Exit-Ed: Stories From Grind to Sale

Welcome to Exit-Ed stories from grind to sale. This is the podcast where we dive into the journeys of founders who have navigated the path from building their companies to successful exits. We interview entrepreneurs from around the US and around the globe, exploring their experiences, scaling processes, and the lessons they've learned. We'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We're excited to have you with us. Let's get started and let's get excited.

Hey guys, I hope everybody is doing well. I have the absolute pleasure today to be talking to Maggie Lord. Hi Maggie. Hi. Good to see you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this. That's exciting. I am super excited. I've been waiting for weeks and weeks to get to talk to you. And Maggie, I don't know a ton about you. I just know you're amazing entrepreneur. I know you are busy.

and I want to get to know your entrepreneurial story. So with that, I think you're based in New York City or New York State. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So I live in Connecticut, just outside of New York and been here for a really long time now. I've been married for 16 years and I have three boys. are 14, 10 and 8 and they keep me really busy. I'm always in the car going to some sporting event.

⁓ my entrepreneurial journey really started a long time ago when I was a kid. I re one, I grew up having parents who were entrepreneurs. My father was an artist, but owned his own company. My mother created a, owned a company with her sister. had stores and catalogs and retail. And so I watched it from a really young age, which is why I think it really spoke to me. But from my earliest earliest memory was I owned Maggie shell shop.

and I think I was about four and I lived in South Florida at the time. And so I would go to the beach on the weekends and find really great looking shells and I'd clean them up and I'd wash them. And then I would sell them to like my friends, my parents' friends, like 25 cents here. And somebody asked me once, I was like four or five and they were like, why did you start this? And I was like, it's free inventory, duh. I just gotta go to the beach and get it.

I didn't even, know, like, so from the time I was that young, I was, the idea of creating companies and doing something on my own just felt very normal. I had a million companies after that. In second grade, it was the puffy paint era. So I painted everyone's binder with puffy paint for like $2 a binder. Like I've had a million different companies. ⁓ So it just seemed very normal to me that I was like, people say to me, are you going to get a job? Like I went.

went to college and went to grad school and they're like, you going to get a job? And I was like, who just gets a job? Like, no, I'm going to go create something. know, just seemed, I know it's not everyone's mindset, but it seemed limiting to me to go work for corporate America and just sit in this one small box. And I know for many, many people that's, that makes them happy. They love their paycheck every two weeks. I just knew enough about myself that that really wasn't what I needed.

Wow. That honestly is amazing. And I'll say, I know, I will say this is the first time we have on the podcast, an entrepreneur that I would categorize as a truly you've done it your whole life. Yeah. It seems you remember because some of us kind of step into that or grow into that. But I, what's your, do you know what like your personality type is? Cause that's a very special brain wiring to be like, I'm going to sell seashells. I'm going to

paint the binders. I that's a hundred percent entrepreneur. And I'm always curious, like, does that have to do with your personality or? Yeah, probably. You know, it's true. I've taken some of those personality things and, I don't really know what I am, but I'm I, I think a couple of things are interesting that I know about myself. One, I'm a rule follower, right? Like I was always very good in school. So I, that kind of leans into things, but, and I don't take very many like risks like

If someone was like, Hey, let's go bungee jumping. I'd be like, absolutely no, never. But when it came to like businesses, I was like, totally ready to take the risk. was like, sure. Like someone's idea was like, we can figure this out by next week. And I think it's at the core of it. It's exciting, right? Entrepreneurship is exciting and I love doing things and I love making things happen and somewhat quickly.

when I realized that that is so much part of entrepreneurial ship was actually after I sold my business and I went to work for David's bridle lovely experience wonderful people. However, I realized it takes 6, 8 weeks to make decisions in corporate people that have to put their eyes on it and their strategy right and I never had run my businesses that way I saw a trend on social media I could flip a switch and rustic wedding chic and I could attack.

that trend that afternoon. You know, feed this feed at which you can work is, is really up to you as the entrepreneur, you can work as fast or as slow. And I think that that is what I really, really liked that. it. I love it. It does though, ⁓ make sense to me. Like we've, you know, we we've talked to entrepreneurs who, know, don't have from that. They'll come from the entrepreneurial background. Maybe they come from professions. That's my case. I come from.

Although in previous generations we do have some owners of some fairly big businesses, but then they just didn't survive. But to me, I love it because so many people would have that risk adversity, right? Of no, why would I do that? I have safety in the salary. I have safety in the process that I'm in, or I have these expectations from my family member that I should be doing X, Y, and Z. Because entrepreneurship is like, you don't know what's next. Like it may fail.

it may fit. You have to b risk. The other thing is a misunderstanding that yo of money to start a comp wedding chic at 26 years o money and you know, put i equity, right? A lot of

right time, right place. I 26 years old. wasn't married yet, didn't have kids. So I could give it the time and attention that it needed. But I think that that is a misconception that people say, need, I, I just need a lot of money to start a company. You really don't. don't, you know, I, know, the, you know, we own in our family, a few companies, one of them is the legal office that we have. We, I think we did a $5,000 loan between our,

personal bank account to the law firm bank account. And I was like, all I need is my computer and my brain and a printer. Back then you would still print documents. DocuSign wasn't that big. And then all I needed to do is go meet some people that needed my service. And that's how we scaled it into an actual law firm. But then I've met friends who are attorneys who rented the office, got special internet that the building offered and had to buy furniture. And by the time, you know,

they started that they're like 20 K, you know, under and zero clients. So that's definitely, you have to come from it being like scrappy. And here's the other thing you have to have zero ego. I always said I was CEO and the janitor and everything in between. Exactly. I I had taken meetings with very large retail companies who are going to do massive ad buys with us.

