What I Wish I Knew Before My First Business Sale

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up. Expect the odd misheard word.

1. 0:00
   Wes Mathews

   Want to introduce the guest? Brent Peterson.

2. 0:02
   Brent Peterson

   You're a unique kind of unicorn in the sense you started, bought, sold. If you want to sell your business, the owner can't be an important component in staying at the business because that's just a recipe for disaster.

3. 0:13
   Wes Mathews

   I think ideas are easy. It's yeah, the execution that somebody's got to do it. People think that ChatGPT can do everything for them.

4. 0:21
   Brent Peterson

   Every piece of content that goes out for human consumption should be read by a human before it gets to the point in which another human can consume it. That garbage that people are just spitting out and not reading are hurting them more than they, than it's helping them.

5. 0:36
   Wes Mathews

   If you train your LLM to do what you wanted to do, it's going to start learning from you. It's just going out and like you said, analyzing the content based on my persona. Do you even think websites are going to be around in five years or three years? This is the unfiltered truth about entrepreneurship. Raw, no BS, no sugarcoating. Welcome to Entrepreneur Intel. I'm your host, Wes Mathews. Each episode we'll learn from experienced founders and uncover the top 5% learnings that led to their success in all things personal, family, and business.

   This show is sponsored by Stealth Consulting, delivering clear marketing strategies, ROI, and no surprises. So I'm excited for today's guest. I want to introduce the guest Brent Peterson. A fun fact about Brent, what I just learned is you've completed a lot of marathons, but six major marathons. That's correct. A couple of things I want to dive in with you. It's multiple companies as an entrepreneur and exiting a company, buying a business, starting another one. I just want to dive in and start to unpack that. A lot of our listeners are either successful entrepreneurs or aspiring to be entrepreneurs.

   And I think you're a unique kind of unicorn in the sense you've started, bought, sold, and all that stuff. So really excited to dive in. So where abouts are you? Where's home for you?

6. 2:02
   Brent Peterson

   Home is in Kona, Hawaii. Right now I'm in Minneapolis. So summers in Minnesota are fantastic. And the year round is summer in Hawaii. So we have kids here in Minneapolis. So come back for a couple of months in the summertime to see grandkids and kids.

7. 2:19
   Wes Mathews

   You lived in Hawaii for a long time, or have you sold your company, moved to Hawaii, or how did you end up there?

8. 2:24
   Brent Peterson

   Yeah, we've been there full time for a year now. Okay. And then we've had a place there for about six years.

9. 2:30
   Wes Mathews

   So you've been an entrepreneur for a long time, 35 years, which is a good clip. You exited, I'm assuming that's your first company, it's called Whatgento?

10. 2:42
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, no, my first company was a business that we built computers back in the 90s. In the late 90s, Best Buy started selling computers for $400. And I could see the writing on the wall that just wasn't going to work. So, you know, I've been around the block a few times.

11. 2:57
    Wes Mathews

    So why back then did you go into, you know, to be an entrepreneur? Like, why didn't you go off and be a doctor, lawyer, or go work off at some enterprise company? What was the differentiator about you?

12. 3:10
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know if there's a differentiator, I think there was something in me that wanted to do something even in college. Well, I should say I went to college for eight years, I was at the University of Minnesota, I went there for eight years. During college, I started a company called BP Enterprises, I just sold electronic stuff. I went to some of the, you know, local outlet stores, bought used thing or refurbished or stuff, you know, like amps and receivers and sold it in the classified section.

    So, you know, it's kind of like my foray into it. And then in college, I had an opportunity to do, to work at a computer store and I and the computer company was offering franchises. So I said, Hey, I'm going to work for a year and then I'd like to buy in. So that's what I did. And I was still in college when that happened. And I decided that after, you know, six months of being a full time student and a full time business owner, it was just too much.

    So I quit the school. Okay. That was 1992.

13. 4:13
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I was gonna say 92, right? So, okay. I'm trying to think back that I remember buying my first computer on my own. I think I was 18. So that was 98, 97, 98, something like that. And the computer was like this big. And it was like a lot of money, like three, four grand or something like that. It was a gateway. It was obnoxious. You mentioned though, in your computer experience, something changed pricing change. You said best buy pricing, you know, what happened as an entrepreneur?

    Like, how did you go through that period, right?

