[Top Agency Series] The Journey from Startup to Acquisition With Alex Chan

Alex Chan is the COO and Co-founder of AntiSocial Solutions, a social-first agency focused on storytelling, user journey, and brand voice through social media platforms. With over 20 years of experience in business development, corporate operations, and digital marketing, Alex has helped businesses of all sizes build powerful professional brands, contributing to the agency’s significant growth serving clients across Canada and the US for over a decade. Beyond his professional achievements, Alex is also an investor and founder of Mascot Brewery, showcasing his diverse expertise and entrepreneurial spirit.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [02:45] How to successfully scale a social media agency from scratch
• [07:30] The wild early days of internet advertising and valuations
• [19:50] How content creation drives social media success
• [23:05] Crucial pitching skills for landing corporate clients
• [25:40] Hiring the right talent to fuel business growth
• [30:10] Essential steps to avoid burnout in your team
• [48:05] Insights into effectively navigating mergers and acquisitions
• [54:25] Alex’s top business resources and productivity tools

In this episode…

What makes an entrepreneur successful in navigating the ever-evolving landscape of social media and digital marketing? How do they manage to build and sell multiple businesses while maintaining a strong company culture? What exactly happens when they decide to sell their thriving agency to a larger corporation?

Alex Chan shares his experience of starting and scaling a marketing agency in today’s highly competitive digital landscape. From understanding the pivotal role of social media to the intricacies of mergers and acquisitions, Alex delves into the challenges and victories of developing a business from the ground up. He offers candid reflections on hiring, pitching to clients, and the complexities that come with integrating two companies’ cultures post-acquisition.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Alex Chan, Co-founder and COO of AntiSocial Solutions, to discuss the importance of hiring the right talent, maintaining a strong company culture, and kindness in the workplace. He also delves into the complexities of mergers and acquisitions, emphasizing the need for a cultural fit and strategic alignment when merging with larger entities. The conversation provides valuable lessons on scaling a business, managing financial growth, and ensuring a smooth transition for both employees and clients during an acquisition.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Alex Chan on LinkedIn
• AntiSocial Solutions
• Break
• Monday
• Slack
• Asana
• Bootcamp
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Special Mention(s):

• Daryl Louie on LinkedIn
• Bloor Street Warehouse
• The Jim Pattison Group
• Save-On-Foods
• Thinkingbox

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “To be an expert in something, it takes about that amount of time, and we really caught a good wave and caught an upward trend during that time.”
• “You’re always learning how to pitch really, from the start from day one.”
• “If your gut tells you that the culture and that the fit in the new group isn’t right, and that’s not where you want to be, you should listen to that.”
• “As much as I would love to say I know everything, the older I get, the more I realize how little I know.”
• “Good fences make great neighbors; you need to really define what you expect out of someone.”

Action Steps:

1. Focus on nurturing relationships with clients. Building strong relationships can lead to significant milestones and opportunities for growth.
2. Hire for character, especially kindness. Employees with a propensity for kindness can aid in creating a supportive and growth-oriented company culture.
3. Continuously refine your pitching skills. As your business scales, adapting and learning how to pitch effectively to different levels within organizations can unlock new partnerships and sales opportunities.
4. Keep organized financial records and clear documentation. Effective organization of company finances and processes facilitates smoother acquisitions and partnerships.
5. Embrace adaptability in business strategies. The story of AntiSocial Solutions showcases the value of being able to pivot and adapt strategies quickly during unexpected situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I’ve Alex Chan of AntiSocial Solutions. And Alex, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. This is part of the top agency series. And we were just chatting about selling a company, which you did. I, Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey actually runs the Second Bite Podcast, where he pairs agencies with private equity and helps sell agencies. So it’s really interesting, because he finds sometimes people make more on the second bite than they do on the first, right. Because private equity sells again. So it’s just interesting to hear the valuation of the agency space and everything like that. And Jason Swenk also has had on who has an agent he sold, built his agency up to eight figures and sold it and then started a group to help agency owners. He also started buying up agencies as well. And so he also talked about the landscape, and of the valuation agency space. And that was also two interviews on that one, those are really good. So check those out.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. So Alex, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host. So they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, and most importantly, run their business. You know, for me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking for ways to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I’m excited to introduce Alex Chan. He’s an entrepreneur who’s created and sold multiple businesses. He’s got experience in mergers and acquisitions. He’s the Founder of AntiSocial Solutions, which was founded in 2014. It was acquired by Thinkingbox Media and Design. The company operates in cities all over Canada, US Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, New York. And, Alex, I’m excited to have you. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Just start us off with AntiSocial and what you do, and I’m going to, for people listening to the audio, there is a video version, I’m going to share their screen. Beautiful looking website. So Alex, tell us more about AntiSocial Solutions.

