Roy Morejon is the President and Co-founder of Enventys Partners, a product development, crowdfunding, and digital marketing agency. He has helped thousands of entrepreneurs raise more than $300 million using crowdfunding, and has also advised dozens of global startups on their digital marketing growth strategies.

As a thought leader in online marketing, Roy is frequently featured on CNN, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Huffington Post, and Fast Company. He is also the host of the Art of the Kickstart podcast.

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

• Roy Morejon discusses how he got started with crowdfunding and created his digital marketing agency, Enventys Partners
• What is crowdfunding and how does it work?
• How Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing platform protects both funders and entrepreneurs
• Roy talks about his team’s process for helping entrepreneurs innovate and launch new products
• How to set a successful initial funding goal
• The industries and products that Roy and his team work with the most
• Roy discusses the importance of obtaining a patent to protect your product
• Roy’s experience consulting with AOL as a teenager in Freeport, Maine

In this episode…

Are you full of exciting new product or business ideas, but don’t know how to bring them to reality? Do you need funding and support to launch and grow these amazing ideas into profitable businesses? If so, you’re in the right place!

At his digital marketing agency, Roy Morejon and his team of experts help entrepreneurs transform their ideas into successful ventures using crowdfunding. Crowdfunding brings a group of investors together to pre-purchase or show monetary interest in a product or service before it is produced. With crowdfunding, you can determine whether or not there is public interest in your product before incurring manufacturing costs, making it one of the best ways to seek out growth opportunities for your business.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Roy Morejon, the President and Co-founder of Enventys Partners, to discuss how to use crowdfunding to grow your business to new heights. Roy shares his insights into launching new products, working with Kickstarter, and developing your ideas into profitable investments. Listen in to learn how to establish tangible and clear growth opportunities for your business today!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Roy Morejon
• Roy Morejon on LinkedIn
• Enventys Partners
• Art of the Kickstart Podcast
• Quiet Light Brokerage
• Joe Valley on LinkedIn
• Louis Foreman
• Kickstarter
• Indiegogo
• AOL
• SeedInvest
• StartEngine
• Wefunder

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokerage, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light Brokerage wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light Brokerage is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light Brokerage offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website, quietlight.com. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light Brokerage is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email inquiries@quietlight.com, or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:29

Hey, folks, thanks for joining the Quiet Light Podcast. I am Joe Valley, the Co-Host of the show. Mark, My business partner is the other host. We don’t do it together anymore. He does one and then I do mine. Just to just to let y’all know how even it is. today’s podcast is sponsored by Quiet Light Brokerage, where everyone on the team every advisor has built, bought and sold their own online business. There are no junior advisors here. If you want to understand the value of your business, even if you’re not going to exit for 12 to 24 months, which is really what you should do in advance planning training. Getting ready in advance, please reach out to us anybody in the team will be happy to help. Just go to quietlight.com and fill out the evaluation form or check out our current listings. Today’s guest I’m telling you is a very impressive one. His name is Roy Morejon. And we’ll be talking about crowdfunding. Roy is the President and Co-Founder of Enventus Partners right here in Charlotte. They’re a product development, crowdfunding and digital marketing agency. Roy’s a frequently featured guest on guest this CNN, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Huffington Post and Fast Company. And he actually consulted for AOL and Microsoft, in his teens. We cannot record an entire podcast podcast on what I wasn’t doing in my teens it was just surviving High School is what I was doing. So I’m pretty impressed with that Roy. Roy’s helped thousands of entrepreneurs raise more than $300 million using crowdfunding. And if you don’t know what it is, it’s an approach that often allows you to determine if the public is even interested in your product before spending the money and going out and manufacturing the product. Several Quiet Light clients have worked with Enventys and Roy, I highly suggest you listen to the entire podcast. Maybe we’ll get that story about what Roy did with AOL and his teens. And definitely visit enventyspartners.com. Roy a fellow Maine-er, welcome to the Quiet Life Podcast.

Roy Morejon 2:28

Yes. It’s good to be here.

Joe Valley 2:30

You are wicked smart. We sorry, we just we just realized that we’re both from Maine we grew up 30 minutes from each other. He’s from Freeport, y’all know, LL Bean and I grew up about 30, maybe 40 minutes north of that in Gardiner, Maine. So welcome. I’m glad we’re finally getting to talk. Louis and I, your business partner have chatted many, many times, we’ve had many clients that have come to visited. Ramon, who many people on the podcast have heard, has has met with you personally and raves about you guys. So thank you so much. Crowdfunding is really the focus. And as Louis Louis says, flat out, you know more about crowdfunding, and if helped more entrepreneurs, ecommerce entrepreneurs with crowdfunding than almost anyone in the entire country. Is that is that? Is that true? Is that a little bit of an exaggeration? That’s true, isn’t it?

Roy Morejon 3:21

I go with the world. No. No, I mean, yeah, I mean, fortunately, right place, right spot, you know, in terms of where we got started in crowdfunding, you know, starting the digital agency I did back in 2010. The intention wasn’t to be a crowdfunding marketing company. I’m just good at SEO. And we ranked first on Google for startup marketing. And that’s when the first campaign actually reached out to us fill out the contact form. And we’re like, what, what is Kickstarter, I’d never heard of it back in 2011 2012. And that’s when, you know, we basically did some digital ads and PR, and some Facebook ads for them and doubled their funding. We’re like, Hey, this is pretty interesting. We get to work with startups, which we love, we get to be agile test lots of different things. And there’s, you know, money at the end of the day, at the end of the day, in terms of seeing a transaction come through. So, you know, that snowballed into, you know, what we have now where there’s a massive team of people running campaigns, doing production, doing product development. And we’re, you know, working with really interesting brand new products that the world hasn’t seen yet.

Joe Valley 4:29

And there’s so many questions that I have, and I wish back in the day, that, you know, I knew about you guys before I launched my last physical product because it would have been perfect for crowdfunding, it would have been perfect to determine whether or not the public had any interest in whatsoever. Before I went out to you know, find the manufacturers which is something you guys also do is you help the e commerce entrepreneurs with finding manufacturers but that’s an entirely different subject. You for the novice out there, including myself just define what crowdfunding is and how it works.

Roy Morejon 5:06

Yeah, I mean, in the simplest form, it’s a matter of bringing together a crowd to pre purchase a product or show actual monetary interest in buying a idea, a product before it’s actually made, right. So your market validating your product idea, and Kickstarter, Indiegogo, these are the main sites that we utilize to test an audience and test a product and see whether or not people are willing to pre purchase the product before it exists and comes to market. And so that word before it exists is that is that the key is that it can’t be an existing product, it just doesn’t make sense. It should. It’s an idea and a concept that you do the tests with. Yeah, so it has to be new novel, it can be an extension of a previous product. Kickstarter is also allowed, you know, different colors of products to come out as new. But there’s definitely a line there that the trust and safety team would look look at on the platforms themselves. But typically, this is a place for entrepreneurs, startups to launch their new innovation, it can’t have been sold anywhere else online, on your website, Amazon, wherever it may be. And really, it’s just the first opportunity for the true early adopters in the world to back and get this product at the best price you can afford.

Joe Valley 6:22

The early adopters being the buyers at the best price that they can afford. So I think getting a discount to buy it pre production

Roy Morejon 6:29

massive in some instances, yeah, I mean, hundreds of dollars in some instances where there’s been a product that pre sold for $100. And then when it finally came to market, it was seven or 800. Because that entrepreneur didn’t potentially quote the product correctly in terms of what they originally thought the manufacturing costs would be for it.

Joe Valley 6:48

So how does it work? If you do a campaign, and it fails, some people buy it and they fund it. But you and the entrepreneur say, look, this isn’t really a viable product, the public has told us that. Do you refund all of the money? Do you go back to the drawing board and start with a modification of that has it generally work?

Roy Morejon 7:08

depends on your definition of failure, right? So for Kickstarter itself, it’s an all or nothing platform, you set a public facing funding goal, I need $50,000 to bring this product to market. If you don’t reach that number, no credit cards get charged, nobody gets their product, right. If it does reach that goal, you take all that capital comes into your accounts, and you are then liable to deliver that product, should you not be able to deliver that product. Many campaigners return the funds or give some sort of discount code for other products that that company may have. Or try and explain why there’s no money left. And certainly there have been campaigns that have raised millions of dollars and said that they lost all the money invested all the money into product development, and they just can’t bring the product to market. And that’s where you get upset backers. But overall, you know, with Kickstarter, it’s an all or nothing platform with Indiegogo, you do have flexibility of what’s called flexible funding, where if it doesn’t reach the public facing funding goal number that you’ve shown, you are still allowed to collect and keep all of that money, but in turn, obviously still need to deliver a product at the end of the day. Okay,

Joe Valley 8:23

big difference between the two. So in the audience, we’ve got, you know, SaaS content business owners, but a lot of e commerce business owners as well. And some of them might be buying a business. And we know that one of the ways to continue to grow a business and stay ahead of competitors is to innovate and launch new products. So in this case, if all they have is a concept and an idea, and they want to expand their total SKU count, and I always, for some reason go back to grilling aprons. You know, a perfect match with grilling aprons might be something to clean the grill with right, or whatever will go into it, there could be lots of different things. If somebody has the idea. You’ve got a team that helps them take that idea from their head onto paper into design. And that whole process. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Roy Morejon 9:12

Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, being probably one of the only turnkey product launch companies in the world. We have a team of engineers that can truly take that napkin sketch idea, build out the prototype, do the ergonomic testing, the engineering, the electrical, mechanical, IoT, whatever it may be, if it’s a smart device, or a dumb device, if you will, we have an entire team dedicated solely on building product. Once that product is then made prototype to build out, we then take it over to our studios, where we do the filming and the product photography and all of the asset creation then around the product. And it goes upstairs to our branding and content team that start building out the story. What is this product story, you know, how is it going to be used? What are the features, benefits, those sorts of things. And then it brings into you know, the crowdfunding campaign where we’re raising capital for that product to then be made and manufactured. So in the case of your apron, there may be a few different variations of that apron that we may want to test and try, maybe we say, hey, let’s try the grill brush, or let’s try adding a towel feature to it. So you can clean something off with it, let’s add these different features to it, where we’re now able to actually test each feature, you know, through market validation in terms of building out a quick website, even before we take it to a Kickstarter campaign, where it’s very public, and the world can see exactly what you’re thinking about launching, we can run small tests and iterations of that product and see what truly resonates, what gets the most engagement, setting up these trap doors with people, you know, clicking to buy, like, Oh, it’s not ready yet, but we’ll notify you when it is. So there’s a variety of ways to bring in test products before you actually bring it to market and spend money on manufacturing where there truly isn’t an engaged audience around that product idea.

Joe Valley 10:59

Yeah, we’ve we’ve talked to several folks, actually, you had mentioned you’ve done a lot of folks that were on Shark Tank and whatnot. And we’ve, it’s a funny, you know, thing with Shark Tank. Everybody thinks that every Shark Tank entrepreneur that gets a deal on TV is a big success. Not the case at all, in my experience and so many of them that I’ve talked to never really got the contract signed, but they end up selling the business. We actually have one under lLoY right now that was a unknown to the Shark Tank, folks. I don’t know how I got on this tangent, by the way. But the shark tank? They all said no, I think Mr. Wonderful actually said you’re dead to me, even though, and that the business wasn’t gonna be valued, but under Li for like five or $6 million. Now. Anyway, why was I saying that? Right? It’s because I think you you take those ideas, and you innovate and you grow them. And one of the shark tank people, actually, we did a podcast where they actually did what you just suggested, which was you create the website, puts an ad spend behind it, and see if the public is interested in if, if there’s a enough people clicking on the order button, then you go ahead. And in that case, they went right to manufacturing. But in your case, you’re doing crowdfunding, which is, I think, a much smarter way. Because you’re, you’re raising the money to build a product out, obviously, on average, and I know this is hard, but so many questions come to mind. How much money are you typically shooting for? How do you determine how much to raise? Does that cover the cost of manufacturing? Are they looking typical? is a typical client trying to make money on the crowdfunding process? and so on and so forth? Can you just dive into some of that for me?

