We talk to Richart Ruddie. Richart founded The Reputation Management Company in 2011 and sold it to two private equity investors in 2021. Richart tells us how he sold his business with Quiet Light, how he ended up talking to more than 50 potential buyers, how listing his business for sale ended up becoming a marketing tool to get clients, why it's important to do due diligence on potential buyers, and what happened when a competitor quit the industry to become a pastor.
Richart Ruddie, the founder of The Reputation Management Company, talks about how he sold his business and the journey leading up to it. He discusses the importance of due diligence on potential buyers and shares an interesting story about a competitor who quit the industry to become a pastor. Richart also explains how he accidentally got into the online reputation management space and how his business grew over time. He mentions that he brought in a professional management team to make the business less reliant on him before eventually selling it in 2023. Throughout the conversation, Richart highlights the challenges and successes he experienced while building his agency.
Richart initially spoke to another reputation agency owner but they were not interested in acquiring the business. He then connected with a consultant and used a site called Biz Buy Sell to find potential buyers and investors, including a private equity company. Richart also sought advice from friends who had sold similar companies and worked with Quiet Light Brokerage based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ultimately, Richart chose to pursue the private equity route for a partial sale of the business. Biz Buy Sell was effective in reaching potential buyers and even attracted some clients. The broker at Quiet Light helped organize financials and facilitate buyer-seller calls. Having good organization and video demonstrations made buyers comfortable during meetings with the team in Utah. Richart had multiple offers but waited for the right one because they didn't have to sell urgently due to strong cash flow. Reputation played an important role in choosing the buyer since bad reputations can negatively impact deals. Meeting potential buyers through video calls was common, but there were also some in-person meetings, including one with a successful internet marketer based out of DC Virginia area who ultimately lost out on their offer due to financing issues.
Richart discusses the challenges and complexities of selling a business, particularly an agency. He emphasizes the importance of preparing for the sale process by diversifying revenue streams and building a strong team. The value of an agency lies in its talent, making it a risky acquisition if key staff members leave. Richart also reflects on their own experience, highlighting the need to avoid certain mistakes and regrets in hindsight. After selling his agency, he remains actively involved as a consultant while pursuing other ventures.
00:01
David Rodnitzky
In this episode of Agentic Shift, we talk to Richart Ruddie. Richart founded The Reputation Management Company in 2011 and sold it to two private equity investors in 2021. Shard tells us how he sold his business with Quiet Light, how he ended up talking to more than 50 potential buyers, how listing his business for sale ended up becoming a marketing tool to get clients, why it's important to do due diligence on potential buyers, and what happened when a competitor quit the industry to become a pastor. All right, Richart, thank you for joining me today on Agentic Shift.
00:39
Richart Ruddie
Hey, thank you for having me.
00:42
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, excited to talk to you. So why don't you start out? Maybe just give everyone sort of the elevator pitch or overview of the agency you founded. Brand offenders.
00:52
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, going back to 2011. Started in the online reputation management space. So it's a niche within a niche of the SEO industry and digital marketing agency side. What we do is we focus on people that want to brand themselves and have positive and good press and truthful information showing up and appearing on page one of Google search results and other search engines, while also simultaneously, if there's anything bad, negative, defamatory, fake news or something that may not be super favorable to them or their business, replacing that with good and positive things. So that's what the brand perception is when they're researched or searched for online.
01:30
David Rodnitzky
Got it. How did you get into that space?
01:32
Richart Ruddie
Like a lot of business ideas and things that happen in life, I believe it just happened by accident and happenstance. I was wanting to work in Wall Street and finance, and my plan was to go work for Lehman Brothers or a big investment bank. And in 2008, Lehman Brothers had collapsed and the whole world was in turmoil with the great financial Cris. And I was looking for employment opportunities at the time. And I ended up connecting with an old friend that I grew up with who said that his uncle ran a boutique hedge fund down in South Florida, in Boca Raton, and he could see about getting me an internship or a job or something.
