In today’s episode, we have fascinating news! WP Buffs successfully acquired WP EZI – a team of highly trained world-class WordPress developers that provides unlimited 24/7 WordPress support, help, maintenance, and fixes. 

Joe talks to Paul Kidis – founder and former owner of WPEZI.com and a brilliant Website Specialist at Kidis Creative – about the closed-door details before and after the acquisition, the reason behind it, and a sneak peek at the preparations made for a smooth take over.   

Tune in and listen to a one of a kind acquisition story!

What to Listen For:

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 02:48 Welcome, Paul Kidis!
  • 04:44 What is Kidis Creative?
  • 07:28 The transition to focus more on Kidis Creative
  • 10:40 It’s time to move on and let WP EZI go
  • 12:52 What made the acquisition push through
  • 16:40 Partnering up with the right people
  • 19:50 How does it feel about selling a business?
  • 23:04 Preparing and getting through the transition
  • 26:20 Mixed emotions, fantastic journey, and refocusing priorities
  • 31:12 It was about finding a better home for WP EZI clients
  • 31:57 What’s keeping Paul busy at Kidis Creative  
  • 33:22 Where to find Paul online

Episode Resources:

Podcast Transcript:

Joe Howard: [00:00:00] Hey folks, Joe Howard here. So all right. A little bit of house cleaning before today’s episode. So obviously, you know, at this point that there’s an announcement happening on the pod this week and from WP buffs this week. So I have a few resources for folks. If they want to read more, learn more in other mediums.

So if you go to WP buffs.com, we have a blog post up that Allie rotor community manager about this news. If you want to hear more about Paul’s opinion or his blog post about this whole thing, going down, you can go over to WP E Z i.com WPZ and you can read that blog post there. We also have an official official press release out.

If folks want to read the official press release, it’s a little bit more formal, but it has all the appropriate details in there. And I don’t know the link to that right now, but it’ll be in a bunch of places. It’ll be in the show notes here in podcast. It’ll be in the w buffs blog posts and WP easy blog posts.

So you can find it pretty easily. And of course you have this podcast episode, so feel free to continue listening for. The real, tell all that we’re going to kind of go through here or at least as tell all it as we can, based on things that were signed. So yeah, today I have on the episode, Paul telecos, Paul is the former owner and CEO of WP easy.

Which is now joining the WP buffs family as are a couple of team members and a good amount of current and former clients and customers of WPZ. So this episode is really cool. I really appreciated the chance to touch base with Paul. And we’d been through a lot of this in the actual acquisition talks and the sales talk.

Some of the formal conversations and during this transitionary time, but we really kind of went to another level and hearing about the positive impact this has had on Paul’s life. And honestly, hearing from his perspective about what a positive experience it was to go through all of this with WP buffs.

And with me, I was really trying to make this a positive experience and unforgettable experience for him, a positive impact for him and his clients. That really was my. Prerogative here in our prerogative, in this acquisition. And it felt really good and I’m knocking lie. It felt good personally to me to hear him speak positively on it.

And so, yeah, hopefully more news to come in the future. But for today, let’s focus on WP, easy with Paul telecos. Enjoy today’s episode.

All right. We are live on the pod. We have it. And a special episode this week, a little announcement for everybody. So I’d like to introduce Paul, Paul. Okay. Two things. One. Can you tell people had to pronounce your last name correctly? Cause I don’t want to butcher it. And two, can you give us the full name of your.

Previous now company that you worked on. Yeah. Cool.

Paul Kidis: [00:03:03] So it’s  and happy to be on the podcast and it’s Kate is creative. So the last bit of my last name, creative.

Joe Howard: [00:03:14] Yeah. There you go. Kiedis, and part of, uh, a longer name and you’re from Australia and now living in Greece.

Paul Kidis: [00:03:24] Yeah. I relocated to Greece recently.

Absolutely. Love it. Yeah.

Joe Howard: [00:03:29] Yeah, I just wanted to touch on the name also of your previous company that is now kind of under WP buffs care. Now, how did you say WPZ or WP ECI? I had someone asked me that and I was like, Oh, I want to make sure Paul touches

Paul Kidis: [00:03:43] on that. Have you for easy. So the whole goal was to make WordPress support easy.