14. 4:50
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, you know, I think there was just a myriad of, of computer assembly and let's let's, you know, it was computer assembly, but there's so many people in that space at the time. And, you know, going through the 90s, we got to be very successful. We were working on very low margins, but selling a lot of computers. And I could see that we're going to get priced out when Dell and those other bigger companies are starting to, you know, do mass manufacturing of computers. And it just made no sense to, to hand assemble computers anymore.

    Even if you get the, we would get parts directly from China. So it made, it made no sense to do it. And you can see the writing on the wall. So I sold the business to some employees and they kind of took it over the time. This is like in the late 90s.

15. 5:38
    Wes Mathews

    So if that's your first business sale, any, any regrets there? Like, if you saw the writing on the wall, was the outcome what you expected or do you have any regrets?

16. 5:48
    Brent Peterson

    Well, I don't have, and it wasn't my first. I mean, I think I had a store, I had a store too, that I sold and, you know, I paid out cash for it. Or they paid me cash for it. So it was, it was one of the franchises. I sold it and somebody else could run it. So, you know, I, that was good. He worked, worked well for me. You know, the, the store was more of a lateral move where, you know, I was able to unload a bunch of, a bunch of burden and, and time and get to start into something new.

    And that's when I got into development work.

17. 6:19
    Wes Mathews

    So what was that, was that the next company, the Wagento that you started then, or was it something else? No, Wagento started in 20, 2010.

18. 6:26
    Brent Peterson

    And that's when, so Magento came out in 2008. And I got introduced to Magento in 2009. And, you know, I came up with the name pretty simple, just start changing the first letters and my Wagento sounded better than Pudgento. So that's, that's how I came up with it. I just got really involved in the community and it's an open source product. And, you know, one of the leadership at Magento at the time encouraged me to, to start an agency and that's what I did.

19. 6:55
    Wes Mathews

    So that's 2010. And so were you guys, that you guys were an exclusive developer on Magento. So if you get, so from an entrepreneurial perspective, there's a lot, like lots of different types of software and coding language. You guys are specifically for Magento when you're starting a company, like trying to be everything to everybody. Cause you need money coming in the door. Did you stay true to just, we're just going to do Magento. Yeah, definitely.

20. 7:24
    Brent Peterson

    That was probably a good move is just niching down completely on Magento. Yeah. We didn't do any other work outside of that. And there was, at the time there was just so much work that we didn't have to go out and try other platforms. We did that. We did it later in the, you know, in the two 2010s, we, we branched out to other platforms just for the need of doing so, you know, having some discipline and, and having different disciplines to offer clients. What made a lot of sense.

    So yeah, I would say that, you know, the best move we made was a pick the name Magento and then be just, just stick to what you're doing and do it. Well, not try to do, you know, hosting all the other fun things that come along with it. We partnered with really great companies at the time to do the other bits of the job that we had to do. And that way we weren't on the hook. You know, if you're, hosting your, somebody's website and the website goes down, you know, you could be making some income, but you know, that little bit of income then is a really a problem.

    If, if you're one little piece that you decided you wanted to add on stops working, that could interrupt the other 90% of the business you're doing with your client.

21. 8:40
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. It's interesting you say that because I, I actually, that happened to me, right? So like, I had a web design development company for many, many years. And part of that solution was we had our own proprietary platform and we hosted all the websites. So people always ask like, is there anything that keeps you up at night? And what actually did was our servers, you know, getting hacked and going down. And you know, we had some clients that were down for three to four days. Imagine, you know, a paying client, an actual business that their website's down for three to four days and there's nothing we can do about it.

    It was the juice was not worth the squeeze. Yeah. I vowed never to host email and or a website ever again in my entire life. So that's good. I mean, they discipline as a, as a, as an entrepreneur, right? I mean, it's kind of nice that you did incorporate the name because it kind of forced you to stay, stay true to it. So what happened throughout that period, right? Is, is Magento still a viable platform or how have things evolved, you know, since 2010 until today?

22. 9:47
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, Magento is still a viable platform. It was purchased by Adobe in 2018. And they really haven't done much with the community or the software itself other than rebranded as Adobe commerce. And now they have a SaaS product called Adobe SaaS commerce. But having said that, there's still a really strong community around Magento. So I'm still, you know, involved in the community. I still volunteer, do things like that around that community. I would say that, you know, one thing we had to do in the late 2010s was we added on big commerce as a partner.

