732 Tanaha Hairston:

You can build it, or you can buy it. And when you build it from scratch as my guest the serial entrepreneur and investor Tanaha Hairston relates, there are so many obstacles to overcome to prove product-market fit, let alone get the sales and marketing really humming, that if you have the means, an easier way into entrepreneurship is to take the reins from an early stage founder.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring serial entrepreneur and tech investor who specializes in methods and tools to increase business valuation and lead generation. Tanaha Hairston is the Founder of Axismeta, the umbrella under which she takes a majority investment stake or buys an early stage company and uses her marketing and sales expertise to while double the bottom line, and get to growing profit, without additional advertising, investment, or hiring.

Tanaha, as you’ll learn, herself learned the hard way as she started and sold multiple businesses in industries including SaaS software, eLearning, and consumer products.

OK, so if you’ve started your business from scratch, you know firsthand the head damage that comes from the early stages. Sure, so much exhilaration and joy as you chart your course towards your big dreams, and invariably then the big challenges … finding a market for your product, getting the first sale, raising investment capital, everything that comes with hiring and firing … oh my god, and there is so much more, and much of it, things you don’t expect or sometimes cannot control.

Startups are hard, and they aren’t for everyone.

And if you have the means and the entrepreneurial bug, it can sometimes be best to buy a company that already exists and has already weathered a lot of those growing pains – so you can take it and grow it. And for the founder, sometimes it can be a big relief to take on a majority stake owner who will invest their expertise and money to take your dreams to the next level, while you hold on to an albeit smaller investment stake in the company you created.

Tanaha Hairston learned the hard way from all the businesses she built and sold that she preferred the growth stage once the companies had gone through the pain of getting customers and traction. So with her company Axismeta, Tanaha helps investors and business owners reduce the risk of failure and be consistently profitable while doubling the bottom line, without additional advertising, investment, or hiring.

Her proven strategies include incorporating a comprehensive digital strategy based on customer journey eCommerce principles, strategic acquisitions, AI, and SOPs, all with the focus on communicating to convert.

Today we talk about her founder’s journey, what she would have done differently, how to know what type of entrepreneur you are around your skills and desires, and much, much more about marketing and sales.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Tanaha Hairston, and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tanaha, welcome to Wings.

Tanaha Hairston:

Hi. Thank you for having me, Melinda. Really appreciate being here with you and the community today.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, likewise. And I love talking to other women who are serial entrepreneurs and you’ve started a number of businesses from scratch. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

Tanaha Hairston:

Well, that’s a great question. If I had to do it over again, I’ll tell you what I would do now. My mindset, first of all, would be very, very different. If I can, can I just deviate and tell you how I got started? I started in computer science and corporate writing software. And then, Melinda, I was married very, very young. And then knowing that our marriage would take a change in trajectory, I had three small kids and this was about 10 years ago, I went back to grad school. And while I was there, I got asked to run an Angel Network. So here I was, I’d been in corporate, took a break to raise my kids, and then here I was now in my 30s, back in grad school, knowing that I would have a change in life.

And I ran what was called, it was an investment network, think Shark Tank without the drama. So I’m looking at businesses and plans. My role was to recruit top investors to come in and businesses, like really great businesses to come in. And I discovered during that time that the best investors were ones that had already built a business. So instead of going back into corporate, number one, I had the three small kids, I was really seriously pondering going through a divorce. And I knew that I would want to be self-sufficient, I set out to start a business. So, first of all, that was my why. Why even to start it to be an entrepreneur? Because I had small kids, I needed to control my schedule, I felt like, why I went back to grad school? The best investors had entrepreneurial experience and they were entrepreneurs. And so, I set out to get that on my own, unbeknownst to me how difficult that journey would be.

Melinda Wittstock:

I know it only too well, I live it and breathe it every day.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. So, I just wanted to start with that because that was a big block there, the first block that I had to overcome, because here I was back in grad school and I got asked to run the Angel Network and then I had to start the business. But I just want to set the viewpoint because I think as women sometimes, I think, it’s important to share. One thing I’ve learned from entrepreneur organization when I was involved in it, is that our personal lives, it does contribute to our professional life. And that was my reason for being an entrepreneur initially. And here I was, I had a two year old, four year old and six year old. Even though I had this computer science background, I actually picked beauty and diet just simply because I thought that it would be easy to sell.

