EMERGE Commerce CEO Ghassan Halazon Shares What It Takes to Scale, Acquire, and Survive in E-Commerce

E-commerce can look glamorous from the outside, yet very few founders talk honestly about the pressure that comes with volatility, acquisitions, debt, and public markets. In this episode of the Startup CEO Show, Mark MacLeod sits with EMERGE Commerce CEO Ghassan Halazon to explore the full arc of a company that grew fast, hit a wall, and then fought its way back with a new, sharper strategy.

They dive into the decisions that shaped EMERGE’s rebuild, the lessons Ghassan learned across 15 years in the industry, and what it takes to operate with discipline in a space that changes every month. This is a grounded, honest discussion for anyone interested in founder mindset, resilience, and long-term thinking.

Here’s the full conversation.

Mark MacLeod:

Welcome to the Startup CEO Show. I’m your host, Mark MacLeod. In this episode, I sit down with Ghassan Halazon, co-founder and CEO of EMERGE Commerce.

Ghassan’s on a 15-year journey as an e-commerce CEO. Over a dozen brands, he’s done over a billion in GMB, he’s sold companies, he now is a public acquirer of companies, and he’s taken EMERGE through a big turnaround, which he covered on this episode. So if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur, especially, you’re going to want to tune in, but there’s lots of lessons here for entrepreneurs in all sectors.

I really hope you enjoy this episode. Ghassan, welcome to the Startup CEO Show. It’s a true pleasure to have you here.

How are you doing today?

Ghassan Halazon:

I’m great. Thanks, Mark. Nice to be with you here and good to be back.

Mark MacLeod:

Yeah, yeah. It’s been a long time since you and I chatted, so really looking forward to this. For folks who don’t know, just to set context for what we’re going to talk about, could you tell us about Emerge Commerce?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, so Emerge is in many ways a second coming of sorts. I’ve been in the e-commerce game for over 15 years now, building, buying, selling, restructuring e-com companies for a living, and EMERGE was founded as a sort of next-generation e-commerce portfolio company. And we did so acquiring early on distressed e-commerce companies and then sort of graduated to more niche market leaders with a track record of profitability.

We were diversified and decentralized in our first iteration of the model. And today, EMERGE has sort of evolved into a much more focused portfolio, grocery and golf verticals in e-commerce and omni-channel. And we do so across Canada and the US, but with a maniacal focus on what we’ve learned, which I’m happy to go through today, and sort of a less-is-more mindset.

And everything that we do is tied to brand and community building and really building lasting businesses.

Mark MacLeod:

Interesting. What made you pick grocery and golf as verticals?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, so once upon a time, EMERGE had about 120 million GMV across everything from grocery and golf, which we’re still in today, as I said, to pets, outdoor gear, experiences. And so we have this eclectic group of brands and assets. And the idea or the aspiration back then in 1.0 was that we would build this sort of constellation software or Berkshire Hathaway of e-commerce.

We pretty quickly found out that e-commerce and consumer, in general, is much more fickle and much more hands-on than software is. And then these boring cashflow style businesses out there that folks are rolling up. And so we really needed to buy stuff that exhibited best-in-class customer lifetime value relative to customer acquisition costs.

That’s a key metric or guiding principle of ours from an analytical perspective. But more than that, as I said, we really wanted to find and double down on lasting brands. And so you needed to see that with community. You needed to see that with customer experience. And yes, we wanted businesses to be growing and profitable. We also wanted a big opportunity.

And so both those verticals, which happened to be Emerge’s original DNA when we went public about five years ago, you know, we kind of went back to them because we realized, A, we understood them very well. B, we had market leadership positions in them. C, we had a huge TAM in each of them.

We think there’s a multi-hundred-million-dollar opportunity in both of those verticals. And that’s both organically and through acquiring a series of businesses in our respective niches.

Mark MacLeod:

I saw True Local as one of your companies. I was a customer many, many years ago when I first got into CrossFit and suddenly needed to eat ridiculous amounts of calories. And of course, protein had to be a lot of those calories.

I don’t know if they did this just in our gym, but our gym was promoting True Local. And then I saw my buddy Adrian. Adrian and I were the ones doing the Tulum event together.

And he had the founder of True Local on his podcast. And it sounded like a tough business to run.

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, you know what? I think now that the dust is settled, and what I would say is the verdict is out on the model and the business, I always like to say, number one, you know, True Local is a brand and a community like very few others. It’s a very special business that intertwines between local farmers and suppliers with customers that care about their local supply chain and want transparency from where their food source is, and genuinely care about supporting local.

In a year like this, where buy Canadian and support local is front and center, that’s been a huge tailwind to the model. But originally, building that model from scratch for the founders that came before us, there was a lot of heavy lifting. You needed to figure out your supply chain. You needed to convince farmers and suppliers to get online on a region-by-region basis, which, to their credit, they were able to unlock, unlike any other player nationally. So True Local is the only national player that does this. There are other smaller regional folks, but we’re number one in scale, but also the only national player.

And I think once that foundation was set, you know, when we were able to sort of come in to True Local, it was more about right sizing the business and taking a data-driven approach, i.e. growing up the business to start making specific choices around where to double down, how to price the product, obviously how to elevate the customer experience in certain ways through technology and a bit of AI lately.