Roy Morejon 12:47

All good questions, Joe. Yeah, so there’s a bit in art in the science to setting a funding goal, right in terms of the public perception of Oh, they only need $50,000, they must be far enough down the line where that makes sense for them to finish tooling, manufacturing, packaging, logistics, whatever it may be. But then there’s almost always an internal goal that is hidden from the general public, in terms of this is the true number, we actually need to manufacture our mo Q. And you know, that public facing funding numbers sometimes maybe set low arbitrarily, because of wanting to hit the funding goal on day one and show early success. No one wants to be the first one on the dance floor, right. But once everybody’s out there having a party and it’s a good time, that’s when everybody else wants to join in. So that same mentality flows through Kickstarter campaigns, where we want to get as many early adopters, early backers into the campaign as possible, setting a funding goal that’s based off of a lot of data as well, in terms of the pre campaign marketing that we’re doing. What does it cost us to acquire an email address or a potential customer back that into what our mo Q is, and then kind of figure out, you know, what the actual public facing funding numbers should be? So there’s a lot of back and forth. But obviously, we’re only making decisions based off of the data that we’re having, in terms of what we’re doing pre campaign marketing for all of our clients.

Joe Valley 14:09

is shooting for a day one success hitting the goal typical, or is it one week or three weeks? Or how does it vary?

Roy Morejon 14:17

It’s critical, you know, meeting and exceeding the funding goal within the first 48 hours is typically critical to an overall six figure campaign. And again, the average campaign, you know, is only raising, I think, $25,000 on Kickstarter, where if you raise over $100,000, you’re in the 1.8 percentile of all campaigns. So you know, it is critical to the overall success of many of these tech, physical products that need to raise lots of money to make and manufacture the products that they have early success and early traction. You know, right out the gate.

Joe Valley 14:50

You just said tech products. Are the majority of your clients tech related products, or do you work with a wide variety of them?

Roy Morejon 14:58

Yeah, we’d like to play in a theater. categories, product design being the largest category that we play in in terms of how Kickstarter categorizes these products. And that can be anything from you know, fitness gadgets, to kitchen gadgets, to you name it, you know, a nice design a physical thing, consumer product, we also play a lot in fashion. Fashion has a massive early adopter community as well as people that want the newest shoes, sneakers, pants, shirts, belts, you name it, we’ve fully funded an entire wardrobe, you know, all over the place. And then lastly, is the tech, you know, anything that has a hardware component to it, early adopters, again, that we’re focusing in on those folks who want the newest tech before it ever hits the shelves of Best Buy. And they find it all on Kickstarter. And this is where you know, an Oculus has come out a pebble has come out, you know, many of these massive big tech brands, hardware brands that have come out and seeing good success, post crowdfunding, because they built that community early on, and they were able to continue to tap into it. And again, that’s one of the other advantages of the crowdfunding side with the Amazon community on this podcast is just that you own this community, this is your crowd that you can continue to nurture, and ask for feedback for the next product that you come out with. So these people are in your database, they’re following your social media accounts, they know you, they feel like they had a part of the product development, and the product lifecycle and how it came out and how it came to market. And likely they’re going to be you know, your biggest brand evangelists as you continue forward, rolling out new skews and new product lines. So that’s a massive advantage of just getting feedback early from your actual customers.

Joe Valley 16:36

And what stage Do you work with the customer? And then at what stage? Do you generally finish? Because, you know, from the product design concept to the industrial designing, and engineers and all that to the crowdfunding, you know, you just said they, you know, they then own that that customer, right? They’re able to reach out to them with a next product that they develop? Are you working with them? In many cases on that, again, design and concept and sending emails out to that database to get feedback? Or are you going straight to the crowdfunding and those who succeed again? How does it How does it work? Typically?

Roy Morejon 17:13

Yeah, I mean, so our hope is that most of the clients use every room in our building, right? You know, so they come in, we do their product development, manufacturing, sourcing, whatever it may be, that we’re creating all their assets for them, then we’re running their campaign. And then we are in charge of, you know, constant communication with the community that we built. While they’re developing the product, getting it ready to ship, then the shipments go out. And then it’s, again, more communication with those backers. And then it’s starting engagement of, hey, we’re thinking of improving this, this and this based on your feedback. And then it’s surveys, text messaging, SMS, email, marketing, whatever it may be, to continually communicate and have that one to one relationship with those customers, in terms of what’s the next thing we should bring out. And we have many clients that have done well, we have a handful of clients that have done more than five or six campaigns with us. Some have run, you know, 15, or 16, campaigns just on Kickstarter, because they keep going back and saying, hey, you like this one? What do you want next? What do you want next? What do you want next. And the crowd truly feels like they have a buy in in the next product that comes out. And they’re more and more likely to obviously buy it, but then tell their friends of, hey, there’s this cool guy that keeps creating these cool products. Maybe you should get involved.

Joe Valley 18:25

Every room in your building, you just went through a whole list of things. You’ve got engineers, industrial designers, people that are doing the digital marketing, buying media for you relationships with manufacturing, are you managing inventory for them as well? Or does it? Do you do any of that? Or is that left in the business owners hands?

Roy Morejon 18:46

Yeah, inventory side, we typically don’t get into usually there. There’s an expert team that needs to handle that. And obviously, I’m sure you’ve had many of those folks, you know, it’s through your buildings. And yeah, it’s a challenge. And it’s something that we’re not experts in. So it’s not something that we try to do.

Joe Valley 19:02

I had somebody on the podcast recently, right, they did 300 million in revenue on Amazon, and had to build their own inventory management tool, because there’s really nothing out there that does it the way that it should be done. There’s lots of different products, but nobody raves about any particular one. So okay, but really Enventys Partners is is doing it, it almost everything from a product marketing standpoint, from concept to putting it on paper to helping people with the crowdfunding and getting it launched all the way to you need some help with sourcing manufacturers. We’ve got those relationships as well. Am I missing anything?

Roy Morejon 19:39

No, I mean, that’s all of it. We even have inventors that simply are, you know, creators, and they just drop off products. Here’s an idea. Here’s an idea. Here’s an idea. And we run them through our own personal test and we say yeah, we like that one. And do you know licensing deals or partnership deals with those folks as well. That don’t want to quit their day job. Don’t want us to be a founder of a startup but think they have a great invention. We we agree, and we launch campaigns with them. So again, there’s a variety of different ways that we can work with, you know, all the entrepreneurs or idea makers out there.

Joe Valley 20:10

It’s interesting on the licensing and whatnot. Let’s talk a little bit about that you talked about designs, do you guys help with or refer people out to, you know, patent attorneys design and utility patents? And how much does that come into play in the success of some of the campaigns that you do?

Roy Morejon 20:29

Yeah, patents is an interesting one. And it’s definitely something that we advise all of our clients to get, um, you know, one of our, we typically source that out to answer your question. It’s not something that we have an in house attorney on. But we have, you know, local resources here in Charlotte that we utilize for that for that service. But I mean, there’s, you know, the biggest case out there on the patent side was one of our early clients, bunch of balloons, with Josh Malone. And, you know, he had to go through a lot of challenges there to win the rights. And, you know, when a court case against the folks that ripped off his product, and then there’s still a lot of issues, you know, going on with the patent office and P tab and all that I’m definitely not going to dive into that, because I’m not the expert on that. But, you know, it’s always our recommendation to get as much protection as possible, because Kickstarter, is getting viewed by a million people every day, right. And there’s a lot of nefarious folks out there looking for the next great invention that’s already getting traction and ramping up their factory because they can see that this product is going to be a success long after Kickstarter is over. And I think you can look at Fidget Cube as one of those campaigns in terms of very simple, easy design, very elegant, but he put all the blueprints on his Kickstarter campaign to get backers right to show what it looks like. But a factory ramped up very quickly and was already shipping product, I think, a half a million dollars with a product even before that campaign ended. So you know, there’s, there’s a balance there in terms of how much you show, in terms of knowing that, you know, if you’re patented and protected, hopefully that gives you a leg up and months, a year in advance, you know, of other people trying to, you know, duplicate product.

Joe Valley 22:08

Yeah, I’ve heard some sad stories like that as well. So you really can’t just jump into this, you’ve got to think well in advance, obviously. And, you know, some patent some, probably more products than not are not patentable. So it is what it is, but it allows you to expand on your current product line. Let’s talk about Enventys Partners a little bit. The firm itself 19 years old? Is that about right?

Roy Morejon 22:35

yeah. So Louis Foreman started that back in 2001. And then we merged with Enventys, to form Enventys Partners. I know very creative, back in 2016. So my firm before that was called Command Partners. So we took half of my name and all of their name, and combined them together. But yeah, I mean, so our agencies, you know, came together basically to be the world’s first turnkey product launch firm. Awesome. And

Joe Valley 22:59

I visited your facility, you got some pretty impressive products laying around. Can you throw one name out there, we’re gonna spend 10 seconds on it, what’s the most famous client that anybody listening might know of or seen a movie with the product is featured or anything like that,

Roy Morejon 23:16

oh, Featured Products. We just had a picks backpack in one of the Netflix series The other day, but like, my personal favorite product that I’ve ever worked on was with Josh Malone, and bunch of balloons. I mean, I think I think last year, they shipped over 2 billion units. So I mean, it’s incredible the growth of that product. And it was just, you know, amazing that we got to be able to work with Josh, before that product became such a mainstream hit, you know, we got him on the Today Show before any other Kickstarter campaign ever got on the show. So it’s just amazing to really bring crowdfunding to the light into the masses, at least the early adopter community through the National PR that we were able to get for that campaign. And you know, it’s been it’s been a lot of fun. We see a lot of different product ideas, a lot of different innovations. And, you know, we’re very fortunate to have such a full funnel of new innovations coming in every day.

Joe Valley 24:04

And what is Edison nation part of your group down there?

Roy Morejon 24:09

So Edison nation was part of Enventys. And again, I don’t have any affiliation with Edison nation on that was on Louis’s side, and we did end up helping them do a regulation, a plus campaign and equity crowdfunding campaign, I raised over $5 million, I believe, for that project before it actually went public. But they deal with more on the inventor side of taking products to market, more licensing side of things. So they’re more of like, kind of like a sister company, if you will. But I don’t have any, you know, day to day or affiliation on that side. And at the beginning of this, I don’t know

Joe Valley 24:42

if you said it in the recording or if it was in our initial conversation, but your podcasting as well. What’s the name of your podcast and what are you covering?

Roy Morejon 24:49

Yeah, thanks for the shout out, Joe. Yeah, so my podcast we talk with early stage entrepreneurs and founders that typically launched a crowdfunding campaign or about to launch a crowd fund. In campaign so the podcast my plug is called Art of the Kickstart. So check out artofthekickstart.com we are probably the longest running crowdfunding podcast out there started. took that over I think back in 2015 2016. We’ve done about almost 400 episodes now. So you guys are getting there. I think you’re at about 100 or so. 150 Joe

Joe Valley 25:19

150 more weeks Yeah, we’re way behind you we’ve got a double lock in order to catch up and I don’t see that happening.

Roy Morejon 25:26

But you need Mark to start pulling his weight right

Joe Valley 25:29

exactly doused Come on get on it He doesn’t listen to this so I can say anything I want to Ivana people listening don’t send actually send them an email Mark at quietlight.com, tell him to get on it and start recording some more podcasts,

Roy Morejon 25:40

or deliver this podcast Mark, it was all for you. I love doing it.