That’d be pretty easy,

Joe Howard: [00:03:49] solid. Okay. That’s okay. That is the exact response I gave to that person. So I’m glad I got it. Nailed it. So cool. All right. So point to this episode this week is obviously people know at this point, WPZ has joined the WP buffs family, and you know, a lot of people will see announcements in the WordPress space, but in the tech space in general, and I guess all spaces about acquisitions and it’s kind of this like.

Kind of formal blog posts, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. But I kind of wanted to go and take it to another level of just like a little bit more transparency into the actual inner workings of like everything that happened. We may not be able to go into every single piece of detail here, but just in terms of like transparency about how the process went, both from your perspective, Paul, as a seller and me, from our perspective at WP buses, the buyer about.

What it was like to WPC to join the WP buffs family. So before we even dive into that, why don’t you tell folks a little bit more about the work you do at kit creative and maybe a little bit about your, your history with WPZ before we start talking? Yeah.

Paul Kidis: [00:04:55] Cool. I’ve been doing WordPress websites since like 2011.

When I started my first business, Kate is creative and we were. Just your normal web design agency, specializing in WordPress and the years we built many websites with that. People were coming back to us saying, can you make changes? Can you fix things? We need to change menus. We need to do this things broke, et cetera, et cetera.

So over the course of years, we set up care plans and it wasn’t till two, 2017. When I had this bright spark moment to think to myself, Oh, it’s actually a little bit of a business in this separate from building websites. I did some research on Google. I found some other companies that were doing it, some were successful and I thought, well, if they can do it, I can do it.

And we set up. So I started WP easy. I basically tried to create. A business that made WordPress support really, really easy in my own mind and for my own customers and in my own reference point. So I was really good at Trello. So I hijacked the Trello boards and created a system using that, that clients seemed to really, really enjoy.

And in fact, we had a lot of clients come to us because we use Trello and they were familiar with it. So that was really good. Basically, we grew that business. Uh, I built a really good team. I’m super proud of the team I built. They’re amazing. There has not been one problem in all these years that my team has not been able to fix, which is amazing.

Joe Howard: [00:06:32] Nice. I love that feeling. Yes. Yes. We have similar perspectives. Cause I feel the same way about our team and you really grow to love the work that you do and enjoy it. But at the end of the day, it’s like, Man, what would I have been able to do without a great team around me? I think a lot of people, even whether they have a smaller team or a bigger team, they feel like man, the team is, is core to everything.

So cool. So I hear this story a lot actually from folks who, um, who do web work and they realize people need ongoing support. Like people ask them for little things here and there. So it makes sense to offer something like this. It sounds like you kind of maybe even went in a somewhat separate direction from some people because some people will build it into their.

There one business kind of started a new business WPZ, you know, aside from kitties doing care plan work. Um, and so, yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about there. Must have been a point where, you know, we’ve kind of discussed this in previous calls, obviously, but I’d love listeners to hear a little bit more about the, kind of the point at which you decided I’d like to focus a little bit more on Kitsis and little less on WPZ.

Maybe it may make sense to. Move on entirely from it. There must have been like a moment or at least like a period of time where you started thinking more seriously about that. And I’d like to dig into kind of like the why’s of the reasons for, for transitioning away from it and having someone else look after it.

Yeah, definitely.

Paul Kidis: [00:07:56] So I don’t know if there’s something, a trait of a common entrepreneur or maybe it’s somebody different with me, but I always tend to have a few things running on the go completely separate businesses. It’s been the story of my life and with that, it’s good, but it also has challenges.

And basically, so I had my web design agency running, servicing those clients. I’ve got WP, easy running, doing that, that thing with the care plans. And then. Also, I’ve got my e-com running. It’s good. But it also, you can’t go deep too deep on one thing when you’ve got so many things running, which is something I’m going to try and fix in the future.

I want to go deeper with one thing, but as it turns out, you can’t do everything well, WPZ has been like, yeah, I’ve put a lot of time into it, systemizing it, making sure the team are running it as much as they can without me, but it just got to that point in. Like, basically for me where I was just getting tired, like, I don’t have the energy, I had to do everything.