And I think that like when you look at the model and the TAM, and you know e-commerce quite well, Mark, one of the largest hidden gems, and I don’t think they’re necessarily a secret anymore, in all of DTC is a company called ButcherBox in the US, and that is a $500 million revenue business bootstrapped from the ground up.

And you know this as well as I do, you cannot reach hundreds of millions bootstrapped in a broken model or in a very difficult model. That’s not to say it’s not a hands-on model, which it is, but scale and profitability are available both at $500 million and our level with EMERGE, which by the way, I mean we’re approaching sort of $40 million GMV now collectively between grocery and golf today, so it’s a more streamlined portfolio, but we have scale and profit and cash flow.

So I think that’s to say it’s very hands-on, but at the end of the day, compared to all the hundreds of e-commerce models that we’ve screened and the tens of businesses that I’ve personally operated, whether it’s acquired, restructured, sold, I can tell you True Local has some of the best CLTV to CAC ratios out there, and that’s a testament to the brand and the model.

Mark MacLeod:

Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it for sure. All right, so food, I get that, we all eat. Golf, especially in the context of a North American market, feels seasonal, so does that create lumpy performance for you?

Ghassan Halazon:

It’s a good question. We kind of look at grocery and golf in tandem as sort of seasonal parallels to each other in a way, you know, get True Local in Q1, you have your sort of new you and health focus, which is the biggest time of the year, and correspondingly, the lowest CAC available is in those early times. In fact, we’re celebrating 10 years of True Local this January, so that’s going to be a big deal for us campaign-wise.

The golf is a little different, and it’s actually a little nuanced, maybe to your surprise, but Q2 naturally is the start of golf season, so no surprise there, it’s huge, and that was a big reason why EMERGE did the numbers that we did in Q2. And a big part of that was the new acquisition we made, a company called Tee2Green, so Q2 is a pretty clear cut. Q3 is also mostly golf season strong, starts tapering down in September, October, obviously, by then things tighten up, although the nice weather right now has been helpful at keeping the flow and the momentum going on golf.

And then Q4, interestingly enough, part of our business, specifically the experiences and tea times part under underpar.com, which is the market leader in Ontario for discounted experiences and available in California, Arizona, Florida, and other golf states, is actually quite solid because golf courses come to us for their pre-sale vouchers for next season. So they’re discounting, and it’s sort of a cash flow advantage for these courses to pick up all that cash, and then the redemptions happen in April, May, June, July.

And so it actually is a pretty solid quarter for experiences, less so for some of the equipment and apparel, although Black Friday, Cyber Monday are a big boon to that. But then Q1 is sort of where it gets quieter on the golf side. But fortunately in the U.S., especially in California, our largest market in the U.S., the weather is nice all year round, so that offsets that too. So it’s a little bit of that effect.

Mark MacLeod:

Got it. Cool. So you sort of alluded to some of this already in terms of the importance of LTV to CAC, kind of these lasting brands, but what else is on your checklist when you’re looking for an ideal kind of target?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, no, it’s a good question, and that mindset has evolved over time. I think we’ve moved from what I would characterize as sexy and high-flying to frankly more boring, more consistent, more cash-flowing today or this year, rather than down the line. And so a great example is Tee2Green, the acquisition we just made.

It’s one of those old-school 38-year-old business. The founder and operator bootstrapped it, sole proprietor, never raised capital, and has a long-term relationship with one of the big banks. And so we came into this business and in a way were quite opportunistic in the sense that the founder wanted out, had other personal reasons to move to Florida, and so forth. And we were able to structure this deal quite flexibly. So we got it at two and a half times EBITDA, a bit less than that.

We got five-year terms on the payment plan. We had eight-year terms on the inventory that we acquired. We acquired a couple of million bucks in inventory, and you’re talking Callaway, TaylorMade, Adidas, Puma type inventory, like you know, top-notch stuff. And so obviously that’s a really solid structure and multiple, and it’s not an everyday thing.

But I would say we side on that sort of equation where we can plug something in and, importantly, have that synergy on day one, right? Unlike in our past lives, we were buying pets and then outdoor gear and then you know golf and grocery, nothing to do with each other, no real synergy.

Here, the reason we were able to grow Tee2Green 31% in the second quarter, which woke a lot of people up to what we were doing again after being in the trenches and turning around the company over the last couple of years, was the fact that on day one we were able to apply everything we knew about digital ads meets golf as well as bring our reach.

We have 400,000 golfers that we can now promote Tee2Green’s retail stores, their road shows. I should have mentioned they do about 70 different pop-up stores across Ontario. Every weekend, they’ll do two shows, you know, in Kingston, in Sarnia, in Newmarket, and people will flock to these shows for all this discounted equipment from prior years.

Think like clearance or outlet style hubs. And so we’re suddenly with our advertising and with the reach we brought to it, these nice little shows turned into mini rock concerts. People were lined up, and we got great content out of it for future ads.

I think it’s really transformed our thinking that the EMERGE of today is looking to acquire stuff that’s actually already working, already profitable, not necessarily crazy growth, and digitize, modernize, and apply all our analytical frameworks to expanding and accelerating the growth.