Joe Valley 25:44

So I don’t mind that he he’s a slacker in that regard. Let’s let’s talk about how in the world did you as a teenager from Freeport, Maine, consult with AOL, and what was it Yahoo or something like that Google MSN? Yeah. I mean, okay, so as a teenager, I was trying not to lose my license, and it didn’t work out very well, and a whole variety of other things. You’re consulting what we doing? And how did that come about?

Roy Morejon 26:13

Uh, so I forced my parents basically to sign up for AOL. So you know, I had like, my, I forget what computer it was, it was either like a Compaq Presario or one of those Apple LC twos, you know, back in the day ones in the early 90s, and got on AOL. And you know, as a 13 year old, I think, at the time, basically, it was the wild, wild west, and anything, anything when, so you could do anything. So then I learned how to code and script programs and Visual Basic and c++. And through AOL, you could do a lot of things in their chat rooms, and emulate the Community Action Team cat watch. So you could go in there and do lots of nefarious things. And one of those things that I used to do back in the day was those sorts of things, or mail bombing or spamming or changing my username to get other people’s information. So that led me down a path of getting in trouble. And, you know, consulting with the authorities in terms of things that we were doing, or the vulnerabilities that AOL had at the time, right on their platform. So it was just consulting for that in terms of patching some of the holes that they had on their software that all of us teenagers were taking full advantage of in terms of pirating wares, and those sorts of things on the site. So did some small consulting there for just showing them everything that I was doing, so I could stay out of prison. And then and then

Joe Valley 27:38

jail time. Yeah,

Roy Morejon 27:39

exactly. Right. Yeah, sure. Here you go. And then that led me to doing some short term consulting, as well for MSN, as they were launching their platform to say, here’s some of the gaps that AOL had here, you know, things that you should plug in doing some more tech support for those folks. So that’s, you know, that’s the long short of it.

Joe Valley 27:56

That’s pretty amazing. It must have been really scary for your parents as well.

Roy Morejon 28:00

They didn’t really have a clue. Fortunately, my father was a special agent for the government. So that definitely assisted and helped.

Joe Valley 28:07

Okay, it’s always good to know the right people, for sure. It’s all amazing and pretty impressive. I gotta tell you, I’ve talked to Louis again, often on for the last couple of years, we’ve had clients go down and visit with you work with you. But the work that you do is so all encompassing, it’s almost hard to comprehend. The crowdfunding part of it, I think, is simply brilliant, I think it’s a great way for new and innovative products to launch get the money before going to the manufacturing, and the fact that somebody can come to you with a sketch on a napkin or an idea in their head, and use your design team to put that on paper and then into the computer and then visually present it and do a crowdfunding campaign is simply simply incredible. I thank you for all the work that you’re doing for all my fellow entrepreneurs out there, I appreciate it. And I know you’re helping people first and foremost, which is the most important thing and at the end of the day, it comes back and helps you as well. And you’ve been doing it for, you know, a decade plus now any any any changes in the future you guys going to continue to do what you do any new paths or tracks that you’re going to go down.

Roy Morejon 29:18

Yeah, I mean, the hope is to launch more of our own products, you know, I mean, we have all of the resources but it’s cobblers kids these days, we’re very busy. We have you know, we’re very fortunate that we have one an amazing team around us that are all product experts in their categories, whether it be you know, the full omni channel marketing side of email, PR social Legion, we have an amazing advertising team and you know, leadership there. And just overall on that side really just trying to launch our own products. And you know, the engineering team is second to none with the capabilities that we have downstairs in our facilities to be able to bring products to market and we have the best, most amazing technology down there as well to do it quickly and rapidly. And cost effectively, you know, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with is just Oh, it’s going to cost me $100,000 to build this thing where, with 3d printing, and you know, some of the products that we have in in shop, we can do things very quickly and very rapidly, and then test very quickly to see whether or not you should continue spending on this thing. And if there’s truly a crowd around it, so the hope is, yeah, launch our own products, we’re doing more and more equity crowdfunding as well, which I think would be an interesting path. For a lot of the Amazon businesses that are out there, to be able to raise additional capital for your company, just by offering up, you know, 10% of your company and raising a million dollars for it through the crowd. You know, obviously, it’s a lot easier when you own the data, and you own the customers, which may be a challenge on the Amazon side. But certainly in terms of showing growth, there’s a lot of opportunities on the Start engines, and we funders out there of raising additional capital for your company based on the success that you’ve had so far. So we’ve worked with, you know, over a dozen different campaigns in terms of the equity crowdfunding side, many of them post reward crowdfunding, where they have a crowd deliver the product, the consumer loves it, and now they want to be a bigger brand advocate for them by owning a piece of the company.

Joe Valley 31:13

equity crowdfunding is a new term for me, and we just opened up a can of worms here, that could be an entirely new podcast and my goodness, cover it real quickly. It’s It’s literally you’re raising money. You know, we have people all the time that say, hey, look, I’m trying to keep up with inventory. All I’m doing is, you know, a HELOC more on the HELOC? Well, you know, wherever I can grab some money, there’s equity crowdfunding, where they can grab money from the public that’s willing to invest, and they can use that capital to grow their business and expand their product lines.

Roy Morejon 31:46

Exactly, yeah. So they can basically offer up a piece of the company convertible note, whatever it is, there’s a lot of flexibility there. And I’m certainly not an attorney. But there’s a lot of opportunity there to continue to raise capital for your company, giving up a little bit of equity and showing that, you know, you’re a high growth high trajectory company that they can invest into. And I know there are Amazon companies and case studies that are out there, and I’m happy to look into those and share those with the audience as well when you get this published. But it’s definitely a you know, an alternative way of raising capital from your crowd from your community that you’ve built. There is another company that we work with and partner with, I’m not sure if you’ve had them on the show are familiar with them called Kick, kick further, where again, you can fund your inventory by people, you know, pledging basically on their site or saying, you know, you give them a certain percentage return within a certain amount of time for you to fund your next inventory purchase. So, you know, again, another alternative for you know, the Amazon sellers out there.

Joe Valley 32:44

Okay, I you know, you’re blown my mind here. I wish we could do this in 20 conversations. Well, we don’t have time. So look, everybody, you’ve got to go to enventyspartners.com. And check this out, connect with Roy asked him about the flannel that he has on today, whether it’s actually an LL Bean flannel because he’s from Freeport, Maine or not, and why he’s wearing a flannel in September in North Carolina when it’s actually only 65 degrees out today. So that’s a good reason. And your former almost golf pro career there’s so much that’s crazy and fun about you. And then what you do in terms of helping the entrepreneurs is pretty incredible. Folks, definitely tune in to the Art of the Kickstart podcast. I’m going to tune into that myself definitely visit enventyspartners.com am I missing anything at all? No, I

Roy Morejon 33:34

you know, the Joe, it has been a pleasure. And I look forward to everybody reaching out from this so I can track the ROI of Judge Joe’s podcast and see if you guys are actually listening out there. But no, I really, I really do appreciate it. I am here to help honestly like I want to help out all the entrepreneurs and bring more amazing products to market. So I’ll make sure Joe has all my info and I appreciate the time.

Joe Valley 33:57

Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

Intro 34:00

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at podcast@quietlight.com. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.

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

• Rob Walling discusses his latest venture, TinySeed
• The three Ps that Rob looks for in a founding team: people, product/market fit, and price sensitivity
• Rob explains the advantages of the “dual funnel” model
• How—and why—Rob and his team at TinySeed help companies grow and scale
• Rob breaks down the five-part TinySeed Playbook
• The dos and don’ts of gradually raising your prices
• How to get in touch with Rob and learn more about bootstrapping SaaS

In this episode…

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Rob Walling
• Rob Walling on LinkedIn
• The Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast with Rob Walling
• TinySeed
• Invest in TinySeed
• MicroConf
• Drip
• Joe Valley on LinkedIn
• Quiet Light Brokerage

Sponsor for this episode...

Episode Transcript

Ramon Van Meer is the Founder and CEO of Alpha Paw, a pet-focused company that creates unique, honest products that contribute to the health and happiness of pets everywhere. Alpha Paw has been featured on FOX, NBC, Allure, and many other popular sources.

As a serial entrepreneur who specializes in growing and selling businesses, Ramon is also the CEO of Growth Hacker TV, the Founder of Van Meer Capital, and the Co-founder of Toodledo. His life goals are to become the Marcus Lemonis for tech companies and to finally beat his son at chess.

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

• Ramon Van Meer discusses the driving forces behind his success
• The importance of checking your ego at the door when starting a business
• How Ramon found the courage to ask for help and advice despite his introverted personality
• Ramon talks about reverse engineering the process of selling his business for $100 million
• Why Ramon decided to bring his fulfillment in-house instead of outsourcing to a 3PL
• Growth through acquisition vs. growth through SKU expansion
• Why Ramon doesn’t use Amazon for his business
• Ramon shares his 10-year-old son’s goal to feed every shelter dog in the world
• How Ramon and his son, Victor, bought a business through Craigslist that later became Victor’s Doggy Cookies

In this episode…

Are you eager to take your business to new heights, but don’t know where to start? If so, you’re not alone—and today’s guest may just have the strategies you need to overcome your fears and turn your growth potential into growth prospects.

Serial entrepreneur Ramon Van Meer knows the value of real growth opportunities, in business and in life. After experiencing homelessness as a teenager, Ramon moved to the United States as a single father without a college degree. Despite the odds, Ramon slowly began to build his now staggering entrepreneurial career by growing multiple businesses to exponential success. After following positive growth trends and investing in future opportunities, he was able to achieve a million-dollar exit—and now he wants to help other entrepreneurs do the same.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Ramon Van Meer, the Founder and CEO of Alpha Paw, to discuss his inspirational journey toward entrepreneurial growth and success. Listen in as Ramon talks about the importance of authenticity when networking, how to cultivate growth opportunities that result in million-dollar exits, and his son’s goal to feed every shelter dog in the world. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Ramon Van Meer on LinkedIn
• Alpha Paw
• Victor’s Doggy Cookies
• Joe Valley
• Quiet Light Brokerage
• “Incredible Exits: Ramon Shares Story of his High 9-Figure Sale” on the Quiet Light Podcast
• “Blogging His Way To $9M in Cash – Ramon Van Meer” on the My First Million Podcast with Sam Parr
• Hustle Con
• Bill DAlessandro on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokerage, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light Brokerage wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light Brokerage is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light Brokerage offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website, quietlight.com. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light Brokerage is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email inquiries@quietlight.com, or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07  

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:24  

Hey, folks, thanks again for joining the Quiet Light Podcast. Today’s episode, as always, is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokerage, where each and every advisor on the team has built, bought or sold their own online business, I’ve sold close to 100 million now. And that used to sound like a big number. But you know, Walker and Brian got one closing in a couple of weeks for 20 million, Brad’s working on it, believe it or not pocket deal for close to 25 million where he’s got two offers on it. Don’t be overwhelmed though, if you’ve got something for half a million or 2 million in value. That’s kind of our sweet spot. And we’re here to help. First and foremost, if you don’t understand the value of your online business, you probably don’t understand the value of your greatest asset. So I would advise you strongly to reach out go to who quietlight.com click on evaluation form and let us help. That’s what we’re here to do. First and foremost, most of the people that we help we talked to for months or years at a time before they begin to before they list their business for sale. And one of those folks that I’ve helped is this guy on the line now his name is Ramon Van Meer. And let me tell you a little about him. He’s actually a good friend of mine now. I was sitting outside a dojo my son was working out. And I get a call from a former advisor here in the team says hey, look, I sold this business for this guy. Ramon you remember him is great guy loved him. And he’s looking to sell the next business. Let me just tell you how the numbers went in Ramon’s history and a little bit of background. And yes, I’m gonna maybe embarrass you a little bit here. Ramon. Ramon is from Holland, he was homeless at one point as a teenager, a serial entrepreneur, not college educated. A single father came to the United States first business he sold it I may not get these numbers exactly right. But somewhere around $7,000 second business he sold somewhere in the $20,000 range third business he sold somewhere in the $220,000 range. And the next this is the one that I got the call from and we achieve was in the just under $9 million range. And he’s not done yet. For those watching on video, there’s an image behind Ramon’s head that says Alpha Paw and there’s a picture of a unicorn back there. And he just explained to me what a unicorn is and what his goal is a unicorn valuation for those that don’t know, is a business that is valued at a billion dollars not sold for but valued. Is that right? valued at a billion dollars.