Alex Chan 3:09

AntiSocial Solutions. Yeah, you got it. We were founded in 2014. We started off mainly as a social media agency, it was kind of during a time where social media was, had been around for quite a bit, but was still in the process of getting picked up by companies. The reality was that nobody really knew exactly how to market there. I remember at one point, Disney saying that, you know, every light that they got on their Facebook page was worth $1 per person, which we definitely know that that wouldn’t be the case in today’s time. 

The cost of managing was so high back then, that no real large agency knew how to come up with a process behind it. Now unfortunately, we were young, we had a lot of team members on the team that were young. And as a result, they live and breathe social media well ahead of other large agency owners or even eight experienced agency people. And when we think about social media, the reality is that it’s really only been around for 10-15 years, and to be an expert in something, you know, that takes about that amount of time. 

So we really caught a good wave and caught an upward trend during that time. And social media started to take off. Because it was such an easy way for restaurants to acquire new customers that those became our first set of clientele for us to kind of cut our teeth, learn how to build processes that we then were able to apply to the corporate world.

Jeremy Weisz 4:38

What made you start the agency? I know that you had a brewery. I don’t know if that was kind of the inception of why you got into this in the first place.

Alex Chan 4:50

Before this, I was just what you just call a publisher. I started goofing around the Internet back in the 90s as a kid and then around the 2000s. We actually ran a number of websites and collectively those websites had over a million unique visitors per day. You know, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have sold that network. But at the time we

Jeremy Weisz 5:13

Were they on specific topics or what were you —

Alex Chan 5:17

Back then, you know, there really weren’t a lot of websites like there were a few smaller websites like or like Ebaum’s World and like Google didn’t exist, YouTube didn’t exist. A funny video website, funny picture website could generate tens of thousands of viewers really overnight and sustain it overnight. Once people knew you were just because they didn’t know who to go to at the time, their search engines were based off of Lycos, AltaVista, which were okay. And even then someone loading up a computer wouldn’t necessarily know to go to those websites first. So we were able to really capture the college crowd during that time. And that’s kind of weird websites like Collegehumor. I think a Break.com, which then later got acquired by Lionsgate started to really build generate traffic, and we were actually working with a lot of them during that time, just because back then there weren’t a lot of us

Jeremy Weisz 6:12

Do you end up selling those sites? 

Alex Chan 6:15

Yeah, we ended up selling those sites. That was during a time when I was living in Vancouver, I met a team in Toronto that also had another network of sites. You know, it’s, as a publisher, all of your revenue is very heavily based on ad revenue, and it has not changed in 20-30 years, it’s always it’s always the case. And at the time, we kind of wanted to move closer to the source where we were no longer the ones kind of receipt generating clicks, generating views in order to receive revenue, but rather to launch her own ad network and kind of get out and build their own stuff. So that’s when we moved to Toronto. In hindsight, we should have kept all of our assets because they were such high traffic generating websites, we could have actually just been our own ad network with our own site. But we sold our websites and our network and then used that money to launch your own network from there.

Jeremy Weisz 7:08

How do you evaluate that at the time? Are you evaluating revenue? Is it for profit? How are you creating evaluation? What to sell these things for? Because the Wild West at the time was a little bit, right? 

Alex Chan 7:21

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s still very much so, you have some things that don’t change, though. And I wish I knew a lot of this back then, which is probably where, you know, finding a good mentor is necessary as you grow. Ultimately, your business is always based on your net value, you always think your business is worth a million dollars, because you make a million dollars. But if you only get to keep $1, at the end of the day, why would anyone want to purchase you for a million dollars? That doesn’t change regardless of what type of company you have. Now, there’s certain industries where something is worth more, and there’s certain aspects of a business or assets in there that might be worth more.

But the reality is that the person giving you money still wants to know when they’re going to make their money back. So that was very true. Back then, when it came to selling the network and the websites, they looked at our net revenue, the potential of net revenue, what they could grow into, what they could sell it for, what they could generate from it. And they gave us kind of numbers based on that. At the time, it was based on somewhere between eight months to three years of your net revenue, depending on how large your site was, and what kind of assets you had around it, and your niche, of course.

Jeremy Weisz 8:29

So what made you ultimately then fast forward to starting AntiSocial? Why did you start? 

Alex Chan 8:37

Well, we were always really good at SEO, we were always really good at web development. That was kind of all there was back then. And as 2012 kicked in, we actually sold our affiliate network as well too. So that excel was actually completed in 2010. I moved to Whistler in 2011-2012. And I basically set up shop here and just called what I thought would be early retirement as we kind of continue to grow and build and launch new websites. Just because we were doing it in our spare time we started building new traffic. 