Mark MacLeod:

Interesting. So would you say you’re looking for diamonds in the rough?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, to some extent. I’ll tell you what we’re not looking for. We’re not looking for growth at all costs; that’s a given.

We have no interest in venture-backed companies unless they’re de-stressed. So we’re not looking to jump into the next round or be the bigger next fool, kind of thing. We’re way more interested in saying, okay, this is a smooth operator, him or her have done this, been through the trenches, have a really tight team and a recipe that works well in today’s relatively volatile environment.

And then we’re going to come in and work our magic, just like we did with Tee2Green, just like we’ve been doing with True Local after essentially transitioning the founders out. There was a period where the business came down from the peak, essentially, which is when they left. And over the last couple of years, we’ve really reignited that growth, but we’ve done so at an increasingly profitable clip.

And we only do that now because, again, we figured out what we do well and we figured out what to be focusing on. And so we have no interest in coming up to clean up after folks. It’s too much work to reverse engineer profitability when it’s not already there. It’s just not our jam. It might be someone else’s jam. Our jam is for there to be cash flow and profit today, which means less pressure on us to execute. And as you know, when you have less pressure, you tend to do a better job and have a bit more freedom with what you’re looking to apply.

Mark MacLeod:

In the beginning of your career, you were in investment banking. Were you in this vertical? Is that where you got some of the inspiration for this?

Ghassan Halazon:

They call it a recovering investment banking career. I don’t know. I think, look, certainly having done a couple of years on the street in New York with Citi, the Miami at Georgetown, and all of that early influence of capital markets, capital allocation, M&A, capital raising, of course, has come from those areas.

I had started my career in e-commerce at 25. I guess you can call it a career now. It’s been 15 years. But I moved from Wall Street, which at the time we had really tough years on Wall Street, 2008 to 2010 was my stint there. I think as time goes on, the slogan is I was an investment banker.

But no, I was actually a couple of years on Wall Street, just kind of grinding out, trying to survive really tough times. But my first iteration was not M&A driven. We built a really cool company. We’re in the Groupon space at the time, and we built a zero-to-$30 million company. And then we merged with our largest competitor as that deal space fizzled. And so we had a couple of employees in my mid-20s, and it was sort of the first thing that I touched. And it was this feeling of invincibility at the time.

And obviously, as the space fizzled, we got punched in the face a couple of times. But I kind of came out of that experience thinking there’s got to be a smarter, more cost-effective way to scale e-commerce. And that was around the time that Shopify, who you know very well, and I loved your show with Tobi. Shopify and other enablement companies in e-commerce had started emerging, pardon the pun. And that paved the way for the bootstrap e-commerce entrepreneur of today.

Because before, you couldn’t do this. You had to have a huge dev team. It took money, it took time, and you were losing money. And so you had to be bailed out by that next round, even if it wasn’t called a bailout. But with these emerging technologies and platforms, you could now find eight people, you know, tucked away in somewhere remote running a one or two-million-dollar EBITDA company.

And that’s where the idea of EMERGE came from, which was merging e-commerce companies under a holding company and acquiring stuff that works today and is profiting today, and then helping them share in technology resources, back office. And that’s how this whole thing came about.

And truthfully, in what I call EMERGE 1.0 now, which was, you know, kind of that first three to five years, including the original GoPublic phase around the pandemic. I think the mistake we made in retrospect was that we went and acquired things that had nothing to do with each other, thinking that these businesses were consistent enough on their own and steady enough.

And so the problem was that a lot of these things peaked at the pandemic when everyone thought that was the new norm. This would become the starting point for more growth. Turns out a lot of that was artificial, and pretty much all of it came down from the peak at the same exact time, Mark.

Acquisition-driven companies like ourselves were loaded up with debt to acquire companies and minimize dilution. And that interest rates on that debt skyrocketed as, you know, those businesses declined, you know, causing this essentially perfect storm, right? And so that’s where we’re like, probably need to focus on fewer, bigger opportunities and go deeper into them rather than go broad. And that’s kind of what resulted in the EMERGE of today.

Mark MacLeod:

Okay. I want to talk a bunch about, yeah, about that transition. Also, life as a public company.

But you said something really interesting that I want to dig into first, like with Bytopia, you merged with a competitor. And that happens sometimes, where these conversations show up. Like, some of my clients tell me that competitors reach out, and they want to talk. And hey, should I talk to them? Like they have hesitation. So what was that experience like?

And do you have any recommendations for folks? I realize it’s a sample size of one, but, you know, any recommendations having gone through it?

Ghassan Halazon:

For folks getting reached out to, do you mean or?

Mark MacLeod:

Like, meaning someone’s listening or watching their competitors reached out to them. How do they approach that?

What did you learn going all the way through and marrying your competitor?

Ghassan Halazon:

Well, I never understood folks who shy away from learning what others have to offer, right?

Mark MacLeod:

I agree with that.

Ghassan Halazon:

You know, so someone calls you and says, hey, I have this, you know, wild idea. I think we’ll do great together, and let’s go to the moon and the stars. I think the immediate answer should be like, listen, sure. Maybe it’s not what we’re looking for at the moment, but I’m happy to hear what you have in mind, right?