I did a bit of a self analysis and I worked out that between everything that I was doing, profit-wise what I want to do, where I see myself as a person and what interests me and what I want to pursue next. I decided that. I might want to start looking for a new home for WPZ.

Joe Howard: [00:09:22] The interesting part of that story is kind of that it’s one, it’s like the self realization that maybe like.

You wanted to, you know, you were waking up every day, maybe wanting to reconfigure your focuses on things. It’s funny, like seeing the parallels between different entrepreneurs, people who have started businesses, like I’m the same way, like you CWP buffs, like, well, this is the WP MRR WordPress podcast. We do like a virtual summit at WP MRR, like w um, very similar to Paul.

Like we like to try and experiment with different things. And so you go through these different phases of life, of like expansion and like maybe wanting to do more. But a lot of times you’ll go through phases where you want to do you either want to do less, or you find that you just maybe will be happier doing less or more fulfilled doing.

More of a fewer things. And I like the part that stood out to me also was like you said, you liked did a self-assessment. I think that’s so important because I feel like so many people in your shoes may have just continued to do it. You know, this is what I’m supposed to do. I was supposed to grow this business.

I’m supposed to build this business, but sitting down and actually doing the self-assessment. Yeah. Like triggered this, like maybe it’s time to do that. And I think that self-awareness, and that like action step really led to a big positive in your life. And they were able to really like focus on the things that you’re super excited to work on every day.

And that yeah, you wake up like jazz to do that thing. So that those things stood out to me as positives.

Paul Kidis: [00:10:41] For sure. Yeah, definitely. It’s, it’s so important in life too, you know, especially after a few years, uh, when you’re on the grind and you’re just going off to your different goals and trying to hit certain milestones and whatnot.

You forget, what makes you happy? You forget what life is like without being busy. And I had a crazy 2020 business school. Like we had exponential growth in some of the businesses I’m involved in and to take a step back after all the craziness and think to myself, like I’m at a certain level with WPZ. I love the business.

I built it from scratch, but it’s time to move on. Like it’s my time. And I don’t want to do a disservice by my clients. So you. You know, you start thinking of ways to do it. And that’s sort of how we met.

Joe Howard: [00:11:27] Yeah. Yeah. This is what the listeners have been, have been waiting for. They were teased for this episode and then we had to go through the background first of course, but let’s start chatting a little bit about like what it was like for you as a potential seller, going into a relationship like this.

So you kind of submitted WPZ. To the WP buffs acquisition unit, you filled out some answers to some questions in a form. I emailed you back saying like, Hey, and maybe I’ll even give a little bit more background. You gave your website, WP eci.com. I went to the website. I was like, Oh, Cause we get some like garbage come through that form.

It’s like businesses that we would never, like, it’s not, it’s not a good fit or it’s just not, or looking for, even though we explicitly say like what we’re looking for on the page. Right. But yours came through and I was like, Oh, one, like I’ve, I’ve either been to this website before, or I’ve heard about this.

Until this, this is like a really good fit. Like you do very similar work to what we do. This is a very similar business to WP buff. So I think there’s something that could work here. So after you submitted some of those Q and a, I took a look. I invited you to do a call just via Calendly as like, Hey, grab a time.

We chatted. I’d love to hear what you thought. What kinda, what was going through your mind after that first call, which was kind of like a discovery call. It was like getting to meet each other, getting to know each other a little bit. Me hearing a little bit about WPZ you getting to learn about WP buffs, making sure you’re comfortable moving forward.

That, that, yeah. And me to both parties, making sure, Hey, we want to move forward. How are you feeling after that first call? And like, what was your initial thoughts? Yeah. So

Paul Kidis: [00:12:58] before we jumped on the call, I did a lot of research. Obviously I already knew I wanted to dive in deeper because. When you think of selling your business?

I wanted to reach out to competitors first and then out of everyone that I researched, I, I, you know, I, I only contacted you really. I was going to post it up on other places and whatnot, but, um, I managed to just contact you guys. Oh

Joe Howard: [00:13:23] yeah. I remember. Yeah. You mentioned, I think when you submitted, like, forgive me if I’m wrong.