    And what gentle was definitely a problem with our name at the time. So we, you know, we spun out a new little brand just for big commerce work.

23. 10:35
    Wes Mathews

    So what year did you sell that company, Magento? 2021. So COVID had started. What led you to selling that company?

24. 10:47
    Brent Peterson

    Well, I'm in some entrepreneurs organization. And my forum, for a number of times, I've had experts come in and entrepreneurs organization is a peer to peer network for entrepreneurs. And so my forum, we meet every month. So my forum has some experts come in and they did some valuations of everybody's business. They do it for free. And so I got interested. You know, I think the value, they, there was one company that gave us pretty low valuation. So we said, no, you know, it doesn't make any sense.

    And then COVID happened and everybody wanted an e-commerce site. And, you know, it was just crazy for, to be in the e-commerce industry during COVID, COVID had to be the best place to be. And we got revalued and it really made a lot more sense. So we put it up for sale in 20 or right around COVID. And we had instant offers and it was just the right time.

25. 11:49
    Wes Mathews

    The market seemed right for you to do it. Like you as an entrepreneur, you know, what was it for you that kind of made it like, okay, was it the money? Was it the timing that, you know, you've had a 11 year run, 11 year run in magento on this company and like ready to hand it off to a, to a new owner or what was sort of the catalyst for you personally that led you to that?

26. 12:13
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, I have a business partner who's my wife and she did all the HR and all the bookkeeping. And you know, we were at 63 or 64 employees at the end there. And it just was so much to manage and doing all that work. She wasn't interested in taking on that stress anymore and dealing with, you know, dealing with accounts receivable and trying to get people to pay. She just wasn't interested. So, you know, that getting out was first her idea and I was on board with it, but you know, it turned out to be the best decision we could have ever made.

    We would have never like, you know, since 2020, I'm sure that all these companies have gone down in value, just simply for the fact that there isn't as much demand out there for what we're doing. And now it's even changed more with vibe coding. And I feel like you can probably produce websites even cheaper than we did. Well, you certainly can make them a lot less expensive than we did in the past.

27. 13:15
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. So I sold in 2021 as well. And we sold a majority of the company. My partner and I held on to 20%. But like my crystal ball that normally doesn't work kind of worked in this instant. Because for me, it was like, Hey, this AI is sort of like heard about it. And like websites and digital marketing at that time for me was man, like everybody has a great looking website. It's such a commodity. It's getting really inexpensive to, you know, spin up a website used to tell people back in the day, like an 0609 that, you know, you don't want your sister's cousin's brother's friend managing your marketing.

    But the reality is today, I think that person can do a really good job with all the little SaaS products out there, and how you can kind of wrap those all together. So looks like your crystal ball worked out for you again, because if you rewind back to your first company and computers, you got out of the way, you have no regrets. But like you mentioned, talking about like the right way to exit. I mean, do you have any like direct feedback or things that you can reflect on today that was the differentiator or hey, that was really smart, what we did here is or anything that you know, could you get a lot of entrepreneurs that some of them are just ready, you know, they put in a decade, they're burnt out 65 people, that's a lot of people, you know, sometimes, you know, do you have any, you know, what are some like the top three things that you recall that, you know, really stand out to you now?

    Yeah, I mean, I definitely it was an emotional roller coaster, you lose control of what you want to do.

28. 14:46
    Brent Peterson

    And the new person has a new vision. I wasn't ready to be on board with that. I was ready to continue my vision. And that was a really, it was a huge struggle. I struggled with that for months in the very beginning. But then I you know, I really just resigned to the fact that hey, it's no longer my vision and somebody else's vision. So I think the first thing is just being ready to for that. But before that, I think one thing I've learned, especially with this new acquisition that I did with this other with content cucumber is you want to you want to make sure that you have a cultural fit with the company that you're selling, especially if you're going to stay.

    And I sort of had a two year contract that I stayed. And I didn't we didn't do all those cultural things. We lost a ton of staff upfront, just because everything kind of changed. You know, I mentioned earlier, my wife was my business partner, and she's very nurturing. She's very nurturing to all the employees. And that was very well that was missed in the in the whole changeover. And then I didn't have a had an exit, and they have an exit date. And typically, the new owner asks them to leave even earlier.