Get that initial offer just to understand. Number one, wouldn’t it be interesting to understand for free what people are willing to value you at and what they are willing to offer you? That’s great. Now, some people say, well, I don’t want to be sharing all my competitive edge and tricks, and there’s a whole shebang, and you really don’t have to. So you can say, hey, you know, present me an offer. I’ll have to chat with my board and management team and so forth, and I’ll get back to you.

And, you know, if you negotiate in good faith and find this common ground, then it’s tit for tat, assuming the size is equal. If someone’s a billion-dollar company and the other one’s a $10 million company, then you have to make a decision. Are you willing to give a bit? Because they’re not going to buy you if you don’t share. So don’t feel like it’s kind of like the idea is saying who cares about your idea? Same thing, competitors, unless you have something super proprietary, don’t think they’re living and breathing and thinking of this.

They’re probably looking at 10 to 20 different things to buy. Like no one’s dreaming of, you know, your little P&L and a couple of things on your margin, like unless you have something super special to hold back on, which in which case, yeah, that makes sense. Don’t feel like everyone’s out to get you all the time. Like, no one cares, to be honest.

You know, and even I, when I look at, I mean, we were on the other side of this. We were looking at tens of different companies. We had tens of LOIs out. Like last thing on my mind was I’m going to steal their ideas if we don’t do this deal. I mean, hey, I learned a thing or two, but that’s fair game. So I would say, like, always be open to understanding, you know, what that looks like.

But in terms of like mindset, I think only the founder or only the CEO who’s being approached knows in their heart of hearts, you know, if they are willing to continue on the same journey, if there’s alignment philosophically, culturally, body language is important. There’s a lot that goes into whether these are the right people for you. That’s a totally different question on whether it’s the right time for you to sell.

Mark MacLeod:

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. You know, so I agree. Like, you don’t necessarily have to open up a kimono to get an offer, but obviously, the more you share, the more qualified the offer is, and so it’s a bit of a dance, right? And when I tell folks is like, show a little skin, they show a little skin, like, you know, it’s like back and forth, trust building. But if you get an LOI that’s based on nothing, that is worth nothing; it’s toilet paper. You know, so you have to disclose a bit.

Ghassan Halazon:

I think I take it for granted a little bit because we’ve been a public company for five years, and we’re naked out there, like, whatever, look up whatever you want. Now, obviously, operational chops and details around what we’re doing are next-level DD kind of thing. But like our audited financials are there. Our metrics are there for the last five years. Everything is out there.

And guess what? I’ll tell you for what it’s worth. I don’t see any other competitors beating us because of it. We’re still number one in our two verticals. So there you go. Like, it’s all out there for everyone to see. And it still doesn’t move the needle. So there’s not too much to worry about unless, again, there’s some proprietary technology that you don’t want to lift the veil on yet. And that’s fine. You can do that after a signed LOI, too.

Mark MacLeod:

Yeah. Yep. That’s fair. All right.

So let’s talk about going public. You know, one of the reasons why I moved on from FreshBooks, which was my last CFO gig, is because they were threatening to go public. And I use that word threatening very deliberately because I have no desire to ever be the CFO of a public company.

Ghassan Halazon:

You’re the one with the white beard, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Mark MacLeod:

That’s true. I’m also considerably older than you. But not only are you public, but you’re public on the TSXV, so the Junior Canadian Exchange, for any non-Canadian listeners. So you’re a truly brave soul. So, yeah, tell me about that decision, yeah, the whole process to go public, and then let’s unpack life as a public company.

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack, so I don’t know if we have enough time for all of that. But I’ll tell you that the EMERGE model that we built early on to take advantage of the opportunity of rolling up niche market leaders at reasonable multiples and, you know, sort of leverage our collective scale, leverage our ability to access capital, leverage our stock. All of these things made sense in the context of being a public company, right?

Being a public company gave you, on paper at least, access to all of the above. And the thing that jolted us to go public, for better or worse, was the pandemic craze. So e-commerce and a couple of other verticals, remember Zoom and some of the health tech stuff, these were like what they used to call back then, COVID darlings. I mean, it was a terrible term, especially with people suffering, but at the end of the day, e-commerce got lifted up.

And so we were approached, and the people around us in those early days were very heavily concentrated on Bay Street. So, Wall Street of Canada, for your international listeners. And so there was a tremendous appetite to raise capital for us in a very immediate fashion, with very flexible or open terms, common stock, no pref shares, no board seats, no nothing to go out and leverage this capital to acquire companies at less valuation or lower multiples than we were trading at or being valued at, which is the ultimate arbitrage for this sort of stuff, right?

And so, it was very compelling. We had a great pipeline in front of us. We were starting to do very well with our existing portfolio, which, as I said, constituted the grocery and the golf, and the actual reason for going was to propel and to accelerate what was already working. And with that capital early on, Mark, I got to tell you, it felt like the right decision when we went public, you know, in those early days, it kind of happened exactly as planned, if not better, early on.

In other words, we traded higher than we ever imagined. We were a $150-175 million company at the peak. We got the capital we wanted in short order. We took that capital. We matched it with debt, that equity capital. We matched it with a debt facility. And we went away. We went shopping and acquired great businesses, great brands like True Local.