And I also was taking the trash out and literally doing everything that needs to happen. so if you, it's very, just as hard as it is to take an entrepreneur and put them in corporate America, which was my experience, it's equally a challenging to take someone who isn't comfortable with entrepreneurship and be like, you're going to have to do all of it, the good, bad, the ugly, and wear every hat. And you have to be fine with that.

And I don't know, Maggie, if you're involved along the same line, like we do some angel, you know, preceding investments. A lot of people come and they pitch and you know, with us currently being involved in our own ventures, you know, a little bit on investment, a little bit, you know, obviously we're scaling a law firm. We're going big with it, but then we have other things that we're doing. I mean, the grind, like I'm not going to stop grinding. I'm one of the probably like you are not going to stop grinding. No matter how successful you get, there's always some other level to achieve.

So along those lines, I'm finding myself doing for a couple of the companies that we started with one of our business partners, I'm actually doing the things that are like from way back in the day, just that manual work that I'm used to not doing anymore. And so people come to us for investments where they want us to invest in their little startup. And I'm like, so tell me everything that you're doing and what are you going to use the money for? And so, I need to use the money to sell to more people.

Well, have you exhausted the way that you can sell? And I give you an example. So it was yesterday, I talked to a friend and I need money because I need to buy, know, hire somebody to sell. And I said, what's your sales strategy? Well, XYZ and they have a good one, but I said, how about this strategy? Who's already selling to your customers today? And why don't you go talk to that person and see if you can do a deal and you'll get in front of the 10,000, 20,000 customers that you need to get to the next level.

But instead of hiring somebody and paying them, and so maybe they'll sell, maybe not, you partner up with somebody that's already doing that. Like, I'm not gonna give you some money to do it the easy way. Because I need to see that you've exhausted this smart way to do it. Yeah, my favorite story is that I actually did meet a founder and we were chatting in the early days of the business and she said, I'll connect you.

with my assistant to get on my calendar. And I was like, you haven't an assistant and you don't even have any revenue? Like that's the stuff that like, I never had an assistant. Like I never thought of that level of like, because I was a CEO that I needed this extra, I was like, I think you probably could have put that money into a lot of other things. Right. And actually that actually brings a good point, right?

Because there's this concept in business, you should use your skillset for the things you're the best and then delegate. But sometimes delegation is too soon. And especially if you're building a business, I'm a big believer you should be wiping the floors, like you said, taking out the trash, doing all the dirty work before you hire anybody, because it's a new business and you need to know how these business operates. And so when you pass it, you you hand down some tasks, you know, you know, at least how the flow works. Yeah. I do think there are challenges. Like when I started, I was a solo entrepreneur.

didn't have a co founder with rustic wedding chic. And so there was a lot of days it was me hitting my head against the wall saying, is this a good idea? I wish I could go back and tell my younger self at 26, like I should have either joined some sort of like the online communities weren't happening yet the way they are now. Like, but I needed to surround myself with other smart founders who we could kind of share stories and talk about things because I used to talk to my husband at the dinner table and he's in a completely different industry.

So he didn't have the answer, you know? And so I do think it's important, even if you're building alone, you know, I think people hire because they're like, oh, it'll be easier, more hands make it work. But actually it gets very complicated the more people you have, know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said something that is so real is that feeling of hitting the wall. was that a how constant was it?

for you that you're like, am I doing the right thing or am I just literally wasting my time? Yeah. I cross your mind. ⁓ yeah, I think every fat like there, you know, there's big growth spurts in a company and you wake up and you're like, my gosh, we got to a hundred thousand in revenue this year. Like, you like you have these big growth things and you're like, this is, I've really put in the hard work. It's and it's all work. It's all paying off. Then you always go through the difficult periods as a founder of like,

Okay, we've gotten to 500,000 a year in revenue. How do we get to six? How do we get to eight? And so I think that every founder goes through it. You wake up and you go, what am I doing? I'm pouring more resources into this. Is it gonna work? Is the payoff gonna be there? Is it even making me happy anymore? All those questions. But I think that two things. One, I attached a little phrase that I came up with, which created more of a temporary sort of feeling about things.

I added the words not yet to the end of anything I was frustrated about. So I'd be like, God, our revenue is just not there where I want it to be. And then I was like, not yet. Because it took something that felt like a blocker forever and being so permanent to something so temporary. And then I would take large breaks from work. closed the computer. It's easy to work 24 hours a day. It's very easy.

So you have to step away and whatever that means to you, whether it's exercising, know, after I had my first son, I was into the business three years, maybe the walks behind the stroller are where I had my most brilliant business ideas. know, and so you have to step away at some time, close the computer and then just hit refresh. Right. And I do think the best business ideas come to you when you're not just sitting behind the computer.