02:11
Richart Ruddie
So at the time he said, I didn't have anything on the trading floor, but I'm building out a website and you can learn some SEO skills and SEM skills and this could be really valuable for you. So I said, okay, I want to get my foot in the door and whatever I have to do, I believe this will lead to me eventually trading. And that was the plan. And one thing led to another where the actual work that I had done, building out the website and marketing, it was going very well and I was very successful and had a good skill in that it ended up translating to more opportunities in the SEO and digital marketing realm versus in the trading and Wall street style lifestyle that I thought I was going to be heading towards.
02:51
Richart Ruddie
And what ended up happening was that I started with a friend that I grew up with and we started a website in the sports niche. And as I was successful with that, people started to take notice and a friend said, hey, why don't we start something in the online reputation space? There was only one other major player at the time called Reputation Defender. At the time, I think they had raised about $30 million of venture funding. We said, we'll come in as the more boutique player of the industry. And that's how it started, with a referral and a website. And then next thing I was seoing it. We started driving traffic and getting leads and then doing the services. And then it grew tremendously from 2011 till I just recently had an exit in 2023.
03:38
David Rodnitzky
That's fantastic. I think very few agencies start with the founder saying, I want to start an agency, like out of college or something. It always starts as something else and then ends up as an agency.
03:48
Richart Ruddie
It feels, yeah, it really is incredible. And I've met a lot of other people in the industry. Many have come and gone. I was actually going through my inbox of some old emails from the early days, from 2011 till now. And it's amazing how many inquiries of both clients and competitors and other people that are just no longer around. I can't tell you how many websites I went to visit and the websites are no longer up. So a lot of people try and start businesses and the success rate is very small compared to how high the failure rate is. And that was very evidence when I was just going through and looking at all the different contacts of people that have reached out through the years.
04:30
Richart Ruddie
In fact, one of the other reputation agency founders actually went on and became a pastor I saw recently. So it's really interesting to see the different ways people go in their lives before and after the digital agency realm.
04:45
David Rodnitzky
I guess if you're giving advice to people in church about how to better people, you are improving their reputation. So there's a correlation there.
04:52
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, it's definitely interesting. I asked another friend, I said, hey, did you see that he had become a pastor? And he said that was actually his life goal. He really wanted to do that. And like a lot of us got pulled into the digital agency marketing world because it can be lucrative if you know how to do it. And that's probably what happened. And then after a certain period of time, he said, okay, now I want to follow my real passion and my real dreams. Yeah, definitely. Interesting. But, yeah, hopefully he's still making a good impact and making the world a better place.
05:20
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I'm sure he is. So you said 2011, and then you sold in 2000 this year, was it 2023?
05:27
Richart Ruddie
Yes.
05:30
David Rodnitzky
Along the way, when you started the business, was your plan all along? My goal is to someday sell this agency, or how did you think about it in the early days?
05:57
Richart Ruddie
And things really got off to a great head start, especially coming in and bootstrapping the business, not raising any outside funding, and having six figures in revenue in less than a year was pretty enticing. And I thought and believed at that time, I was like, I'm going to sell this business for 25,000,001 day, but had no exit plans and just wanted to keep running with it and seeing where things go. And then toyed with the idea of potential sales much later down the road. In late 2016, we had somebody who was a competitor, who just as friendly conversations, was talking to one day and said, I'd offer you guys money if you'd like to sell or you'd like to exit. And I said, no, I'm happy with where things are now and just want to keep staying on the path.
06:42
Richart Ruddie
But then in 2016, 2017 started looking at ways to expand because the issue was the whole business really depended upon myself. And that's one thing that I would warn other agency owners if they eventually want to exit, that they have to be keen on the fact that if their business is all about them, then there's going to be issues with trying to divest or get out of the business because the business is so heavily dependent upon themselves. So that's when I started speaking with some outside potential investors and private equity and brought in a team and a CEO out in Utah county, the Mormon area of Utah, and started hiring and building a team and office base out there.