We acquired a company called Wholesale Pet, which was like a three-million-dollar EBITDA business that we subsequently sold to Tiny as part of our kind of decision to zone in on grocery and golf and restructure the debt later on. And so we bought like credible, quality businesses.

The one flaw, and there were a few intertwined in this theme, but the flaw was that the miscalculation was that we bought things that, number one, turned out to be at the peak of their existence and not the start of a new wave. Ok, so timing was off. We matched it with debt, thinking revenue would go up, but instead, our debt levels were too high for where they leveled out. And interest rates going up obviously didn’t help anyone, especially debt-driven roll-ups.

So all in all, I think that was just a conundrum that, frankly, by the way, wiped out many e-commerce aggregators. They call them aggregators. They’re companies that bought e-commerce sites, Amazon sites. And these were like supposedly world-class operators. One of them is called Open Store, which is backed by Keith Raboy from Opendoor. And that business wrote off 95 percent of its book and wound down most of that business a couple of months ago.

Thrasio, the face of the Amazon roll-up, billions of dollars raised, went bankrupt and came out of bankruptcy. We came pretty damn close, I got to tell you, because we had a mountain of $32 million in debt with a business that was supposed to have seven, eight million in EBITDA, and suddenly had four million in EBITDA.

And so if you have four million in EBITDA, that sounds nice on a press release, but wait till you find out you have five, six million in debt servicing costs, interest costs, and payments owed to brands. So the result there was that we had to focus, and obviously, we made it not only survive, but now we’ve sort of made it to the other side, where we’ve eliminated 80 percent plus of our debt, paying down the debt with selling off these non-core businesses.

But I think I kind of detoured here to tell you what happened, but like your original point on being public, it makes sense if you have consistency, you have stability, you know how to use capital markets to your advantage. And frankly, stability is the word, because if you’re public, you can’t be declining. So that’s where there’s no forgiveness, and that’s why e-commerce is naturally volatile. So why would you do that? So good point. That’s a mouthful, but that’s a lot of learning.

Mark MacLeod:

You know, stock markets, of course, want not just stability, but growth. And then you actually shed some assets, and your GMV went down. So I’m guessing you got punished for that.

Ghassan Halazon:

We got punished for that. We got mostly punished for having too much debt relative to our profit at the end of the day. Of course, no one likes declining assets. And the reason EMERGE in the last couple of years is up a hundred something percent, although we’re still down from the peaks, well down. But the reason we’re being recognized now is this new model that I mentioned, which is focused on winning categories with synergy and buying things very opportunistically and modernizing them and growing them like we’re doing.

Suddenly, our new model has high double-digit growth. So if you look at Q2, EMERGE grew 70% year over year. And of course, that’s not apples to apples because we’ve added the acquisition. But even stripping the acquisition out, we report that our organic growth is double digits as well. So in other words, apples to apples comparison.

And then we’re profitable. We did a million in EBITDA in Q2, which was a big record for us under this new model. And then our debt’s down to four and a half million net debt from $32 million. I even still surprised myself saying that because there was no way in hell we thought we were going to get there. But look, we fought the good fight.

Now, my point is on the growth side of things, we’ve layered in organic growth underlying everything, which is very important. And that’s the growth you don’t want to be hiding. That’s the growth you need to be keeping up. But then, on top of it, with acquisitions, we can aim for 50, 60, 70% growth overall, which is our model. So if you look at Constellation software, as you know very well, their organic growth is more like 2%, 3%. But then they’re growing 20, 30% with the acquisitions.

Mark MacLeod:

So when you’re going through all of this at one point, on paper, you’re worth a lot. Over time, you’re worth less. What was your state of mind?

Ghassan Halazon:

That’s a really good question. And I actually had a partner who’s no longer with EMERGE right now. And I actually gave him… And I don’t know why I gave this talk, but he reminds me of it. Like the eve of going public, we were having a beer, celebrating the event at our previous office. The weather was reasonable, so we were sitting outside on the balcony of the office.

And I told him, the biggest thing that’s going to piss us off, and this wasn’t confirmed yet, we were going public at a certain level. And I just said, I know that we’re going to see the stock fly like we’ve never imagined before at some point. And we’re going to feel so good, but so bad at the same time, because we’re not going to sell any stock.

In venture, when you’re in Canada and a lot of other places, you don’t go out taking the company public, raising it to here, and suddenly selling your stock, because everyone runs away if you run away. You’re the lead. Everyone’s behind you. You’re still a relatively young company. You don’t get to do that.

And obviously, there are people who do that and ruin their reputation and make some bucks along the way, but I’m not one of them. And so I told him, we’re going to see this thing fly. And it did. It flew to 150, 200 million bucks. I owned, at the time, probably something like 12 to 15 percent of the company. And I did get some looks and some calls around.

But at the end of the day, in my mind and in my heart, I probably felt like that was running way too fast for what we were actually worth. But I’ll tell you something, Mark. I don’t think now, in retrospect, where we are now is also what we’re worth. I think we’re undervalued, and I think it’s just a matter of time to build up the real stable picture that reflects our real valuation, which is hopefully OTW.