Ramon Van Meer  3:07  

Yeah, value. But of course my goal is to exit the you know, have that unicorn exit.

Joe Valley  3:15  

Yeah, one day. So all round guys here. Not only is the entrepreneurial journey, the personal journey, the triumphs, there’s a few tragedies along the way as every entrepreneur and individual has in life. Are they not just all impressive, but on top of it all? He’s actually just a humble nice guy. He had to clean up his office in the background before we started recording. Yes, he’s actually just like the rest of us. It’s usually a mess. My camera is zoomed in on only the clean things in my office. I had to ask my dog to leave before we got stuck in the carpet before we recorded I thought that would be an interesting part of recording. But I passed on it. Anyway, Ramon, welcome back to the podcast. One of the one of the reasons we’re having you here again, and having you and thanking you for tolerating us taking more of your time is that we’ve produced a video a little mini film on your story called Quiet Giants. And you tolerated Chris Moore coming out and getting you up at the crack of dawn not that you’re up at the crack of dawn anyway, not up to the crack of dawn anyway, but that’s going to come out folks on October 8. In conjunction with this podcast. Thank you for listening if you’re listening right now, after the recording, I’d suggest you go to Quiet Light Brokerage and do the search for Quiet Giants or go to our YouTube page and look for Quiet Giants you’re going to see and hear and get to know remotes full story and it’s just simply motivation is what it is. And that’s the purpose of this episode anyway and he stopped flapping my jaw. Ramon, how are you today?

Ramon Van Meer  4:55  

Doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Again.

Joe Valley  4:59  

Again. Thanks for joining Joining us again. Look, what is it that drives you? What is it that motivates you in in Victor’s what, 10 years old now your son in the, in the last 10 years, you’ve gone from a negative net worth to a pretty positive one are now shooting for a unicorn valuation? What is it? Is it simply money that drives you? Or is it the, you know, achieving that next hurdle and the learning and the knowledge? What is it? Help me out?

Unknown Speaker  5:30  

Yeah.

Ramon Van Meer  5:32  

It’s definitely not just money. Of course, money is a part of motivation. But if it was just money, I would have retired probably after, you know, selling the soap opera blog, I put everything in boring as you know, index funds, and you know, live happily close, quiet. It’s more of a journey, it is building cool things, helping you know, other people. And, and also see, like, see if you can pull it off, basically. So, I in my career as an intrapreneur, most were failures, but it’s all across the board. It’s not like I was passionate about, you know, one thing and I just, you know, dedicated 20 years of my life on, you know, becoming the best knitter or like writer or whatever it is, it’s for me, it was always across the board from selling custom eight, pin Jada’s online that I sold, you know, for $20,000 that website to a stock broker software that I, you know, helps build and then, you know, sold subscriptions to, to a soap opera blog that, you know, I never actually watched a soap opera episode in my life. So it’s more also like the challenge and see if you can pull it off. And learning along the way I’d love to learn.

Joe Valley  7:03  

What’s fascinating is that you you’re not Hispanic with pinatas as part of your life growing up, you’re not a stockbroker or trader, you don’t know how to do that. It’s not what your skill set is. You’ve never watched a soap opera. I’m assuming now because Alpha Paw is a pet related business that you have. I know you do. You’ve got it. You’ve got a dog, I assume you’ve got pets. But that doesn’t mean that you then become an expert on the subject. How is it that first and foremost that you? What do you say to somebody that just has a fear of their lack of experience or knowledge, they say I don’t know how to do that. You don’t know how to do this either yet you’re doing it you don’t have experience in all those things that you’ve successfully built and sold in terms of the the niche itself. You I would want to say you don’t know how to build a value a billion dollar valuation company because you didn’t work for one and you don’t come from the private equity world. You know, you’re just a guy hustling and working hard. And you said something in there that was helping others mean meaning you’re a good human. And I think that makes a difference. But how do you? How do you get beyond that? I don’t know how to do that, too. I’m not afraid to ask kind of thing. Yeah. Which is a major challenge and roadblock for a lot of people.

Ramon Van Meer  8:24  

Um, yeah, I think it comes natural that I’m having like zero ego go into something and try to ask advice and help from people that have been doing it already, or have done it in the past. And then not, you know, my ego was busted 20 years ago, like when I had these big failures, like, you know, I was, I had a, I was promoting, like parties, like rave parties, like these EDM, like so I rented a big hall, got famous Dutch DJ, playing EDM, and, you know, was bragging to everybody that’s going to be the party of the century, everybody should come. I was able to get on local TV and newspapers with interviews and boasting like, oh, man, if you’re not going to be there, you know, you’re gonna miss out. I need a 2000 people to break even. And it was a huge, huge square footage, like a huge Hall. And at the end in the middle of the night, basically, there were like 200 people there. hundred of them were friends, family, you know, people that I knew. So basically hundred sold tickets, and I still have to do a freaking TV interview within the background and empty hall. And like I was early 20s and I was so sick to my stomach of embarrassment like fog like Yo, what’s wrong and like, what Like, I worked my ass off for months, and this and I really believed in it, and then I still have to stick around and do this freaking TV interview. So long story short, my ego has been, you know, humbled many, many years ago. So, not to be afraid or embarrassed to fail or to make mistakes, or, you know, I think that really helps me today to just, you know, fucking anything worse than that is not going to happen anymore. So like, yeah,

Joe Valley  10:29  

I think failure is part of the entrepreneurial journey, or, you know, athletic journey or political journey, whatever it might be. Failure is just part of it. And you’ve got to accept it and not take it personally. But personally, have you ever approached someone and said, Hey, can you help me with this? Can I pick your brain on this? And they were rude and said, Hell no, go away?

Ramon Van Meer  10:57  

Um, that’s a good question, actually. Uh, well, definitely. Now, it’s easier because I think, you know, the more,

Joe Valley  11:07  

you’ve had some success, they know who you are.

Ramon Van Meer  11:08  

Yes, exactly. Or I can ask, you know, I’m friends know, with people that have, you know, big network. Yeah, if they Google me my name, there’s some stuff coming up. So now it’s becoming easier. And then I always say the biggest asset is your network. And you have to really build that up. And it takes time. Let me

Joe Valley  11:28  

give you let me give you an example, though. The last time we saw each other was in St. Pete at the Blue Ribbon mastermind event. And I remember one of the presenters, there was a young woman, I can’t remember the business that she was talking about. But she was Lord to come be the CEO of the company. And she could have talked about it. Later in an event I saw you down at the luncheon just picking her brain walked right up, started talking to her out of the blue. And I think 90% of the people in the room wouldn’t feel comfortable with that, because she was such a great speaker and so impressive. And her pedigree you walked right up and had a long conversation with her and pick your brain about that. Is that a certain courage that comes with your success? Or have you always been that way?

Ramon Van Meer  12:15  

No, actually, as you know, like, I’m taking my personalities the opposite. I’m a very introverted person. I don’t like public speaking. I don’t like to be on stage. I don’t like to be on camera to be honest. I will typically not just walk up to people, I don’t know.

Unknown Speaker  12:35  

But

Ramon Van Meer  12:38  

again, those cases I think is, especially if you’ve come from a position like hey, I, you know, you’re doing a great job. I want to learn from you. What I’ve learned myself is that 90% 90 plus percent, especially in the industry, we are in, people love to help other entrepreneurs. And especially if it comes across authentic, not just like, Hey, you know, I just want to use you for your information, but no, like if it’s an authentic request. That’s how I met Sam Parr and part at Ron he’s the founder of Hustle Con and the newsletter, the hustle. And I went to his first conference, many, many years ago, I was like, 300 people. This was before his big newsletter success. But I find them on Facebook. just messaged him, too. Hey, I just went, Oh, I bought a T shirts actually. Say the hospital or whatever. took a picture of myself. Send him to Facebook Messenger. Hey, I was yesterday. They’re big fan. I got the T shirt. Check me out. I would love to invite you for coffee. And he said yes. And I ended up actually investing in his company. We became really good friends. He now advises me and all my companies. And I got a lot of really good relationships through that friendship. And it was just me messaging him

Joe Valley  14:14  

and just putting yourself out there. Yeah. And I love the part where you’re not just trying to you know, make it one sided. You’re helping Sam as well you guys. You know, you obviously become friends. Sam’s a great guy for anybody that hasn’t checked out the hustler trends or hustle con or any of that please do yourself a favor and check it out. Sam’s one of the other folks that I would you know, you know be part of the good human club if if I was to create such a club hippie hippie right there at the top with with Ramon but putting yourself out there it’s funny the sending the picture. Like the reason we do video like this is because it just breaks down barriers and you took a picture of yourself and you sent it to them. I had a Conversation with. I think it was Scott Volker a few months ago that he was trying to early on reach somebody. And instead of just reaching out cold, he actually shot a quick video of himself on the screen. He said, Hey, so and so I love your book. This is what I think I could help you with and, you know, not looking for anything in return. I don’t even know if that’s exactly what he said. But it was the breaking of the barriers and reaching out and being human and not necessarily being afraid of. What if they say no, we’re not teenagers anymore, right? I’ve got two of those. And, you know, asking a girl on a date is horrifying. What if they say, Oh, yeah, yes. It’s okay. rejection is part of life failure is part of being an entrepreneur. So put yourself out there, but help first is what you’re saying. Right?

Ramon Van Meer  15:43  

Well, yeah, or be authentic, like so now, after our podcasts, and I did a podcast with Sean it’s The Hustle as well. So I get some people asking, you know, questions to me to like, especially through LinkedIn. And if I don’t answer to them all because I just don’t have the time but if I noticed, it’s just like, or you’re just out there just like for yourself basically, I don’t respond. But other messages that are more sincere and you know, authentic. Then I jumped on a call with as many people as

Joe Valley  16:20  

you can and help them so blanket candy emails, stopped doing it people get person Yeah, make it sincere, make it authentic. The other podcast that Ramon just mentioned is called My First Million with Sean Parr, I would definitely recommend listening to that. It’s part of Sam’s group as well. And it’s it’s fantastic. You’ll get much deeper, fuller detail a remote store there. If you if you like listening to podcasts, I’d go to that one as well.

