Sam Jacobs

Well, a year ago, a year plus ago, as we were facing what,

became 2023, which is a really difficult year for tech, I went to the board and I said, well, what do you think the business is worth?

And they said, well, if you get to profitability at this growth rate, it's worth this, which was effectively like two to three times revenue, which isn't a great outcome.

They would have lost money on that deal if I tried to sell the business.

One of the other lessons, by the way, is if you're asking your board what the company is worth, it's probably not worth very much.

And if you want to sell the company, it's probably not worth very much

Companies get bought, not sold.

So I said, well, what if the business has this growth rate but is unprofitable?

And they said, well, then it's worth zero.

Then it's worth zero.

That's a pretty tough message to hear.

We had 10,000 members all over the world.

We have chapters all over the world.

We help a lot of people do a lot of great things in their lives.

For me to process that idea that the business could potentially be a zero over the course of last year was really, really difficult.

So we had to take action.

At the same time, over the last couple of years, we're not the only ones, right?

So we've moved from this world of growth at any cost, growth rates, this is across a data set of a couple thousand, both private and public companies.

This is taken from Winning by Design, one of our big partners.

But we know that growth rates have declined while client acquisition cost as a percent of revenue has also increased.