I have to agree. mean, I, I forced myself to go on a walk and stop because I have that whatever personality trait. I just won't stop. I just won't stop working. I obsess. don't know if that's a good thing or not. And here's why I think it is that way with founders. Many of the times when you're building it, especially when you're building a loan, like I was, if I wasn't pushing the ball forward for the business, the ball wasn't being moved. So it was very easy for me to say, I have to just do, you know,

one more this or one more that because if I don't do, it's not going to get done. And while that was true, it sometimes was done out of desperation as opposed to, know, getting it done kind of for the right reasons. Right. It's, know, I've gone through the whole entrepreneurial journey, you know, with the big exit to the best company, like, you know, all that whole thing on it. And I'm back in the grind scaling the whisper group with my partner, Carrie Kerpen, who went through the same thing, sold her social media agency.

But it's like when I said to my husband, like, think I'm to go back into this scale and, you know, grow mode. was like, I'm not surprised at all. You know, that a thing like that's a thing. You know, I, you know, I'm in my almost mid forties. Okay. Me too. Okay. So I turned 44 last week. Okay. So I turned 44 in November. Okay. So, and you know, um, I'm finding myself in this year, 2025.

Unleashing. been telling so many friends, I've unleashed the beast. The beast is wild and running free. And it's just creating and creating and creating and expanding where we're buying some companies, we're investing in some companies and we're actually building some companies while we're actually scaling, you know, the law. It's a lot, right? And actually it's funny because I'm like, it's a little bit of an Elon Musk in me where you're like doing many companies. But I think if you're smart, you know, disciplined and have the right people in the right place, I think it's very doable.

But I have that same feeling, which is, you know, so many women my age are currently in yoga, as you and I are talking mid morning or well, it's lunchtime. They're in yoga. Some of the women are, you know, doing their thing. And that's great. I happen to be the one that we'd rather talk into Maggie lunch, you know, on a Thursday ⁓ when I have no reason or, you know, to do it. I just want to do it. And, you know, I was

⁓ finishing a build out of a business plan I have right before this meeting and I'm going to have some other meetings this afternoon. And I was telling my husband, like, it weird? Like, is there something wrong with me? And I've been asked, the funny thing I've asked that of myself my whole life, what's wrong with me? Why am I the one that prefers to be doing this? But I think it's just normal. I think we need to normalize it. Like some of us are just wired like that. But I also think that like, that doesn't mean that you're trading work-life balance.

Life balance was the absolute number one most important thing to me. Right. Well, after I started the company, then I got married. Then a couple of years later, we had kids like that. was a different, it was a different rhythm to the car. Right. And it was, if the kids were sick, you know, I could close my computer. used, you know, be home. All of that was great, but it didn't, I was just like, doing the exact same work as someone who's working 40 or 50 hours a week. I'm just doing it. Not all between the hours of nine and five.

And you know, one of my mentors told me once, and actually that gave me, guess, I guess I needed some validity and that's fine. I don't need it anymore. I think I grew up, but this was about three years ago. He's like, you know what? was a gentleman in his sixties and I'm in my forties or somebody with more experience. He said, you know what? You have built your own universe and that universe works for you. Yeah. Period. Nothing else. mean, same. My kids get sick, close the laptop and go to the doctor. Yeah.

I remember in the early days, I would, you know, when they were babies and they, and they were sleeping until seven or eight, I'm grinding at 5 a.m. five to seven. put two hours to 12. I put another two hours and then, you know, my mom would help me in the afternoon and I got another maybe five hours. That's a good nine hours. Yeah. Math, right. That's that's what works for me. Right. And that's that's how I did it too. I mean, when my kids were really little, you know, like

It can't like my longest there are regrets my longest maternity leave with 2 weeks that's ridiculous right, but then they be right strapped in my chest, I think that you know I work from my kitchen counter my kitchen table our entire life of the company which was fantastic and so like our overhead was really low once we had employees and that we were all anyway but it the the ability that it gave me with my kids was like once they got into preschool.

So I was like, have three hours of the other moms, rightfully so, grocery store, workout, whatever. I dropped my kids at nursery school and I'd go right back home and I'd work for three hours. And now this phase of life that I'm in that my kids are ninth grade, fifth grade and third grade, they're out of the house from eight to four every day. That is entire uninterrupted work day. I love it. You know, so what we did, we actually put them in a school.

Uh, so here in Texas, everything is driving this. Everything is 20, 30 minutes away. So I'm like, I can't like 20 this way, 20 that way, the grind of the Monday through Friday with kids that the stress of the morning. So they are actually in a school that's three times a week. So we actually drive them three times a week and we alternate at two mornings, husband does afternoons and then Tuesday and Thursday is a homeschool day. And we're actually all in, I still work from home a lot. So.

We're in the house all together, like have lunch. We hang out, go for a walk in the middle of the day. It's actually, again, it's part of creating what works for you. Yeah. You have to make it work for you. And I guess, I mean, I realized this, I did it intentionally at Rustic Wedding Chic, but I don't know if I was like very conscious of it at the time. Now with the Whisper Group, Carrie and I say to each other all the time, this has, this business has to work for us.

We have worked, we're extremely passionate about it. And our whole goal is helping women be exit ready with their company, you know, and it's such a passion for us. However, if we need to move a deadline by a week or two, we have the right to do that. If we decide, you know, we're gonna hit pause on this or we're gonna cap how many clients we're working. We have the right to do that because this business has to work for us. And then when it does, makes it, you know, it's much more successful across the entire board.