Ramon Van Meer  16:45  

Yeah, let’s not very quick plug sent too much. But he has like, he taught me actually how to cold email really good. Like he’s the master. But all his speakers, he doesn’t pay actually for his conference. They all come for free. And I think he has an article there like he’s just Google Ads, I think, or video where he breaks down like, Okay, this is if you want to reach somebody doesn’t matter if it’s a CEO of Pandora or the founder of you know, then he, you know, this is how I did it. And it’s pretty, pretty simple. So

Joe Valley  17:22  

definitely check it out, folks in Sam, if you’re listening, we’re happy to plug in because you’re a great guy, and you’re helping so many people with what we do every day. Let’s talk about your your unicorn. Back there in the background. One when you sold. Thank you. Yes, he’s for those not on video. He’s pointing to it. When you sold your last business require like you had never really done physical product e commerce businesses. You found this one. You took what was a business doing less than a million dollars in year a year in revenue, and doing some amazing, amazing things. A friend of ours in common. Matthew DeWalt, who’s a former and I get this wrong. He wasn’t the CFO of Priceline, but he was up there. He calls you one of the top five digital marketers he’s ever met. And being a guy at Priceline, he could tell he’s met a lot of people Ramon’s trying to be humble, shaking his head back there going. That’s just you know, I, I give him too much beer. That’s why he says that that’s not the case at all. Um, you you you make the leap into e commerce. You’re How is it that you go about saying, you take this business is doing less than a million in revenue, and you’re trying to shoot for a billion dollar valuation? How long does it take? How do you figure out? How do you we talked about this in the interview for the book? How did you reverse engineer what it takes to sell your business for 100 million dollars, which I think is your goal, which may be changing and growing? How did you do that? Was it again more conversations? Do you read? How does it work?

Ramon Van Meer  19:06  

Yeah. Um, so yeah, this case, I bought this business. I’m a and so there was already an existing supply chain and existing product. And so then I can just focus on the growth, but because I never really done it. So I had to learn along the way is go look at other companies that you admire. And first, actually, Sam again. Again, I hate to be broken record, but he introduced me to another friend of his Roman Roman con. And he is also like a legend in e commerce. And I asked like, Hey, can I pick your brain? I like how do you do this? How do you do that? Then, after first meeting, I sent him an email, say, Hey, you know, I’ve never done this. I don’t know how to ask this properly or like, for sure you get many of these emails requests. Do you want to be come my mentor? Like, is it okay to mentor? And? And, you know, he said yes. So he started mentoring me,

Joe Valley  20:22  

what’s in it for him and the mentoring aspect.

Ramon Van Meer  20:26  

So we go back and forth. It’s like, I want to give him equity. So typically, in mentorship or an advisory role, you give up equity or Phantom units. So but up to today, he has not accepted it yet. So we’re gonna have to fight for it later that he’s gonna accept my, my equity, but typically, an advisor, mentor, you give equity in your company?

Joe Valley  21:00  

Did you offer that right away? Or did you just go the humble, please? Would you consider being a mentor, can I pick your brain?

Ramon Van Meer  21:06  

No, I offered right away, because, and if you accept this or not, he’s gonna get it, I’m just gonna deposit it into his, you know, son’s bank accounts or wherever. But I think if I approach everything that if you help me become a better or, you know, learn or helping the business to get more revenue, I want to share that with you, I have to share it with you has to be a win win.

Unknown Speaker  21:38  

situation,

Joe Valley  21:40  

your situation with with gold planning and things of that nature, I’m thinking back to the sharing of, you know, wealth and goals. In last exit. I know you wrapped up some employees and you they benefited from it as well. But I remember the one of the one of the buyers visited you personally and said that your goals on the whiteboard behind the conference table that you guys were meeting at, were just incredible. And it was more about the number of people that you wanted to help. When it comes to I mean, I we get the the connection and asking for help and mentoring. And in this case, saying, hey, look, I’ll give you some, you know, a small share in the business and, and of course, there’s like, Come on, let me just buy you a beer. And we’ll have some conversations, and it leads to a great friendship. And I love that you’re going to just deposit money to his son’s account, whether he likes it or not. That again, good human doing the right thing, thinking about others first. But goal setting, like how did you pick a number of the exit that you wanted? And how do you manage your day to day tasks to get not wrapped up in just responding to emails and always looking at that bigger picture? It’s challenged, I would imagine.

Ramon Van Meer  22:53  

Yes, but I like for me personally, and everybody has different styles or opinions about it. But for me, personally, I like to have an exit strategy when I start something, because then it’s for me easier to reverse engineer. So to give you an example, my initial target was to sell alpha pa $400 million.

Unknown Speaker  23:21  

Then

Joe Valley  23:22  

mind if you know, it’s not too big of a goal, okay,

Ramon Van Meer  23:25  

yeah. But, uh, and to be honest, like, even if it, if I didn’t hit it and still sell for 60 million, it’s gonna be great exit. So it’s not like, if I don’t use it, like, oh, if I don’t hit that target, then I’m a loser. It’s a failure. I think it’s just, if you reverse engineer from your ideal target, so hundred million, you kind of know, okay, selling on on, you know, a marketplace online is not going to the buyer is not going to be that like, you know what type of buyers you have to go after, then you can do research, okay. $400 million pet company, what type of company or who would be our ideal buyer or potential buyers, so you can make a hit list. I have one here too. And you can make a hit list of potential buyers, then you can look and do research. What other similar companies did they bought in the past? And what did they look at? Did they look at revenue? Did they look at profit? Did they look at just brand too delicate user growth, like the different metrics and every I think in every different level, like maybe you know, a website, up 2 million is more focused on EBIT our 10 million like there’s specific ranges where for example, the metric is just ever like profit last 12 months profit, a you know, put a formula on it but you know hundred million dollar acquisitions, they also look at other things. So in the pet space, for example, and other spaces, they look more often at revenue. And you know, doesn’t really matter if you have 12% profit or 18%, it’s more revenue. So then you can reverse engineer, okay? In order to sell 400 million, I need to, we need to have our metrics at XYZ. So we need to do 30 million in revenue, 10 10 million, whatever those those numbers are. Now that creates, but you know, what’s revenue, what profits what to focus on?

Unknown Speaker  25:39  

And then

Ramon Van Meer  25:41  

they start talking to like, I’m already talking even though I don’t have an exit date in mind, I already start talking with bankers and private equity and try to talk, I reach out to people that work at my kill list companies, and just try to pick their brains and just to you know, like, how many acquisitions like what was what was the last acquisition, what was the valuation? You know? Why did they bought XYZ company and why not start a company like things like that. So you can already you know, basically, steer the universe basically, to that outcome.

Joe Valley  26:27  

If that makes sense, and, and you can do that while juggling the company that you’re growing as well obviously. For those that are listening, instead of watching, I want you to understand that Ramon is sitting there in jeans and a T shirt I’m sorry, shorts and a T shirt. He lives in California. Fortunately, safe from the firefight. forest fires in the moment. regular guy you’re not in a big corporate office with a team of 100 employees. All and let’s let’s talk about staffing and whatnot all in with employees and VA. How many do you have today? All Park I know, I get hard to keep track of them all. But sometimes I know.

Ramon Van Meer  27:15  

So we made a decision two months ago to bring fulfillment in house. So for people that are not in e commerce, when you sell a physical product, a big part of your you know, operations is like you need to store all your products in a warehouse. And you need a company or team to put it in shipping boxes and ship it you know, ship your product to the customer. So I decided to bring it in house. And so we have a warehouse in office in Las Vegas. And including the warehouse team we’re now in VHS you know less than 20 people

Joe Valley  27:58  

less than 20 people including the warehouse folks, how many how many folks are at the warehouse?

Ramon Van Meer  28:02  

A nine

Joe Valley  28:04  

nine So prior to that you were like 10 people Yeah. Which is pretty amazing. And in regards to the warehouse you know it’s you’re not a warehouse operator, you know running the fulfillment center you’re choosing to do that why did you make that choice? versus outsourcing to a 3PL Was it because of that big picture goal and growth that you needed in margins? Or is it just a need to control all of these touch points of your business?

Unknown Speaker  28:39  

Yeah.

Ramon Van Meer  28:41  

It’s like the fulfillment in house versus using a 3PL and other company to do it for you is an ongoing debate basically, typically people don’t advise you to bring it in house because and I’ve learned now as well like I still don’t regret the decision but I am living it now that it is it took it’s like basically running a separate totally different business with different challenges, issues, etc. But three reasons I think having control over the user experience of getting your packages on time and you know the correct products that’s a huge benefit. Versus you know, going with a three PL doesn’t mean there’s no headache to like I had to have a full time person basically not full time but like, like every day to where issues of the wrong product sands or they they had delays and they were like four days behind like people ordered last week and still products were not shipped out or they suddenly found six pallets of my product. In warehouse like they

Unknown Speaker  30:02  

just like sounds like Amazon. Oh my goodness.

Ramon Van Meer  30:04  

Yeah, exactly. So having more control over when the products go out like now for example, we get emails, because sometimes we’re often now you order in, you placed an order in the morning, you already get your tracking them in afternoon, and we get emails saying like, Oh my god, this is amazing, so fast, you know, appreciate it. And cost saving. Definitely, you know, three pills a day make money on a lot of things, you know, pick and pack fee really adds up.

Unknown Speaker  30:45  

So

Joe Valley  30:46  

for the person, when you decided to open up your own fulfillment center, you’re nuts, by the way, but good for you. It’s obviously gonna work out. Did you? Did you bring somebody on with a ton of, you know, fulfillment experience, obviously, to sort of run that ship for you?

Ramon Van Meer  31:01  

Yes. So when I made the decision, all my friends and advisors advised me not to do it. And but I’m a little stubborn, in that sense of like, I want to try it. Like, my mindset to I think this is also important is that 99% of your decisions, you can always go back from the only thing I won’t be heard is your ego basic. And really, we don’t carry ego, okay, we’ll bring fulfillment in house, it’s a shit show headache, fuck it, which is the back, I will just hire a couple trucks and ship all my products back to the same three people that I’ve worked with. Like, there’s not really it’s not the end of the world basically. And, you know, I like it, I learned a lot. I the big thing is, is to is when you do it yourself, and the whole team, everybody in my team, including my myself, it’s like we’re trying to find ways how can we ship this more efficient? How can we ship? How can I make this box? Smaller? How can we maybe put this package in this other package? So we don’t have to pay double shipping? And we just do. So everybody’s mindset is about like how can we make the user experience better? And how can we make this cost more cost efficient?

Joe Valley  32:24  

to necessarily get that from a 3PL? No,

Ramon Van Meer  32:27  

it doesn’t matter. I have friends that are huge. econ brands work with a 3PL and they’re still just a number, like four to 3PL like they don’t have.

Joe Valley  32:40  

So it makes sense. You know, we I think you’ve met build elisandra we had him on the podcast, he’s a friend of quiet lights down a Sharla elements brands, by the way, they have a pet related brand as well, a pet food related brand as well, and do the same thing they fulfill on their own because they can they can do it better than the people in the fulfillment center care. It’s not for everyone. Obviously, we’re not advocating everybody go develop a fulfillment center. I like to say be careful of promoting yourself to your own level of incompetence. Ramon has yet to determine what that level of incompetence is obviously because your your heights keep growing and it’s pretty damn amazing. Let’s talk about growth through acquisition versus growth through skew expansion. Mm. Which approach Are you taking? Because when you started this journey, you bought one brand, which had more or less one skew? If I recall that did the bulk of the revenue. Have you simply expanded skews for the most part? And that’s accounting for most of your growth? Or have you continued to acquire other brands to put into the Alpha Paw portfolio and that’s helping you grow more?

Unknown Speaker  34:00  

Yeah.

Ramon Van Meer  34:02  

In my case, I’ve done both. So I bought when I bought this business, it was just one product lines, whew. But the product has or has a ceiling. Basically, there’s only X amount of potential customers that needs this product. You know, so it was not this is not a product for all dogs. It’s for you know, specific breeds. So there’s there was a ceiling. So, you know, I knew I cannot get to 200 million or a unicorn status or whatever, with just this one product. Right. So then I bought a couple other smaller brands that actually were only selling on Amazon

Unknown Speaker  34:57  

and

Ramon Van Meer  35:00  

Took them over and then brought them off Amazon and just added rebranded rebranded those products to Alpha Paw, and started selling them in our on your own Shopify. In our Shopify store,

Joe Valley  35:15  

hey, in that regard before I forget,

Ramon Van Meer  35:18  

yes,

Joe Valley  35:19  

Amazon versus Shopify or your own website, you’re really not an Amazon guy here, you’re driving most of this revenue through your own traffic, owning the customers creating repeat experiences and things of that nature. Is that is that an accurate statement?