Mark MacLeod:

Right. This brings up for me, and you could speak to this theoretically or actually, but when I look at the business and I agree it’s undervalued, that’s trading at a fraction of revenue, I think, in terms of its market cap.

Ghassan Halazon:

Half-time revenue.

Mark MacLeod:

Yeah. So why not take it private? It’s capital seemingly in the private capital markets. You could get a PE sugar daddy behind you, continue the acquisition spree, but without the scrutiny and the costs of being public.

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah. I got to be careful with what I say here as a public company CEO. But no, I can at least opine big picture on what I’m seeing out there. Obviously, there’s been no shortage of companies that have been hit, have been pushing hard to recover, and never really seen full recovery, and eventually going private through these partnerships with PE and otherwise. And you can’t blame them in many cases.

And I think that my stance on it, when folks have asked, is, first of all, A, I was too busy saving the company when we were low, just to be clear, a few years ago. It was so damn dark down low in the basement that I had no time to even think about whether that’s something I wanted to do. I had a 30-plus million dollar mountain of debt.

And all I could think of is, listen, the minute I made a decision that I’m not bailing, all I could think of is how the hell am I going to climb this mountain and bring it down. And when I’m there, I don’t want to be talking about this and that. I’m just like, this is the focus. I had full loyalty and alignment from my team and full support from my board to clean this up, which is critical. You need the people around you fully aligned and supportive.

And they were, and they gave me the rope to do what I do best, which is go in, clean up, negotiate, get scrappy, and make things happen. And we really did. And the irony is, by the time I looked up, suddenly our valuation is now a couple of hundred points above the low, by the way, a couple of hundred percentage points above the low, which was really low. So, you know, that’s not the point here.

The point is that I’ve gone through the hardest and ugliest, and darkest time. And it’s like, well, now I’m starting to be rewarded. And now, you know, public markets could get very interesting for companies coming out of the dark side and surviving crazy times.

So look at Carvana. Carvana is, you know, probably the comeback of the decade, if not the century, in the public markets, you know, kind of a much bigger car company that was de-stressed, had some debt issues, came out of them, figured its way out, survived, and it’s now up hundreds or thousands of percentage points.

I own some shares at a very low value just because I’m a big fan of watching companies get out of distress, then I think there’s huge ARB there. So same thing with the merge. I mean, technically, we’re up 8x from the low. The low is close to zero. Let’s be clear here.

So I think, by the way, we’re still 15, 20x away from where we can go and go back to. And so I really do look at this and say, going private now, not as interesting as maybe it would have been a flat low at the very, very low, because now I think even if we’re undervalued, I do think there are eyes on us. EMERGE moved 30 million in volume over the last quarter. This isn’t just a doubling of stocks since July. This is a doubling…

Mark MacLeod:

Are you talking about trading volume?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, yeah. So we just…

Mark MacLeod:

Ok, so you’re not trading by appointment.

Ghassan Halazon:

Exactly. Exactly. And that’s the point of this, because usually when you see companies hurt, there’s not much trading on the venture and so forth.

But we’ve traded $30 million in the last three months, which, by the way, is 10x up year over year. And so for me, like I was just at a conference yesterday and I just had people who have sold and made money on EMERGE years ago, 3x, 5x, what they bought in at looking at it for the first time, saying, ok, so this is happening all over again.

But probably we have this with a guy in a group that has the scars, the learnings, and frankly, the proof that they stuck around and stuck with it, and this is exciting. And now let’s build for the next 10x, next 20x, because I’ve done it before. I can do it again. And I think we’ve earned a lot of respect and admiration in the community for making this happen and kind of continuing the course.

So, yeah, private. I’ll tell you something. If we keep doing what we’re doing and we don’t get the real recognition, then, of course, you know, in a year, in two years, three years, of course, we’d be crazy not to look at other options if the market doesn’t reward our continued progress. But it’s starting to.

Mark MacLeod:

Love that. So I’m curious, if you had like a pie chart for your time, how much is spent operating, or I guess you have operators, but working with them, acquiring versus investor relations? Maybe there are other buckets, but those strike me as the biggest ones.

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, some of the biggest for sure. I would say that the EMERGE of today is much leaner, which means I’m running out of time a lot, right? I’m doing a lot. You know, I’ll just tell you what I kind of do at this point. I’m the CEO and the founder of the holding company EMERGE and the public company. So I deal with everything on the investor side, our messaging to them, our IR, our PR. I have no firms. That’s us. That’s me.

And, you know, inside here internally running that external ship, working with the CFO on the audits and on our reporting. And so all of that jazz is one part. Honestly, the percentages with the other buckets I’m about to share really vary depending on time of year, right?

Like audits coming up, I’m deep. But then I also personally operate True Local. I am effectively the CEO of True Local as well. We have a terrific lead for the golf vertical who, you know, has been with me through this venture and the prior venture, Morris Finn. He’s a great golf operator and an e-commerce operator as well. So he has most of that covered. I’m only there for guidance and advice.

And I would say that if I were to really just drum it down, I would say there’s probably 65% running True Local, 35% public, and finance and audit, and working with HQ.

Mark MacLeod:

Ok, so never a dull moment.