    And I kind of wish now that I would have asked for more salary to get them to get rid of me sooner than later, I think it would have been better for my own mental well being to be able to leave. And then and I would have been fine even being forced to leave it. In fact, I you know, I quit after two years. And it was just I couldn't, I couldn't see eye to eye anymore with the way the new the new way of thinking of thinking and doing

29. 16:39
    Wes Mathews

    wasn't my way. And I didn't find the energy to continue on. It's really important to share and like our stories are very similar in the sense of that whole experience, you know, I kind of I had that realization myself to that, you know, you meet you made the decision to sell yet your you kind of have to give up that control with whatever control you had. But then you sold it. And that's what I was gonna ask like reflecting on that specific piece, like you tagged along, right, you sold the company, then either you were there, you were there from like a fiduciary, you had to be there as part of the deal.

    Like, would you change that aspect? I mean, obviously, to me, everything's a learning experience. But what would you do differently? Would you have just sold it and been done that day? Or are you glad you went through that two year

30. 17:28
    Brent Peterson

    experience to really understand what you want and what you don't want? Yeah, I think sold it and be out and say 60 days, you know, my wife was done within 30 days, they decided they didn't need her. And I think that, you know, I think with I was a good part of the business, and I was a good I was the face for the business, and I didn't necessarily have to stay there. And it ended up that I wasn't an important component, which also is the goal is if you want to sell your business, the owner can't be an important component in staying at the business because that's just a recipe for disaster.

    Maybe I had a more inflated sense of what myself was worth in terms of being there, you know, and now looking back, I could have left after 60 days. And I think that just having some of those that contractual things in place, where you are measuring, you have some measurements in place that say, after this time, if both of us aren't meeting some expectation, and if you're running EOS, you understand that you get a scorecard. If one of us isn't meeting a scorecard expectation, and then make those objective, you make that scorecard very objective, so you can measure it.

    Let's part ways and let's let's do it in a happy sense and not be, you know, let's not do it in a in a in a emotional sense. And I think the other thing that happens in all these occasions is your emotions start getting into in the way of what a business decision should be. It's really interesting.

31. 19:01
    Wes Mathews

    There is an exercise I think in EOS that you know, the entrepreneur operating system and it's like, it's like a culture fit tool. And if I rewind back, I wish I would. Because I think the challenge is like, when you're getting courted for sale, it's super exciting as a business owner, right? You're talking 65 employees, I can do some back the napkin math, like, we're talking a lot of money, right? So it's kind of nice to have these conversations. I think everybody show up and whether you're, you're selling, you're the buyer, it's nice to like, get a letter of intent, you know, Loi, or like somebody's offering to buy your business.

    That's one thing I think for me too, that I kind of sold myself in the idea that we were a culture fit. And then, you know, for me, I tagged a lot for two years, very similar story to you. Like, I just, it just, we didn't have clearly defined roles. It was like, well, we'll just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And we can kind of just do this together and get it. And that wasn't the reality once everything was said and done, right?

    I mean, the last thing any buyer wants is another visionary, you know, giving their input, you know, and then there's like this, Hey, we bought you or whatever that it's just, it's worlds collide, you know? So I find it interesting that so like, you go through that transition. So what is it for you? Is it the, what's the thrill of the entrepreneur? Like if you sold, it's like, okay, I'm done. But if you're anything like me, like that lasted about a week, like I gotta, I gotta create, I gotta build stuff, break stuff.

    Like what's it for you as an entrepreneur? Like what keeps you, like you bought another business, start another one. What keeps you going?

32. 20:37
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, I think it's that creative side. I started my podcast during that transition from exiting just to have sort of somewhere where I could be creative and I could have an outlet to do those things. And now, you know, having another challenge to try to, to try to make a business profitable again is exciting. I think, you know, I bought a business that has human beings that write content. And that's really, human beings are under fire right now for writing content. And people don't believe that humans need to be involved in content creation anymore.

    So it's been a, it's a real challenge and I'm up for it. So I think that's part of it. The other thing I do is, you know, I create, I like to create things. I'm still a sort of a programmer at heart and I'm creating an app right now that does some branding and some brand voicing and, you know, using the help of AI to help analyze some bulk data to help clients better understand what their voice is. I think that kind of thing is very exciting.