Ramon Van Meer  35:36  

Yes. And I know, several people, and we are both friends with several people that are very successful on Amazon. Sure. Me personally, I think, if you want to build a brand, like a real big brands, eventually you’re going to have to go off of Amazon, in my opinion, you know, Amazon owes your customers. And I think there’s more value if you own your customer and customer data. No, you know, I know, Joe Valley has two dogs. One is called gotcha dogs named yafei.

Joe Valley  36:24  

Dasher and Willow, for those that want to know that

Ramon Van Meer  36:26  

show Willow, and they’re excellent, you know, they’re one is two years, one in six years, whatever, the and the breeds, then, you know, I think there’s a huge asset, if you build a customer database of you know, that information, that’s going to be value. This can be a high value for potential buyer,

Joe Valley  36:48  

when you have that customer database of information, does it help inform your decision on your next cue expansion or purchase in terms of brands?

Ramon Van Meer  36:57  

Yeah, so especially when you already have a customer base, or have a huge following on social media, instead of, you know, making an assumption, Oh, for sure, people will love, you know, XYZ, you know, let’s just start this product and buy a cup of containers, what we typically do is, is following we first ask our current customer base, is this a product that you use? If so, how many? How often do you buy it? Where do you buy, like a survey about a product idea. And we share it across social media, our email list, etc, etc. Then, if that’s a positive, positive signal, and I know, you know, surveys are not waterproof, you know. But if there’s a positive signal, we try to drop ship first, that same product, so we can learn the economics behind how Oh, face running Facebook ads for days products, without buying, you know, hundred thousand dollars, a million dollar, whatever the is an inventory, run Facebook ads, email marketing, all kinds of stuff. And then we can see how much it costs to acquire customer and what’s the return on adspend, etc. If those are also positive, then we start looking at to sourcing, you know, the product herself, and then that whole process starts of sourcing ourselves.

Joe Valley  38:39  

That’s a great way to do it so that you’re not investing a ton of money and inventory and have it be a bust each and every time. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  38:46  

quick questions back to the

Joe Valley  38:49  

skew expansion versus buy and bolt on what what percentage of your and ballpark numbers current revenue is from businesses that you’ve bought versus maybe expanded skews from those businesses? And that’s probably an impossible question to answer.

Ramon Van Meer  39:09  

Yeah, well, I could answer this is that in the beginning, I to increase revenue. I acquired several

Unknown Speaker  39:19  

brass.

Ramon Van Meer  39:20  

Yeah. Now I’m more on the other side where I just try to develop because a couple things like you never know. I’m still looking but like, I want to you know, we’re working on healthy doggy dog cookies, right for my son is involved in that project. But there’s no dog cookie business for sale at the moment, right. So as often we come up with ideas and you know, there’s no company that you can buy, right? So we’re not going to wait for an acquisition to get into Product skew, which is then start ourselves. But I’m a big believer in growth by acquisition because especially if it has other assets, besides, you know, sales data or sales history, if they have an email list, if they have a customer base database with addresses that you can send, you know, direct mail to, maybe they are also an Amazon and have a huge history and alar, large, you know, a lot, maybe many reviews, things like that. So we do the approach, basically both. But at this stage, because we need to add a lot more products, we were actually launching most of our products ourselves. Yeah, it’s like, it’s not a like acquisition.

Joe Valley  40:51  

Yeah. How important in your unicorn valuation your your personal exit goal is the recurring revenue aspect of the business model that you have, versus this is for folks, I’m talking about a one off sale of a growing apron versus you know, the propane that people have to get on a regular basis of course, get that luckily for the tank, but recurring revenue versus one off sales in this large valuation approaches. Is it critical that you serve shooting shooting for a certain percentage of total revenue being recurring? Or is it just case by case basis?

Ramon Van Meer  41:30  

Most of our decisions are basically have to answer yes to the question, will this eventually get us more recurring revenue basically. So it’s very important, I think it’s going to help lower your valuation. It’s, it’s good for your own revenue, because it compounds right your revenue growth, especially if you have a good product that people will keep buying.

Unknown Speaker  42:02  

So

Ramon Van Meer  42:05  

I Yeah, definitely. When we look at new products, the number one question is is a recurring product, this is a product that everybody needs, you know, because we need every day, every week, every month, whatever that answer is, okay. But it’s not if it’s not If the answer is no, this means that we right away scrap that idea, but then it really has to have some other things like a high margin or like super, you know, a big ARV or other questions. But yeah, recurring is

Unknown Speaker  42:46  

very important for us

Joe Valley  42:48  

at it. Got it. For again, for folks that are hearing this for the first time, I want you to definitely check out the quiet giants episode, where our cmo and filmmaker Chris Moore, dragged Ramon out of the bed at the crack of dawn bored him to death with preparations and questions and all that we get to see Ramon in his real world and his real story, and it’s inspiring Simply put, I think, I think that the title one of the words is the fighter in there because a little bit of bit of your background but also because you’re just focused on never giving up and fighting for success while being good human at the same time. Being a single father to Victor and doing what you’re doing in terms of that you know, the organic cookie business their dog dog biscuit does this is by the by the way is that is that website live yet?

Ramon Van Meer  43:52  

His life. So yeah, you watch this. Here it is you have a dog. This is going to be my first plug I ever did. But this one my son so I don’t feel that bad. But yeah, victorscookies.com. And he is going to donate for each bag of cookies that he sells. he donates one meal to a shelter dog. Wow. So his mission is actually pretty simple. It’s like his mission is to feed every single

Joe Valley  44:22  

shelter dog in the world. There’s victorscookies.com feed every shelter dog in the world pretty. Again, the van Meir ambition is so damn impressive. I mean, he’s 10 he wants to feed every dog shelter in the world. The goals you don’t set them lightly, that’s for sure.

Unknown Speaker  44:45  

But he can

Ramon Van Meer  44:47  

you know a little bit very proud of that little bit. But yeah, he came up on a within itself. So one of my co workers shot a video. Like an like a commercial like An ad with him. And I didn’t read the script. I didn’t saw anything until it was a finished product. And then yeah, he came up with idea like, yeah, my mission is to feed every single shelter doc in the world

Joe Valley  45:16  

at an incredible rate. I told remote folks, I told them a month or so when I got when I heard about this that I wanted to have Victor on the podcast, and I’m going to make good on that. Victor is probably more of an introvert than Ramon. So it may be cute and shy and stumbling, and I’ll pull as much information out of them as time comes. I think everybody here should go to victorscookies.com. And and buy some, buy some dog biscuits, organic dog biscuits for your pet, or your neighbors to do that today, please, I’m gonna guess

Ramon Van Meer  45:52  

we make it ourselves. So it’s not like a like a white label. You know? You know, that’s another company Vic Baker’s making its own or whatever. It’s like we actually it’s our own recipe that we own. And we have a professional kitchen. And of course, he has a baker actually has an employee already. Helping.

Unknown Speaker  46:15  

Good employee.

Ramon Van Meer  46:16  

Yes. And she’s amazing.

Joe Valley  46:18  

Let’s, let’s, if I recall the story, you Yeah, you didn’t go out and buy equipment raw from a you know, manufacturer or anything like this. You put in you found a business that was established and but older and modified it and or is that still hold true? Where you found this through Craigslist originally? Yeah. This is this is I I just want you to just cover this real quickly. But this is what entrepreneurship is all about folks, is it you have to go out and and seek it and find it and attack it and climb that hill? And don’t let the traditional ways get in your way and these obstacles that you know, you’re like, I don’t know how to do that, or I’ve never done that. Or, you know, they’re gonna say no, just you got to go out and find a way to do it. And that’s exactly what you did in this situation. Okay, I’ll be quiet now tell us what you did to actually find this business. And

Ramon Van Meer  47:15  

yeah, so I don’t know anything about baking, cooking, especially in a dark cookies. So I just put an ad out on Craigslist, looking for somebody that knows knows something about doc cookies that will pay for your time to pick your brain. I forgot like hundred dollars for an hour or something just or half hour just to jump on a call. And you know, sometimes you don’t get anything at all. But in this case, in the same day, I got an email back from a very nice gentleman said saying that he used to have a doc cookie company very small but still was selling in some local supermarket chains and pet stores. And he was actually also an author turned out to be an author of a book about healthy dog foods like you know, what should you give your dog whatnot it was really important that you know the cookies Victor’s going to sell or healthy and yeah, jumped on a call with him not actually with the mindset all I want to buy it is I just went very open minded to it just trying to learn as much as possible. And just in that conversation, I just asked him Hey, like, do you still own this company and recipes and he said yeah, so everything. Oh, are you open to selling it so and he was so we bought eight original recipes that we own now. And alongside with everything and very sweet man he even sent us his actual cookie cutters and his dough roller like he’s he said this The package is all his his whole thing. In the same thing, okay, now we have the recipe and we know a little bit more about it like you know what to do what not to do with licensing permits. He taught us everything. Now we need to find somebody to make you I cannot make you know, hundred bags a day or victory neater you still have to go to school for a couple years at least and put an ad out looking for you know, this is idea. My son and I are working on a doc cookie company and turned out the first or second email we got was Jamie who is the head pastry chef at Caesars Entertainment So, not only knows she knows how to make anything pastry, like from cookies to whatever, she also knows the economics like calculating how much up to the sense, you know, of ingredient goes into each cookie. If we just do one cookie less then we can, you know, save X amount of dollars per bag. So also like the economics behind it. And yeah, amazing, amazing fight.

Joe Valley  50:33  

Brilliant. I love it. You just didn’t know where that journey was going to take you when you put an ad in Craigslist. Or where the journey was going to take you when you bought your first business on Flippa which is I think where you started and eventually sold it at first one for twice what you bought it for, which was a big sale of $7,000 or so give or take. It’s It’s It’s an amazing journey, Ramon you’re you’re you’re good man, a good heelan a good great entrepreneur and a good friend. I appreciate you tolerating another 15 minutes of me poking you with questions. Oh, I’m sure I’m really excited to have the public. See the Quiet Giants episode with a fighter you Ramon Van Meer, because it’s motivating and inspiring. And I think it’ll get some people off the I wish, I wish I wish and on to the I’m doing it. I’m taking some action and moving forward. I expect to succeed even though I will fail along the way here and there. And that doesn’t bother me at all. I’m still going to do it. If remote can do it. I’m going to do it to kind of attitude. So you’re good man. I’m gonna as soon as this is over, I’m going to victorscookies.com and look for an order. So you tell him to look for an order to send a North Carolina here shortly. I beg everybody else to do so as well. And check out alpha pi is it alpha pod.com? Yeah, check out Alpha Paw all the products and sign up folks see how see how Ramon does the marketing become a customer pay attention if you want to learn something, become a customer and you’re going to see how they treat you and how they reach you and how they inspire you and, and and help you first and foremost and and then you become a customer as well. And maybe someday you too will have a unicorn valuation a billion dollars. We’re gonna have to have you back on as long as you promise when you and I, I yes, I just said, I’m sorry for taking up more of your time. And now I’m saying I’m gonna have to have you back on. But as long as you promised that when you hit that hundred million dollar exit, or whatever the number might be, that’s going to have so many zeros, it’s going to make most people’s head spins, that you’ll still be wearing. shorts and a T shirt and your high tops and you’re not going to change it all. Promises, of course. Alright, last question. What’s your favorite type of drink? Beer, whiskey and what’s your what’s your, what’s your vice there?