07:26
Richart Ruddie
And that's where things led me towards the path of if I wanted to exit now, I had the capability of doing so and having the business not be so reliant upon me anymore.
07:36
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, that's a great point. And so you said in 2016 or 17, you started, I like to call it firing yourself from jobs. And it wasn't until 2023 that you actually exited. So you had approximately six years where you had a professional management team in place before you sold.
07:50
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, the professional management team came in. I want to say it was actually, they didn't officially ink everything until the very beginning of 2018. So the team started in February of 2018. So it actually took a while of going back and forth and looking for the right partners. I didn't want to just jump into anything. The business has always been cash flow positive. Never had a negative month ever, and wasn't in a position where I needed to raise outside money, wasn't in a position where I absolutely needed to bring on somebody, but I wanted to do it to create both the ability to expand the business and also create the ability.
08:29
Richart Ruddie
So if I'd like to exit one day, I could do so and not have the business so dependent upon me, but still have enough control where I can guide the business in the right direction, but also be able to enjoy other things in life and kind of see about building up other kind of side businesses. But for the most part, the side businesses had to wait till the exit so I could really focus on that. That's one thing that I did come to find out.
08:54
David Rodnitzky
Yeah. So what were the things that you kept as control for yourself, and what are the things that you delegated when you did this? Bring on the professional management?
09:02
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, definitely. So at one point, I was the accountant, I was the salesperson. I was the one doing all the work. I was the credit card processor. You named it. I did every single role at some point or another. So it was nice where we brought on a team member that started doing the work fulfillment job. So we work really well with freelancers and outsourcing. So that's one of the ways that were able to build such a great lean business and have great profit margins because we didn't have so many people in house paying us labor wages, and having a lot of really just great vendors that were able to build a list and connections with over the last twelve years.
09:46
Richart Ruddie
So having a team member who could start to facilitate and be the conduit to discuss and fire off work placement jobs and to actually get the fulfillment of those roles done was really a big stepping stone. That was the first big relief that I had given up. Partly I wasn't 100% giving it up, because I still like to do some of the work and stay sharp on skills and know how. But for the most part, I'd given up a lot of the work skills and stuff that I had done in really 2011 to the 2014, 2015 kind of years. And then the other thing that I started giving up was having to create proposals and drafts and other things that were paperwork and tedious things like back and forth accounting.
10:31
Richart Ruddie
All that started to come together where people on the team were starting to do it, and it wasn't so much dependent upon myself doing it. So those were really nice to give up and open up the opportunity for me to go out and network and meet with other potential clients and then refer them over, get them placed in and connected with our team members, because it used to be somebody would be referred, and then I'd have to do the sales, I'd have to do the back and forth, and then I was able to change that over, to hand that over to different team members and our CEO that we had brought in as well.
11:03
David Rodnitzky
That's great.
11:03
Richart Ruddie
Yeah.
11:04
David Rodnitzky
It feels like sales and account management are the two things that when you're selling, you need to be able to convince the buyer that they're not entirely dependent on you or else you run into the problem you had, as you said, which is they're not going to buy the business because you are the business.
11:19
Richart Ruddie
That was definitely one of the big issues, and it was nice to get that resolved and in such a big way that even the broker said to me that you must be a genius for hiring your CEO and the team members here because they're so diligent, they're so hardworking, and they're so well spoken. And I think maybe that's a testament to waiting it out and waiting for the right sort of partnerships and people to come into the company versus just hiring the first person that crossed in the door. And I've done that with other companies. I had a few apps that I've created and badly needed somebody and interviewed only three or four people and then said, okay, I'm going to choose one of the four. And unfortunately, it didn't work out where this was.
12:13
David Rodnitzky
That makes a lot of sense.
12:15
Richart Ruddie
When.
12:15
David Rodnitzky
Let's talk about selling the business. I guess first question I have is, when you finally realized it was time to maybe sell, who did you talk to about that decision? Whether it's family, friends, employees, outside consultants, how did you come to that decision?