And that to me makes a business unique. You're not a cookie cutter and you see so many cookie cutter businesses. Well, this is the way people do it. This is how everybody does it. I am the person like, I don't care how everybody does it. I'm to do the way that works for me. Yeah. Right. And so whatever. So look, I want to talk about the whisper group, but I also want to talk a little bit, a little bit about you said you started that business when you were 24. I want to talk even more because

I want to cover your entrepreneurial journey from like age, whatever is, six that you said, you know, painting on the bind. Like what other businesses did you do as a child? And then which ones did you do more like in your adulthood and how do we end into like the rustic wedding industry? And then I definitely want to get into the process of selling that company and then where you're at today, because you've had an amazing journey. And I really want everybody who's listening to know like,

You're not alone. Like all of us are building and it's never been easy for any of us. So yeah. Yeah. And it's never, you know, what you see on LinkedIn or you see in, in, you know, the news, but like, it's never a straight line. People think it is. And it's never like, it's always messy. You make a million turns and change your mind and change your, like all sorts of things. So for me, I, I think I loved

like playing store as a kid and I would set up elaborate stores and my mom would come shopping. So in my head I was like, I'm already a shop owner. Like I would create this whole fantasy world of that sort of thing. But then working in my mom's first retail store and then they went to a catalog ⁓ sort of world later. like, I had firsthand experience of like what it was like, just watching too, not even interacting, but like watching my mom interact with.

her customers that would come in the store and how I would run the register at my mom's store. Like, praise, like it was like my favorite thing. You know, and so I had a lot of those things and then it would, I would have a spark of like in high school, I was like, everybody was commenting on like some clothes or something. And I was like, well, why you can rent them. Like she was like, where can I buy it? And I was like, I don't know. I got it at some place. And then

I was like, but you could rent, you want the dress? Rent the dress from my closet for like 20 bucks for the, you know, so like I never sat out with a business plan. I never sat down with anything I've done and said, let me create a business plan first. Let me do a lot of research and see if this is a market that wants to be searched. I would, an idea would come to me and I'd be like, I think I could, I can make a business out of it. Right. And I, I, I firmly believe sometimes you sit down and you start to look at like to create a business plan.

And it limits your, I was like, come to it with imagination first. Correct. I so agree. I love it. It just, it's very traditional to be like, I'm going to build out the business plan for this and I'm going to do the market research and all of that is great. Yes. There's a place for it and you mitigate a lot of risk, I guess, doing those things. But that's where I think I'm like, no, I, if I want this service, I know.

probably 15 other people need it. And so I think that's what they say, find a problem that you have and then create a solution and you'll be amazed to see how many other people need that same solution and now you sell it. And that's exactly what happened with rustic wedding cheek. So this was 2008. So I know it's hard to go back so many years, but this was the beginning, like blogs were happening, right? And people were creating blogs and they were getting readership and

I was going to get engaged and I kind of always loved the wedding industry, but it's also in 2008 before Pinterest before instagram right obviously before tiktok there was you know facebook was around there was limited amount of imagery in the it was still print magazines that you would look through when you're playing. And I.

was from Connecticut, my husband and I were planning this very rustic yet very chic and elegant wedding at my family's lake house. And I kept trying to find good pictures to communicate to vendors. Now at that time I had a Blackberry which like took blurry photos. So I was like trying to take photos from the magazine and email them to like, it was, it wasn't working. And so I started looking at websites of photographers.

wedding photographers and I see a beautiful wedding that they shot and I was like, I love this from this one. And so I'd email them and say, listen, I created a little website, it's called rustic wedding chic. ⁓ Can I put up these photos from your wedding that you shot and I'll talk about you as the photographer and I'll link out. And they're like, yeah, that would be great. Like we don't have enough, like that would be fantastic. So I started that way and it was really before

the wedding business was very much on. ⁓ And I then like was like a month into it. And my brother who's the president of a media company was like, ⁓ so you have to monetize it. And I was like, ⁓ yes, I have to. Yes, of course. Yes, of course I have to figure that piece out. And I spent a weekend and I emailed every vendor that had rustic wedding anything from Etsy. Yeah. I just sent out a million. said,

I have a new website. ⁓ It's just in your niche. And I know you're spending money with the knot and the other big players and that's great. I want you to keep doing that. But we're this very niche base, right? And at the time Rustic Weddings were just starting. It was just popping. Everything was like the barn, blah, blah. So I emailed all these Etsy vendors who were selling birch candle holders and stuff. And I was like, 75 bucks a month. I'll put your ad on my website. And then...

It just piecing it together. It's like everybody just, know, pieces of the puzzle all in one, one website. And everything started to kind of just fall into place. And then little by little, was like, things changed. Display ads came in to be, know, like there, we, we, we really revved up our business in 2012 in 2011, I had a baby signed a book deal and my book came out in 2012.