Ramon Van Meer  53:13  

Well, you should know because we’ve been, you know, down that rabbit hole a couple times, but I typically if I don’t drink often, but if I drink it’s it’s vodka.

Joe Valley  53:27  

Okay, random question. There’s the answer, folks. Ramon, you’re a good man. Appreciate it. Everybody. Look for the Quiet Giants episode coming out. Same day as this October 8. Extra.

Outro  53:43  

today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light Content Team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guests, email us at podcast@quietlight.com. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to this show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Rich Goldstein is the Principal Patent Attorney at Goldstein Patent Law, a boutique law firm dedicated to patent prosecution. In this role, Rich guides small businesses, startups, e-commerce marketers, and investors through the time-consuming and complicated process of obtaining patent protection. His goal is to connect, protect, and educate his clients while understanding their problems and needs.

In addition to his work as an attorney, Rich is also the host of the popular Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast and the author of the best-selling book, The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent.

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

• Rich Goldstein discusses his role as a patent attorney at Goldstein Patent Law
• The importance of timing when filing for a patent
• Rich talks about patent protection on Amazon
• What is the difference between a design patent and a utility patent?
• How Rich and his team find and innovate expired patents
• Rich explains the difference between a trademark and a patent
• Where to learn more about Rich and his patent protection expertise

In this episode…

Do you want to protect your products from being copied or knocked off by other businesses? If so, it may be time to invest in a patent or a trademark.

Obtaining a patent or trademark is complex and time-consuming. However, it’s an essential step in mitigating risk for your business and creating maximum value for your future exit. Protecting your brand at all costs prevents your competitors from taking a share of your market—and, consequently, devaluing your business. Fortunately, Rich Goldstein is on the Quiet Light Podcast to share his patent wisdom with the world!

On this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Rich Goldstein of Goldstein Patent Law to discuss the ins and outs of patent protection and risk mitigation. Listen in as Rich shares how and when to obtain a patent, the various types of patents to use for your products, and the real difference between a patent and a trademark. Patent protection can make or break your business—so stay tuned to learn more!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Rich Goldstein
• Rich Goldstein on LinkedIn
• Goldstein Patent Law
• Goldstein Patent Law on Facebook
• Office Hours
• Join the Live Office Hours Zoom
• Innovations and Breakthroughs Podcast with Rich Goldstein
• The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent by Rich Goldstein
• Patents.Google.com
• Joe Valley on LinkedIn
• Quiet Light Brokerage

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokerage, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light Brokerage wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they are your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light Brokerage is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light Brokerage offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website, quietlight.com. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light Brokerage is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email inquiries@quietlight.com, or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:24

Hey folks, Joe here from theQuiet Light Podcast, today’s guest is Rich Goldstein. I’ve known Rich for a while now he’s a patent attorney, speaker, host of the Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast. He’s also author of the best selling book The ABA Consumer Guide to Obtaining A Patent. He’s a product innovation specialist counsels entrepreneurs and individuals and venters startups regarding the best steps to take for patent protection. And when patent protection is available, kind of an important step there. I’ve seen Rich at almost every ecommerce event I’ve been to in the last two and a half years he seems to know everyone. He helps everyone. And I’m thrilled to have him on the podcast as a guest today. Today’s episode is brought to you by you guessed it Quiet Light Brokerage, where every member of the team, every eminent m&a advisor here has built, bought or sold their own online business. There are no junior brokers here, folks, I personally sold close to 100 million, and I’m just one of 11 advisors on the team. We currently have a slew of new listings coming up. So be sure to visit the buy page quietlight.com. And if you’re a seller and want to know the value of your business, which is likely your most valuable asset, don’t go to the watercooler and talk to your friends about what they sold their business for. Figure it out for real. Talk to one of the advisors on the team. We’re here to help it’s free. We don’t care if you’re ready to sell now or not planning to sell in the next 24 months. We’re definitely here to help. And we will we’ve learned from experience that planning does help you get a higher value. So take that step. Rich my friend. Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are you?

Rich Goldstein 1:59

Hey Joe. I’m doing well and thanks for that intro That was great.

Joe Valley 2:02

That is a beautiful background. There you is that a virtual brick office background? Or we have virtual brick background? Yeah, I can’t do it. The lighting it makes me look like I get a halo on and all that stuff.

Rich Goldstein 2:14

Well, I think that’s part of the secret is I have good lighting. And you know I have lights in front of me and the most critical is the hair light the light above that makes you stand out from the background. So even though I don’t have much hair, I still have a hair light.

Joe Valley 2:30

hair light I’m gonna have to look that one up. Yeah.

Rich Goldstein 2:34

I’m three if you look up three point lighting. That’s like the the light that’s behind you typically.

Joe Valley 2:40

Well it makes you it’s making you look for folks that are listening instead of watching YouTube and look at it Rich looks very nice with his three point lighting and his brick office. Thank you.

Rich Goldstein 2:49

And I have to say though, I really kind of struggle to find a background that I like because because so many of the backgrounds, the virtual backgrounds, just kind of silly.

Joe Valley 3:00

No, you’re not really in that house. So you’re not really on that beach, or you’re not really in outer space. I was just talking to a friend of ours in common. And he’s actually on vacation so I can’t make fun of him too much but he’s not at the beach yet. The background was a beach and the waves it was actually a video background so the waves kept repeating so I did notice after FYI on his john Yeah, you’re not actually at the beach because no no no, I’m in the Airbnb. So right. Pretty funny

Rich Goldstein 3:30

that you log thing they used to have a Christmas time with the fireplace. It is. And actually if you watch really closely, one of the little ashes on the log suddenly jumps and that’s where you know, the end of the loop. That’s it right there. If you if you want to be a nerd about it, I guess but I guess.

Joe Valley 3:49

So you have nerds. Right. You You’re in Europe, you’re a patent attorney. That’s not nerds. Because it’s bigger. Totally complete. No, you man. Look, I’ve seen

Rich Goldstein 4:00

you as nerdy of them. patent attorney. I don’t

Joe Valley 4:03

think I’ve seen another patent attorney at any of the events. I you know, I see you at every e commerce event mastermind group, whatever it is, I think the last one we were at together was billion dollar summit with Kevin King. I see you everywhere. You’re helping ecommerce entrepreneurs, you know get Is it is it. patents, trademarks? What did tell us what a little bit more detail about what you do?

Rich Goldstein 4:30

Yeah, I mean, it is patents and trademarks, I’m going to help them to protect what’s protectable. I mean, a lot of times when you’re, you’re out in business or you’re launching a new product, you want to prevent people from just copying what you’re doing and jumping on top of the bandwagon that you create. And so the extent possible, it’s great to create IP protection, intellectual property protection, to to protect the thing that differentiates you from others so that the thing that consumers So looking for and your products is also something which you can keep exclusive. And that’s what I seek to do.

Joe Valley 5:06

You just said new product when you’re launching a new product. Talk to us about the timing around when somebody can file for a patent because I think there’s a certain period of time and whatnot. If it’s out to market, it’s still okay. Can you touch on that? Yeah, absolutely.

Rich Goldstein 5:21

And I think that’s critical. And, and and I’m glad you asked, because I think that’s one of the most important things for entrepreneurs to know, because it’s where I’ve seen them lose out the most, is by filing too late. And so the way it works is that in most of the world, if you make the idea public, before you apply for a patent, and then it’s too late, so in most of the world, it’s what’s called absolute novelty. Where, if it was made public in any way, before you apply for a patent, then it’s game over. But in the US, there is technically a one year ice period. Okay. But in the US, there’s technically a one year grace period, where if you put it out there, and then you, you file a patent application within a year, you still can be okay. But many times what happens is that, you know, people launching a product, they want to be conservative with their resources, which is extremely understandable in business, you want to spend money on what you need to spend money on. And so they’ll say, Okay, well, patents are expensive, so why don’t I put it off? And if things go, well, then I’ll get a patent. The problem is, they come to me after two years have gone by, and I have to give them the unhappy news that it’s too late to ever apply for a patent.

Joe Valley 6:49

Absolutely, yeah. And then everybody you asked one year, it’s game over. Okay. And and if you do it nine months in, the rest of the world is off, right? You clock

Rich Goldstein 7:00

most of the world is off, there’s still some places where there’s a grace period, but most of the world is off. And that’s why I mentioned that it’s that the rule about the most of the world first, because a lot of times people that know a little bit of patents, think about that one year rule. And they say, Well, I don’t really have to do anything until a year goes by. I mean, that’s fine. If you want to give up your foreign foreign rights.

Joe Valley 7:26

Yeah, right. So and And usually, those are the ones who are going to knock you off the most, you know, the Chinese competitors, which is challenging.

Rich Goldstein 7:36

But that’s also a good thing to understand about this, too, is people wonder like, well, do I need Chinese patents? Or do do I need a patent in every country around the world? So the way to back into that question is, what a US Patent does a US Patent prevents anyone else from making using or selling the product in the US? So okay, can they make it in China? Yes, but then can they bring it here and sell it here? No, not if you have a US Patent? So the most common thing people are worried about when they say, Do I need a Chinese patent? is whether it can be made overseas and brought in here? And the answer is no. If you have a US patent,

Joe Valley 8:19

and how do you fight that? Let’s just go straight to the beast, Amazon, you know, anybody that’s selling a product these days, they’re more than likely selling on Amazon and more than likely sign the majority of their revenues on Amazon. And I’m obviously generalizing there. But patent protection wise, let’s say somebody has a patent utility design, and we’ll get into that in a bit as well. Amazon’s gotten a lot better at helping their sellers fight infringement, I believe, right?

Rich Goldstein 8:49

Yes. And I would say that, from, from the standpoint of someone who has the patent, you know, Amazon is practically a dream, you know, you just do when you make an IP complaint, and and they shut down the competitors listings and in most circumstances, so it’s great to be the one that’s holding the patent when you’re dealing with Amazon. Because the problem is that the avail they’re even a bit overzealous in terms of shutting people down. As you know, a lot of times people get shut down unfairly because of patents. So if you have the patent, Amazon’s great. If someone’s coming at you with a patent, it’s not so great.

