What keeps a digital business moving and thriving, and what makes it truly valuable? 

Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa, is joining me on this episode of Insight Out to break down his role at Flippa, his experience over the last 20 years, and the variables that influence the value of businesses in the market. He touches on the importance of looking at growth, average order value, refund rate, cost base, etc., when evaluating how much to buy and sell a business for and some patterns that have emerged over the last few years. 

The team he leads at Flippa supports business owners in their exit or their introduction to possible new business ventures. In short, he helps them make an existing business their own and then, a little further down the road, understand how to optimize the organization financially and systemically! 

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Flippa works in terms of buying and selling (2:43)
• Blake’s entrepreneurial journey and selling his business in 2015 (5:15)
• How data allows Flippa to check the pulse of successful businesses across the globe (9:06) 
• Flippa’s evolution with value assessment (14:46)
• Common themes that Blake has noticed in this market (19:53)
• How to get involved with the platform (23:36)
• Blake shares some inspiring success stories (28:55)
• The most lucrative businesses for entrepreneurs today (32:24)
• How to know the ways a business needs to expand & grow (37:12)
• The future of digitally-based businesses (39:25)

Notable Quotes:

• “So what I encourage everyone to do is find a business model that they can imagine themselves having a skill set that they orient well too. And then secondly, find a category that they know they’re gonna be passionate about for long enough that they’ve got the resilience to get through that stabilization period…” – Blake (26:07)
• “It’s better to go slow. It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. If you treat it as a sprint, chances are you’re going to make some bad decisions.” – Billy (28:40)
• “Age is a factor in evaluation, by the way, because it gives you some predictability. And buyers and investors love predictability.” – Blake (30:40)
• “You don’t actually have to know tech to buy a digital asset.” – Blake (43:31)

Resources & Links:

Blake Hutchison 

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/blakehutchison

Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/blakenow 

Flippa: https://flippa.com/ 

Billy Samoa Saleebey 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billysamoa 

Email: billy@podify.com and saleebey@gmail.com 

Insight Out 

Website: https://insightoutshow.dreamhosters.com/