That was huge because it took us from just a website that anybody could create to being a published expert in the space. Can I ask about the book? I've heard, you you become an expert in the, was that, was that like the, people seeking your audience? said, no, I'm going to establish myself as the reference nationwide for this. was it hard? Is it hard? Like, how do you get a publisher? Like how do you even start? I know. that.

it wasn't as thought out as you would think like I say I was getting a lot of inbound emails from bribes asking for my advice at you know, and I had a section a small section on the website called. ⁓ Maggie and so I take the emails that they email me I turn into a lot nice long answers and so I was becoming this this really expert in the the wedding field so I well well I.

loved to have a coffee table book. that seemed like it never occurred to me like, that might be hard or, you know, I was just like, it's like, it's like another thing. And so I did connect with a, with a publisher who they do things. Gibb Smith was a wonderful publisher of mine for many years. We did a lot of books together and floated the idea by them. You we've kind of just worked in partnership, like to come up with what we thought was going to be great. The first book, Ressiquaited Sheet came out in 2012. And that's when it went from

just being another person on the internet to the morning shows, to promote the book. And then after that, doing the morning shows and the talk shows, they would come to me and say, okay, know, the couple of years later, books, whatever, but they'd say, it's, we're going to do segments on, on wedding trends. need you to come be, you know, talking to a celebrity. okay, that's amazing. I would say it was a good time to do it in my life because I was, ⁓

Late, I guess I was, I guess I turned 30 at that point, but I was like comfortable in my skin. I was confident. I think if I had done it younger, I probably wouldn't have been so confident right now at my age. It's a little bit harder to pull yourself together for. Yeah. Hey guys, I want to take a minute here and talk to you about for a second about the company X-ray bottom line. If.

You want to sell your business in the next few years. There are two things that you're going to need to know. You're going to need to know the financials and you're also going to need to know the legal side. Why? When you go to sell a company, there will be a lawyer on the other side and there will be financial people on the other side. And usually once you're on the table, the financial stuff has been figured out. They give you a purchase price. They just need to verify. But the lawyers for the buyers are going to scrutinize your company in a process called due diligence.

And we've seen so many people not be ready for the due diligence and turn these &A situations into horrible ⁓ stress and emotional roller coaster stories. And for that, we have created the solution, which is called the company X-ray. Check it out at the company X-ray.com. We basically do a legal audit. It's just one click for us. That's all it takes. You give us your data, we analyze it, and then we give you a report and we tell you how

exit ready your company is from a legal perspective. Because if you're not, not only is your &A going to turn into a roller coaster, but your purchase price might be cut and your purchase sale agreement might look really, really, really against you because the buyer found things and liabilities they don't like. be ahead of the game. Check out the company x-ray.com and reach out. We'll be happy to help you. Do you have that feeling? Like if you look today at that.

version of you, the 30 year old going in the morning, you're like, I don't even know how like you were flowing, were probably in that flow. And you're like, my God, I did that. I had those shocking moments. I don't think I think back on that stuff enough. I will say like two funny things is like I have the first time I was in Forbes, I framed it and I was in success magazine with a big article and I framed it and it's up in my office at our house. But every

to my, I'll walk by it an remind myself like that was hard work to do that. Like that wasn't easy. And I probably I was so busy and also like changing diverse huge that I didn't like I was doing the everyday mom thing too. Congratulations, Maggie, that is an amazing, amazing achievement. The funniest thing is about a year ago, I did a podcast with someone and she sent me and she goes, here's here's the finished version.

before I publish it, I'd love for you to listen to it, make sure it's exactly what you want. I said, sure. I put it on the background. I'm doing emails like 20 minutes later, and I'm saying to myself, wow, this entrepreneur is amazing. And then I was like, my God, wait, it's me. It's me. It's you. It's like, no one, here's the thing. When you work either alone as an entrepreneur, no one tells you you're doing amazing. You don't have a boss that says, here's a bonus. You did great.

or someone to like pat you on the back, be like, we couldn't have done this without you. No one gives you any validation. And so you have to stop and remind you to try to celebrate like the small wins, but you don't, there's no one there to, market though, the market when they're buying, when they're buying your company, your product, that's huge validation. So, okay. So I'm curious what morning shows were you, did. So because I'm in the New York,

area. I live about an hour outside of New York. did a lot of the New York based shows, the Connecticut based shows. I did KTLA morning show in LA at one point. like, there would be time. It was like fun. Like I have cute videos of my oldest son. He was like three or four like pointing up the screen and going like, Oh, there's mommy. Like, it's all cute. I it was it was fun experiences to have. But I will say it

You know, it's hard to run the business too, when you're going in a million different directions. And for us, we really became a big, big, big digital media company when like Pinterest changed the game. Like we were on Pinterest very, very early, like within a week of it starting. we weren't even like, there was Pinterest just regular, like their Pinterest business wasn't even a thing yet. And I jumped on it very early because I was like, this is awesome. I, we, every photo that we

that we had on Russie, Gwening, Sheik, we also had up there and it linked back to us and our traffic went crazy. And when we sold in 2020, our Pinterest had 10 million monthly impressions of content. Wow, that's insane. I mean, that is insane, especially back in 2020. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, social media supposedly keeps growing and growing and growing. So.

I would love to hear more about what your experience of selling like, you know, you're running the company, running around, doing morning shows, publishing a book. And at what point are you either approached or think, you know, it's time to transition that what was that experience like for you? So we, when I always say we, as if we were like this large company, mostly me, we had, had done a lot of things, right.

