Lessons from Running and Growing Multi-million Dollar Online Businesses with Joel Stevenson [Ep.118]

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Running a big online business can be like captaining a large ship. As the business grows, it can become less nimble and harder to adapt to new trends and changes in the industry. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But, with the right kind of foresight and knowledge of the online business landscape, you can steer your business to even greater heights. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is where Joel Stevenson thrives. With his experience as Vice President of Wayfair and now as CEO of Yesware, an email outreach software, he's helped take multiple industry giants to new heights of success.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode, Joel gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at his approach to growing businesses and explains some of the unique challenges that large businesses face as they scale. We discuss the differences between growing eCommerce vs SaaS businesses, and how to navigate the competitiveness of mature markets. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Joel also shares details of Vendasta’s recent acquisition of Yesware, explaining how the acquisition came about, and how he worked to make Yesware an attractive asset for interested buyers. According to Joel,</span></p> <blockquote> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I really tried to rebuild the company in such a way that it would be</span></em> <strong><em>acquisition friendly</em></strong><em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">. We tried to have a</span></em> <strong><em>minimal overhead cost structure</em></strong><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. We tried to be</span></em> <strong><em>very efficient</em></strong><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. We</span></em> <strong><em>paid down a ton of tech debt</em></strong><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. My goal was for somebody to see our product, and see that the business itself is in good shape, and know that it would be</span></em> <strong><em>easy to take it over and really accelerate it</em></strong><