    And, you know, AI has been a, has been a real eye-opener and it's been a wave, a way for me to do things on my own without having to hire a developer.

33. 21:54
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I was going to ask that, like thinking back to your company with 65 employees, like, do you think about that again? Like repeating that process, or is it with AI and just how the markets changed? What are your thoughts on that as you build these companies? I mean, how are you approaching employment hiring humans versus leveraging technology?

34. 22:13
    Brent Peterson

    I am aware that we need to leverage this. I do believe that every piece of content that goes out for human consumption should be read by a human before it gets to the point in which another human can consume it, which requires humans to actually read it. And I think what's happening right now is content's just getting churned out there. People are just copying and pasting directly from ChatGPT. And we're going to end up with a whole bunch of vanilla content. So the people that are actually have an expert that are reviewing the content that's going out and editing and rewriting and making it less GPT ish, there's definitely buzzwords out there that GPT does, and we can recognize now.

    And the savvy people are going to recognize this content is generic. And I believe that those people then are going to affect you by not shopping or not reviewing or not reading or whatever that thing is that you use to create that content. They're not going to read it. They're going to skip right past it because they know it's just garbage created for the sake of garbage. Yeah. The ChatGPT content is just so bad.

35. 23:25
    Wes Mathews

    I get content now from people and it's got like the emojis, you know, on every title and it's like certain things are bolded. And I'm like, can you just take the emojis out and at least like not bold the lettering? It's so bad.

36. 23:38
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah. And it's, it's also, you know, if you did want to use emojis in your posts, you don't want to use emojis anymore because everybody knows that it's, it comes out of a LLM.

37. 23:50
    Wes Mathews

    But so I just, I just watched like Theo Bond had a, was it Sam Altman on, right? Open AI. And they were talking about the new version of ChatGPT that's coming out. Do you think at some point though, that might change in the sense of like, right now it's kind of crappy, but will there be a day where it's like, can't tell the difference?

38. 24:09
    Brent Peterson

    It'll get closer. But you know, with anything, if, if left on its own, not to change, what changes is your feedback? And so if you train your LLM to do what you wanted to do, it's going to start learning from you. If you're constantly just going out there and creating content without ever giving it feedback or changing, that it's, it's never going to learn what you're doing. It's never going to decide, or it's never, it's going to decide whatever the least resistance is in creating that content.

    And it's going to do whatever it thinks it could do. And if you don't give it feedback, it's going to continue on. So again, without some kind of intervention, we're, we're always going down the path of, of mundaneness. So I love that you're in content because from a business perspective, if you're B2B,

39. 24:58
    Wes Mathews

    like, how do you differentiate yourself from the pack? Like, I think it's, you know, is, is blogging important to you? Social media posts. But I think as we progress further into the time and the world of AI, like authenticity, trust, like being a thought leader is so important. So like, what do you recommend for an entrepreneur or a company that is faced with the headwinds of AI? Like, is it, hey, write a blog a month, do some social media posts? Like I know a lot of entrepreneurs, like they don't know where to start.

    So they get analysis paralysis, or you don't want to put yourself out there. Like even owner, like I just, I've never had to do that. I don't want to do that. But like, do you have a, a simple recipe card that you would recommend for a business to think about?

40. 25:46
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, I guess, whatever your product or services, make sure that whatever that landing page is, whatever you're trying to get people to look at is supported by material that gets people to look at it. If you look at your search results right now on Google, a lot of that is just FAQs. And so your content is going to get raised to the top by answering questions that people have where they're searching for your product or service. So having content on your side is super important. And then having extra content other than your product or service page helps to support that content.

    So interlinking within your site, all that is still completely important. That's not to say that you shouldn't be aware of AEI, you know, the AI optimization that's happening right now, you should be doing both, there are going to be agents that go out there and buy stuff. And there's going to be more and more of agentic shopping, agentic commerce, where it's just going to go to an API endpoint, it doesn't even may never even look at your website. But at the end of the day, the majority of the people that are buying are going to look at the content on your site and decide whether they want it or not based on that content.

41. 27:05
    Wes Mathews

    I'm really interested to see like what the next five years bring. Like you and I both coming from digital. I mean, I feel like the heyday was like oh nine to like 2018 of just like straight up search engine ranking. I mean, that was it, right? I mean, everybody just wanted to be found on the search engine. I mean, I think at some point, I mean, I think Google was really smart in terms of how they activated local search ads, local service ads, right, guaranteed leads, because people are tired of getting ripped off and just paying per click.

