Why I'm Selling My Company To Facebook... Someday

Building a business to the point of acquisition is incredible. It takes hard work, dedication, and tenacity to build the team and the infrastructure necessary to grow a business to the point of being attractive enough to be acquired.

When I started Ad Zombies, I never dreamed of selling it. In fact, growing the business to the point of being acquired wasn't even in my scope of possibility.

I remember the day we had our first sale like it was yesterday. Client was a local HVAC company, the invoice was $297, and I stared at that number on the screen longer than any grown man should stare at a three-figure check.

I recall the thrill of our first $500 sales day. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head the first day we kissed $1,000…only to fall short by a handful of dollars. It took another 10-days to get there. That first day we hit $1,000 in sales, (insert dreamy flashback here)… it was as if someone dropped $1 million in our laps.

Back then there were only two of us, and we were high-fiving one another in my home office. My wife hated having us work from the house, but it was the only affordable space at the time. After all, it was covered financially in our monthly mortgage. Yes, we knew the potential was there, but couldn't see how much potential at the time.

Each milestone in our sales history was met with joyful celebration. And each milestone was met with a new goal, a new number to aim for, a new mission to be accomplished. Now, I am not all about sales and dollars. I simply love this business. Somewhere between that $297 invoice and the 100,000-plus ads we've written since, the math stopped being the point. The fact that I can make a living doing what I love, and the business can now support employees and their families, AND we can even offer health benefits? That's pretty freaking cool.

Dream Big, Execute Bigger

Yes, I always knew there was potential. After all, I'm a dreamer. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it big. And if I have a dream… Well, that dream is going to be epic.

If I'm being completely honest with you, I never thought about being acquired by a big company when we first started. In fact, the first time I had dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk, back before Ad Zombies had written its first thousand ads, he asked me a question that stuck with me for years: was my goal to build and hold, or build and sell? The answer would determine whether or not I gave up an equity position in the business. At the time, I told him build and hold, because who builds a business just to hand it off to someone else? That seemed kind of dumb to me back then.

You see, I'm an artist with entrepreneurial tendencies. I do this because I love the craft -- the same reason I still personally review copy on some of the campaigns that helped generate the $300B-plus in client revenue this agency has put on the board. Not doing this seems weird to me. So why on earth would I want to sell something that's my passion? It didn't make sense to me at the time. I'm still, at the core of it, an artist.

It's Not About The Money

To me, part of growing a successful business means taking care of your team. What better way to take care of the people who helped you build this thing than to make sure they're well taken care of when your business is acquired. I wasn't thinking about myself. I wasn't thinking about what I'd do next in life. I was thinking about the people who helped me get this off the ground and build it into what it was, what it is, and what it's becoming.

To be acquired by a company like Facebook is huge. And though it was not my original intent, things change. The ability to provide a financially secure future for the team that helped me get there is what drives me -- the same way I tell every writer on my team that trust is what actually keeps a client, not the invoice. You build something worth acquiring the same way you build something worth trusting: one honest deliverable at a time.

Fast forward a couple of trips to New York City later, I was having a glass of wine and chatting with Gary Vee at VoiceCon. This was last summer, just before the release of my book 'Jab Till It Hurts.' I told Gary I think I'd changed my mind, that maybe being acquired by a big company like Google, Amazon, Facebook, or some yet-to-emerge platform wasn't such a bad idea. He looked at me and smiled.

Yes, I am ready for the day we are acquired by Facebook. Until that day, we will keep doing what got us here -- writing headlines that actually earn the read, because at the end of the day the headline is still doing 80% of the work whether Mark Zuckerberg is signing the check or not -- and we'll keep building on our past successes.