But one thing that we were never able to do was generate a lot of traffic through social media. So we started to spend time learning how to do it and ultimately teamed up with a couple people that knew it very well. My former business partner Daryl Louie, as well too. He was very well versed in social media at the time and had a few clients based in Vancouver. So I teamed up with him and brought in my business experience and web development experience. He decided to launch an agency focused on social media, mainly the power of my projects, but ultimately this company took off and those projects went to the side.

Jeremy Weisz 9:52

Just walk me through kind of like fast forward me through the different business ventures. So you start off you have a network of sites It sounds like somewhere in there is a brewery somewhere in there is AntiSocial. Anything before AntiSocial someone there is an affiliate network that you have built up and sold. So if we start chronologically, what are some of the different business ventures?

Alex Chan 10:18

Yeah, so coming from the network of sites and moving to Toronto, we built the affiliate network, the affiliate network got built up, that got sold around 2009-2010 came to Whistler. A good friend came up and told me about a venture on the east coast to open up a restaurant, which was one of the warehouse group chains. So that would be Bloor Street warehouse. And then we invested in that, from there learned a lot about the restaurant industry and decided to produce our own beer, because we’re buying beer from everyone else and removing a lot of it. So then invested in a brewery to kind of add to that, and in that process, and as society was growing as well, too. And then social media was serving as our kind of a marketing arm for all these different assets. 

Jeremy Weisz 11:08

Okay, so we’re AntiSocial, parkour the evolution of services, with AntiSocial because it’s obvious you started off with social media. And then how did it evolve from there

Alex Chan 11:22

From social media, that leads to basically everything else as well, too, right? And marketing is, and when we talk about marketing, it’s, especially in today’s age, like a 360 marketing campaign involves everything, your website, your social, your different channels of social, which are all completely uniquely different. And then you’ve got your media buying, which is Google AdWords, AdSense, Facebook ads, your website, SEO, on top of that, you know, where do you invest your time and money at the end of the day. 

So with our clients at the time, social media was in demand, nobody knew how to do it, restaurants knew that it was their ticket to get people in the door. And so our first clients were very heavily based in the restaurant industry. At the time, around 2014-2015. People were really just re sharing everything on social media, nobody was actually creating original content. And nobody really understood what that meant for society at that time. Fortunately, because I already had another number of publishing websites that were already creating content, we knew the value of it. 

There’s the old saying, and still to this day is that content is king. It’s why we’re having this chat now. And as a result, we decided to launch a photo video arm and we started capturing photo and video photography for the restaurants, including that in our packages is a mandatory purchase. Because if you try to sell it to them, they’ll never buy it so it’s easier to sell it in a bundle. Once we started shooting photo video content for our clients, though, then all of a sudden that got us noticed by bigger corporate clients.

Jeremy Weisz 12:58

So I want to talk about your first clients and how you got your first clients. So talk about how you got your first clients. What was the first memorable milestone client

Alex Chan 13:15

In Vancouver they were actually already a client with Daryl at the time because he was already working with them as a freelancer but he didn’t have his own agency yet created at the time. They’re a local pub group in Vancouver called the Donnelly Group, they actually at the time were really dominating in terms of the clubs, clubs space, because we’re working with them. We also worked with their main competitor, which was called Blueprint. And that ultimately led to basically every restaurant in Vancouver, every restaurant pub and nightclub in Vancouver, kind of either having a conversation with them to manage or even actually taking the project on.

Jeremy Weisz 13:54

And then fast forward a little bit, what was another milestone from a client perspective because I know you’ve worked with companies like Fairmount, 7-11. And many more, what was another milestone?

Alex Chan 14:07

Yeah, I’d say that we’re big. Our first big corporate client was one of Jim Pattison companies. We started working with Save On Foods, which is big in Vancouver. They basically came on and said, We need social and we don’t know how to do it. We pitched them with what we thought was the right package for them. And as we worked with them throughout that year, they started to lead Photo Video, more community management, more management and more posts. 

Jeremy Weisz 14:37

What do they do?

Alex Chan 14:39

They’re a grocery chain. Yeah, they’re probably I’d like to say the second largest, maybe the largest second largest. They basically hardly front turn.

Jeremy Weisz 14:50

How did they find you?

Alex Chan  14:53

They saw a lot of our photo video content. And then at the time, there weren’t a lot of companies doing social media because if you went to some of the bigger agencies like the cassettes, the advertising, there’s another company called invoke hit, oh MDs, right? Like really global agencies, they were not willing to touch social media at all, the cost of them to even look at your social media would have been anywhere between $30,000 to $60,000 a month. And with no real ROI coming from social at that time, there was no real desire for any corporate client to invest at that level.

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