And so, I self-financed it, all the things, the wrong way I did. I can tell you all the wrong ways to do a lot of things to start a business at the beginning, because I learned the hard way. Number one, I self-financed and did everything myself, that was wrong. Number two, I focused much more on product development, trademarks, instead of really understanding and learning how to sell and really learning and understand how to market.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s the mistake so many technology product-based company founders make, including me, And it’s really easy to do because the product and the thing that you’re crafting and creating takes so much care to get that right. And especially if you’re self-financed, you put everything into it and then it’s built and it’s like, “Oh, man. Now, what? And do you have the runway? Do you have the money? Do you have the skills and the knowledge to really do the marketing?” And it needs to be almost the other way around, you got to figure out how to sell it before it’s even built.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right. Right. Right. And that’s a beautiful point. So, I mean, here I was, I had lost $100,000, I had three small kids, but I got to figure this out.. So, I took that product development creation hat off and really rolled up my sleeves and really learned marketing and I learned sales because you really have to learn those things and they’re not the same, they’re two totally different things. I was like, “Okay. Well, I’ve got to learn this so I don’t lose any more money on marketing firms.” Thinking that I was going to create, and then were going to sell. I got to learn it myself.

And so, that’s essentially what I did, but after building a businesses from scratch, the one thing that I would say is that, now, if I had to do it all over again, this leads back to your first question, I would look for a business that I could acquire or partner with somebody and then have majority control. And here’s why. When you first launch something, there are so many parameters that really need to be figured out. I mean, you know this so well. It’s not just the focus on my product and what I’m creating, and then everything that comes with that. Really, it’s not just a product, it’s a product with upsells and downsells and cross-sells and all these other things to like create and maximize AOV, average order value. But in addition to that, then it’s my whole supply, how am I going to fulfill that product and all the ways to do that? And then, how am I going to market? What’s my omnichannel marketing approach going to look like that’s KPI optimized every step of the journey?

Melinda Wittstock:

But here’s the thing though, I’m listening to you and I think I hear it because I do this to myself sometimes. With the benefit of 2020 hindsight, you can see all these things and it’s easy to blame yourself for like, how did I not know all these things in the beginning? But the entrepreneurial journey itself is one of growth and learning and we can only make the best decisions that we can make with the information we have available to us at the time. So, as entrepreneurs, I mean, perhaps we’re really foolish people, we just go out there and we’re like, how hard can it be? I’m just going to build the plane as I’m flying in and it’s necessary. But it’s your ability to adapt and quickly learn which you did.

You’re like, “Okay, I’ve got $100,000 in debt. I got to figure this out.” So, talk to me about that moment, that moment where no doubt, you were feeling a lot of fear, thinking like, “Oh my God, how am I going to do this? What am I do?” And you obviously became an expert in all things, marketing and sales. What were some of the first steps you took to turn the corner and start getting it right, in terms of all of those things?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. So, definitely, there were some first initial steps, but I just wanted to add, when someone has already figured out a product market fit, this is with an existing business. Even if the sales are, let’s say, under a million or just above somewhere in the $1 million to the $5 million range, if they figured out product market fit, like there is a need and approve a need for a product because you really have to prove that first. And number two, you really have to prove that there is a demonstrative need for this product. You have to prove those things. And once those things are proven, it needs initially and you have, I’m going to call it, 10 sales, then you can start to build a growth engine around those things, and really document that entire customer journey. That’s why I like an existing businesses now even if they’re small, that’s for that reason I like that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. There’s so much head damage in getting to product-market fit because all we have are hypotheses. And there are certain entrepreneurs who love that piece of the puzzle and not so much the operational growth side. And there are other entrepreneurs that love the growth stage.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

They’re not necessarily the same people.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right. So, it’s for that reason why that I said, if I did it all over again, I would buy a small existing business and grow it because they’ve already proven those basic fundamentals as opposed to starting something with a 97% value rate. I would grow an existing one. But my key turning point was getting back to your question is when I said, okay, so first of all, I had this idea of what I think the customer needs, and I hired firms, which is how I lost the money in order to sell my idea. But what really is the customer saying? What really do they want? So, number one, it was getting back into that and getting really clear. And you’ve said this, everyone says it, but it’s really true, it’s getting really clear on our avatar and what they look like and really figuring out like, where they’re at?