Cause we’ve had a few submissions come through, but I believe you said, like, I think I’m maybe some place like a flip ball or like a, or like another kind of marketplace where you sell businesses, but I’m going to start with you because this seems to make the most sense. And maybe I’ll try one of those others if, if this doesn’t happen to work out.

So I think that was that correct? That

Paul Kidis: [00:13:46] is correct. And uh, I loved what you guys were doing. Yeah. You seem like the leader in the market, the community’s down, people really enjoy what you’re doing. Your reviews are great. Like it was, it felt like a really good fit initially. Anyway. And then after the call, what really became clear was that we share a lot of the common goals.

So it was really, yeah, I really enjoyed that Cole. It was very positive.

Joe Howard: [00:14:11] Yeah, good man. I’m glad to hear that. And I like hearing little nuggets. I didn’t know about before, like the research you did before, you know, you came and checked us out. So we’ve put a lot of work into like, not one, making sure we look good online and people are like, Oh, WF is awesome.

But to, to make sure we’re actually fulfilling that promise. So that, that is not just like a marketing thing that is like truly w what WQS offers, uh, and that our marketing is. True to exactly what we do as the buyer. I guess, coming from my perspective, I was pretty excited after a call. I remember I shot a Slack message to Ben and Nick, like, Hey, we were actually in the middle of another potential acquisition that didn’t work out.

Yeah. And it was kind of at the end of like, maybe we wanted it to work out, but it just, it clearly wasn’t the best fit for a few different reasons. And we’ve realized we were trying to force it. I remember having the call with you and being like, okay guys like that other one now I really know what a good example of a good fit is.

We’re going to wrap up, you know, those negotiations didn’t quite work out. This is what we should focus our time on. And I remember talking with you. I, the one thing that stood out to me was I remember you were being, so you were so focused on making sure that you, that making sure that we knew, like how much you still want it to support the transition, which is something that we’re obviously looking for in a partner, because we know the whole, the whole success to this happens is like, we don’t just want to like take over a business to like, Just like reap the benefits and like look through customers, right?

Like the point of this is to. We, we care so much about managing people’s websites and, and keeping them up and running that you obviously want to make that transition as seamless as possible. And just the fact, so you were like, repeatedly, like, Hey, I’m not handing everything over. Like I want to be part of this only an act, a part of this, how can I help?

And you’ve like written emails to customers. You’re like jumping on this podcast. Like you did like everything that was asked of you during this transition, which is what you promised and like that to me, honestly, like. That was probably the best part of this whole transition was like, remember how well it’s worked out so far.

Like, and it’s just the two of us have loved working together. Like it’s been really as easy as possible. It was always something that’s going to go. Right. And something that doesn’t click. Right. But it’s been really pretty easy and the communication has been simple. So that’s something that after our first call, I was like, I think this is a good fit because honestly, I think based on what you were saying, I feel like we have similar.

Like value structures. And I think that sounds like a wishy washy. Oh, like you have good values. You should work together. But like, if you want to do folks, like if this is something you, I really have to focus on big time, I think that is what’s driven so far, the success of this, obviously like this is an announcement, so we’ll have to see how it goes over the coming months.

But like so far, and I don’t foresee any issues with it. It has been a big success so far. So I think, I, I think you agree with that. Does that sound good? It seems that same values. Yeah,

Paul Kidis: [00:17:01] definitely. Definitely agree with that. It’s been smooth. Uh, I went into it with good intentions and I think you guys, well, you did, you, you referenced yeah.

Reciprocated perfectly. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been really easy and it’s refreshing, like it’s refreshing to just do it with somebody that yeah. Has the same values and not like, yeah. Uh, we’re going to try and screw this person over, or we’re going to do this, or we want to do low ball offers here or do this, or do that.

If there’s none of that, it was just like, this is where we’re at, what we want to do. Where are you use at? And we found that common ground and it’s been, it’s been

Joe Howard: [00:17:40] really good. Yeah, dude. Awesome. I’m really glad to hear that. We obviously like went through all this, but doing this podcast episode really like brings out like real feelings of things.

