Jamal Muse has sold three ecom brands. He’s done over $20 million in sales across Amazon and Shopify, and for a while he was teaching maths at a high school during the day and building a business that made millions at night. Completely faceless, which he loved because he’s an introvert through and through.
I had him on the Infinite Income Podcast because most people never think about selling their business until somebody makes them an offer, and by then it’s usually too late to fix the stuff that kills the price. We got into what makes a business sellable, how he thinks about spending around $300,000 a month on ads, the deal he almost walked away from, and the part nobody warns you about, which is what happens after the money lands.
If the business needs you, the price drops
The first thing Jamal said is that the business has to be sellable, and the biggest thing that ruins that is when it depends on you. If it’s a one man show, a buyer sees key man risk. Somebody might still buy it, but the valuation goes way down.
His last brand had four employees. Two did customer service so they had coverage around the clock, one handled supply chain and logistics, and one ran email and social. Jamal ran the ads himself. When he sold, the buyers took on all four.
I’ve always been a service guy, and the downside of service is it’s attached to you. A product business can have worse margins, but it’s way easier to hand to someone else. Either way the rule is the same. If you can’t step out, nobody’s paying top dollar to step in.
The numbers have to match from day one
This one surprised me a little. Jamal said the fastest way to kill a deal is when your numbers don’t add up. A buyer sees your numbers early, gets interested, puts in an offer, then digs into your books. If what they find doesn’t match what you showed them, even one small expense you forgot to mention, it plants a seed of distrust and the whole conversation changes.
On his third exit he worked with a broker who was ruthless before they ever went to market. He didn’t want Jamal to tell him the numbers, he wanted access to the ad account and the store so he could find out himself. Jamal said it was tough, but when the buyers did their due diligence it was seamless because everything was already there.
Compare that to his first exit. No broker of his own, no attorney of his own, just him on calls with the buyer’s whole team. At one point they found something and tried to knock $200k off the price. He was sitting there holding his hand over his son’s mouth to keep him quiet, and he just told them if that’s what they wanted to do, he’d walk. They came back about 45 minutes later and said fine, let’s do it on your terms.
He was the first to admit his negotiation skills were trash back then lol. It worked out, but I wouldn’t plan on getting that lucky.
Get an attorney, and don’t let AI play lawyer
Jamal used AI the whole time to understand what the attorneys were saying, which is smart. But when the buyer’s side sent back a redlined agreement, he ran it through AI and it told him to push back hard on a bunch of stuff. He sent his thoughts to his attorney, and some of it the attorney agreed with, but a lot of it was totally out of touch with how these deals normally go.
So use it to learn, sure. Just don’t go cheap on the attorney.
How he thinks about $300,000 a month in ads
He’s spending about $300,000 a month on ads right now, so roughly 10 grand a day. But he said the first time he set a $50 a day budget he was freaking out. Your idea of what’s too much changes as you spend more and make more.
The way he gets there is he doesn’t start at 10 grand a day. He starts at 100 bucks and turns it up as things work.
What blew my mind is his target return. In the service world I’m looking for 4x or better. In his world, breaking even on the first sale is good. Somewhere around 1.4 to 1.8 is normal and anything over 2 is a great day. The reason is he knows customers come back and buy again, so he watches the blended number across the whole store, not just what the ad did that day. He also said the sweet spot for price is $40 to $80. Under 40 the cost to get a customer eats you, and over 80 it stops being an impulse buy.
Start the next thing before you sell
This was my favorite part. When Jamal sold his first business, he was sitting on seven figures in cash for the first time in his life, watching his daughter play with Lego, thinking, okay, now what? He said it was bittersweet.
So on his third exit he had his next thing already running. The deal closed May 7, the wire landed May 27, and there was zero change in his day because he was already building. Now he’s buying brands, which he’s never done before, and he’s pumped about it.
He also told me about a mentor of his who sold a company to PepsiCo for $110M, and the guy said he was happier during the build. I get that. I told Jamal about the party I threw when I first hit a million a month. Some guy asked whose place it was, I told him the whole story, and he just said “cool.” It sent me into a low for a while, because I’d chased that my whole life and nobody cared. I even took a six month sabbatical and felt worse. When I came back to work I felt way better.
Your family doesn’t care about the number
Jamal’s kids see his ads around Dubai and their classmates hype them up, and they just shrug. They’d rather he take them to the park and kick a ball around. He said the hardest thing for him is giving time, and that if he was doing it for them, what they need right now is him, not another big trip.
He’s been married 15 years and he said the thing that helped most was learning how to communicate early, before anything was broken, instead of waiting until the marriage was on the ropes.
My takeaway
Build the business like someone else is going to run it, because if you ever sell it, they will. Keep your numbers clean, get the right people around you for the deal, and have the next thing going before the wire hits. And if you’re doing all of this for somebody else’s approval, I’d just say they probably don’t care as much as you think. Do it because you want to keep growing.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