12:30
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, so I initially had spoken to another reputation agency owner just to field them out on both if they were interested in potentially acquiring what they would be looking at, what they were doing, how much money they raised and so forth, and they weren't really willing to give any sort of favorable valuation or anything that made sense. So I said, okay, it doesn't make sense to direct towards another agency owner because they're going to just want to take the client list.
12:30
David Rodnitzky
Did you start on Biz Buy Sell and stop listing it there and then go to Quiet Light?
13:32
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, so Biz Buy Sell is actually how we found the private equity investors. So there'll be a lot of small to mid size private equity investors and types of buyers through Biz Buy Sell. So it actually is really a great tool to reach people. In fact, a small little secret. Even from having the listing on there, were able to pick up a few clients as well. That in itself is almost like a marketing tool and ways to connect. I got some national names that you would see all over television that were potentially interested in buying the business. And then when weren't able to agree on terms or it wasn't a good fit, they said, I see what you do. You got a great business. We like you. How about giving us a quote to fix this issue or to help us fix this?
15:59
Richart Ruddie
And we said, okay. Quiet Light ended up back in the picture. When we looked into selling in 2020, COVID hits bad time for everything, right? Wasn't sure what was going to happen with the business in March and April, but then things were steady. And as we know, things, especially on the digital side, got only stronger. And then fast forward to late or December 2021. I said, okay. I said, we're past the worst of COVID 2021 was another record breaking year. Every year, our numbers continue to get bigger and better. I said, okay, let's reconnect with quiet light and go through the process of trying to sell. And what I really liked about quiet light is our broker. His name is Chris. He really was diligent right from the beginning of getting everything organized.
16:51
Richart Ruddie
We had very great tax returns, organized financials, and were able to go to the SBA bankers and get the maximum amount of lending that they provide. So were maxed out there. And little things like that were really helpful for potential buyers if they were SBA. Ultimately, our buyer was a big private equity contact who didn't need SBA financing, but at least we had that ability for the buyers right from the get go. So having everything really well organized and then good video calls, we had our CEO come on and do a really nice video demo and explanation about who he is, what the business is, and things like that really helped buyers become comfortable. Where they said, we feel like we already know you. We know the business so well just from the package they put together and how well organized everything is.
17:41
Richart Ruddie
So Quiet Light, they list your site. They were just blown away and it really made the sale process a lot easier, especially given the size of the deal compared to some other digital marketing agencies or online businesses that sell in comparison.
18:00
David Rodnitzky
Got it. So Quiet Light, they list your site. They also act as like an investment banker and help you prepare for the sale and then they help negotiate the deal. Sounds like. Is that right?
18:09
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, absolutely. So they have a big email list that they market out to potential buyers, people that love to buy online businesses, which is their niche. Not as much so much digital marketing agencies, but more so just online businesses. A lot of FBA Amazon type businesses are becoming very popular. I've had friends sell pet websites and other content websites through them and they market out to everybody that's bought a business from them before somebody sold or somebody who's been aggregated and is on their list. And then they help with the negotiation process, the back and forth, setting up buyer seller calls and just advising and they would come to me and say that hey, we have an offer. Sometimes it was above asking, but it was installments. That didn't make sense.
18:55
Richart Ruddie
Or somebody wanted to buy the business but only put a small amount down or somebody wanted to buy it, get a discount, but pay all upfront. So they were very good about advising even the potential buyer that the seller is not so much interest in that. In my case, were fortunate because the business continued to cash flow very well and there was no issues of needing to sell. So we didn't have to be super flexible or have any sort of fire sale. And that probably made the job easier in some ways for the broker to turn down offers that weren't super favorable but also had him waiting a little longer until the right offer came in.