I’m really happy to hear you say that. Like the word refreshing is like, that’s refreshing for me because that was our entire goal in this. Because when you do an acquisition, like when we sent you like the contract, it was like, It’s such an official thing. It’s like, what if I snuck something in there to like, like you never know what could happen.

And it’s like, it’s, uh, you know, this is a significant financial deal for both of us. Right. You know, for us as a company to be, you know, paying, you know, a multiplier on like an annual profit margin. And for you, it’s a, it’s a significant windfall for you to be able to take home. And like, there’s always a risk of something happening, but I think.

I felt like the foundation we laid in that first call and just like throughout our communication of like mutual respect and just like strong communication, honestly going a little bit, I always felt like your emails and my emails. We always try to do a little bit extra. I tried to always include that extra point of detail and make sure that communication was clear so that you knew, Hey.

Like we’re in this with you. Like we’re on the same team here. We’re w this is, this is us. This is not us as separate. And I think that was really helpful in, in moving things forward. Um, I, I also want to talk about like the, that next part. So like, after we, um, you know, jumped off the discovery call, I went to.

To Nick and Ben, I was like, let’s move this forward. Ben sent over, you know, a nondisclosure agreement that you signed so that we could do our due diligence. You know, Ben and Nick, from Nick from an operation standpoint, just going in and checking out everything, seeing making sure operations were strong and like.

Honestly, like what you said they were, which they were all good then from a financial standpoint, just going and making sure, Hey, this is the profit margin and this is the revenue that’s being generated. Here’s some money X customers, you know, all that stuff from a financial standpoint. NDA is like, Oh, I sound so like official and formal, but it’s really like, it’s a protect you from us being able to like, share your financial details around.

It’s like, that’s a nice closure is we can talk about, you know, your financials and it like protects us as well in the same. Uh, it’s like a two-way street there. How was the like, experience for you going from. Like the, the NDA, Sinai, and going through due diligence to like that, that final contract signing, like, again, like there’s a, I feel like there’s a little bit of like, not even a little bit like, but some significant pressure.

It’s like, it’s a big moment and you want to make sure you get it right. And that it’s. Mutually beneficial for everybody, but I just wanted to know kind of from a personal standpoint, like how you felt selling your business and going through like DocuSign in that final contract and what that process was like up to that point.

Yeah. A hundred

Paul Kidis: [00:20:22] percent. Um, okay, so you sent the NDA. I was like, okay, let’s get an official now, but it’s on there. And you know, the, the sending all the stuff was no problem, because I was just as open and honest with you from the beginning. So I, I think I told you on the first call, like. This is what we’re doing.

This is where we’re at. This is how many customers, et cetera, et cetera. So sharing all that with you was no problem. But, uh, yeah, like it was just a natural progression for me. I knew that you were going to see it one day. So there was no point in the beginning trying to do some fluffy business, like to see it all anyway.

So here’s where it’s at. Uh, for me it was fine.

Joe Howard: [00:21:03] I, I think that’s a really important. Thing to say though, is like a lot of, a lot of what we’ve talked about so far. And the reason we feel like this was a success is because of the trust we built with each other and the relationship we built with each other, just honestly, between like you and me even, and to build that trust.

Like if you were to have said something that like, wasn’t right to the point of like, maybe he was trying to hide something, that’s like a red flag for us. And that like it’s, so it’s hard to build trust. It takes time to build, trust, takes energy. It takes attention, but it only takes like one thing to break trust, right?

Like it takes one wrong move to break all that trust you’ve built. And so I always felt North team always felt like we never found anything that was like, Whoa, what’s this. Like, everything was like, What you said from the beginning, maybe like plus, or minus some small deviation. That’s like, well, now we’re having our second conversation, like a month after the first conversation.

So you brought on some new customers which changed this number a little bit. So like that those are the only changes, but those naturally happen. So yeah, I think that’s super important. And honestly, a lesson I’d give to anybody who’s potentially trying to sell a business or potentially try to buy as like, but especially from the seller’s perspective.