We, we had licensed our name to product. we had a product line with, with a partner. ⁓ I had written at that point, six books along my journey, right? We had, we had published a lot of books. we were both online and offline. Like we had done a lot so that the company really was, had a lot of things going. And I had had three kids along the way, which was great, but I had this like aha moment where I was like,

wait a minute, it's all working and I love it and it works for me. like, however, it's kind of like the kid who's ready to go to college, but decides to live in your basement instead. I was like, I'm keeping the company back. I'm holding it back. It needs to go and fly. it needs to

Was that what did you feel like what you you needed tools to scale funding? Like what do you think were the touching points there? I think it was, ⁓ you know, the company was always profitable because we ran from like month to we were profitable, always off our revenue. Like it was all great. I and we had scaled so big just doing it that way. I did feel like I had taken the company as far as I could as a leader. I was

kind of burnt out because running a machine like that and the kids, like it was a lot, but I really felt like I was going to stifle the business by not letting it go live under a bigger home and go do great things. And so it's, say, it's like dropping your kid off at college. Like, I haven't done it yet, but I anticipate the angst and how like you're so upset because you're dropping your baby off to go live outside.

And yeah, there's that emotion there. But you also know that if you suppress that and keep them here, that's not good for them. They need to go and grow. Right. Right. And I thought about a lot about that with the company. And I also I was like, I feel like I've taken it as far as I can. And I think it's ready to go live. We had had some of the major wedding players over the years, like, you know, of reach out, like, what are you thinking? ⁓ And we

had one deal that was like kind of close and then kind of like fell apart. And yeah, so I kind of had this like, okay, no, I'm actually going to I'm going to do this. I'm not just going to like wait around and see if someone comes to the table. I'm going to it was December and I said in January after Christmas break, I was going to sit down and I was going to make a list of where it should go. And you know, what is the strategy behind it? And I talked to a couple different people who are like, well, you can go with a broker.

but they're gonna take a lot of the percentage of your sales. And two, I spoke to a couple and they were like, well, you're too small for us. Like you're under 10 million in revenue or they'd say you're in a very feminine, you know, we don't. No, it's women, we don't understand it. We don't understand what to do with that. So I was just like, you know, kind of stubborn and I was like, I'll just do it myself. Like, I'll just make Okay, I love it. Let's just take it. Let's take these. Let's take it.

I had probably spoken to every single wedding-ish company. You know them, right? Yeah, they know you, you know them, okay. So I was just like, all right. So I was like, I'll put together kind of an overview of the company and let you know. And I started to reach out to a bunch of people and had a lot of interest and had a lot of good conversations. But in the end, I met with the executive team at David's Bridal in Manhattan in March.

a week before the world shut down. wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. So this is pre-COVID. Like we're hearing rumblings of COVID, but like schools aren't closed. Yeah. It's that nebulous three, four weeks that we had in March. was horrible. Anyway. And so we sat down, we sat around this table and we talked and I just, thought the people were amazing. I thought what they, the leadership that they were, this company that's been around for so long, what they, what they were planning in this next phase of this company. was like, this is fantastic.

And I also strategically, know the bride so well and the bride psychology from being in the business for so long. I knew that David's bridal kind of engaged, makes sense. said at the time they just sold wedding and dresses and bridesmaids dresses. Now they've done a million other things, but at the time they were mainly focused just on the entire part. And I was like, so the bride shops for that around nine months before her wedding, rustic wedding chic would get that user for

12 to 14 months before. okay. even before she was engaged, she had secret Pinterest account with all of our phones. And so I was like, listen, you want to move up, you want to start talking to her way before you're trying to sell her. Your pipeline, yeah, starts earlier. Yeah. And when those words came out of my mouth, I saw the aha around the table, like, yep, I think, you know, it's kind of the right piece of the puzzle. David has gone on to do amazing. You know, they have

They have a whole planning site. It's a completely different business than when I first talked to them. And so, ⁓ I love that I sat in that room and I saw like, they really are gonna change a lot with the wedding world. And they communicated that very well to me in that first meeting in 2020, but to see it all kind of come to be is pretty amazing. So I was thrilled that they were the right home for us. That's amazing.

When you started that process of finding who will buy your company, were you a person that felt like, I'm like, did you, were you worried about like, get a lot, a lot of the people we work with, it's like, oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what it's like. I don't know if I'm ready. I don't know if- I think I tell, I tell everyone it's like, um, childbirth. Like with your first baby, you, you have no idea what it's going to be like.

But you can kind of imagine, you you're like, I've seen some of it, but it's, it's, you don't know what you don't know. And so you just go into it and you know, that's why I'm so passionate about what I do now is that I help women every day. They get to exit their company and it's, know, it's, it's emotional for a lot of women. It's, ⁓ I'm very passionate making the, getting money in the hands of women gives them to go choose the life that they want, you know,

So that's the work you're doing with the whisper group. So tell us more. Did you take time off? So how do we get to whisper group? Did you do an earn out or did you just sell and take some, you know, rest in some Island or what? What did you do? what did you zero rest? So I, so I actually, we knew it was all gonna. Okay. So I met with the David's team in March of 2020. I joined the company in a

in an official vice president role, ⁓ July 27th of 2020. And it was publicly announced in October that they had acquired the company. was willing to take, the job was not tied to the acquisition, right? Like they were like, we're gonna acquire your company. But I was also like, hey, I'm out of a job too, right? And I didn't know what I wanted to do next. And so they offered me this a lovely job and I had never worked in corporate America.

worked for myself. was like, my god, they would like say phrases that I was like googling. I was like, where's the corporate like ⁓ dictionary? Because I don't know what these terms are. So I enjoyed it. And I took away a lot of learnings. I really did get to see how a very large company works. And I think I learned some interesting leadership skills from the leaders who were there and our executives at the time. ⁓ And I had such passion for the wedding industry.

