Spending 1m on a website

Buying EDC, 1 year later

Some lessons about buying and integrating a company:

If you dont know, I bought everydaycarry.com last year for roughly $1,000,000.
At the time, it was a well priced acquisition, sub 3x multiple. A steal for 2022.

Here is that deal in review:

EDC is crushing it.
The team over there, lead by Bernard and Mikey, are doing world class work.
In my opinion, its the best work to ever be produced for EDC.

And the results speak for themselves:

• Traffic up 100%+ this month YOY

• Traffic up 80%+ YTD

• Email list growing 10%+ every month

• In Q1, we drove 7 figures worth of sales to amazon, up 40% YOY

• Short form video, a brand new content vertical, is doing millions of views every month

The business is 2x as good as it was a year ago.
More readers, more fans, better content, more revenue.

But getting here wasnt easy.
The team put in work. Way more than I initially thought we had too.

Lesson:
Its easy to get excited, its harder to execute on that excitement.

This needs to apply to everything in your life.
I was so excited by all the things we COULD do, I forgot that there was a reason the old owners didnt do them.

“The benefits of synergy are theoretical, the benefits of focus are immediate."
David Sacks said that. It is 100% true.

I got excited about synergy.
Just how much there was to do, how much this thing could scale.

Luckily, Bernard and Mikey are very strong leaders, so I personally didnt get distracted in the day to day.

They brought focus and executed.

But that execution took 12 hard months, where my excitement lasted 12 minutes lol

Lesson:
Everything is twice as hard and twice as expensive as you think

Ever remodel a house?
Or hire a contractor to do literally anything?

Rule of thumb is it will take twice as long and cost 2x as much as whatever they quote you.

Spreadsheets are easy.
”Oh we just grow 20% next year while cutting costs by 20% and BAM!”

The real world is hard.
You are battling entropy every day.
Things want to fall apart. You are there to stop it.

We reinvested every dollar EDC has made for the past 12 months.
It went from a 500k EBITDA machine to a zero dollar EBITDA machine.

Thats the cost of growth.

Lesson:
Passion is valuable.

The people I bought EDC from werent gearheads.
I am sure they liked it, maybe even loved it, but they didnt live it.

I got very lucky that the people running the org, Bernard + Mikey + a team of talented writers, LOVED gear.

Ridge isnt a wallet company.
We are a premium accessory brand.
We are more of a Montblanc than a yeti.

And to build a montblanc, you need to be best in class.

This sounds stupid to say but its true:
You cant be best in class if you dont know who else is in your class.

Thats the power of passion.
I dont need to train the EDC team about what a keycase is…

They will list off the 15 best keycases, their features, and how they could be improved.
They will do that on a weekend for fun.
Because this is their passion.

When you hire a world class marketer or executive, you hire for technical skill.
But do you screen for passion?

Does that new COO coming in care about your industry?
Your product? Your customers?

Or are you hiring them for their technical ability.

In my experience, technical ability is easier to find, easier to recruit for, easier to teach.

You cant teach passion.
Gotta just find those people.

We are very lucky to have found a whole team of them.