In this episode of the M&A Launchpad Podcast, Casey Minshew interviews Paige Wiese, founder and CEO of Tree Ring Digital, a Denver-based digital marketing agency. Paige brings over 15 years of experience helping businesses build and execute marketing strategies that drive measurable growth. She shares her perspective on why evaluating digital marketing strategies is critical when acquiring a business, how digital assets factor into valuation, and what buyers and sellers should consider during due diligence.
The conversation dives into the importance of preparing for exits, integrating digital strategies post-transaction, and adapting to rapid changes in the digital landscape—including the rise of AI. Paige also highlights the unique opportunities and challenges in bringing digital presence to blue-collar businesses.
Key Takeaways
- The M&A Launchpad event is a must-attend for anyone buying, selling, or scaling businesses.
- Evaluating digital marketing strategies is essential for business buyers.
- Understanding digital assets can prevent costly mistakes during acquisitions.
- Financial health and quality of earnings are critical in M&A.
- A strong digital presence can significantly increase business valuation.
- Buyers should ask the right questions about digital assets before acquisition.
- Post-transaction integration of digital strategies is key to a successful transition.
- AI is changing the digital marketing landscape rapidly.
- Blue-collar businesses need to start building their digital presence early.
Connect with Paige Wiese
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigewiese/
Tree Ring Digital: https://treeringdigital.com/
M&A Launchpad Conference
The M&A Launchpad Conference is where acquisition entrepreneurs, investors, and operators come together for a full day of deal-making, insights, and networking. Whether you’re buying, selling, or growing businesses, this is the event that puts you in the room with the right people.
- Learn directly from industry leaders and active dealmakers
- Gain insight into real-world acquisitions and exits
- Build relationships with capital partners, operators, and advisors
- Discover opportunities to scale through mergers & acquisitions
📍 Chicago, IL
📅 Saturday, October 25, 2025
🎟️ Tickets + info: https://www.malaunchpad.com/
Use code LAUNCH for $150 off registration.
Additional Resources
- Sponsored by O’Connell Advisory Group – Work with a trusted Quality of Earnings and Financial Diligence partner who focuses solely on business acquisitions.
Schedule a discovery call with Patrick of O’Connell Advisory Group—your dynamic Quality of Earnings partner.
Visit: https://www.oconnelladvisorygroup.com/
- Access our archive of video interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MALaunchpad
- Connect with show hosts Casey Minshew and Feras Moussa: info@equitylaunchpad.com
Learn more about Equity Launchpad: https://www.equity-launchpad.com/
Additional Resources:
- Access our full archive of podcast and video interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@malaunchpad
- Connect with the hosts at Equity Launchpad: info@equitylaunchpad.com
- Learn more about M&A opportunities: https://www.equity-launchpad.com
�� Have a question or want to work with us? Reach out to Casey and Feras: info@equity-launchpad.com
🎧 Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0X6oOeICcW9Mk7fo6OE3e5?si=7GjMGa_tQEWApUN_pDP_OQ
🎧 Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-assets-business-valuation-with-paige-wiese/id1740382586?i=1000727541475
🎟️ Attend Upcoming M&A Launchpad Conference: http://malaunchpad.com/
Transcript
00:00 Hey there, this is Casey with the M&A Launchpad podcast. Want to let you know about October 25th. Put it on your
00:07 calendar. This is a do not missed one-day event. There’s going to be incredible headliners, but really at the
00:14 end of the day, you’re going to get a chance to talk to people that have made acquisitions, learn from some of the
00:19 challenges that they’ve made because this is definitely a challenging process. But more importantly, there’s
00:24 going to be people there that can help you and support you along the way from great vendors, quality of earnings, how
00:30 to run the due diligence process, and how do I get financed, how do I raise capital, how do I structure all of these
00:36 things. October 25th in Chicago, we’re going to be gathering. It’s going to be hundreds of people that are all focused,
00:42 like-minded people. And man, everyone that’s come has given us incredible feedback. So, mark your calendar.
00:48 October 25th in Chicago. We look forward to seeing you there. All right. Right. On today’s episode, we
00:53 interviewed Paige Whis where we talked about what does it look like to evaluate and have a digital marketing strategy on
00:59 a business that you’re buying, right? Buying a business has many parts to it from the operations to the sales to the
01:05 marketing. And usually, right, technology is the backbone of all that. And so, what are some of the considerations that you as a business
01:12 buyer need to think about whenever you’re buying a business and who can help you identify the gaps, the
01:17 weaknesses, and the strengths to help you make a successful acquisition? So, Casey, what were some of your takeaways?