Okay. What a seller should do from my perspective as a buyer, you for sure should be honest and straightforward about everything because most people have good intentions. We have good, we have good intentions. We had good intentions in this deal, and we want to make it mutually beneficial, win for everybody.

We don’t want to have any bad surprises happen that that hurts it for everybody. And you know, yourself potentially included. So I thought you took the right. Approach and all that stuff and said, here’s lay, lay everything bare. And here’s where everything lands.

Paul Kidis: [00:22:46] I feel like we went to, we went into it, both thinking like open honestly, and fair.

Like that’s a big point to bring up, like, as we’re talking about it, we will fail with each other with what we can do, where we’re at, what we’re going to agree on and disagree on. Like we’ll just fair. And that goes a long way, especially

Joe Howard: [00:23:05] in marble. Tell me what the transition has been like from your point of view, because it’s been about three weeks since, since, you know, things were signed and we’ve been working together on operations transitions and that kind of stuff, but also some announcement stuff.

This podcast episode, we wrote some blog posts. You wrote a blog post WPZ, you wrote some emails to your customers, that kind of thing. How’s the transition been from your point of view? Is it lived up to the kind of expectations that were set when we kind of closed on everything? Yeah.

Paul Kidis: [00:23:30] Uh, the day after we signed the deal.

I said to my wife, I turned around, said, all right, we’ve got some work to do. So we basically sat down in front of the laptop and, uh, you know, got everything organized with all the different, uh, logins, all the different things that we had to do. And, you know, again, it was just all normal things. And, uh, it went, it went very smooth, Joe, like I sent you everything that we had a few hiccups with logging in with, you know, passwords or whatever, but.

To be expected when

Joe Howard: [00:24:00] you’re sharing 30 log-ins yeah. I don’t know how am I going to be, right. Yeah.

Paul Kidis: [00:24:04] But in terms of you guys getting access, you know, getting in there, checking everything out. I don’t think there’s been any issues with that. Everything’s been running as per normal. If we didn’t make an announcement, none of the clients would have even known what’s been happening.

Everything’s been running smoothly. The team’s really excited as well to get to know you guys. Yeah. So very good.

Joe Howard: [00:24:27] Yeah, I, I agree. I don’t know if I have much to add, I think has been, it’s been pretty smooth. The only hiccups we’ve had a few log in details, things, a few, like there’s going to be stuff that requires a few back and forth emails anyway.

Like it’s just, you’re not going to be able to package every single thing about the business and just send it off to us and then we’ll just take it all out. Like it’s going to require some back and forth. We need to learn about the business, whereas there’s, maybe we didn’t go over every single detail during the acquisition.

And we knew there, there were things where, like, we know the basics of this. We know, maybe we’ll add a note to like ask Paul about exactly how X, Y, and Z works, you know, once it has gone through, because we just, we want to know it so that we’re good with customers so that we give them the exact same experience and maybe even a better experience, but not change things for them, keep them with, you know, having some consistency and stuff.

So, yeah, I think from our point of view, I think something that we’ve learned honestly, is like, we could do a better job. Of formalizing some of this handover stuff. Like we could, we could put structures in place and systems in place from our point of view, that that really at the end of the day probably are our responsibilities.

Like the handover of logging information. Like we probably should have a better procedure than like sending like a password, like locked PDF files and all this stuff. And it was just a safe, secure way to do it. But like, we should probably have a process for that. Like, you know, this is the first acquisition data we’ve closed, so we don’t have every single thing in place, but this is.

Honestly like great reason to hop on this podcast too, cause we want to improve. And so that’s an area where yeah, maybe a few things weren’t exact right. But we should have, and we will have, but we also should have a better procedure for some things to make things a little smoother, both for you and for us, because you know, the more efficiently we can do some of this handover stuff and like have a core list of all the stuff we need to get through, you know, the faster and more efficient it’s going to be for everybody.

So learning moments for us too. Yeah. I want to know kind of personally how you’re feeling once now that this announcement’s kind of going live. Are you feeling like how has your what’s going on in your brain? Are you, are you happy? This has all happened. Are you feeling like a little bit like, Oh, I kind of like what a journey that was like, I don’t know.