    But do you see a world of like, I do all of my searching now on ChatGPT, I don't use Google any longer. And like I come from that world. Do you feel like with your experience in web and software that I envision a world of, you know, the agents like really understanding you, like knowing my shoe size, know my hopes, dreams, fears, and it's just going out and like you said, purchasing stuff, analyzing the content based on my persona. Do you even think websites are going to be around in five years or three years or like what do you, what's your crystal ball?

    Your crystal ball has been pretty good to you.

42. 28:14
    Brent Peterson

    What do you see? Yeah, I mean, that's been said that big companies aren't going to need a website, but I just I'm still very skeptical that somebody's somebody's going to want to do some research. And I just feel as though if you put yourself in a little pigeonhole and allow your agent to do all the research for you, you're really then filtering everything through one lens. So let's just say all your search goes through your ChatGPT and ChatGPT is returning you those results. You're not really open to seeing is it right?

    Like, is it correct? How can you verify that it's correct? And where if the if the website if there's no website, how do you double check that? Right? How do you know you just go to Claude and check it and you go to Gemini and check it? Like, I guess I can see at the at the end where we wouldn't have a website, you're going to still have to have something that is a back end. So maybe it's just a headless e-commerce platform. And if you have a headless e-commerce platform, why not make a website?

    Like the difference between having to serve up content through an API, and then having just basic text to somebody to read, it could be you're right, it could be that eventually we don't have websites and everything goes through portals. And in 30 years when you and I are both 50, we're going to we're going to see it differently. And maybe the older generation is still going to want to use a website to do some of the research. I'll probably say that's what grandpa used to use, right?

    Yeah, the other thing is like, how do you as a as a merchant, how do you promote your product if you don't have somewhere for the promotion to go to? Like, I guess then you're just really determined on timing of whatever ChatGPT is giving you, you get rid of any sort of creativeness and what you're doing as a brand. It doesn't matter what your brand looks like, or your new thing is, you're going to have to figure out a way to market that new thing through ChatGPT, right?

43. 30:16
    Wes Mathews

    I'm big on that right now. I'm hot on that. I think I think it's a gold rush right now, just like back in 06 to 09. In terms of getting ranked for search engines, I think right now is that opportunity for like really capitalizing on ChatGPT. But I almost, you know, my son, we were driving in Michigan, we're both from the Midwest and stopped off at a rest stop. And there was a pay phone there. I showed him the pay phone, like he was like really puzzled, like had no idea, like, couldn't even like process what that was like with this, Sam, all like what they're talking about is like how just the leaps of how fast this is going.

    And, you know, you incorporate ChatGPT now plugged into your brain, like what does that do for a website? But my point, the one point I want to make about where do people go? I've been noticing this thing pop up on my credit card statement, TikTok shop. So now like my kids and now my wife, like, I don't even know anything about it. I should probably know all about it because I'm paying a lot for it. Like everything's being directed through this TikTok shop purchase. So is that what happens?

    Is it just these massive platforms where the e-commerce, it was kind of like Amazon, right? Like you have to go on Amazon to get market share. I'm sure there's the outliers that kind of do it themselves, but these three large platforms is the only way you're going to be able to do commerce in the future. Yeah, I guess I would ask if you're going to choose channels and if you're going to be on Amazon, is Amazon going to go away?

44. 31:43
    Brent Peterson

    Is ChatGPT going to take over Amazon? Or is it going to be a AWS version of ChatGPT, which they're already, you know, it's already some learning versions of that. And then if you're already on all these channels, and again, you have to serve up your content from somewhere via API, would it make sense to put up a website? I'm just saying the obvious, right? You're going to have to serve up your content to TikTok and Instagram and ChatGPT and Claude. So would it make sense to have another channel that's your channel that you own, right?

    Because you don't own anything else. Right. If you don't own your own content, you don't own any content you put on TikTok. And if TikTok goes away tomorrow, which it's been going away tomorrow for the last, what, six, eight months, does it make sense to continue to invest in that? At some point, you should own what you do, right? And, you know, email lists and your website or your really two places where you own that content. Yeah, that's interesting.