And then two and a half years later, I left David's and it was kind of the right time for everybody. I had done it for long enough that I felt like I made some nice things there for them. And then I was like, it was the right time. And I took one month off and I was like, what do I, what do I want to do? Like I need to find a new passion, right? I'm a different person than I was when I started at 26 or whatever. Right.

I said, was like, okay, after I sold my business, so many women came to me and they'd read about, and they're like, how did you do it? Cause it says you did it like, how'd you do this? And it wasn't like I just sold, I was in the wedding world and I sold to the largest bridal retailers. Like that, that's big. And so I was like, well, this is what I did. And then I started to do some research and I really felt like women,

We're underrepresented at the deal table because the idea is, we have to have a million dollars in EBITDA to even be a sellable business, which is junk. I don't subscribe to that. And, you know, there's brokers and, right. And, and they, there, there's not a one size fits all. Right. so I, that's because there's this mainstream way. And again, it's like, this is how you do it. This is, this is who you do with, and it's not the truth. It's just not the truth.

Nope. And, and I was, I did think I didn't really have an exit plan. didn't very much like not having a business plan, didn't have an exit plan. And so I think if I had, if I could know that like, Oh, it's 2018, I'm going to sell in two years. I would have done things differently in the business to be very well ready to exit. There are systems and things that you shouldn't let you should be pulling before you exit. And so.

what I really found was like my passion was coming back to helping women as they really start to exit their business and be exit ready. And what does that look like and who's a strategic buyer? And there's valuations out of a calculator that are your hardcore numbers. And then I created a valuation that was based on our social media following and our revenue, like there was more to it. And ⁓ I was introduced to Carrie and

who was doing the same sort of work, exit readiness. And we hit it off and I was, it was a little bit like, I'm doing this work, you're doing this work. Why are we not building together? And you know, it's, I've never had like a partner in business and I find it so refreshing because on the days that you feel tired, you have someone there to, yeah. Yeah. And he's almost therapeutic probably like, ⁓ yeah. Like this or, yeah. I said like, she's the best like,

therapist. I mean, it's very much like a marriage and the fact that the days that are you're tired and it's hard to get through the day, you have a partner who picks up the slack, you know, so that's been a different part of my entrepreneurial journey. And that's a new one for me, but it's, very rewarding. love it. So, I mean, since we're talking about the whisper group, ⁓ who's an ideal person to reach out and how do they reach out? Yeah.

So one you can go to, we are the whispergroup.com. You can find us all over social. when women need us the most is when they're either planning their exit, right? As in, need to exit, I'm ready to go right now. We can support them through that journey. But we also really help women who say, I need a bit of a roadmap. I need evaluation of where I am today. What are some of the levers I can pull?

And then we give them a score of how sellable their business is. And so we're really there for women who are looking exit today, or if they're looking in the future and they're like, I want to exit, but I need a little bit of a roadmap. And is there a sweet spot in terms of their revenue size? that, as you said, in the exit world, again, there's the brokers for certain size, then there's investment bankers if you're bigger, and then it's

the boutique bankers, if you're a certain level. then there's, you know, the institutional ones and, and same with any other, you know, kind of service person. So is there an area that you're like, that's our sweet spot or are you open to? are open. We currently have clients all across the board from mental health company to fem tech to traditional CPG PR firms, agencies. I mean, it is literally all over.

the space and what I think is so great is that we have so many wonderful advisors in the whisper group that when you meet with me and we talk about like what your goals are, I then put you with an advisor ⁓ who I've matched with them for one reason or another. Sometimes it's industry, sometimes it's personality, sometimes it's like, well, she sold for 25 million and you wanna sell for 30 million, like you're gonna be the right You guys are there, yeah.

I love it. I love it. And we need places like that because ⁓ I think still the women are still loners because of all the things that we talked, right? Like you're the weird one, like you're the one that's working, you're the one that's building and you know, there's, there's the stereotype and you know, who's taking care of your kids and, then, you know, and I think the dynamic is a little bit different anyway. I've seen statistics that show that ⁓ in the startup space,

Female led startups are way more efficient. Way more efficient. And again, I'm not into the feminist or anything like that, but however, I can see myself like multitasking and finishing my day having accomplished so many things. I think honestly, my theory is.

⁓ we are nurturers and a nurturer. It's like, you're making sure your kid is not drowning while you're doing the thing and you're talking to the doctor. And then when you apply that to a business, you're in, that's where you can multitask so well, because you already are wired to do all those things all at the same time in synchrony and successfully, you know, the, kid is alive. The food is cool. The trash is out, whatever stage. And I'm just obviously describing a very genetic thing. ⁓ but.

to that stage at one point, you know, when my husband was working, know, doing his thing full time and I was more part timing and ish and I was running the firm and doing all the kid things and handling all the ladies cleaning and doing the grocery shopping and the guys that cut the grass and the leak in the thing. And that was a form of multitasking that I'm actually applying it to all my businesses. Like that's, mean, you just described what like my every day is because my husband works a very traditional job where he is out of the house at six 45 and he's home around six. There's zero flexibility.