Ghassan Halazon:

Never a dull moment. Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it, for better or worse. But you know what, Mark, I almost don’t want to give the impression that making money isn’t important. Like it’s obviously why we’re here to some extent. Like we want to build great brands. We want to impact communities.

But the reason I’m still here is that I genuinely see a tremendous upside in what we’re doing, and I actually love connecting these dots. Like, the harshest time was the last year and a half. But if you think of that curve as I chart out what I just said, $32 million in debt, the path to bringing it down to less than five million.

So imagine how much better I feel here than here, than here, than here. I feel such tremendous energy and momentum, and adrenaline, thinking about what we’ve been achieving. And it’s contagious because then team members are like, wait a minute, some of the people that aren’t with us or they said this couldn’t be done, but it’s actually being done.

Like, True Local is supposedly a small, niche little business that can’t be profitable. No, it’s not right. We’ve grown it again from the lows. We’re double where we were right before the pandemic. Right now, from a revenue perspective, from a profit perspective, we’re double where we were last year.

And then the golf, the acquisition to come in and say, oh, EMERGE, careless, they bought different companies or whatever. And now we buy a company and we grow at 30% and we make our money back in 90 days. Like that is sweet revenge. I don’t know against who, but I’m loving every minute of this comeback. We’re still in the middle of it, but I’m really excited about what we’re going to show next.

Mark MacLeod:

Let’s say a 90-day payback on buying a company is reasonably unprecedented.

Ghassan Halazon:

I did tell the board not to get used to that notion that I can do that again. I’ll be the first to say. And when I say I, I mean the team and Morris and everyone involved in golf.

Mark MacLeod:

Yep. So I’m curious, other than hanging on for dear life, what have you done to grow yourself a CEO so that you can be there through all the highs and lows and be the CEO the company needs?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah, I think, you know, one of my favorite things to do is write. I’ve been doing a lot of writing. Some of it makes its way to social, and some of it makes its way to my notes or some smaller thoughts. Coincidentally, I was telling my wife, we’d just come back from a trip, that literally my favorite place in the world to do some writing and some thinking is on a plane with no Wi-Fi. I’ll never do Wi-Fi on a plane as a rule, whether it’s available or not. I just love the productive quiet.

Not so much when my daughter’s flying with us, she’s two and a half, absolutely wild. But, you know, so I really enjoy writing and I have a little, I’ll tell you on my little tip. I don’t know if it’s a hack or not, but I have in my notes, I characterize things in different ways. For example, I have this ongoing list of something. I’ll just call that specific note deep thoughts.

And so every once in a while in this crazy world of ours, the problem I find, at least for myself, there’s not a lot of follow-through with thinking, right? It’s always like, we’re running around, we think a bit, then we’d get jotted up. And so occasionally I’ll be like, okay, for example, let’s say I’m frustrated with something.

And again, and again, I’m not delivering what I think I’m capable of in something at business or otherwise. Then it’s like, okay, let me run with this thought a little longer. So it might be on a walk where I’m like, okay, I’m going to just think about this one thing. I’m not going to allow myself to think about anything else.

Like, and I take my thought all the way to the end. And once I conclude that, it’s usually like a really interesting conclusion, and I’ll jot down that. And so this deep thoughts thing is like, I’ll go through it. Let’s say when I’m on a plane, and I’ll just be looking at all my deep thoughts, just as an example. So I do a lot of that lately. I’ve been doing more of that.

But the other thing that I’m adamant on, I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I’ve never joined any group workouts or any gym trainers or any of that. Like I’m adamant that my gym time, my workout time, is my alone time. And I like saving a lot of podcasts early, like when I have my free time on the weekend, so that when I go to the gym or on a walk, I don’t have to think about what I want to listen to. I just have like six or seven in a row ready. Some of them are your show, by the way.

Mark MacLeod:

Excellent. Great to finally meet my one listener.

Ghassan Halazon

And don’t worry, I’m not going to be saving my talks and listening to myself. And so anyhow, those are some of the things that I do. I love listening to a lot of people, love this non-business stuff. I love listening to roll-up stories, big stories, bootstrap, hidden gems, stuff like that’s my bread and butter. You know, that’s what excites me.

Mark MacLeod:

I love it. Well, I can tell you, writing is super powerful. I’ve written for a large chunk of my career. And I find that writing crystallizes my thinking. I learn through the process, like I get very clear on a topic. So you’re definitely preaching to the converted there.

I’m curious. I’m also like you, airplanes are very productive for me. Back when I was at Real Ventures and I would go to SF all the time, I would pound through emails, and then I’d get off at SFO, connect to Wi-Fi, and everyone’s inboxes would blow up and like, Oh, Mark’s landed.

They just knew. And then my eyes would be bloodshot cause I worked so hard. So that is an example of deep work, right? Having a deep work block, in this case, a plane, but I’m curious, do you make deep work blocks in the office, or is the office a bit crazy?

Ghassan Halazon:

Yeah. It’s called the weekend because the weekend the office is a shit show. And it’s more like working hours are where I view myself working for others on the team. What do they need of me? What can I do to help them win more? And you know, I got to check boxes on their list.

Early mornings, which I don’t have as much as I’d like, especially with my daughter now, you know, those are sacred and very productive. I don’t know who said it, but I love the idea of waking up and not looking at your phone for a certain amount of time. And the mentality that you decide in the morning, what you need of the world, not the other way.