Paul Kidis: [00:26:36] I got mixed feelings, you know, like. All right. So end goal is I can’t wait to have this wrapped up and you guys running the show so I can take a step back and regain that time and start putting it back into myself where it needs to be. I can’t wait for that. And I’m really looking forward to it because, uh, I need it.

But, um, part of me is like, wow, what a amazing journey I’ve been on with this business and gotten to know so many cool people. Our clients have been amazing. Our team is amazing. Like it’s just been really, really good. And, um, letting that go is, yeah, it’s hard, you know? Um, I think I’m going to miss the interaction with everybody more than anything.

Cause you know, you go back, you go from having that team and that communication and that, you know, we’re all doing this together as a mission and we’re gonna fix that. These things to now, I’m going to be back to by myself. I’m probably going to miss that the most, but yeah, it’s been a bit, yeah, different emotions, um, positive and negative, but not negative.

I should say positive. And like all I’m gonna miss that, but yeah, it’s good. Overall.

Joe Howard: [00:27:50] Yeah. Yeah, no, I think negative is a fine way to put out. I have positives and negatives like this yin and yang, right? When you have all these positive feelings that will bring some negative feelings because it’ll ha it’s just, just, this is kind of like how the human brain works.

So I get what you’re saying. Um, I I’m super glad you said that, man. I think one of the biggest things I remember when he got her first call, like one of the biggest things I was thinking was like, and through this whole process, really, I was, I was thinking. This story is so important. Like Paul’s like put his, like blood, sweat, and tears into this business for years.

And like, to transition in a way is a big deal. Like that’s something we have to respect as a company potentially like acquiring these clients in this company. And like, that story is so important. And like one of my biggest drivers in this was like, I wanted us to be here. I wanted you to be here and for you to have mostly positive cathartic feelings about the great journey you’ve been on and feeling good about it being in WP boss hands, obviously there are going to be some mixed emotion.

I’m not saying I don’t want you to feel that I want you to feel that’s what it is to be human, but. That was like, in terms of like this acquisition unit that we’ve launched, like this needs to always be the story we tell this needs to always be the ending of the story for the seller. I wanted you to feel like, yes, great.

You’re going to focus on other things you want to, but like, wow. Like. That part I’m like, I want you to look back at that part of your life with fondness and positivity and yeah. Mate, you’re allowed of course, to miss it, but I wanted you to feel overall positive. So it sounds like we’ve done that, which makes me happy, but yeah.

Is that set mostly true?

Paul Kidis: [00:29:23] Yeah. No, definitely. Definitely. You can take that one off the books.

Joe Howard: [00:29:28] Yes. Excellent. Very important. I’ve I’ve talked with like Allie, who’s our community manager kind of, she did like a mini interview of me of like some of this, maybe some quotes who wanted to put into some of the content we’re putting out.

And I kind of had a little bit of a hard time describing it because there’s like acquisition sounds so like. Monopoly like acquiring to become a model. Like when I think about an acquisition of like a fortune 500 companies, like acquiring competition. Yeah. It’s like so corporate and like launching this unit, like, this is really not what I was going for at all, like what we were going for at all, but that can be the story.

If we don’t tell the story, that can be the story people tell of us. And so I just wanna make it clear to people that like, We want mutually beneficial wins out of this. We want to, like when we, when we were going through the final steps of this, we really thought like, You know, all of your active clients like these are there now are responsible that we can continue to manage your websites.

They can continue to grow their businesses like that is good for them. It is good for you to be able to you yourself, Paul, to be able to focus on the other things you want to focus on. And we can grow our business at the same time at WP buffs, like all three of those things can be wins, but I always found myself like, Kind of caught in the middle of like acquisition unit.

Like, it sounds like you said it sounds so corporate. I don’t want it to, I don’t want it to feel like that or to seem like that to people. So people are like interested in checking out the acquisition and like the details there. WP bluffs.com forward slash acquisitions, go and read about it. It’s not, it’s not corporate or we’d really don’t want to make it feel like that.

We want to. Purchase businesses, but we want to do it in the best. We want to have the best positive impact. That is our new mission at WP buffs to great unforgettable experiences to have positive impacts for people. And that positive impact is going to be what leads us. So hopefully that came across in that whole process too.

