how that plays out over the next few years. I think what else? Operators as a service is pretty interesting. I think you might see more of those. So people that have experienced running kind of setting up an agency as an operator it's not super common yet, but I think at that might, that might happen as well.
And yeah, I think with more money coming in, there's going to be a multiples will continue to go up. And then yeah, I think that anything related to actually managing the websites is going to be the most interesting thing compared to real estate, which is also quite an active investment. You know, you have to have a property agent or a town planner to do the subdivision or something.
I see it following pretty much mirroring to be honest, the real estate industry of how they're structured and set up going forward with amount of money invested, which is massive and with the structures as well that come across. What's
Jared Bauman: W do you have any, any, any fun success stories coming out of your community yet, or have any fun operator investor stories you could, you could share, tell us a little bit about some of the power that comes with this type of a relationship.
Sam Bass: No, I wish I, I wish I did, because that's why I want the case studies. I'm trying to like I'm like connecting people left right. And center at the moment to like get some deals going. So we've got people that have connected and they're looking at they're looking at deals. But finding the right deal is not an overnight thing.
So and then completing it and stuff, it'll be a few months before we before we get that result. But I think that's the exciting part is looking at sites together as well. I find it hard to look through the brokerages and not be like, oh, I wanna buy that site or that I should just find out more.
I can. That'd be interesting. So that's the state trout.
Jared Bauman: Well, yeah, I was going to say it, these things take time, right? We all know websites take time. And obviously it's gonna take time for, you know, for something like this to get going and get a lot of case studies going. A couple more questions for you, just because, you know, you're involved probably pretty regularly in terms of website acquisitions and the way this goes.
Where do you see most people looking right now to acquire websites? Is there one or two that stand out or is there a favorite amongst investors? And then a second question to that would be I think a lot of listeners would understand what more of the operator mindset is looking for in a website.
Because it's, it's probably mostly people who run their own websites that then listen to this book. What are the particulars maybe that an investor is looking for in a website? Are there any specific things that an investor wants in a website. I think that'd be really valuable even for the person who's listening, who might not be an operator or might not be an investor, but wants to build a site or is, has a site that they're building.
And it's, it's really, it would be insightful to know some of the insides of what an investor looks for in a website that is maybe not as obvious to those who run sites.
Sam Bass: Yeah. I think it for the investor side it's just a mindset switch. It's not, it's not that hard to work out what the investors would like, but it's just a think of it a completely different way.
So the easiest way is imagine you had $2 million to invest. What would you be looking for in an operator and in a website, and then that will help come up with the ideas for what your site is or what you would like to build in the future. So the obvious ones are pretty much risk are depend on the risk tolerance of the investor.
Usually people investing in websites have a slightly higher risk tolerance or they have a more diversified. So they're willing to take on some of that risk. But. It's rare that they're willing to go, you know, a 1% chance of success like the sort of venture capital sort of model. And that's why buying websites is good.
Cause there's already proven product market fit. Usually they're already making money. They've got consistent growth over the last few years or consistent revenue at least. And that helps minimize that. Say anything you can do to minimize risks from an investor is the best thing. And then buying sites.
If you're looking to buy a site, look at what wins, what quick wins you can do in the next year, because the quicker you can. Get that growth. And that's what the, and you can share that to an investor. Like this site hasn't even done these basic principles. I can implement those really quickly by myself, and we should be able to see, you know, an increase in traffic by this amount, or stopping a display, our providers and things like that, which are just easy, quick wins as well as a more longer term plan.
And then that the other investor thing to consider is how quick they want to exit. Do they want to keep it forever? Which obviously changes a strategy or do they want a quick flip in a year or two years? And I'd say two to four years is probably the most common, like exit time, like build up for that period and then, and then sell it and then split the equity from the and go
Jared Bauman: from there.
Yeah, the let's see. So you mentioned from an investor standpoint, minimizing risk is a big deal. And one, you know, a couple of ways to minimize risk for a website owner Mo have multiple streams of revenue have, you know perhaps a proven track record with our website, a track record, you know, many years of earnings, hopefully, or the more years the better in terms of earnings are our investors scared of sites that have had drops or significant drops?
Is it, you know, how are some of the investors you're seeing? Do they dive into those kinds of things? Or is it, is it really more of, Hey, what's the trailing 12 month or six months? Multiple or sorry, earnings and then multiple, are they sticking more with the numbers of it?
Sam Bass: Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to say accurately across all the, all the investors for that.
It would Be it dependent on the investor and their risk tolerance is for what they would look at. You know, if they've been burned in the past, they might go into that deeper. If they just invest in content spaces, they might know, okay. If there's a drop-off, it might not, it might come back for these reasons or it might gradually come back or say it would be a very dependent on the, on the person.
And a lot of these deals are like one-to-one so they can vary a lot between what one investor would consider Esker and what one would consider a interesting opportunity. And that's, what's interesting. There's, there's a whole range of opportunities out there. You don't have to fit every box. But obviously the less risk and the more upside you can do, then the more arrange of investors are going to attract.
Jared Bauman: That's. That's the name of the game right there. That's the name of the game? Any final thoughts? Anything I didn't ask you about that you think would be valuable for people listening? We, we touched on a lot of times. But I, you know, I want to give you a chance if there's anything that, that you have that would add value that I didn't ask about.
Sam Bass: No, I think the most interesting one for operators would be to consider it as an opportunity. It might not be the way you go. But if you're looking at buying websites, I think it's it's worth investigating just to see, just to learn about like, we have some people just wanting to, they're not going to do it in the next three months, but they want to learn about it for the future.
Especially, if you want to go down the more passive route in the future of becoming an investor joint, venturing with them, you can learn how they work and stuff. So I think it's an interesting option to consider. I don't think it's right for everyone. But I think the people that is right for it works really well for.
And I think it's gonna, people are going to be seeing it a lot more commonly over the next six months to a year, as a model and it'll get more widely accepted cause we are still at the super early stages of it. But I would say I really enjoy helping people learn about this space, even if they don't join or uninterested in it, just helping give resources about how other people are doing it or how to think about it.
So if anyone wants to reach out and just learn about other people, how they're doing deals and hopefully that's what I can do with the case studies when they're public. I can share those with people interested in the space. But in the meantime, yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, I'm happy to give advice.
Or help out in any situation or connect people as well. I'll see if I can connect people and they can do deals. That's coming from me as well. And to get my case studies
Jared Bauman: well, perfect transition. Where can people find you? You know, w where can people kind of connect and and get more information?
Sam Bass: Yeah. So all the applications are on chief operators to IO. So if you want to apply, you can apply on there. If you want to reach out probably easiest on Twitter. It's the Sam bass T H T S a M B a S S. My DMS are open, so you're welcome to to message me on there as well.
Jared Bauman: Well, Sam, thanks so much.
It has been a very insightful walk into the investor world, the operator world to topics that are really interesting and I think are only going to grow in their interest levels in the coming years. So thank you so much for joining us in the niche pursuits podcast, and I'm looking forward to catching up again soon.
Sam Bass: No worries. It was a pleasure.
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