Because if you know where they’re at, you can develop the traditional digital marketing funnel methods to get them, you can use strategic partnerships to get them, you can do acquisitions to get them, but you got to know where they’re at and you got to know who they are, because you got to be able to talk to them and the language that converts to them. So those are some of the things that I just had to hunker down and get really clear on because it’s different for every product. It’s so different for every product. And then once I figured out like, what are they like? What are they not like? What are their pain points? What are their hopes? What are their dreams? What are their successes? What do they want?

You get really clear on that, then you start crafting verbiage that communicates with them from the very beginning, from the first lead stage, the awareness stage, you all know about this, how are they going to find out about me top of funnel? And then what kind of communication am I going to continue to demonstratively speak to them from stage one, the awareness stage, like the lead stage? And whether that lead is a LinkedIn ad, whether we’ve partnered with a conference group and we’ve got our target market there, whether we’ve partnered with or are acquired a media piece, whatever, that our target market’s there, but we’re speaking the language to them at that awareness stage to drive them through the next stage is when they’re just considering our product.

And then the same thing, we’ve got email flow and then we KPI out every stage, the third one, the conversion stage. So, that was really the turning point is understanding for me that marketing is also data driven much, like so much you’re developing a piece of software, if then out statements, so just as they. And if we can make that in our heads, that it’s data driven and we can see what they’re saying, because if we had this existing business, then they tell us. This is, again, why I like an existing small business to build and acquire. But if it’s a new business, then we have to go to the groups wherever they’re at and we have to matriculate that communication. And then we use their communication and our copy to communicate with them.

So, understanding that I had to really build a journey whether it’s a digital journey, whether it’s an in-person physical, we meet them at trade shows, wherever, but documenting the journey and then KPI-ing out the journey is a big turning point. And that didn’t happen overnight. I can enunciate it now and I can tell someone else like, “Here’s how you would do that.” But for me to learn that really, honestly, it took years. It really did. But now I can say, “All right. I’ve got a small business, here’s how we’re going to do this.” And I can do it now. It’s a different study. It’s a different study from creating software. It’s a different study from an MBA. It’s a different mindset and a different study, really, that marketing journey and that sales journey, because it should really be two different journey documentations for every product and for every customer avatar. And it took some years. I can do it now like, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” But it took me some years, Melinda, that didn’t happen quick.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. No, it does take a while to learn these things and we’re all in an incredible rush to go get it done, but it doesn’t all happen overnight especially female founders who can really feel quite isolated…

Tanaha Hairston:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

…and not necessarily reaching out for help, not necessarily hiring early enough, And so, to what extent did you have to get out of your own way in that sense as well, like learning to, “Oh my God, I don’t know how to do this, I need to attract the right talent or I need to learn this, or I need to ask for help and receive it”?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. You know what, that’s a good question. Because I will tell you, I’m 45 now, and one of my missions, really, for the rest of my life is to draw more women into tech and investing. And I’ll tell you why, because there’s very few of us.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, I know. I know. It feels lonely. I mean, I’ve been in that tech and the media side of tech for, oh gosh, 20 plus years as an entrepreneur, and there are very few women.

Tanaha Hairston:Yeah. It really is. It’s one of my missions because I think that we, as women offer a beautifully unique skill set, and that if you look at like the top leadership, like the Harvard leadership traits, over where men excel over women, and this is a deviant from your question, but I really think it’s important for women to hear this. We really pass men on almost all of the leadership traits on average, except for fear and decision making. So, that’s why I put that if we can operate from a point of, that’s why this podcast is so important, because if we have the knowledge, we are not afraid to execute. But one thing I’ve always noticed for why men counterparts is they will take the leap, whether they know it or not, or whether they’re sure or not, they’ll just go and they’ll go, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

And sometimes we as women, we make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. It’s a good decision. It’s a calculate. We know that this is the right decision. But that is the only thing, other than that, everything else we as women, we don’t give ourselves enough credit. We like surpass them. I don’t mean to make this a men versus women, but I think it’s important for us to understand our value and the gifts that we have and the change agents that we could really bring like two business and two companies and for the next generation of women. And then if we can just hone in on that one point and really learn to operate with without fear, but it’s still, we’re still going to make calculated decisions.

But other than that is the only thing that men even just outshine us in a little bit. So, I found that very interesting when I was looking at that journal study and that gives me confidence, and continues to give me confidence because I see it daily amongst peers, where they’re just like, “We can do this. I’m not going to do this.” And I also think that the other part of that is that I like shows like this and podcasts like this and opportunities like this, because I like it when we as women stick together.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so important.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. I like it because even in the best community, they’re able to like, “Hey, let’s grab drinks late.” Or, “Let’s play golf,” or whatever. Or, “Let’s hang out.” versus me as a woman, I’m very conscious of, “Okay. It’s now the appropriate time for me to say goodnight.” I’m very conscious and on boundaries and I do lunch meetings. So, I love it when we as women can connect. That’s why just a couple points, number one is, don’t be afraid, it doesn’t matter how old you are because I started at corporate and at 20 I had to reinvent myself, going through a divorce, with kids, become an entrepreneur, and then now as a business investor. Now that the kids are now in high school, I’m ready to step out in a different way, but it’s never too late to really think about how you want to live and then go and do it.

Number two, don’t be afraid of non-sexy opportunities, because great cash flow can come from many different things. They come from many different basic needs. You would be surprised how much basic manufacturing companies make. It’s not sexy. It’s not something that you would necessarily say, “Well, gosh, I’ve got this.” But cashflow is sexy. When you’re able to build a team that can run itself with a product that’s needed and you can build a journey around that, and instead of having to push and cram and like, “Here, this is what you’re going to do. You have to really work it.” Do you understand what I mean by that?

Melinda Wittstock:

Completely. Yeah. I’m the type of founder that creates game changing products, creating something

that’s never been created before, changing behavior like those kinds of disruptive businesses that stand a chance of being billion dollar plus businesses. So, that’s always been like the territory that I operate in and that’s really hard. And every now and again, I’m like, “Why am I doing this?” I mean, I could just like, “There are so many easier businesses.”

Tanaha Hairston:

Right. Absolutely. No, no, no. So, I do want to share that point because the things that I’m trying to level are playing field. Some friends of ours were over that flew to visit and they’re about to sell. All they did is they really built this industrial office, they did it. Just very basic. They’re going to sell it for $15 million. I did start this way, so I know the mindset because this was me. But there are very non-sexy businesses, like parts and hardware components, but just basic needs that are really fundamentally needed that already exist, there’s already a market for. There’s a specific need already there that if you have the cash flow that you need, and whether it’s a lifestyle business or you’re building it to exit, where you want to exit for whatever, whatever it is, what I’m saying is that the world is made up of a small number of those unicorn businesses.

But then also those businesses were really focused on the basic needs. And I just don’t want us as women to overlook those things because I’ve seen how in communities how they’ve been really, really very, very successful and they live very, very amazingly good lives where they can travel. The things that these inspirational things, but their basic necessities of life and basic successes of businesses that are really needed.

So, I don’t want women to overlook those things as well, and then just not being afraid throughout the journey, and those are some of the things we can do to level up. It doesn’t always have to be if that’s what you want, but we also think of how we want to live. You can live a very, very life unparalleled to anything that you can do in the corporate world with a non-sexy business. I’ve seen it over and over again.

Melinda Wittstock:

So true. So you have built and sold a number of your companies, getting companies to exit. Tell me about that because I know you do a lot of work on valuation growth and whatnot as well. So, tell me about the process of actually selling your business. What did you learn along the way there?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. So, sometimes, we all have different motivations for starting. We may think, “Oh, okay. I know that I don’t want to be in the corporate world anymore,” whatever the motivation is, or you want to build a legacy for your family or you think you’re going to have a more flexible life, whatever the reasons are. But if you’re building a business to exit, it’s either this is going to support our great lifestyle for us and our family, which is insurmountable of anything that we could get, meaning that we’re going to run it truly as a business, and it’s going to be a great lifestyle. It’s going to be 10X or 20X, any salary that we could have ever had from corporate.

So it’s either a lifestyle or it’s going to be a business that we’re going to build to exit. And then if that’s the case, then there are certain factors that we look for. So, at the very beginning, we want to be able to really look through our revenue forms. As a consumer, we hate monthly recurring and any recurring, but we really want to look at our top seven revenue points and we want to convert them to MRR and ARR, whether we convert them, whether we product ties like associations or memberships or whatever, because you get five times more valuation just from monthly recurring revenue versus revenue that you always have to continually to go get. So I’m going to explain that, like revenue that we have to continually go get, what does that mean? That means that I am going to fill out the RP for this contract, we have to win the contract, we have to win the bid and then we have to continue to maintain that customer, and then…

Melinda Wittstock:

Labor intensive, whereas a nice monthly recurring revenue. I mean, it’s just a monthly fee. It’s just like, almost like a subscription or a membership and it’s just auto pay. Like it’s sold once, and then it’s all about the lifetime value of the customer from there, how long are they reducing churn, all that kind of stuff, upsells down sales, etc. But that wildly increases valuation of the business.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right. So, we want to take a look at it and we want to convert our revenue to recurring MRR, ARR, that’s one of the biggest things that we can do. Number two, culture is huge for our organization, can the business run by itself? That’s also really huge. So, in other words, if the founder is gone, if the business is sold, is the business able to run itself? Because one of the things that you really don’t want to do, like me as an investor, I’m actively looking for businesses, but one of the things that you don’t want to do is you don’t want to change the dynamic of the business. You really don’t. So, if the founder can remove himself, even part-time from the business and allow the business to run itself, how do you do that? What does that really mean?

Well, what that really means is that you have created your organization in such a way, so that you aren’t responsible for the day-to-day operations of the business. That means that you aren’t needed to be there throughout the day in and day out. If you’re needed for any reasons, then the business needs you to run. It just does. It needs you to run. So, the goal should be to create an organization that can run by itself. Independent…

Melinda Wittstock:

So, this is a big challenge for women, I think, particularly perfectionists who are used to doing it all or thinking they have to do it all and not being really good at delegating and in effect making themselves obsolete. So, as you go through those processes of scale, like having great just systems in place, SOPs practices, making sure that as your team grows, everyone’s in alignment, making sure that everybody knows what they’re doing, that you can actually start by taking the occasional vacation, nothing’s going to fall off the rails, but that’s a huge part of it. So, people who build businesses, say, in the info product space and it’s all around their personal brand and they are the company, very hard to sell those companies because the asset is the person who’s trying to sell the business.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And it’s tied up in their brand. Even if they have good systems, and so, it can be optics, I guess, as well. So, thinking about a business from the start, it’s helpful to know. And I think you said this, but it bears repeating that it’s helpful to know what it is you want. When you start a business, do you want a lifestyle business? You maybe work 20 hours a week or less, you can travel, you can do whatever, and it’s a cash flow business and it comes in and it supports you, and it’s fine.

And it’s not imperative that you sell it, you should have some exit strategy or transition plan, or that you know that this is going to be a wealth building event, you’re going to put your heart and soul into it, get investment money, do all the things and sell it five to seven years from now, and you know what you want, what your number is, what you want to take away from it. That’s going to wildly change the decisions you make at the early stages of the business and how you set it up and what you actually do. But I find very few founders have clarity about that when they start, it’s sort of vaguely, “Oh yeah, maybe I’ll sell it sometime.” You know what I mean? They don’t really have a sense of that at the outset.

Tanaha Hairston:

Right. So I want women to build wealth. So I care about that. So we only have a finite amount of time. We really do. And so, with the time that we have on this earth, if we want to create wealth, we should think about that. What do we want to leave for our children? So, I have three kids, two of them are girls. And I know that I want, I mentioned it, investing, I want to see more women investing in attack for my girls. I also want to start them out in better ways that I had that start. My dad was a corporate Honeywell, Intel, Motorola engineer, come from the family of engineers, I’m the only, from the time I was probably teenager, wealth seeking entrepreneur.

Then if you look at it, all of that time he gave in management, my father was a very good man. Served our church, served the corporate. But he’s got a corporate retirement. And because he doesn’t have major stock options, he is more middle management, I would say, and he spent his time doing the church. So retirement looks very different for him and my mom than for what has been important for me to create. Nothing wrong with it. We just have to be clear on what we want. And if we’re clear on what we want, one of the things for me is I’ve always wanted to start my children off better. I had to get my own scholarship money to support myself through school.

I had to help. We bought our first house. Because I want to live and have the children start differently than I did, I’m motivated in different ways. Either way is okay, whatever motivates you, we just want to be clear so that way we can set goals accordingly. And I would love to see more women involved positions. But one of the things is we can’t replace time. And so, that’s why by training organization to do things, maybe not as perfectly as we did, but a very high percentage of the way that we do, we free ourselves up to go and create other opportunities, other wealth generating opportunities. So then we have cash flow from our business that we can take, the business continues to grow over time, and we’re establishing KPIs, that were the businesses growing experts in year over year.

We have a team in place to manage that, then we take ourselves and then we do it again, and then we do it again. And we find something, we build it up because now we’ve learned processes, according to what you said, we’ve learned systems and we’ve learned structures. And again, if we can find something where it’s already proven going back to what we were talking about before product market fit, some of these key things are there where they’ve got some sales, then now we know how to do it again. So then now we’ve got income coming in from business A, if we choose business B, and then we’re building real wealth. And then we have a business, we can sell, we have a business, however we set up the structures, that’s how we can build our wealth. So, this is if we choose businesses as an asset class versus pony and on stocks or owning it, but here we’re talking about business growth. So this is how we could turn business growth and focus on an asset class to build wealth.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. And so, when you were selling your businesses, did you feel you got the exit multiple that you wanted? Is there anything you would’ve done differently at that…

Tanaha Hairston:

Oh my God. Heck, yes. Because like you said, you learn over time. So the very beginning, there was things I should have asked for, there was specific IP I had, Melinda, there’s so many things. Yes, 100%, a thousand times, yes, like anything. So, you asked a question earlier, so MRR opportunities defining the culture, having the business run without you is really key and that’s really important. Productizing offerings, upsells, downsells, cross-sells to increase average AOV, lifetime value customer, knowing our next opportunity. Learning to grow through acquisitions. How can we grow our business? In what way? And then, how can we develop and negotiate partnerships and relationships? Because that’s really how businesses grow, even the big ones, like Amazon. That’s how they grow if you really studied them. They all grow through kind of acquisitions and not even that you would have to have all of that on your balance sheet in order to do that.

But learning how to do that with the businesses, I think is really, really key as well. Number one, also defining any IP that we have, that’s really important because that affects evaluation as well. Business is structuring it so that things are as much as we can create it systematized, productized, so where somebody can come in and you could present this beautiful business that you created all these systems and processes where your SOPs are documented. You said all of this, and everything is clear, everything is running and someone can take it over, and they can use their secrets sauce to grow, whatever that is. By doing just those basic call it seven things, that is really how you present a beautiful, nice business and you can shop it around very easily and you can get 5X multiple on up to, depending on how well you have it. Depending on the business, all the way up to an 8X multiple, it just depends on. There’s some multiples per visit…

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve seen even bigger ones, because it is sort of the context of, are you selling your business or is someone buying your business and what the buyer may see the value of your business. Might be very different from what you perceive it to be. Like when you think of why would Amazon buy Zappos, say, for [inaudible 00:36:08], and at the time Zappos was sort of on the face of it, it wasn’t really doing anything differently than Amazon was doing it. It was really selling shoes, but it had two things. It had this amazing culture and it had incredible customer service like renowned customer service. It was like unparalleled with a very counterintuitive approach that was of real need for Amazon at that time. But they also could do things with their eCommerce, like they could have a functionality that say, if you were selling a product you could buy on different colors or different sizes or these sorts of things.

And that Amazon was worth a billion dollars, but to somebody else, it was just another eCommerce business and maybe it was worth $200 million. So understanding what’s driving the value of your business in the context of the company that would buy it. So, one of the things that I always think is important, especially if you’re in the software side of things like thinking early on, like who would be your potential strategic buyers and what value are they looking for? Can you have a relationship with them early on as a customer or a partner and almost qualify them that way so that by the time you’ve decided, “Yeah, okay, it’s time to exit,” you have those relationships and that’s one way to think about it. Actually, I don’t see a lot of people doing that or as many as should. But it’s very interesting in that context.

And I think the further along you get in this road, the more of these things you start to understand, and it’s very, very difficult for early stage founders sometimes to really know this, although all the information these days is kind of at everyone’s fingertips in a way, because people are pretty forthright about explaining their journeys on podcasts and such.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. No, no, no. They are. They are.

Melinda Wittstock:

All the things, right? Like I think it is a part of the reason I started this podcast is like, “God, I wish I’d had a podcast like this one when I was coming up as a female founder,” because there was so many steps of reinventing the wheel that people had already gone through the pain I just wasn’t aware of it.

Tanaha Hairston:

Okay. So, you actually made a good point there that I really want to circle back to. So the acquisition there and you went through it quickly, but the acquisition there was because of the stellar customer service, you said two things, the culture. So, I want to circle back to that because that’s sometimes things that we don’t think about, like we think we have to figure it out ourselves and we have to do everything ourselves. But that just illustrates what we were talking about earlier, even a company, a massive company like this did an acquisition because they wanted to, and you just said it and you said it will, I want to repeat it again because I think that’s really important for the customer service and the culture.

Which are basically like other components of having a successful, equitable, scalable company throughout the customer journey. They’ve even got that last piece. So we talked about the awareness stage, I stopped there, but what makes them a raving fan and keeps them coming back and keeps them referring, having that last piece of the journey ironed out. That’s a really great point and it supports everything that we said today. You don’t have to figure it out, you just have to know where to get it. We as women, it’s okay to relinquish. It’s okay. It’s okay to go and get what you need for your business because, at the end of the day, you’re creating and building really, I’m going to call it an engine, it’s in a series of engines, a massive engine that’s well run with SOPs as you said, that’s well run with a documented customer journey on the marketing side, on the sales side.

These are small little, I love to think of them as engines and programs. That’s what it is. And you build one of these things and articulate it and document it. Then you’ve got a great, scalable, equitable business that you can get great. And again, the valuation, they all range, it can go all the way from 1X to 15X. That’s a big question, you just have to take a look at that. But the important parts are that you build your big engine with a series of smaller engines and you don’t have to figure it. You don’t always have to figure it out, but you just have to go and get it. That’s really the key. And your example that you just shared was a beautiful one because of a company like this would do that, why wouldn’t we?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So true. And so, tell me, we haven’t really even talked about your current business right now, Axismeta. And so, tell me more about Axismeta and what you’re doing because it sounds like you’re helping a lot of other companies figure this out.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. But not necessarily on the consulting side though. So it’s either an investment or it’s an acquisition. So, we actively look for businesses to invest in them that maybe they want to sell their business and a lot of these things we’re looking for things where they need help to build a digital, scalable engine all the way throughout the business. And then, frankly, I’m going to turn around and sell it again for really high multiple. That’s exactly what I would do. So I would build a business…

Melinda Wittstock:

I understand. So you come in say a company has a really great product and they are at that phase of product market fit. They don’t have the marketing systems or the sales system.

Tanaha Hairston:

I would acquire them.

Melinda Wittstock:

But just buy it outright, and then, do you take the founders with you or no?

Tanaha Hairston:

It depends if they wanted it. I mean, it depends. I would have to speak with them and talk to them. Yeah. So, acquisitions or investments. Investments, meaning that they want to stay along and it’s going to be a strategic partnership, and which we’re going to come in and do these things. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s so interesting. And so, how many of these has Axismeta bought at this stage? How big is the portfolio?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. So, right now, we have four companies that are in our portfolio. So it’s just me and it’s my team. So it’s me and my team and everybody is a specialist. So we have a digital marketing team. My SOPs are all agile-based like software agile. So, there’s agile-based SOP team, which specializes in building SOPs, but using agile principles. We don’t believe that agile is just for engineers, it’s not just for software.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. Oh, it works very well in a marketing context, I think.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. So, we actually like it for all organizations. We like it for all of that. So no, we have a team that specifically comes in and then we grow and then we hire. It varies because as you know, every business is different. So those seven components that we talked about that have to be there in order to build in business and this takes time, it actively takes time because it’s not quick, nothing’s quick, nothing’s overnight. So it takes time. We put together a plan, where are they at now? The first two months is benchmark. Where are they at now? What do they have? Where are the gaps to get them to sell at the multiple that we want? And then what do we need to do in order to get there?