45. 32:46
    Wes Mathews

    I'm thinking about like, does it, your websites now are kind of like lead generation tools, from my perspective, I think marketing at the end of the day, it's people are investing because they want client acquisition. I'm just thinking about how those evolve, you know, from more of a more of a content deployment system, then call to action, phone number, all that stuff. Like my 16 year old doesn't want to have any interaction with any human. He doesn't want to get on the phone. Like, yeah, like the difference of kids growing up versus where I'm from, it's just, it's so interesting on the differences.

    So with content, my assumption, I want you to explain a little bit about the challenges your company solves. So you got content basis, and then you have content cucumber. I'm a visionary entrepreneur. If you, Brent, asked me to sit in front of my computer and write one blog article today, and as soon as I'm done, I can go home early, I would be here all night.

46. 33:42
    Brent Peterson

    Yeah, think of content cucumber as the creative arm of a growth, a marketing growth engine. So content cucumber has humans that write content, they're now doing some video, as well as audio content and images. And they're delivering it to content basis, which we're a HubSpot partner. So we're working with marketing people that help to get that content out there and to deliver the content to the end, to the end user, wherever it's going to be. Apparently, it's not going to be on a website, and it's not going to be an email eventually, but that's how the kind of two fit together.

    The content basis has some products. So we have a Shopify app that works inside of your Shopify store that helps you with content and blogging. And then we have a new branding app that helps you understand your brand voice. So content basis is going to be more that arm that does some product development and product delivery, along with content delivery. The content base or content cucumber does content creation.

47. 34:49
    Wes Mathews

    What industries doesn't it work for? You get a visionary, I've talked to a lot of lawyers, and they're like, it's got to be me. Nobody else can do it like me. Or you get entrepreneurs, is it for any type of entrepreneurial company? Or is it exclude any type of industries? Talk about lawyers.

48. 35:08
    Brent Peterson

    Before ChatGPT, lawyers were a huge part of their business. Any of those people that need a lot of content on their website were a very large part of their business. And I do believe it's going to be a shift. I do believe that people think that ChatGPT can do everything for them, which it can. At some point, though, you as an entrepreneur run out of bandwidth to do all this stuff. And even if you're getting great ideas from ChatGPT, if you have to execute those great ideas, you as a person may not be interested in even putting in the prompt, and then coming up with 20 social posts, and then hopefully reading them if you are, exporting them as a CSV, uploading them to your system, your delivery system for social media, and then hoping that that social post that ChatGPT wrote that you didn't read actually sounds reasonable.

    Because I believe that garbage that people are just spitting out and not reading are hurting them more than it's helping them. And I know from my own experience, I put on a weekly article, but I also do a post every day on LinkedIn. And I get called out when I, people can tell when I use ChatGPT, I use it to like summarize data, and I'll use it to take a whole entire post along with everybody's comments and some and bring it break it down into a summary.

    Well, then it sounds very machine like, and that's what it's good for. But really, you need some massaging and items in there to make it make it sound like yourself.

49. 36:44
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I hear you, man. I think there's no shortage of ideas. I think ideas are easy. It's the execution that somebody's got to somebody's got to do it. The machines are going to go so far. I just I'm really perplexed on these agents that are like ready to roll out. It's kind of crazy to think about, but I think doubling down like I'm a big believer in content, I've always been a big believer in content, you know, when's the best time to do content, you know, 20 years ago, like planting a tree, but you can still start today.

    You know, so, Brian, I really appreciate the experience shares. If you know, how can people get in contact with you if they have any questions or kind of want to take an analysis of what they're doing? Sure.

50. 37:24
    Brent Peterson

    [email removed] is the easiest way. Just send me an email. I'm on LinkedIn under Brent W. Peterson. Like I said, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn. I comes out every Wednesday. And I have a content that I put out about e-commerce and AI every day, including the weekends. I put on I usually do a pre long run post on Saturday morning. So if you're interested in how far I'm going to run on Saturday, you can see that. And then I always like to sprinkle in some entrepreneurial content.

    I do have a podcast for entrepreneurs for EO network. And then I have my talk commerce podcast, which I've been doing for four years now, 350 or whatever odd episodes of that. So I do a weekly interview on that as well. And I would encourage people to check those out.

51. 38:12
    Wes Mathews

    Nice. Well, Brian, I really appreciate the time, man. I thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks.