Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. Today we are going to talk about what into It's twelve billion dollars acquisition of Mailchimp means. But let me add some context here first. So Mailchimp is an esp or an email service provider, and they started in two thousand and one. A lot of people know who they are to use them. Mailchimp could their competitors would be like a convert kit or a constant contact or active campaign. There's a lot of these different tools out there. Into it as a publicly traded company most commonly known for quick books, they also own TurboTax and mint dot com. So Neil, you want to go first. Yeah, So what into it more so is trying to do with Mailchimp is if you think about their products suite, they target a lot of SMBs and if your SMB, you usually send emails if you're making some sort of money. And the way into it's looking at this is it just expands their SMB offering, whether it's marketing services or design services or accounting services. But their whole goal is to provide SMBs everything they really need so that way they can be successful. And I think it's a smart move because Mailchimp's freemium model brings in hundreds and thousands of users every single month that could also be cross seut to all the other products. I thought that was really smart for them. Yeah. I want to talk about it also from the context of Mailchimp side, because this is the largest acquisition ever for bootstrapped company based on kind of you know, pitch book data that's out there. So this does give hope to a lot of bootstrappers out there where there's a couple of levels here. Mailchimp first started out as a design and development firm, and they actually weren't they were doing okay, they weren't doing like I don't even think they hit seven figures right in revenue and ben Chesnutt the CEO. He continued to evolve over time as us. So one thing I'll say is they started with this launch pad business first an agency, then they moved into Mailchimp, and when they first started charging, it wasn't even SAS yet. This was they didn't even do a subscription. It was like they were getting checks coming in from people and they're like low dollar checks. Eventually they leveled up into learning subscription and they became a SaaS company before SAS was even a thing. And then the other thing I'll add to is that they started in twenty and so it's a twenty year journey. So when you think about your business, you think about how to think in decades instead of years. And so I think the Bill Gates quote is like most people underestimate what they can do decades, but they overestimate what they can do in a year. So a lot of different lessons there really on both sides. So if you are, you know, thinking about your company and how you can grow, if your bootstrap and a potential exit option for you, just think about who you can also align with and how you can help their company grow. Most businesses, when they do acquisitions, they don't want one plus one eCos too, they want one plus one eCos three. Example of this is into it makes all their money doing their accounting and bookkeeping the other services. If they can cross remote to Mailchamp users, they'll make more money there. And if they own Mailchamp, all those users can also start selling or buying their other products and services, which creates a much bigger effect than each of those divisions. Is staying separately and not cross promoting. Yep, the final two things from my side. You know, I've heard from Internet marketers before when I've talked about different groups like YPO and EO, They're like, oh, I don't need that. I can just hire a coach whenever I need and take an hour of their time or whatever. And that's not necessarily the right way to think about it, because you're actually it's a different type of setup. Paying coaches one on one that's a different thing. That's a learning experience. But when you go to a peer group scenario where you have like minded thinkers that are trying to do very impactful things, it levels up your thinking. And Ben, the co founder of mail Chimp, he was really against that in the early days, right, or not really against it, but not really open to it. He thought, you know, he knew what he was doing. He had to focus on his business and it wasn't until way later when he's actually speaking at conferences where he got to interact with these peer groups where he understood the value of them. Right. So nobody is above peer groups. People might say they are, they think they are, but I think that's broken thinking because you're constantly looking for people the challenge, you're thinking, you're looking for perspectives. That's one thing. The second thing I'll say is when you think about bootstrapped versus raising money, Ben had many opportunities. Many vcs were knocking on his door because his metrics were so good, but he just kept deferring, delaying, delaying, delaying, and never really raised money. And so it's a good outcome for him. But some people on Twitter are chirping right now about how oh, he should have given equity to his people. Right. There's two levels of thinking here when it comes to incentives. If you are bootstrapped, you incentivize people through profit sharing or maybe through bonuses, right. And you can even have a you know, if the company sells, you can have an additional incentive there. Now, if you are VC funded, you're likely going to give out equity. You might carve out ten, fifteen to twenty percent on the cap table for your people, right. And so there's two schools of thinking here. About what I like about equity is that there's long term thinking there, right, and then when you think about kind of profit share and it's more short term. Now, there are different ways to think about incentives here, and there's two schools of dot But you might be able to merge these and make something creative for yourself. So go to marketing school dot ioslash Live. That's live. Our live event is happening now in Miami, November seventh through the ninth. It's going to be at an amazing spot. It's gonna be outdoors, by the way, and we have a lot of amazing local entrepreneurs and people from around the world coming. So great speakers as well Good Marketing School and the ioslash Live. That's live and we will catch you later. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool dot io for more resources based on today's topic as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool dot io until next time. Class dismissed

Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. Today we are going to talk about what into It's twelve billion dollars acquisition of Mailchimp means. But let me add some context here first. So Mailchimp is an esp or an email service provider, and they started in two thousand and one. A lot of people know who they are to use them. Mailchimp could their competitors would be like a convert kit or a constant contact or active campaign. There's a lot of these different tools out there. Into it as a publicly traded company most commonly known for quick books, they also own TurboTax and mint dot com. So Neil, you want to go first. Yeah, So what into it more so is trying to do with Mailchimp is if you think about their products suite, they target a lot of SMBs and if your SMB, you usually send emails if you're making some sort of money. And the way into it's looking at this is it just expands their SMB offering, whether it's marketing services or design services or accounting services. But their whole goal is to provide SMBs everything they really need so that way they can be successful. And I think it's a smart move because Mailchimp's freemium model brings in hundreds and thousands of users every single month that could also be cross seut to all the other products. I thought that was really smart for them. Yeah. I want to talk about it also from the context of Mailchimp side, because this is the largest acquisition ever for bootstrapped company based on kind of you know, pitch book data that's out there. So this does give hope to a lot of bootstrappers out there where there's a couple of levels here. Mailchimp first started out as a design and development firm, and they actually weren't they were doing okay, they weren't doing like I don't even think they hit seven figures right in revenue and ben Chesnutt the CEO. He continued to evolve over time as us. So one thing I'll say is they started with this launch pad business first an agency, then they moved into Mailchimp, and when they first started charging, it wasn't even SAS yet. This was they didn't even do a subscription. It was like they were getting checks coming in from people and they're like low dollar checks. Eventually they leveled up into learning subscription and they became a SaaS company before SAS was even a thing. And then the other thing I'll add to is that they started in twenty and so it's a twenty year journey. So when you think about your business, you think about how to think in decades instead of years. And so I think the Bill Gates quote is like most people underestimate what they can do decades, but they overestimate what they can do in a year. So a lot of different lessons there really on both sides. So if you are, you know, thinking about your company and how you can grow, if your bootstrap and a potential exit option for you, just think about who you can also align with and how you can help their company grow. Most businesses, when they do acquisitions, they don't want one plus one eCos too, they want one plus one eCos three. Example of this is into it makes all their money doing their accounting and bookkeeping the other services. If they can cross remote to Mailchamp users, they'll make more money there. And if they own Mailchamp, all those users can also start selling or buying their other products and services, which creates a much bigger effect than each of those divisions. Is staying separately and not cross promoting. Yep, the final two things from my side. You know, I've heard from Internet marketers before when I've talked about different groups like YPO and EO, They're like, oh, I don't need that. I can just hire a coach whenever I need and take an hour of their time or whatever. And that's not necessarily the right way to think about it, because you're actually it's a different type of setup. Paying coaches one on one that's a different thing. That's a learning experience. But when you go to a peer group scenario where you have like minded thinkers that are trying to do very impactful things, it levels up your thinking. And Ben, the co founder of mail Chimp, he was really against that in the early days, right, or not really against it, but not really open to it. He thought, you know, he knew what he was doing. He had to focus on his business and it wasn't until way later when he's actually speaking at conferences where he got to interact with these peer groups where he understood the value of them. Right. So nobody is above peer groups. People might say they are, they think they are, but I think that's broken thinking because you're constantly looking for people the challenge, you're thinking, you're looking for perspectives. That's one thing. The second thing I'll say is when you think about bootstrapped versus raising money, Ben had many opportunities. Many vcs were knocking on his door because his metrics were so good, but he just kept deferring, delaying, delaying, delaying, and never really raised money. And so it's a good outcome for him. But some people on Twitter are chirping right now about how oh, he should have given equity to his people. Right. There's two levels of thinking here when it comes to incentives. If you are bootstrapped, you incentivize people through profit sharing or maybe through bonuses, right. And you can even have a you know, if the company sells, you can have an additional incentive there. Now, if you are VC funded, you're likely going to give out equity. You might carve out ten, fifteen to twenty percent on the cap table for your people, right. And so there's two schools of thinking here. About what I like about equity is that there's long term thinking there, right, and then when you think about kind of profit share and it's more short term. Now, there are different ways to think about incentives here, and there's two schools of dot But you might be able to merge these and make something creative for yourself. So go to marketing school dot ioslash Live. That's live. Our live event is happening now in Miami, November seventh through the ninth. It's going to be at an amazing spot. It's gonna be outdoors, by the way, and we have a lot of amazing local entrepreneurs and people from around the world coming. So great speakers as well Good Marketing School and the ioslash Live. That's live and we will catch you later. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool dot io for more resources based on today's topic as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool dot io until next time. Class dismissed