Like I like to laugh like it's not true, but like I don't even know if he knows where the pediatrician is, you know, but like, but I think it's why I'm so good at like what I do is because I can handle a meeting and then I can run to the grocery store and I can have, you know, like someone coming to fix something like I can handle all those things. And I like, I volunteer a lot through my kids' school. So like this morning I was at a meeting there. Like I, it fuels all of me to be able, but

keeping everything in the air. I feel like it's a talent. I think it's a superpower. I think it's a superpower. I want to talk a little bit now, Maggie, about obstacles. you know, any obstacles in the entrepreneur life, like what obstacles did you encounter in your career? Several. mean, one in the beginning, people would say things like, that's cute.

about my business and it really irritated me. Cause I'm like, I'm building a large business. It's not cute. Like it, was like, you'd never, you'd never say that to a man who was starting to like, you know, found that to be very kind of insulting. And then, you know, I, the other challenges, like people couldn't see the big picture. I'd be like, that's fine. You don't have to like, see it. Like people would be like, how are you going to make money? I'm like, I will don't worry. Like I'll figure it out. But you know, you do have to be

You do have to be prepared for that, especially in the early days. Like you are the last vendor to get paid. You may not get paid every two weeks. ⁓ That is a real challenge because we were bootstrapped. never fundraised. like that's a challenge that happens early on. And then once you solve that problem, you know, I also really found that people

I think there could be misconceptions of like, well, what do you have to complain about? Like your business is like great. like, especially when I sold this misconception of like, oh, I someone say to me, oh, it must be so nice to retire at 30. And I was like, I retire. I didn't even know what that means. Like, one, I don't know what that means, but like two, like I have a very big life and kids in college. Like that's not an option. you know I mean? So I think the...

Some of those misconceptions used to bother me in business. Yeah. Do you, you know, that's, you just need to shut down the noise, I guess. so many couple more questions I wanted to ask you about. Okay. So I want to talk about AI is the thing. Yeah. Right. Especially because your business was built on the basically on the web.

You are a pioneer back in the was very early. things in the web, taking photos and uploading them and creating these catalog of things. What is your brilliant mind saying about this whole AI, especially for those who are maybe in the digital space where now it's so easy to iterate what they did and I can do it in five minutes for like five bucks. That's a real thing.

I think AI is going to add a lot of value in places for people, right? That's without question. Like you can use it to make, to streamline things, to make life easier for you, to upload something and say, give me a report on it. Like all those tools, I think we have to lean into it and figure out how to make it work for your business. ⁓ I think that even though like my company being so digital and internet-based, the reason why we stood out against some other

brands is the authenticity, right? Like you could have AI write a blog post for you. And it would still be lacking my true personal knowledge and the emotion, right? Especially in my business with wedding, wedding is an emotional business. so AI is lacking that. But I think people are, you know,

The level of the quality level, can tell when something like I went to a website the other day that I was like, this was so AI and like was terrible looking, you know, and there was no thought process behind it. And so, you know, all those things that we think about, like, how are we going to position the brand correctly? you know, the thought process that goes into things you can see, you can tell. So I think we have to leverage AI and use it as a tool. However, you know, I think that authenticity is still

is what the consumer needs to feel. The human touch and the human ⁓ perspective, the understanding, the deep breath, the thinking through, let's do it together. that's And experience, right? Experience counts. My son wanted to improve his golf swing, so we AI'd something, and it was a 10-week long thing. And I was like, but you realize at the end of the day, this machine has never swung a golf club. That's true.

the experience of what feels like to walk on the wet grass, at a golf course and breathe in the smells like all of that goes into it. And so while we got the tactical side of things, you have to pair it with the real life experience. Exactly. Yeah, there's just so much talk because you know, AI and then the robots are coming and they have AI and now they can do the things that humans do.

There's all these and I'm I always love to hear different perspectives because we're living in that sort of revolution. It's kind of a silent revolution that while it's here, you know, it, it's not visible. Like the industrial revolution was, they're building factories. That's where they go to work. This one is like, resides silently in a computer. It's not on the streets. So, you know, you just don't know what's happening, what's going to happen. And it's just fascinating to me.

I know. Well, Maggie, I have enjoyed absolutely loved hearing your story. I wanted to ask you one more question. Any word of advice for any of the women out there, the men out there listening about, know, what you what you would tell somebody who's in that grind process that is maybe getting ready or maybe somebody wants to start a business. Like what's what's your word of advice? I say just do it. Don't think too much. Just do it.

Even if it's something, every small thing that you do moves the company forward. I told someone, she's like, I have a great name for a company. I'd love to, I like, just go register it, spend the, spend the couple hundred, but register the name, register the domain. You've done something to take steps forward to bring it to fruition. So just do it, just start it, fail, succeed. Who cares? Who knows? But you have to at least start. Start. Amazing.

Thank you, Maggie. I have loved talking to you. ⁓ thank you so much. It's been a blast.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Exited. We are passionate about supporting founders at every stage of their journey, from scaling up to planning an exit. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot to me if you would leave us a five-star rating on your preferred platform. If you know a founder who would benefit from our insights or wants to learn more about exiting a business, let them know about our podcast, Exited. To stay in touch with us, you can follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and many other platforms.

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