And then we start putting processes and systems in place, and then the major one is that big journey map. For every product, for every customer, we always start with that because that has to be there, and it has to be structured and productized. That in itself is massive because for every phase of the journey, we want to be communicating with them hands off or we need to be communicating with them with a position and someone’s assigned to that, or an organization is assigned to communicate at every stage of the journey. So we always start there with the journey map for every product, for every channel that’s defined. And then secondly is the growth opportunities where we positioned on.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, are there any particular types of products or companies that you look at?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yes. Love tech, SAS, [inaudible 00:45:13], anything tech and anything tech focus, just because I come apart from family of engineers and love helping them communicate in a way that converts and help them prepare. So, that’s the gap that I’m really able to fail is helping them throughout their journey.

Melinda Wittstock:

What an interesting model. It’s almost like there’s an echo of what you do that I see in private equity where you’ve got these private equity companies that roll up a whole bunch of startups perhaps in the same area and then go sees a market in that sense. But I’ve never really heard of a company that does what yours do. Do you have competitors that do operates like you?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. It’s a private equity investment banking concept. So, typically, private equity has a bad notoriety name, without come and dismantle. We don’t do that. We come in and we’re looking specifically at growth. So, in that way, it’s almost like an investment banking firm, investment banking opportunity where we’re going to look at strategically, how can we grow, and how can we grow through acquisitions? But we can’t even focus on that until everything’s cleaned up first. So it’s like an investment bank.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. So I understand. This is so intriguing to me. So you come in, say, there’s a company you think, “Okay, this could be really good,” so you get all that stuff in place, or do you buy it first and get all that stuff in place?

Tanaha Hairston:

No, I would buy it first and then get in place.

Melinda Wittstock:

You go through your process and then you sell it.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yes. I would have a talk first and I would say like, “Look, are you ready to sell? Where are you at? Do you want to partner? Where are you at? Do you feel like you know how to get to where you need to go, to get to the multiple that we want?” And it just starts with a conversation and how you can be of service. What I’ve learned through the years is that if you can just figure, you can just help people solve their problems. That really is key. I sold my business, frankly, because of a personal situation. Someone had passed away and I was like, I have to do it all myself.

And so, I was just taxed and someone passed away and that was really a reason why I had that first sale really authentically. But whatever their reasons are for wanting to sell or they don’t feel like they have the tools in order to grow, it doesn’t really matter to me, I’m just trying to figure out where they’re at, where they want to be. And then if it’s a good fit or not. And it’s such just a brief, quick conversation, and then based off of that. Basically one or two meetings, a run about look at the valuation and then we should be able to have a deal done in a month or two. And then other than that, we’re focused on our existing core companies and how are they doing and what can we do to grow. That’s something that we do checkpoints on because everything is KPIed and is everything running as it should.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness. So I feel like I could talk to you forever, because there’s a whole bunch of your knowledge and expertise here that we haven’t even gotten into yet on the podcast, like such as some of the different things on marketing tips and sales tips and all these things for companies that are working all these out. And I know that we’ve spoken for a full hour and usually the podcast doesn’t run this long.

Tanaha Hairston:

Oh, wow. I’m sorry.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh no, no, no. Do not know. It’s a good thing, actually. When you lose track of time in a conversation, I think that’s good. Hopefully everybody who’s listening, hope to had the same experience. But today, I’d love to have you come back at another time and go a little bit deeper, because this has been truly amazing. I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to… Sorry. Hold on. I’m just going to pick up there and ask a slightly different. I want to make sure that everybody who’s interested in perhaps working with you or perhaps they have a business that they might be interested in selling to you or just want your expertise or want to connect with you for whatever reason, what’s the best way?

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. Let me give you, it’s Tanaha. T-A-N-A-H-A@axismeta.co, A-X-I-S-M-E-T-A.co.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Tanaha Hairston:

Yeah. Thank you for doing this podcast. Really appreciate you doing this and kind of creating this platform for us to level up as women and to support each other and to help each other with wherever our goals are. So, thanks for doing that.