And then eventually, once you figure out that you look at your phone and you see, Oh, well, a board member needs this, a vendor needs that. And it’s like, okay, now I can get to everyone else. At least I know I’ve set myself up for success today. I love that advice. I don’t follow it nearly as much, but I love it.

Mark MacLeod:

What, that is an example of boundaries, right? And intention. Like when I hear you say I’m here to serve others, on the one hand, I get that. But it also might mean your day is defined by what’s in your inbox or your Slack messages, or your meetings. And then that’s not necessarily an intentional direction.

Again, when I was a banker, we were doing six deals at a time. It would have been so easy for me to just get caught up in that and then just like let this happen to me. But I actually carved out my entire mornings, no meetings. That was my time for deep thinking, thinking through a deal strategy. Let me review the data rooms before it goes out.

Afternoon, like noon onwards, shit show. But I didn’t care because the things that were most strategic, I did in the morning. So it wasn’t just like the first thing or the weekend, but like it was worthy of real estate in my day. And, you know, you may, as an example, at one point be like, Hey, I can’t be CEO of the holding company and run True Local. I need to hire someone to run True Local, in which case, now that’s a strategic priority. And then having those deep work blocks means you’re going to fill that far faster than if you’re doing it along with the hundred other things that you’re doing.

Ghassan Halazon:

Right. I agree with you, Mark. And I think that, longer term, that would be the plan, kind of parachuted in for the restructure and the cleanup. I think we’ve accomplished most of that. I’m very happy with it. I think the team is pretty autonomous, quite frankly, but I think over time, yeah, leadership there will also make sense. But I like what you said about blocking things out.

What I’ve been doing at least is I find, I looked at when the days are when I am most miserable, and they tend to be the days where I have early morning meetings with things that are not what I deem absolutely critical. So, for example, just the weekly meeting doesn’t matter with who, but like there’s a weekly meeting at 9:30 AM or 10 AM. And like, okay, let’s say my morning is off to a late start for whatever reason. I worked late. My baby was sick at night, whatever. Then I’m like, what the hell?

These are the same people. It’s the same meeting every week. What’s the point of it being so early and starting my day with this? Like it’s nothing against anyone. It’s still important, but like it could happen at 11 AM, and that way, at least I know that no matter what, I have a good hour of quiet and planning, even if my schedule is delayed a bit or my start is delayed a bit.

So now I try not to schedule any calls unless it’s like a board call and there’s like conflicts with time and stuff. I try to schedule no calls prior to 10, 10:30 AM. And that way, that earlier morning is for sure mine, and I have a bit of time to catch up as well, especially if I’m running late, which sometimes I am. But I like what you said.

Mark MacLeod:

I love that. And maybe as we wrap up here, this is not intended to be a coaching session, but I cannot help but react to what you just said. And, again, I love this notion of, Hey, I’m here to serve my team and kind of unblock them. And that’s recommendable. And what I’m about to say might result in a similar outcome, but it comes out in a different way.

One of my fundamental beliefs is that the CEO is customer number one, meaning anyone who reports to you, their number one customer is you; they are here to give you leverage. And like, no one has more context or motivation or probably ownership in the company than you.

And you look at the CEOs who go all the way, and I would say they’re selfish and they design their role around like their unique superpowers and around the things that give them energy. And like the example I bring up all the time is Tobi from Shopify, right? Like, Tobi is the CEO. He should be the guy doing the CNBC Squawk Box, quarterly Wall Street stuff, but he doesn’t want to do it. Harley does it. Meanwhile, Harley’s like made for that shit, right?

Like Tobi just wants to spend time on product and technology. And so he’s designed his role. He’s designed the scope of the CEO role where he spends time around that, which means then he’s forced to hire his polar opposite, like Harley, right? And design the leadership team around that so that collectively it’s complete. So, just a thing to think about, like, I would encourage you to be more selfish.

Ghassan Halazon:

Right. No, and I appreciate that. I think I should be. And I think that if you go back to what’s responsible for most of our success, or I should say early success here in this turnaround, it’s this one word of focus. And, even though the businesses are focused and what we’re doing is focused, I definitely have a fair share of stuff going on across Popco, finance, which we had a transition board, raising capital, debt negotiations, M&A, and then managing through local. That is a fair amount.

And it’s not lost on me. And I think to your point, I think this next phase needs focus, not just for the businesses, but for myself as well, which means some decisions have to be made, too. So I appreciate that. That’s helpful feedback.

Mark MacLeod:

File it under free advice.

Ghassan Halazon:

There you go.

Mark MacLeod:

Well, I really enjoyed this, and congrats on that turnaround. I know it’s not done, but bringing the debt down so much is massive. And I truly hope that the street rewards you for all of this.

Ghassan Halazon:

I hope so, too.

Mark MacLeod:

Thank you.

Ghassan Halazon:

Awesome. Thanks so much, Mark. Appreciate it.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Startup CEO Show. If you’d like to connect with me, be sure to visit my website at markmacLeod.me, or follow me on LinkedIn at The Mark MacLeod, or X account @markmacleod_, and if you want to tune in again next week, be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll see you next time!