19:34
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I think having a, I like the term BATNA, best alternative to a negotiated agreement, which in many cases is just walking away, being able to walk away from an offer is the best way to get a good offer because you're not desperate and you don't have to sell. And from a buyer perspective, that makes the buyer want to increase their offer because they're like, if I don't give this company a good offer, they're just not going to take it. You need to be in that position of power when you're selling. I'm just curious. So you said you did a lot of video calls with buyers. I assume it's eventually, did you meet just the winning buyer in person or did you meet a couple of buyers in person and do like a couple hours meeting or how did that work?
20:11
Richart Ruddie
There were a few. One of the potential buyers actually is based out of the DC Virginia area. And he was a successful Internet marketer. We liked him and we're going back and forth between him and another offer. And I had gone up and met him, took him to lunch and got to know him and really liked him. But ultimately the other offer came in was a little bit less and long term, there was a earn out component of his offer and his was SBA financing. Rates were starting to raise. And speaking with the broker and my partner, we said, all right, what are the best options?
20:47
Richart Ruddie
And ultimately the buyers come in, has a plan to grow this to be close to a 500 million dollar plus business one day, so wants to grow it even more and has the contacts and is already setting up grand defenders with some big national names for getting them to start using our software and services as well. So I think ultimately that was the differentiator of this buyer is going to be a hands on, but not so hands on where they won't let our current CEO kind of take control and continue pushing in the direction that he wants to go in. But ultimately I think that was a big part. But we had met with a handful of buyers, definitely did a lot of video calls. Even one of the potential buyers had bought one of my friend's companies.
21:34
Richart Ruddie
And I had spoken to them and I said, what were your thoughts on this? And the people we had spoken to were more on the investment side, not the actual operators that they had put in place. But they ultimately told me there were some issues with them and they weren't super happy. So that made it a lot easier to say, okay, we're going to pass on these because they don't have a great reputation. They have some dings from people that I know firsthand that have dealt with them.
22:02
David Rodnitzky
If they didn't have a good reputation, you guys could have fixed that.
22:04
Richart Ruddie
That's your business. So there's a few things in good reputation, right? There's some things that you may read online that may be true or false, and then there's what people actually say about you. Right. One thing I'm very fortunate about anybody who's ever dealt with Me, and they tell me firsthand, they say, you're just a pleasure to work with. It's great. You don't screw anybody over. You're a man of your word. And that really holds up tremendously in business. And I've gotten tons of referrals and contacts and introductions, and I'm able to do all sorts of different business dealings with people because of my superior reputation firsthand from anybody that I've met with and worked with firsthand. Unfortunately, trying to fix what people just say in person versus what's online is two different things.
22:45
Richart Ruddie
It's tough to psychologically change people unless you meet them and you actually have dealings with them firsthand. Anything online, yeah, we'd be glad to fix that for them, but I didn't want to bring that up to them on the call.
22:56
David Rodnitzky
It is important, though, to say that everyone's money is not equally green, because at the end of the day, if you sign up for someone who's giving you a lot of money, but they turn out to be jerks, then either the deal falls apart because you're miserable, or they do something that is unprswrustworthy in some way that ends up hurting.
23:15
Richart Ruddie
The value of the deal 100%. And through the years, we've had a handful of those people coming through the door. They want our help. We do our diligence, and we've turned clients away. There's bad income and bad revenue. Even though it'll look good on paper, there are plenty of clients that we've had to turn away because they've had things that were just too negative or just other people have said, this is not somebody that you can work with. And we've said, okay, and we're fine passing on it, and I'm totally fine getting a smaller valuation and being able to sleep tutter at night knowing that I didn't help somebody that was truly a monster or had something negative that could have impacted society had we been able to fix or change what was said about them online.
23:57
David Rodnitzky
Yes, absolutely. That's great. So what surprised you the most about selling?
