Chlo?'s 3 Things #7: Business Acquisition / Focus / Streamlining

Morning!

This week I have been mostly... dealing with the acquisition of eCommerce Tech.

Yes, the secret project is finally revealed ??

So you'll see a bit of a theme in today's 3 things, and (hopefully) they'll be a shorter read than normal because today's to do list is fairly epic.

Thing 1: Business Acquisition

Strangely enough, I've been thinking about this a LOT over the last 2 months, ever since I sent Derric this email:

So I'm now the proud owner of eCommerce Tech , and yesterday we announced it to the world - read the post.

I'm not going to repeat all that here... instead, I'll share some lessons learnt...

Sometimes you have to jump on the opportunity

The timing of this acquisition was NOT good for me! ??

May was a month that pushed me to my limits (all planned and intentionally!) with 2 conferences and 2 weeks' holiday (Never doing that again).

So the plan was to spend the summer "being kind to Chloe" by getting back in balance again, and focusing on the things we do best...

But then Derric (friend and founder of eCommerce Tech) decided it was time for him to exit.

And to add eCommerce Tech to the eCommerce MasterPlan family was just too obvious and awesome an opportunity to miss.

So I sent the email.

Leverage help in the areas you need help in

I've sold a business before, and I've chatted to plenty of friends who've bought businesses before.

But I've never done it myself.

So one of the very first things I did was to ask some trusted friends for advice. Not about whether or not the deal was good one, not about should I do it. But to ask them about:

• what do I need to know that I don't know I need to know?
• what do I need to pay attention to?
• what can I ignore?

It will never move as fast as you want it to

Everything with a business purchase takes longer than you think!!

From due diligence, to the paperwork, to signing, to fund transfers, and then on to getting everything set up and ready.

Which is going to take us onto Thing 2...

If you'd like to chat about helping me realise my eCommerce Tech plans, and being a part of that journey (sponsors, yeah, I'm looking for sponsors) DM me.

Thing 2: Focus

I like a business life where my must-dos get set on Friday and don't change.

I like a business life where I can get a whole task done, then move onto the next one.

That doesn't work when you're a small business owner adding a second business to your existing set up!!

It's a bit like when you're growing fast, but with a little more ops and one off "must dos" in the mix.

You have to daily reassess where your focus is best placed:

• Today do I need to work on podcast guest booking?
• Today do I need to train the team on these things?
• Today do I need to work on Sales?
• Today do I have time to finally get the Instagram login to work??! Or handover the new stripe account to the bookkeeper?
• Today can I do the zapier account merge (and have time to deal with anything that it screws up?) and halve our zapier costs? AND is that a good use of my time when I could be doing sales or marketing?!

[I know the zapier cost reduction is NOT a good use of my time - but I'll enjoy doing it!! so that has to be fed into the decision making too]

It's a constant process of reassessing where my focus should be.

I love planning - but it's starting to get a little frustrating...

For the last few weeks it's all been a bit fire fighting and reactionary. But I'm now 2.5 weeks into ownership, so it's time to try and get in front of things a little.

So on the list today is to step back and do a bigger plan for everything that needs to happen from now until early September.

As I often say,

Success comes from working out what you SHOULD do from all the millions of things you COULD do.

It's time to focus on the Shoulds. Both for the good of the business, and it'll make me happier too - which will make the business better.

Everyone wins! Definitely worth focusing on that today.

Thing 3: Streamlining

Prior to May, I'd reached a point where, with my lovely virtual team, we'd got the eCommerce MasterPlan business pretty streamlined- certainly to the point where I could easily work less than 40 hours a week, and not work the weekends.

There were still efficiencies to be gained - and the plan was to work on those over the summer.

Post-acquisition...

I'm now running:

• 5 podcasts (3 of which are active),
• 1 BIG website (eCommerce Tech) and several smaller ones
• 2 email lists
• 2 Communities
• Countless social media handles across the brands!
• My own speaker/moderator bookings
• And the marketing and sales across all those

So there's a lot more to do!

AND one of the reasons for bringing eCommerce Tech into the fold is that there should be lots of economies of scale - lots of potential streamlining.

So efficiencies and streamlining is very much a key part of the plans for the Summer.

But it does raise the workload in the short term, and contribute to the ever-changing focus alterations (see above, or last week's API update!!).

It would potentially be less time-consuming over the next few months to run eCommerce Tech via its existing systems and process without integrating it into eCommerce MasterPlan.

BUT by integrating and streamlining now me and my team will reap the benefits every week and every month into the future.

Luckily I love a bit of process building and streamlining.

OK that's the 3 for this week... sorry they're a little rushed and not quite as clearly though through as normal - but hopefully helpful!

Any advice or suggestions welcome!

Have a great weekend.