I've received a bunch of emails asking me what's up with NHD? The short answer is, I've been too busy to post here, but I'm working more than ever. The goal of NHD hasn't changed, I still aim to help aspiring entrepreneurs fire their bosses and make it online, and still do this by:
- Offering remote internships - This is now done in partnership with NichePursuits. You can apply here if you're keen.
- Working on already established businesses which we have purchased. This allows people we work with to learn a lot faster and to experience a much broader range of operations when compared to a smaller website that is just starting. Also, we’ve seen that we can make a lot more money a lot quicker by scaling existing businesses and spotting opportunities which others haven’t seen or don’t have the systems to exploit.
- Bringing people down to Valle de Bravo, Mexico - There are currently 10 people here working in our little community. They are working on a few different 7 figure businesses I'm running. This group is super smart and have added over two million dollars in value in the two short months they've been here. It's not all work though, we have our Olympics (currently tied 2-2, black and blue from paintball, with ultimate frisbee and poker as the remaining events), and are headed to an all-inclusive resort this month to get some much needed R&R. We're looking for another 6 people or so each quarter. Apply here if you're interested!
I'm spending most of my time working on WiredInvestors (of which I am co-founder).
WiredInvestors brokers, buys and manages 7 figure online businesses. We raise money from silicon valley investors, purchase the business, and then try to 3-6x that business ourselves. We recently acquired a majority stake in LongTailPro, and have doubled the business in just 3 months. Here's the case study if you're interested.
I will be posting regularly on WiredInvestors showing how we improve the businesses we purchase.
NHD will relaunch the podcast, of which a couple episodes per month will focus on case studying Wired businesses.
Details of the last 12 months.
My last major update was back on June 1, 2015. Check it out if you're interested. Back then I was working on two passion projects - one was Stepify, a SaaS tool to facilitate interactive online learning, and the other was the Partnership Gauntlet - which was a way to partner with people and work on specialized entrepreneurship sites that I thought showed promise.
Stepify is still in the background and mainly being used on my own businesses as both a course platform and as a content upgrade + lead magnet platform, but I decided not to put in the additional effort of turning it into a paid SaaS product.
The Partnership Gauntlet had two successes and 4 dropouts. One of those successes was WiredInvestors which I believe is shaping up to be a fucking massive business. Because of this, I decided to work on it full-time as of October 2015.
The first major deal we closed was on LongTailPro. We have published a case study on how we doubled revenue and positioned it for a much higher multiple flip over at WiredInvestors. We're currently closing another deal (also 7 figures) which is a niche affiliate site - a strict publishing play.
My vision for WiredInvestors and NoHatDigital
My long-term vision hasn't really changed. I still want to help aspiring entrepreneurs, and I've discovered the best way to do this is in person. A huge percentage of the people that came and stayed in Valle for 2+ months are now making 5 figures/mo, which is something that gives me great pride. I also still think physical community is the thing that's lacking most in this industry (and in most modern-day life).
WiredInvestors is my way of bringing people down to Mexico and offering high performers something substantial. By the end of the year I plan on setting up a second community in Europe or Asia, and scaling it to the point where we are doing 2-4 deals per quarter, meaning we'd bring in 6-12 people/quarter. Eventually I'd like to have 3 communities on 3 continents, and 50+ new people coming through them each year. This would allow my family and I to have a digital nomad(ish) lifestyle with a solid community of peers, and a healthy mix of business, fun and travel.
The longer and more ambitious plan is to then build micro-schools in each of these locations, and offer an alternative to university that involves spending a year traveling the world while learning online entrepreneurship through active application, with guidance from myself and other accomplished Wired entrepreneurs. If this is something that you'd like to be involved in, feel free to contact me.
Ilya says:
Good to see that you’re back Hayden! :)
I didn’t know that you were one of the creators of Wired Investors. Very cool!
For those of you who are thinking about doing the internship: DO IT! I completed it about a month ago and even though I’ve been making a pretty solid amount of money per month from my Amazon sites, the internship showed me how I could 10x my income with less work on my part.
If you’re just starting out the internship will give you what you’ll learn in your first year of online money-making in 4 weeks.
Cheers!
Hayden says:
Thanks Ilya :)
Jane says:
So to bring up the tacky topic again, but what’s your take on PBN’s these days Hayden? Do you believe it’s worthwhile to build one or do you believe it isn’t worth it risk-reward wise?
Sorry for not “just giving it a try so to see for myself”, there’s a lot of investment in setting this up and I would highly value an opinion of someone who has vast experience in this field.
Thanks, Jane.
Hayden says:
They still work, but there’s always a risk you will get destroyed. Just don’t make the mistake of blogging to publicly about them :D
Jane says:
Thanks Hayden!
Loren says:
Welcome back! Just checked in on NHD a week ago to see if I’d missed anything new. Was great to wake up to a new post today. So many good things! LTP was a great acquisition and good job scaling it. Very impressive.
Hayden says:
Thanks!
Fazl says:
Hayden,
What you’re proposing here is quite remarkable. Websites generally sell for much less of a multiple than stocks or real estate and in many cases, even small businesses. What you’re attempting to do is to connect the 7-figure website marketplace to the capital markets world – I don’t think that’s ever been done before.
Hayden says:
There’s a big gap in the marketplace. If you can bring a business to a 3mm/yr run-rate however you can then sell out to tech or media companies with decent P/E ratios. An acquisition at 5- 6x would immediately drive their stock prices up. The problem is it’s not worth them even looking at a business doing just 1mm/yr – so you can either do multiple acquisitions in the same vertical, or you can improve the businesses drastically (or in our case, both).
chris says:
THanks for the update Hayden, and Congratulations on WiredInvestor.com. Hope to visit you in Mexico some day, and looking forward to your future success.
Rob says:
“We’re currently closing another deal (also 7 figures) which is a niche affiliate site – a strict publishing play.”
Can you write a little more about this? What affiliate sites can have the potential to be valued at 7 figures? I guess these aren’t typical Amazon review websites but rather quite popular blogs with multiple income streams, am I right? Some insights, examples etc on this topic would be very interesting to read.
Thanks and good luck with Wired Investors!
Hayden says:
It’s an authority in the vaping/e-cigarette niche, gets about 1.2mm pageviews/mo.
Rohit says:
Great to see the update Hayden! I’ve been wondering where you were all these months. I really wish you good luck in your vision. I’m so pumped up myself. I can only imagine how excited you would be. I think the world needs people like you to create universities for the stuff you teach.
But I find it hard to believe, that you need to setup 3 communities to be able to travel with your family!!