Well, it

Paul Kidis: [00:31:15] definitely did come across and yeah, I don’t, I don’t see it as, um, like them, you know, the acquisition corporate style. It hasn’t been like that at all. Um, I went into this wanting to find a better home for my customers. Uh, Oh, clients I should say. And you guys fit that mold, plus, you know, I can’t believe you have a happiness buff and his only job is to make sure that everybody’s happy.

Every client is happy and successful. That’s awesome. So, yeah, we, we couldn’t be happier to do this with you,

Joe Howard: [00:31:50] you know? Cool man. Yeah. Happiness engineers. We’ve got client success folks. Yeah. That’s the name of the game for us. So I want to hear a little bit more about kitties and some of the other stuff you’re working on.

I’d love to hear some more about like the e-commerce stuff to work on, because that seems to be like a big focus for you moving forward.

Yeah.

Paul Kidis: [00:32:08] So it’s always been a focus for me. It’s always been a side hustle, but over the last few years, it’s really just taken off. I don’t know if that’s a combination of.

Uh, myself and the team getting better and, uh, doing better products and better things, or a combination of that. Plus, you know, generally the tide of things moving is towards e-commerce. But the last few years we’ve managed to build, uh, acquire and also manage, I think, up to 60 e-commerce shops now under the umbrella, which are owls.

So yeah, as you can imagine the team and I it’s, it’s very busy. We’re doing very well. And I can’t wait to dive on, like, one of my personal goals is to get over a hundred. It’s going to be on my journey and with all this extra time.

Joe Howard: [00:32:56] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s just time is the only, that’s what they say right?

Time is the only commodity you can’t really make more of, you know, you can always scale a business and make more money and make more, uh, you know, more growth and more stuff about time. That’s you only have a finite amount of that. Uh, not very much of it. So I think using it as wisely as possible is definitely.

The right move. So, Paul, thank you for hopping off the man. I think this is honestly just like selfishly. I thought this is great to touch base with you and hear that you really had a positive experience with this, but tell people as we’re wrapping up, how they can find you online. Now that you’re now with wpc.com, where can they find your domain?

Are you still on social? That kind of stuff.

Paul Kidis: [00:33:33] Yep. Poll caters on Instagram, Facebook. Also Kate is creative. You can just shoot me a message through the website there if you want. That’s

Joe Howard: [00:33:40] it. Cool, man. All right. Last thing I always ask our guests on this podcast to do is to ask our listeners for a little five star iTunes review.

So if you wouldn’t mind just asking folks to give us, leave us a little review. I’d appreciate it. Come on.

Paul Kidis: [00:33:52] Everybody give us a five-star review for five star WordPress support and we’re going to make it easy.

Joe Howard: [00:33:58] Yeah. Yeah. We are going to make it easy. WP mrr.com forward slash iTunes forwards you right there.

So if you’re on a macro, an Apple device, Uh, just type in that extension. You’ll get a nice little redirect. You don’t have to leave a comment, but if you want to, I mean, we love comments. I want to hear about something you learned from this episode. We can send Paul A. Little screenshot and say, thanks for helping us get a review.

It helps us to know what episode types we should do. So we get a few reviews for this. This particular episode, Hey, maybe we’ll have pollen again and talk more about it or we’ll have, you know, maybe the next person who joins WQS family had jump on or talk with more other folks who have sold businesses themselves or by well by businesses.

We’ll do more episodes around at least some comments interview would be excellent. If you have any questions for us at the show, yo@wpmrr.com. If you have questions, maybe a few Q and a episodes coming up that we would like to do. If you’re a new listener to the show, we’ve got a hundred. 2,530 episodes, something like that.

Uh, go ahead to WP mrr.com forward slash podcast. Use the search bar search for some keywords, we’ve got episodes and all sorts of things. So if you have questions or want to learn about something specific, we have an episode about it. Uh, that is all for this week. We will be in your podcast players again next week.

Paul, thanks again for me now, man. It’s been real.

Paul Kidis: [00:35:17] It’s been great. Thank

Joe Howard: [00:35:18] you. .

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