We recently connected with Connor Gillivan and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Connor thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Any thoughts around creating more inclusive workplaces?
For the past 15 years, I’ve been building businesses online with remote teams. A big focus has always been company culture and making sure that everyone on the team (no matter where they’re located) feel empowered, motivated, and included in the growth of the business.
How did we do it?
– Monthly culture meetings
– Sharing a company culture document with each team member
– Quarterly 1 on 1 meetings
– Weekly 1 on 1 checkins
– Firing team members that were causing drama or not living up to the company’s values
Today, I run a portfolio of 4 B2B companies. All together, we have 40+ people working for our businesses and culture continues to play a critical role in our growth and how we run the business.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Over the last decade, I’ve built 7+ businesses to 6, 7, & 8 figures in yearly revenue.
In 2019, I exited one of them, FreeUp, to The HOTH after 4 years of growth to 40+ team members and $12M+ in ARR.
Today, I’m on a mission to build a portfolio of 10+ B2B companies.
Here’s the 5 I’m scaling right now:
→ Outsource School: Teaching business owners how to build affordable teams in the Philippines.
→ EcomBalance: Monthly bookkeeping for eCommerce companies.
→ AccountsBalance: Bookkeeping for agencies, SAAS, and service providers.
→ ConnorGillivan.com: Teaching SEO & marketing strategies, processes, & know-how.
→ TrioSEO.com: Helping companies scale with SEO content and organic marketing.
My Expertise:
→ SEO
→ Marketing Strategy
→ Website Design & CRO
→ Writing
→ Scaling from $0 to $10M+
→ Outsourcing
Outside of running my companies, I manage a stock investment portfolio, I angel invest in early stage companies, and I dabble in crypto.
Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.
In 2019, I sold one of my businesses, FreeUp.net, to The HOTH. My business partner and I had scaled FreeUp for 4 years from an initial $5,000 investment to $12 million ARR and a team of 35+ people.
The biggest lessons we learned from selling and going through the acquisition process:
– Have your financials organized from Day 1
– Be picky with who you sell to. Make sure that they have similar values and understand the company’s vision.
– Stay patient in the sale process. It can take 3-6+ months with due diligence, contracts, lawyers, and accountants.
– While in the sale process, pretend that it’s going to fall through and keep focused on growing the business.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
I’ve had the honor of working with my business partner, Nathan Hirsch, since 2009 when we met in college at Quinnipiac University. We were both in a Business Law class and I saw him selling products on Amazon during class. We didn’t know each other, but then I saw that he was looking for help with the business and I reached out to see if he’d hire me. He ended up hiring me and we hit it off quickly.
Over the course of the next 15 years, we went on to start businesses together, move around the country with our families, get married, and eventually settle in Denver, Colorado where we continue to work together today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ecombalance.com, https://accountsbalance.com, https://outsourceschool.com, https://connorgillivan.com, https://trioseo.com, https://nathanhirsch.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorgillivan/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConnorGillivan
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@connorgillivan342