01:23 Well, you’re the software guy and you know that this checklist is pretty valuable, man. I mean, like I have been
01:29 through multiple due diligences and I just have not thought about the digital footprint, the any of that stuff. So,
01:34 she put a total light bulb on to me and uh getting that information because, you
01:39 know, once you get to the close and if that business has some type of marketing expense or advertising expenses and you
01:47 don’t know where all that’s coming from or who controls that or who owns the website or all that, man, that that
01:52 could be a loss right there just of time, energy, and effort. I’m not saying it’s going to cost you $50,000, but what
01:58 I am saying is that time is money. And this is one of those things you could just alleviate right up front and know
02:04 what you’re getting when you close. So, I was super impressed with this podcast and Paige. So, she’ll definitely be
02:09 someone we talk to. No, I completely agree. Right. I mean, you know, it’s it’s easy to get hyperfixated on buying the business but
02:14 not really think about the transition and the mechanics of that and you know, that’s what they’re there to help solve. And so, we should have gone into horror
02:20 stories on this one and we didn’t. But again, lots of valuable things. There’s plenty of them help get a successful transition. So, that’s this. I’ll take
02:30 Welcome to the M&A Launchpad podcast with your host Casey and Ferris with Equity Launchpad. On this podcast, you
02:36 will gain insights on acquiring, investing in, and selling profitable businesses in the lower to middle market. Whether you’re a business owner,
02:41 investor, or spying entrepreneur, at Equity Launchpad, we will provide you with the knowledge, guidance, and capital to navigate the world of mergers
02:47 and acquisitions. Hey guys, go ahead and just pause the podcast for a second. When you’re buying
02:53 a business, you need to ensure the financial health of the company. The quality of earnings is missionritical. It doesn’t matter what size business
02:59 you’re buying. Patrick O’Connell Advisory Group. They’re dynamic. They do a great job. They’re going to look over your shoulder. They’re going to make
03:04 sure that you’re doing the right thing. And this guy’s done over 200 buyers successfully just like you. So, reach
03:10 out to him and it’s okconelladvisorygroup.com. Click the link in our show notes. Can’t live without. Paige, welcome to the
03:16 show. How are you today? Doing well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Yes, great. Well, why don’t you just
03:22 kick it off and talk to us a little bit about what you do, your background, how you’re involved in the ETA, all that
03:27 great stuff. So, um, I own Tree Ring Digital. We’re a full-ervice digital marketing agency.
03:32 Uh, really tailored more though as your digital partner. So we while we do the traditional website development, we do
03:39 the digital marketing and all of that, we like to dive a lot deeper into the digital assets that go along with the
03:45 business and really looking at the full digital footprint from your domain and your hosting and your emails all the way
03:51 into your Google Analytics, your social profiles, your compliance, ADA compliance. Um, you know, how are we
03:58 storing and managing brand files? So that’s where I say we really come alongside and work with our clients to
04:05 meet them where they’re at to make sure that we’re looking at the big picture of everything as well. I really love it because
04:11 I it’s just not part of my checklist. I’ll be honest. Like it’s not on my checklist. It’s going to be I’m going to go to your website and download it
04:18 because that’s just great stuff. You know, you assume it’s just going to come or it’s going to be there, right? But that that’s a great angle. I love that
04:24 and it’s important, right? Right. I mean, it’s kind of the lifeline of a business is really that sales and marketing strategy. And even at our
04:31 companies, that’s kind of the the one where you kind of have to get the right people, the right alignment because it’s kind of, you know, it’s it’s a
04:37 blurriness between operations, sales, and marketing, right? And so, you kind of have to get a real strategy in place
04:42 that’s effective. Well, what we see too on the M&A side is, you know, like they’re stoked and they’re looking at all the things when
04:48 it goes to a transaction, but no one’s really putting their pulse on, but what
04:53 does that look like for these assets? How are they getting transferred um of ownership? How are they getting handed
04:58 off? How are we making sure nothing is lost? With all of those, we’ve identified 300 digital like data points
05:06 that go into having a business online. And yeah, you’re deep in the weeds looking at finances. You’re deep in the
05:11 weeds looking at the tangibles and operations. People slow down and forget to focus on
05:17 the digital side of that all. So, um, yeah, and I think anytime you’ve got multiple brands, I know you guys are,
05:22 you know, got a different a couple different ventures going on as well. And, you know, they forget that each of
05:28 those continue to have their own set of assets and what are we doing to keep that all aligned and I feel a lot of
05:34 agencies or a lot of business owners are focused on just that one little section of it, not looking at the big picture.
05:41 And so, that’s where we’ve really started to see that there’s some issues out there in that M&A space that need to get cleaned up and addressed.
05:46 Yeah. So, so who’s your typical customer? Maybe walk us through, you know, a typical customer, right? At what
05:52 point do they bring you in? What’s the problem you’re helping them solve? And what are they typically overlooking? We have like two typical customers for
05:59 us are on both sides, right? So, typical is going to be your buy side. Typical is going to be your sell side. There’s two
06:04 ways that we can really put that into place. Um, when you’re looking at the sell side, we like to see them about a
06:09 year out so that we can start looking at how do we increase that valuation through your digital presence. Is that
06:16 increasing your website automation? Is it getting a new website because you haven’t had one done in the last 10
06:21 years? Is it making sure that you do have ownership of these pieces? Is it reducing costs because you’re overpaying
06:28 for some of your thirdparty tools or license keys and different things that you don’t need? So, how do we come in
06:34 and really gather all of that and put it together so that when you do go to market, you have a very very strong
06:41 section there on that like line item, if you will. And so when you get to due diligence, you’re not going to get slowed down in your deal and you’re not
06:47 going to have your deal and your valuation impacted because they start asking questions at that point. So
06:53 that’s a really good side for us on the sell side and increasing valuation there. So a bit of a jump start on that
06:58 is always good on the acquisition. And really quick and what’s the deliverable actually on that before you hop to the buy?
07:04 Yeah, deliverable. So, we’re going to go through and we’re going to put together a whole like packet basically where it’s
07:09 like here is everything that we’re looking at and asking for and we’ve identified ownership. We’ve identified
07:14 when things expire. We identify, you know, do we have the right login? What happens if an employee turns over and
07:21 put all of that into place? A lot of times we hear, I can’t get a hold of my
07:26 marketing team. I don’t I can’t get you the numbers that you’re asking for for me to prove that the ROI is there on the
07:32 marketing expenses that we’re having. So, while they’re looking at financials, they’re not able to get the documents to
07:38 support it. So, we’re going to see what we can do to either recover that or let’s start getting some data in place
07:43 now before we, like I said, get to that like two-month mark um prior to exiting and don’t have anything to show for it.
07:50 Yeah. Because most of the companies, if it’s online business or even a traditional business, whatever, most
07:56 people are doing some type of online advertising, right? Keywords, they’re doing something. And so if I’m going
08:02 through and I’m doing all my due diligence and I’m like, “All right, look, there’s 10K a month that’s going to advertising. Great.” Most of the time
08:07 it’s like, “Yeah, it’s advertising great.” But in your your checklist and what you’re saying is, “Hey, Casey, listen. Let’s dial into that 10,000,
08:15 right?” Or let’s let’s do an analysis and say, “Hey, what what is the ROI on this?” Or, you know, all of that other
08:22 stuff where I’m sitting there busy doing the QV or looking at the the P&Ls and doing all that EBIT to great stuff.
08:28 there’s just that extra little notch, right? You go into that part or and let me ask you if this is also something you
08:34 deliver, which is to then come back to me and say, “Hey, listen. There are some things we can do off the bat, right?
08:40 I’ve looked at the keywords. I’ve looked at the market and you know that 10K could be completely given here and you
08:46 should be able to get so much more out of it.” Yeah. Low hanging fruit to address now that you see that and that’s been helpful on both sides,
08:52 right? We could also come in on the acquisition side and go, “Hey, look, we’ve looked at the numbers and we see what they’re doing.” And there’s
08:58 actually a lot of opportunity if you just reposition yourselves a little bit. And now we, you know, go ahead and
09:03 acquire because we know we can already jump that revenue pretty quickly if we’re doing the right things compared to
09:10 what they were doing. And then yeah, same thing on the um exit side of hey
09:15 why or another way we see it is a lot of companies will come in as referral based especially if you’re doing like home
09:21 services or some of those more traditional kinds accounting what per uh business services whatever and that’s
09:28 not really going to look great when you go to the valuation side and due diligence. So if we can come in and yeah
09:33 start to get ahead of it and say why don’t we focus on two to three really core lead generation tools here’s what
09:40 we’re recommending for a budget let’s run that for one to two years so that when you go and are asking for this
09:46 valuation we can show them that that revenue is coming with you and it’s not
09:51 just going to get lost because all the referrals decided to go to a different company um or you know the the referral
09:57 network and everything. You know, Paige, you bring up a great point here and I think for our listeners that are
10:03 thinking about buying their first business or somebody that has a business wanting to exit. They always say that you got to start with the end in mind,
10:09 right? So, if you’re buying a company, you’re not I love that people say, “Hey, I’m going to own this forever, right?”
10:14 But the truth is is if you do it right, someone’s going to tap you on the shoulder and buy it from you. Okay? So,
10:20 what we’re always doing at Equity Launchpad on our deals is we have a data room. we’re always looking for as we add
10:26 value, we create a data room, we build out that piece. And so it’s also nice to
10:31 be able to say to a a a seller is, hey, this is the this is, you know, because
10:37 one, I’ve got sales people. People do traditional sales, but look at the lead genen, the ROI that we get here. that is
10:43 so I’ve never really thought about that as a as a selling point in regards to hey when I go to exit this business I
10:50 need to have a digital marketing kind of stamp like this is ROI this is our plan and prove off that scalability there so
10:57 I can grow the business correct I mean that that’s really a key so instead of thinking hey I’m going to try to sell my
11:03 business in the next 6 months someone’s got to put that plan together that exit strategy and one of them can be is hey
11:09 if we added more digital marketing or if we proved up you know a cert certain amount and look at the sales that are coming in. If you spent more, look at
11:16 what you can get. It’s pretty pretty powerful, right? Well, I mean, yeah, people are looking how do we, you know, 2x, 3x, 4x
11:23 the company. And a lot of times it is you’re going to have to modify your marketing budget, you know, like bottom
11:28 line there. Yes, there’s a few other ways you can do that. and maybe you can cut some corners someplace to like shore
11:34 up your profit margins and whatnot. But at the end of the day, if you want to really show and like grow and scale,
11:41 it’s going to be to your point, how do we get more qualified leads in the door? Then how do we make sure our sales team
11:46 can close those deals? But we don’t want the sales team chasing unqualified leads. So that comes back to what are we
11:53 doing to, you know, generate those to begin with. And sometimes it is the cold calls and, you know, different ways of
11:58 going about it. But are there other ways we can maximize that time too and have those kind of fall more in their lap and
12:04 a little more warm so that we can get them to the deal a lot faster? Yeah, I can see and we’ll talk offline cuz definitely want to talk to you about
12:10 what so uh we made an acquisition in May on a service business. Um has zero zero
12:17 marketing. We’re we’re not at the marketing growth phase. We’re at solve foundation play. But we know, we don’t,
12:24 we already know that once we get into the digital marketing or we start advertising and doing that stuff, but
12:29 we’ve got to build out a CRM. We’ve got to build out all these things. So, is that some of the sides that you come into when you talk about digital? Is it
12:36 more about traffic or do you actually help say, “Hey, I’m going to help you guys get a funnel here and how to market
12:42 to that funnel and build out those triggers and all that great stuff.” Is that kind of in the package that you
12:47 offer? We can go into that for sure. You know, obviously there’s going to be other professionals that are much more
12:53 experienced in like the set CRM integration, but we do look at it. And the pace the place that we really like
12:59 to come in is too many businesses have a website and they have a CRM, but they’re
13:05 not connected. They’re not talking whatsoever. Or you’re to your point, right? They have a sales team, but like
13:11 are we really tracking how those leads are getting in there? Or did you just say, “Hey sales team, here’s your CRM.
13:16 Go ahead. We’ve set up some things for you, but it’s there that we don’t have everything in place, right? So, we do
13:22 like to have those conversations with our clients to say, how can we automate more? How can we integrate your existing
13:29 tools so that you are a welloiled smooth rolling machine over there instead of
13:36 well then once we get the lead in, someone has to manually add it to the CRM and then from there it gets
13:41 triggered to the next person and like no, we’re not in that age anymore. we need to get into how do we automate and
13:47 that yeah that’s another area that if you’re looking to acquire dive deeper ask the questions of the company and if
13:53 those are things that they still haven’t automated you can yeah jump in there right away clean those up and I
13:59 guarantee you’ll start to see more revenue right off the bat because you’re going to be able to get things done a lot faster and be able to handle higher
14:05 volume got it and and so maybe shifting gears to the sales side right you know what
14:11 does that look like and you know kind of what are the clients doing there what are you helping with and how are you solving them
14:17 on uh let me go back though on the side I’m going to say the buy side sorry I apologize I didn’t say the buy side no worries I just wanted to make sure um
14:23 yeah so on the buy side we like to come in one as we mentioned just kind of let’s just take a quick look what’s
14:29 going on what questions did you ask what like what quick things can we identify as you’re um exploring is this a good
14:36 purchase for you or not obviously we can’t get into everything until we get deeper into consulting but then what we
14:41 really like to one talk about is Do you are you going to get all of these things and do the does the current owner know
14:48 where those assets are? So, one thing I encourage is, you know, on our website, we’ve got a checklist for the digital
14:54 asset um tools and you can go on there and download it and it’ll start telling you like as far as domain and hosting,
14:60 what does that ownership look like? As far as social, what does that look like? As far as marketing tools, what does
15:05 that look like? Who has owners? So it starts to give you as a buyer questions
15:10 to start asking instead of waiting until the deal has closed and starting to ask.
15:16 That’s what we see too many clients doing is that they acquire and then they engage us and then they start saying hey
15:23 why is this happening and we have to did you ask for this? Did you do that? Did you no great let’s go back through our
15:30 checklist and do it. So um that’s one thing I would definitely encourage is start understanding what questions to
15:36 ask on a digital side before you acquire. And then the second place that we help clients is the post-transaction
15:42 integration. Whether that’s into an existing system that you have because you’ve acquired multiple brands like that or just how do we get them over to
15:49 you so that you can get off the round ground and running. What we’ve seen is yeah, some people don’t know to be
15:55 asking for A, B, and C, the email login details to the actual admin account, not
16:01 just login to an email. Um, you know, it could be, do they have privacy policy and, you know, whatnot in place and the
16:07 right disclaimers or do we got to jump in and do that right away? So, certain ways that we want to make sure that you’re protected from the get and really
16:14 just trying to speed up the integration process. too often, like you said, they’re focused on all of the different
16:20 phases. And if you’re a new buyer, that’s a lot to take on in that like ETA space, right? You come in and you don’t
16:28 really know. You maybe know how to run the some of the business or you’re hoping that your key employees are coming with you, but we need to make
16:35 sure that that digital side really does you got to have control of that. No question. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a that is a good piece.
16:40 No, I mean, and most people don’t realize all of the nooks and crannies. Like you know for example the company
16:45 may be using a third party service to schedule postings for social media. Yeah and owner thinks let me ask for just a
16:52 Facebook account. Well you kind of miss the fact that how the schedule yes you need the software the scheduling also
16:57 right or you know if I’m getting the domain name you need to really understand all the DNS entries and what’s happening there. You’re not going
17:02 to just flip a switch to go from Outlook to Gmail if that’s your preferred thing. Oh yeah. A lot of mechanics big time.
17:08 So that’s about you know my background is software. So at least for our businesses I I know those new But most people don’t. I mean, I have 20 years of
17:15 experience for it. ETA, too, if they’re coming in to own a business for their first time, if you
17:20 will, or like, you know, no, they don’t know what all these little technical things are. Startups start to understand
17:26 because they’ve gone through that headache slowly but surely, right? I set up a domain, something stopped working. Now, I know that word, but yeah, if
17:32 you’re acquiring a business that’s so well-rounded and ready to go, you’re not
17:38 going to know that stuff till it comes up. And when it comes up, it hits a bit harder because you don’t know who’s in
17:43 place to solve that issue for you. You don’t even know how to say what the actual issue is. You know, it’s just my
17:48 sight’s down, my emails are down, or whatever that looks like, but we they don’t know how to say what the root
17:54 cause of it is. Or do I call an IT company? Do I call the lawyer who said that this was all my ownership and
18:00 something happened? Or do I go call a marketing company or web company? And so now they’re already just wasting time in
18:06 weeks and circles trying to figure out who’s the right contact. It’s clean. Yeah. So is your business more of kind of doing a a biscuit lowcost audit and
18:13 then obviously the things you identify are things that you you can help them solve, right? And that’s where you know you’re that’s the real core of the
18:19 business for you, right? Yeah. No, it’s a great way to say it. We’re going to come in, we’re going to audit everything, make sure we, you
18:24 know, we know where things are, who’s in charge of what. Just makes it easier to Yeah. you’ve got key employee turnover,
18:29 we can quickly recover, you know, not recover, but like make that transition, if you will, so that it doesn’t get to a
18:35 recovery phase. And then also, you know, yeah, as we start to identify gaps. If
18:41 it’s like, yes, you have legal issues, then obviously we’re going to refer it out to a lawyer. If it’s like, yeah,
18:46 your cyber security is not great, we’ll refer it to a networking person. But if it falls into that digital side, then
18:52 we’ll say, “Hey, these are things that we can help you with, too.” So, you don’t have to go and find a whole bunch
18:58 of vendors or have seven different vendors trying to handle different things that aren’t talking. So, Paige, kind of just let’s let’s
19:05 understand the business, but how did you stumble across this niche? Because you’re one of the first people I’ve talked to that’s that’s focusing in this
19:12 area. So, how did you what’s your background? How did you run into this? Yeah, my background is actually just
19:18 selftaught web design. I was doing architecture originally and trying to find some money and decided to start
19:24 teaching myself website design. Um that was about 16 years ago. And then from there we just started seeing clients
19:30 roll up. You know, we were providing amazing services. We were getting the results they needed and they would get
19:36 rolled up into an investment company or they would decide, hey, actually I’ve just been doing this for far too long.
19:42 You got me where I needed to go. I’m ready to exit. What does that look like? And so our clients just kind of
19:47 naturally started falling into that arena. And I think it just kind of was speaking volumes to us though of like
19:53 we’re on to something here as far as how do we get them ready to hit that exiting phase and what are the things that are
19:59 coming up during that deal process that are, you know, pain points that we could resolve. And then yeah, as we got more
20:05 and more into some of the investment side and the acquisition side, sure they have processes in place. Yes, they’ll
20:12 say there’s a team that’s handling the integration. We we’ve seen though that when we get in there, no one’s done any
20:18 of the things that we’re asking about. And so that’s where we were like, you’re right. You have an integration team. You’re right. You have due diligence.
20:25 But an IT company who you think is in charge does not really want to go hunt all these login down. They don’t want to
20:30 identify where these gaps are and how to transfer it over. They want to focus on your IT. So that’s where we started
20:37 seeing that. Yeah. An IT company’s just keeping things running. That’s very different than understanding, you know, how a
20:43 business fully operates and what are the nooks and crannies to be aware of. Yeah. I mean, we just went through this.
20:48 I mean, the the company that we bought, small business, it’s in the service side. It’s in a specialty niche and
20:54 they’ve been running the business the way they’ve done since uh really 7576.
20:60 And so they were using Yok YK mail. Um not every employee had an
21:07 email. um people are using their personals and so our the IT group we’ve used prior they came in set us up on
21:14 Microsoft they got everybody linked in on the teams and all that but that doesn’t get into the other stuff right
21:20 that doesn’t get into the other stuff that you know you don’t even think about until after you close and then you’re
21:25 like man you know now I’ve got to go search all this down and you find out that you know the guy in charge has no
21:31 clue about any of it right they’re not tracking anything especially from you know 1975 or something like no
21:37 or I always say it’s in an email sent to the client at some point that’s like here’s the login details and they’re
21:44 like cool I’m not going to put it anywhere because if I need in the future I’ll just find that email but oftent
21:49 times in a transition those emails are all deleted when the ownership is transferred so if that was the secure
21:56 storing of it all right down the drain it went right so yeah like how do we make
22:01 or even knowing to say hey as part of the transition you are not allowed to delete the emails you have to give us all Right. I mean, that’s important,
22:08 too. People don’t realize some of these things really matter, right? Yeah. And especially like, you know, let’s say
22:13 you’re buying a law firm. I mean, you know, you really need to have that history and you need to have backups of
22:18 it, right? And so, how do you check all the boxes? Just make sure you have that in place and you know what to ask for as
22:24 part of the the agreement to buy the business. There’s so many questions, right? And you’re right, it’s everything’s running
22:29 fine and okay, like we acquired and we’re doing great. It inevitably will absolutely something will come up. At
22:37 some point a digital piece is going to throw a wrench in your operations and it
22:42 will bring your business to a halt. It’s just a matter of when and that is what we have seen for pretty much every
22:47 business that is acquired. And so that’s where we too were like how do we get ahead of this? How do we prevent that so
22:54 that we don’t keep getting calls of why did everything halt? Why did I have to turn off my marketing because my
22:59 websites down? Why are my emails not sending? Why did the contact form stop sending me leads three months ago and
23:05 I’m just now finding out all of that? At some point it’s going to happen and so how do we yeah be more prepared for it?
23:13 Now just kind of diving into another question here for me. This is more for me and I hope the listeners would benefit you know. So what are you seeing
23:19 change right now in the digital landscape from what you guys do on advertising marketing and things like
23:25 that right? We’ve got chat GPT we’ve got all these things hitting the market. So I’m sure you’re
23:31 on the cutting edge of figuring out like hey here are the things that are that are what do you see what do you see in
23:36 that digital landscape that’s changing from the way keywords used to be done to Facebook all that good stuff. What are
23:42 you seeing? Yeah, I mean you’re right. The biggest change that we’re seeing right now is just how do we adapt for AI? Uh obviously, you know, Google search is
23:49 much lower on the totem pole than it used to be uh chat or just you know AI becoming more and more of the responses
23:55 that people are looking for and trust trusting blindly like absolutely if you
23:60 know the first result in the AI is this company they’re going to go and call them right away. They’re really not
24:05 going to do a whole lot more research. So, you know, what do we do then from an uh SEO side, AIO side, all of that to
24:12 stay more in front of it? And what we’re seeing too is a lot of clients calling and saying, “What do we need to be doing
24:17 differently to incorporate?” And I’m like, “You haven’t been running SEO at all. Why Why would we think now all of a
24:24 sudden we can not only catch up, but get ahead of?” And so any of those that, you
24:30 know, we’re just like, “No, we don’t need SEO. We’re not going to focus on it.” and now want to quickly shift gears
24:35 to optimizing for AI, you’ve got a long long road ahead of you, you know, or it’s a costly,
24:42 expensive road to try to get to that catch-up. And so, one is it’s always better though to start as soon as
24:47 possible than necessarily wait another 6 months or another two years to try to get ahead of it. So, that’s one thing
24:54 that we’re seeing change. And then another is just you were saying it with personal email accounts. We’ve got so
24:59 many people that are just signing up for AI on their personal accounts, training it for the company and then they leave.
25:07 All of that information that was trained now is going away with the employee. And so, how do we start having the
25:13 conversations with business owners of you need to be setting those up? You need to be supplying the team with the
25:19 login and that way if they leave that comes with you. And then there’s still
25:24 stuff on marketing, you know, with uh Facebook and whatnot. It’s right on the cusp. I mean, yes, AI is great for
25:31 should I set this up myself, but you’re still not an expert. You really do need a digital marketing company to come in
25:36 and set those Google ad campaigns up to set social up. So, I mean, yeah, social media marketing up and stuff. So, you
25:43 know, it’s understanding where is AI good for running the business and where do you still want to um lean on the
25:49 professionals for it. No, that’s a great answer and that helps because you know those are a lot of things because when you buy these old
25:56 businesses, right? Right. So, look, I’m just going to talk about what Ferris and I do. Yeah. You know, they’re not you’re we’re not
26:02 looking at a digital marketing engine, right? It’s it’s not even really being thought of. You know, one of the
26:08 companies that we’re in due diligence on right now doesn’t even have a website. They don’t need that stuff. At least
26:13 what they think, right? We know that it’s valuable. We know that’s the value ad that we can bring, right? Those are those those are those
26:19 those pieces. And so, and I would imagine that a lot of our listeners that are looking for a lot of these bluecollar ran businesses, you know,
26:26 they’re like, eh, you know, that’s maybe not as important today as it is tomorrow. So, what is your advice?
26:32 Right? You know, look at me as like I’m asking you right now, you know, what is your advice for those that are buying the bluecollar businesses that maybe
26:39 doesn’t have a lot of these digital assets, but what should they be thinking about in their integration timeline of,
26:45 hey, the first 30 days, first 90 days, I’m really just trying to get payroll right. I’m trying to get this right. I’m
26:50 trying to get this. When should you start, you know, then really focusing on
26:56 this digital side of building that brand and starting to build out the SEO and getting the website where you need it to
27:02 be? How do you see that in that that phase? Yeah, I think that it’s great to like be considering it and I one of the biggest
27:08 pieces is like you don’t want to be driving so much marketing if you’re still trying to get your operations in
27:13 line. So, I do think get the presence at least build the website and get like the
27:19 directory listings and whatnot claimed so that you’re at least getting a presence if people are looking for you.
27:26 And also sometimes just announcing that the changed hands or ownership and management, right? So that they’re aware
27:31 that it’s still around, but so if they’re going and doing any research and like, oh, I heard Johnny sold the
27:37 business finally. If someone still goes to look, the business still exists, right? So that’s where I would say at
27:43 least getting the foundation in place is best. Then go in and focus on how do we
27:49 get the operation, the books, the numbers and everything in line and then move into what are we doing now for a
27:55 very strategic strategy on marketing to now get this, you know, going even more
27:60 because like I said, you can do all the marketing, but if the website’s not there, there’s no point. And if the
28:06 website’s not going to convert, there’s no point. And at the same time, you can only handle so much traffic and leads if
28:13 you don’t have the operations in place. So, I think really understanding leveraging what was built and came with
28:18 the company the best that you can, but don’t let it run dry. What I’ve also
28:23 seen is people are like, it’s so established. We’re not going to do marketing. We’re just going to let these
28:28 like especially in blue collar, we see a lot of we got these contracts and they just keep coming back. All these
28:34 construction companies just keep coming back, right? So why would we go look for new work? Why would we look for more
28:39 work? It will dry up. Just like let’s say Johnny just sold. So is Bob. And so
28:44 then what happened? They’re going to, you know, have someone new come in and start looking for a different contractor or vendor and providers. So you don’t
28:51 want to be just sitting and writing it out. You do want to start getting proactive. You want to be in front of your
28:56 customers, the potential customers all the time, right? Constantly reminding them of the who, the what, and stopping in, you know, seeing you, your brand. I
29:03 mean, heck with the company we’re looking at buying didn’t even have signs on their trucks until you know what
29:09 yeargo, right? Simple things. I mean, it’s kind of a sleeper, but big in his industry, but nobody really knew it was them. So,
29:17 awesome. Well, I think we can go ahead and move on to our rocket round where we ask the listen the uh the guest the same
29:24 three questions. So, first question, what do you like to do in your free time? Uh, in my free time, I’m an avid
29:29 showrunner. I love I’m in Denver so I love getting up into the mountains about 12,000 ft and just enjoying the day
29:36 running and uh checking out the trails and the views. Well, see I got to say Casey’s more of a 14,000 footer. All right. You just he
29:44 did two months a two weeks ago. Yeah. So you got that done. So yeah, love my daughter lives in Boulder.
29:50 Um you know my wife just got back and she’s like ah it’s just so beautiful and they went for hikes and I mean it’s just
29:55 it’s really nice. It’s so quiet and peaceful. Yeah. Like you just get away from it all. you start to get to the right elevation, there’s a
30:01 lot less people, too, than some of the easier, smaller trails. So, a little more solitude.
30:07 I agree. It’s big stuff. It’s needed. All right. Next question. What’s your most memorable moment in your business journey?
30:12 Um, memorable moment in my business journey. You know, I think there’s been so many ups and downs. It just sometimes
30:18 it’s just getting here where we’re at, what we’re doing. You know, it’s I started just freelance with no
30:24 experience in it. And so I just take every day is I’m very very fortunate to be doing exactly what I love. I didn’t
30:31 know I enjoyed business. You guys had asked earlier about you know how do we get into how do I get into M&A and just
30:37 I didn’t even know these things were around you know when I started my business and so just I felt like doors
30:42 just like kept opening of wow there’s so much more out there than just even owning a business you know and how do I
30:49 grow through acquisition? How do I acquire and invest in other businesses? And so for me, just finding this is like
30:56 my passion, this is what I love, and being able to not just follow that myself, but help other businesses go
31:01 through that same journey is really, really exciting. So, it’s more rewarding than like a moment.
31:07 All right. Fair. No, I love that. And then the last question, which I think is actually even more applicable for you, you know, favorite tool or
31:12 resource since you probably know many of them. Yeah, favorite tool. I’m going to say a CRM. We use Insightly. Not a lot of
31:18 companies use it, but I mean, we’ve been on it since probably 2014, so it’s pretty hard to get off. But I don’t know
31:24 where I’d be without a CRM, whether it be clients, opportunities, uh, just tasks. What am I supposed to do today?
31:31 So, I’ve never heard of Insightly. So, what what’s the just what’s the plug? What’s what does it do that you see some
31:36 insight? Yeah. My biggest reason that we chose it is that we get to um have project
31:41 management and uh CRM in the same system. So if we update a contact, it updates in the project as well. And then
31:49 the other reason is the way that we can do our own customized pipelines and tasks. We don’t run in a combine um you
31:55 know type of style. We or any of the traditional kind of tools if you will. So it’s very especially web design and
32:01 marketing. It’s different and every service that we offer has a different flow. So we’re able to go in and create
32:09 that exact flow. What tasks need to be happening? what tasks can happen 30 days from moving into that phase where a lot
32:16 of them are like sprint style and it good luck you guys have seen sites get built that sprint is not the way that
32:23 that’s going to happen. So yeah, for us just the customization of it all has been stellar. And then on top of it, the
32:30 tasks, yeah, it just moves us to a much more task based. So nothing gets falling through the cracks. It’s a lot of what
32:35 allowed us to stay, you know, even ready for digital assets as we got into this is we’re already collecting these things
32:41 as we go because we have tasks reminding us to do things. Yeah. Can I tell people going from zero CRM to one CRM is one of the biggest
32:49 leaps you can make to have a CRM, right? So people obsess about which is the right one. But then later once you’re on
32:55 any CRM, even if it’s Excel, right? You can treat Excel like a CRM if you’re methodical about it,
33:01 right? But just making that first leap is a huge impact on the business. Then later once you’ve used something for a
33:07 little bit, you can start to know what you like, what you don’t like, what are you looking for, and then make the leap from one to two. But it’s really getting
33:12 from zero to one is that first and most critical piece of it all. So critical. Well, I think that’s a good point because a lot of companies will ask like
33:18 are starting to specialize in HubSpot. um go high level different tools that are out there and with tree ring I don’t
33:25 care what CRM you’re using I am not going to ask you to change off of it we’re going to figure out how do we use
33:30 that into what we’re trying to do instead so that it is that efficient tool but you’re right I mean what we
33:37 keep trying like we should get off of it there’s probably some ways we could automate a little bit better some of our processes and whatnot and then I just
33:43 look at it and I’m like how how after you know 10 years on this tool are we
33:50 literally just going to overhaul and jump to a whole new program. So, you’re right. It is a huge jump, but something
33:56 to really really think about. What is it that’s working and you need? Well, I know a company that helps, you know, businesses basically put together
34:02 a strategy. They can help you put that strategy together of how do you switch to a different CRM? All right. That’s good to know because I know I
34:08 even keep talking to my um project manager about it. I’m talking about you. No, that’s what I’m saying. No, like
34:13 internally like and plus like it’s going to be my time. Let’s be honest. I don’t have the time to revamp a CRM this
34:20 moment. So, I’m I’m actually really stoked about it. That’s pretty awesome.
34:25 Great. Well, Paige, thank you for hanging out with us today. Great stuff. I learned a lot. I’m going to get that
34:30 download, but tell us what website and how people can get a hold of you um from this call, from this podcast.
34:37 Um so, on LinkedIn is one of the best ways just kind of see what we’re doing, stay in touch, stay up to date on
34:42 certain things. And then on our website trueingdigital.com that’s t ree r i n g
34:49 d i g i t a l.com. And if you visit treeangdigital.com/mma
34:55 launchpad that’s where you can get the free download and the checklist. And like I said really if anything just a
35:01 great place to start especially in that acquisition side of am I asking the right questions? What should I be
35:07 looking for before starting that um journey on the digital front? And then from there deciding, you know, what
35:12 direction do you want to go? Awesome. Outstanding. Paige, thank you very much.
35:18 Yeah, it was outstanding. Thank you so much. Thank you. No, I had a good time. Thank you so much. Likewise. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the M&A
35:24 Launchpad podcast. If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to support us, please leave us a rating and a review after you listen. If you’re
35:30 looking for guidance on your next business acquisition or sale, capital to support your next business transaction,
35:36 or to invest in a private equity opportunity, visit equityaunchpad.com to learn more and to connect with our team.
35:42 If you know of an individual who would be a great guest for the show, head over to equityaunchpad.com/nominate
35:49 where you’ll have the chance to refer yourself or someone else to be a guest on our show. I’m Casey Menchu and I look
35:54 forward to talking with you next week.
