114 - Buying a $3m Course Business (Whose Founder is the Face)
Online courses can be phenomenal businesses. They can sell for $500, $1,000, more, and the gross profit of those sales is eye-popping, like 80 or 90%. Now the thing is, online courses can be really tied up with the founder-owner, who's often the face of the course, not to mention the developer of all the course material. So as appealing as the businesses are, you might assume that they are unsellable, or should I say, unbuyable by you, the acquisition entrepreneur. Well, not necessarily. My guest, Dom Wells, bought such a course business and in today's interview he explains how to make an acquisition like this work. So for those of you interested in buying digital businesses, this should open your eyes to the opportunity in online courses. Couple quick notes. First, Dom and I didn't talk about the size of this business, so I'll say that here: the course does between $3 and $3.5 million a year in sales. So 3 million bucks a year with extremely high margins. Pretty interesting business. Also, please excuse my audio in the first 10 minutes. Little snafu there. My computer mic was picking up my audio instead of my proper mic. Fortunately, I realized as much and fixed it. But the first 10 minutes, my audio isn't great. Okay, on to the interview with Dom Wells, CEO of Onfolio.