24:03
Richart Ruddie
Oh, the complexities in terms of how much time it takes. There's somebody I was at a business dinner with, and we're in a young president's organization where successful other business owners in the area get together. And he was talking about how he sold his healthcare agency and he connected with the buyer, and they did the deal over a weekend. And I was just shocked when I heard that. I said what? I said, how? I said, that's incredible. I said, I've been working on a deal, and I hadn't told the business at that point, but I'd been working on a deal. And I said I'd gone down the road a couple of times. First when I got connected with the private equity and decided not to do a complete exit. Then a second time when COVID happened.
24:44
Richart Ruddie
And then the third time was the charm when I went at it to sell. But I said each time it took a while, and there's a lot of back and forth, a lot of questions. And again, like the Biz Buy Sell example, I said we actually were able to even get clients when were discussing with potential buyers, or if they weren't a good fit, they still would come back later down the road and say, I have a portfolio company that could use your help, or here's another contact that could use your help with your reputation services. And our business was heavily on both processes and contacts, and we had really good recurring revenue. But it was different where we don't have fixed assets and things like that. That made it a little unique.
25:19
Richart Ruddie
And I would say anybody who's thinking of selling the business, prepare at least six months. Don't expect it to be a weekend like my friend's deal was. And again, like the Biz Buy Sell example, I said we actually were able to even get clients when were discussing with potential buyers, or if they weren't a good fit, they still would come back later down the road and say, I have a portfolio company that could use your help, or here's another contact that could use your help with your reputation services. There's a lot of back and forth. There'll be different, unique questions that you will receive from every single potential buyer. One will want to know what this line item is. Another want to know about specific risks.
25:40
Richart Ruddie
And again, like the Biz Buy Sell example, I said we actually were able to even get clients when were discussing with potential buyers, or if they weren't a good fit, they still would come back later down the road and say, I have a portfolio company that could use your help, or here's another contact that could use your help with your reputation services. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time. It definitely takes effort. And again, like the biz by sell example, I said we actually were able to even get clients when were discussing with potential buyers, or if they weren't a good fit, they still would come back later down the road and say, I have a portfolio company that could use your help, or here's another contact that could use your help with your reputation services.
26:09
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I think one of the things that's interesting about agencies is that the value of the agency is the talent is the staff, and that means that the whole value of the agency could just walk off out the door one day. And I think that makes it a very risky acquisition. It's different than acquiring a subway shot where people are just making submarine sandwiches. And it's predictable what's going to happen to that business. But in the case of an agency, you pay $10 million for an agency and 50% of the staff leaves. Now you've only worth $5 million or whatever. And I think that's one of the reasons why it takes so long. And maybe it's surprising to people how long it takes to sell an agency.
26:47
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, I totally agree. I think anybody trying to sell an agency, just be patient with me. Some of the risks and issues was, as I said, that the whole business initially depended upon myself. I had a big team of freelancers, but they were still freelancers. They weren't in house. And that was actually an advice piece also from Quiet Light. There was a few really big clients that had paid each month and had been around for years, but the issue was, if they churn because you leave or you're not around, or something happens in their business, then what happens? So they wanted to know that there's some diversity in revenue. And that was actually an advice piece also from quietlight. So we started developing out some software that was really great, and were able to add thousands of additional clients to the business.
27:39
Richart Ruddie
And that really helped diversify our revenue, made it so it wasn't so concentrated, and really lowered the overall risk for any buyer for when that day came.
27:48
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, that's smart. That's definitely smart. So is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight, now that you've been through this sausage making machine that is selling an agency?
27:58
Richart Ruddie
That's a really good question. I look at some of the competition, what they've done. Some have come and gone, some have expanded. I see one that has big revenues, but only a slightly better overall bottom line number, but yet has a team that's five times the size. So I liked our model was very good. The industry is good. It's not going anywhere. I don't know if I'd really change anything. I'm not one to live with regrets. You always learn from some mistakes, and that's what I did. I learned that I wasn't diversifying enough. I didn't have enough of a staff. I think the only thing I might have changed was just bringing in a team earlier and having more of a sales floor enacted to bring in more people.
28:42
Richart Ruddie
We've made some mistakes through the years, and we've worked with some vendors that ended up being shady or not doing the right things. And then, as I've always been there for my clients, I believe in the reason why we've been so successful is because we've always done right by our clients. We'll do whatever to defend them once they're a client. And if we didn't do that, we probably wouldn't have had nearly as much business as we did. But there were some vendors we worked with through the years who did some things that were potentially damaging to us and the clients. And I stood up and took complete charge and made sure to make things right by our clients and kept them happy. And so, in hindsight, yeah, probably avoid some of those landmines as they come across.
29:27
Richart Ruddie
But I think that's just a cost of doing business as you grow and you have lots of clients and lots of business in the door.
29:33
David Rodnitzky
Yeah. So what has life been like for you since you sold the business? Are you still actively involved? Where are you?
29:42
Richart Ruddie
You know there must be something very transformative about being in the reputation management space because you've got your friend who became a pastor and now you're creating a children's YouTube channel. Almost every day there's still something coming in the door it feels like, and that I'm working with them to help them get set up and help them fix their reputational issues or problems they have. I'm still as a consultant and still involved for the time being and I thought I actually would free up a lot more time.
30:01
Richart Ruddie
It hasn't quite happened yet, but I'm actually studying to become certified information privacy technologist and I'm working on some data privacy stuff which tangently related to some of the services that we had offered through the years, but on a different level where this would be more software based versus more on a removal basis is what were doing with the brand Defenders brand for clients that wanted to keep their privacy and remove personal information, home addresses, emails, family members and those sort of contact information, data points online. Reputation management before she started her and the helping out leppers in India. I have a young daughter who is obsessed with an online YouTube cartoon called Cocoa Melon. You laugh because I so I'm working on a children's YouTube channel as well. That's been a fun kind of project.
30:47
Richart Ruddie
So I have a few things going and I've ended up, and I had a call with a potential investor the other day and were talking about different businesses and stuff we work on and I was naming all these real estate assets that I have throughout the country. I said I'm not really a real estate guy, I'm more entrepreneur and tech guy. And they said they were like, believe it or not, you're a real estate guy now because of what you've acquired through the years and what you're doing. I said yeah, I guess I am now by default I have other ventures, investments and things that are keeping me busy. Almost like I'm building a mini family office for myself and my family, but still also want to build my next venture bigger and better and just keep on doing it and keep busy.
31:25
Richart Ruddie
I love to work and this is what I enjoy.
31:29
David Rodnitzky
Know there must be something very transformative about being in the reputation management space because you've got your friend who became a pastor and now you're creating a children's YouTube channel. You guys are like trying to make the world better one day at a time after you get out of reputation management.
31:46
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, that is ironic, right? So now I should do a survey and contact the other agency founders who have exited and see if they've in.
31:55
David Rodnitzky
Reputation management before she started her and the helping out leppers in India.
32:01
Richart Ruddie
The Dalai Lama as well actually is working on.
32:04
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, probably a lot of people he meets with actually do need reputation management. That's a whole other world of geopolitical.
32:11
Richart Ruddie
Oh gosh, problems that we could talk about.
32:14
David Rodnitzky
I think this is really great to hear how you went about it and how much time you spent preparing for the sale and how much time it took to get the right deal done and how you chose your due diligence to find the right partner. I think this is going to be really valuable to all the agency founders who are not in your shoes yet but hope to be someday. So really, thank you for the time.
32:35
Richart Ruddie
Yeah, thank you. And thank you for having me and anything I can do to help any other agency founders that have questions. Glad to advise and help get them to the best exit with the maximum amount of money on the table for them.
32:47
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, thank you. That's great. All right. Thank you again.
32:51
Richart Ruddie
Thank you. Have a great day.
32:53
David Rodnitzky
Thanks for listening to the Agentic Shift podcast. Make sure to check out our website, agenticshift.com, where you can access exclusive content. If you are considering a sale of your marketing agency, contact us at info@agenticshift.com.