Joe Valley 9:31

Yeah. And we’ve we’ve both had a client in common in that regard. Talk to us about the different types of patents. And let me just say that, you know, I’ve been doing what I do here as an advisor quite light for eight years now. And, you know, of all the transactions I’ve done, Rich, I think probably only a handful of them, maybe five have had any kind of patent protection. Everybody has seemed Have a trademark. And we’ll get into that a bit as well. But for those listening, if there’s an opportunity for you to get a patent, and you believe in yourself in the marketability of the product, you will get more value, because one of the four things that buyers are looking for is defensibility of the business, and there’s nothing better than a patent. Now, let’s talk about breaking that down a little bit Rich, design, patent and utility patent, because I hear this, you know, easier to get a design patent. But utility patent is more defensible. Can you talk about the differences between the two? Yeah,

Rich Goldstein 10:36

absolutely. I mean, and you’re totally correct about that. I mean, design patent tends to be easier to get, actually a lot easier to get. But in many scenarios can be less valuable. Amazon is an exception to that. And we’ll talk about that in a moment. So first of all, the difference between the two utility patent is what we what you typically think of when you think of an invention, or you think of someone patenting an invention, you think of someone made an improvement, somebody worked in their garage and came up with a, like a better way for a can opener to operate. And so they come up with a mechanism. And the utility patent then is what would protect that improvement and protect that structural difference, that those functional differences. That’s what a utility patent is all about, like the kind of stereotypical notion of what an invention is. And that’s how it’s protected. A design patent is strictly about the appearance, it’s strictly about the way the product looks. So the shape of the product. And so if you get a design patent, then it’s really only protecting a product that has that appearance. And so if someone had copies the concept of what you’re doing functionally, and just and makes it look different, then it’s not going to infringe the design patent. So over the years, people would always say that, well, utility patents have valuable design patents not so much, because with a design patent, you just change the way it looks, and then you’re getting around the patent. And that has you know, that’s that’s valid, except that these days, on Amazon, there’s certain advantages. So first of all, because a design patent is about the way that the product looks. Then if you do an IP complaint on Amazon, for let’s, let’s go the other exam for utility patent. So utility patents about a functionality. Now utility patents and infringement. It’s about wording. It’s about kind of a definition in the patent that describes exactly what’s covered. It’s like a table that has four legs, and it has, you know, rubber feet on the base of whatever it’s, it doesn’t fit the definition, where the design patent is just about the way it looks in the drawings. So the Now again, look toward the situation, someone does an IP complaint on Amazon. They say this hijacker is copying my utility patented product, Amazon is faced with trying to interpret this patent. But if it’s a design patent, then you’re saying, hey, this hijacker that product, it looks like my design. Well, Amazon is just going to look at the drawings in the design patent, they’re going to look at the the product listing, that’s that you’re you’re looking to shut down and they’ll say, Okay, looks the same. And they shut them down. So it’s actually easier to get recourse on Amazon with a design patent than with a utility patent. So it could be quite valuable. And the other thing is, you know, just think about how people copy you on Amazon, people typically don’t say, hey, that’s a great concept. Let’s take some time and design our own. They say, you know what, I’m just gonna knock this off. Let me see if I could find the same manufacturer to sell me some of that product, or, or even just, he has another manufacturer in China, and they send them a sample and say, can you make this exact thing. So when people copy you on Amazon, they don’t get imaginative about it, which means it’s going to look the same, which means it’s going to infringe the design patent. So what traditionally design patents might be less valuable. they’ve actually been very patent. They’ve been very valuable on Amazon. And I advise people that if you have a product that you’re launching on Amazon, that has a fairly distinctive look. You might as well do a design patent because it could really pay off later.

Joe Valley 14:46

Can you work with the folks you know, gamba or down here at inventus in Charlotte and and and get an industrial designer to change the look and design of the product even though the functionality the utility of is the same? Can you design it differently? And then apply for a design patent? obviously don’t know if you can if you can,

Rich Goldstein 15:09

yes, I mean it. The situation matters, of course. But, uh, but often Yes, you can do that, like if if you recognize that when someone has a design patent, it’s not about the functionality, then yeah, you could you could make your own design and, and get your own patent for it.

Joe Valley 15:31

Well, let’s talk about, you know, one of the I think, one of the reasons people don’t apply for the patent, obviously, they thought they had more time megawatt to market and it’s right 13 months out, like, too late. The other is that like, Man, that’s just it’s a lot of dough. It’s I’m barely scraping together money here for inventory. What What is the cost difference between utility and design? And I think there’s quite a

Rich Goldstein 15:55

significant difference. So there is quite a significant difference. And, you know, and you’re right, I mean, people that are launching products. I mean, a lot of times, being successful on Amazon is about being scrappy, it’s about being able to move quickly and get something out there and not spend a lot of money on launch, because it’s a bit of a numbers game, and not every product is going to be successful. So if you get a few out there a few irons in the fire inexpensively, then that can be the the key to success. So with that in mind. Yeah, I mean, it’s something you want to carefully consider whether it’s worth patenting. But in terms of the difference in price, typical utility patent is going to be at least $10,000. Where design patent just a few. So it’s just a few. Yeah.

Joe Valley 16:46

So I applied once upon a time, my wife and I just designed a product, and we applied for a utility patent. And looking back, I kind of wish we had just focused on the design pattern, it’s before I knew Otherwise, I would have used you and I would have gotten the patent. Whereas I actually didn’t get the patent. But I wished I had focused on the design aspect of it. But it’s an e commerce business. And I’d never go in there. Again, I love doing what I do here as an advisor, Quiet Light. So I’m actually working with the folks down at inventus. in Charlotte, they’re going to give it to somebody a former client of Quiet Light’s, actually, and let them run with the product if they can. Oh, interesting. But for those that are listening and have products and are thinking Well, how do I find an industrial designer, I’ve mentioned them twice. inventus partners down in Charlotte, very, very good at what they do been around for about 2022 years. Louis Foreman is one of the founders, the company lives down the street from me, one of my friends, and then Zack over at gumba. Great guy. We’ve had him on the podcast, they do fantastic.

Rich Goldstein 17:47

I’ve had jack Zack on my podcast as well. And I love the guys again, but they’re really great, really fantastic. I agree.

Joe Valley 17:54

One of the things that you actually talked about at the billion dollar summit, and when we were there was Zach as well, was taking expired patents and innovating them to keep talking about that a little bit in terms of people with, you know, motivation now. Yeah.

Rich Goldstein 18:12

Do you? I’m glad to remember that. You know, like you remember my talk from last November that I was that

Joe Valley 18:17

one guy that was listening. Just for the record. Look, everybody. Richard, I bet

Rich Goldstein 18:21

it was all for you.

Joe Valley 18:24

Richard, I both did a presentation on the same day. And after the presentations of the day, Kevin, who’s the founder of the event, he has everybody breakout into different groups. There’s, there’s a table where Rich and Joe or there’s a table for Matt and Jason and the different things that they talked about. And that event was all about, you know, driving revenue and importing from China and competing and knocking off competitors. Rich, I sat at the table alone together. No one had any advice?

Rich Goldstein 18:53

Yeah, talking to us. Right. Right. So so no one had any question. I guess our presentations were so complete that no one had any questions. And that’s what I was thinking. Yeah, exactly. And so you and I had got a chance to talk. So Exactly.

Joe Valley 19:06

Let’s talk about reverse engineering something. Okay, an expired patent. How do you do that?

Rich Goldstein 19:10

Okay, so, so few principles here that are that are important to that. And one is that once a patent expires, it can’t be renewed. And once a patent expires, it’s fair game. So if you want to do exactly what was in the patent, the expired patent, you’re free to do that. It’s kind of like the whole basis of the patent system is that in exchange for protecting you, for a limited time, say 20 years with your patent, you’re essentially explaining it, you’re explaining the the product, you’re explaining the idea in full in that patent application, so that at the end of that time period, you’ve explained to the future essentially how to go ahead with your product, how to go ahead with your invention. So this There’s some real beauty to that. And that not only is it that it’s free for you to use it, but the inventor laid out for you exactly how to go ahead doing it. So, so there is this invaluable resource in the the patent record in the 10 million plus issued United States patents, where there are tons of bring it out of the darkness into the light and have it and have that idea half its day. And there’s nothing you need to do, you don’t need to contact the inventor, you don’t need to get permission from their errors, you just can go ahead and do it.

Joe Valley 20:40

How do you go ahead and search for expired patents?

Rich Goldstein 20:44

Aha, the million dollar question. Yes. Um, so um, so one of the the best resources for for searching patents easily, not thoroughly, but easily is Google patents. So that’s patents pa t nts.google.com. And there are some kind of, you know, expert navigation features on the left hand side, one of them allows you to limit limit the date that the patent is from, and you can say that it was that it’s that issued more than or that it was filed more than 20 years ago, because essentially utility patents filed more than 20 years ago now expired. design patents issued more than 15 years ago, are expired also. So you want to limit it by date. And then it gets a little bit complicated in terms of the search query. The best way is to look by classification. And that’s probably more involved than I could just describe right here. But the point is that there’s over 100,000, different classifications where where patents are arranged. So basically, all kind of hand tools might be in, in class for and hand tools with a sharpened edge might be then in subclass 161. Yeah. And so you do a little research, find that subclass, you could plug it into Google patents. And then you find all the patents that fit the category you’re looking for. You’re looking for sharpened hand tools, and, and you do that, and then you limit it by date, and then all of a sudden, you’re looking at expired patents. And you have to do a good amount of hunting to find those good ideas. Because there’s a lot of mediocre ideas. It’s

• How he floundered before finding his true passion.
• Launching a wholesale-based CRM software, before pivoting into repricing software.
• Explaining wholesale.
• Working with an antiquated business model.
• What happens when everyone is using Aura at the same time.
• How Aura works.

• Justin’s work history.
• Explaining “conversion optimization”.
• Justin’s favorite tools.
• Why directing traffic back to your homepage can make a huge difference.
• At what point the strategy goes beyond the customer’s website.
• The importance of incremental adjustments.
• Keeping it simple.
• What is helping him through 2020.

On this episode of Quiet Light, we speak with Jon Elder, who had a seven-figure exit and now guides others on their startup journeys.

We discuss the start of his Amazon career; his new business, Black Label Advisor; and how he guides his clients to success.

Topics: 

• Why he got into an Amazon business.
• How his conservative spending affected his start.
• What he negotiated in the sale of his business.
• Who his current business helps.
• How his methods have changed since he started.
• Why you should consistently innovate.
• Creating experiences for customers.
• Who his typical client is.

Resources:

Black Label Advisor

Jon@blacklabeladvisor.com

Quiet Light

Podcast@quietlight.com

Transcription:

Mark: Starting an online business and an Amazon business, that can be tough, right? There are a lot of mental challenges in that and especially those first couple of years; there are a lot of decisions you have to make in order to be successful. You have to think about how much inventory should I be buying in that first year, how much should I be investing, how many new products should I be launching, all while not seeing a lot of cash in your pocket, because any money that you bring in, you’re typically reinvesting in that business to be able to help it grow. And so, there are a lot of challenges through those first few years and I think a lot of people get drowned down mentally during that time because there are just so many decisions to try and make as you’re growing a business. Joe, you had Jon on the podcast to talk about that. He went through this. He went through a successful exit, and now he’s training people on that startup process. How to start up an Amazon business, how to build brands and make those decisions a bit more clearly, have the right mindset as well going through this to make sure that you have some resiliency through that process.

Joe: Yeah, Jon reminds me of us and what our website says which is a bunch of entrepreneurs with a bunch of crazy, been there, done that experience. That was a terrible quote from our own website. I should have had it up and read it.

Mark: It’s something like that.

Joe: It’s something like that; a bunch of people that have done something.

Mark: We’re just a bunch of guys and Amanda.

Joe: And Amanda, she runs the show. Jon, he had a mid-seven figure exit and it was a substantial and life-changing one that will probably change a generation or two of his family. And he did it through building an Amazon business the right way with multiple brands in one Seller Account. Not that that’s the only right way. There are many ways to do it. But he’s sharing his direct experience. He’s not the typical guru if you will. And I shouldn’t say that because we have many friends who would be considered gurus that are actually really good at what they do. But he’s been there, he’s done it, and now he’s going, okay, look, I can help people. I truly, truly can help people. And he set up a system and a process to help people understand how to identify the right product, not just from maximizing value and return on dollars but upon doing that, you’re going to be happy and satisfied with working with you and your cash flow; how long the launch process really takes, how often you should launch. He never used any launch services or anything like that. There are a lot of steps that he’s set up and he goes through and he’s working with people one on one. And I thought it would be beneficial to have him on the podcast because he does have a crazy amount of done there and done that experience.

Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Today we’ve got somebody that had an incredible exit, one in the mid-seven figure range. Jon Elder ran an Amazon business with multiple brands. Jon, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast.

Jon: Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe.

Joe: That was a short but powerful introduction if I do say so myself. We don’t read fancy intros here. Jon, can you give the audience listening a little bit of background on yourself so they understand who you are and why you’re here?

Jon: Yeah, of course. My story is kind of similar to a lot of people in the sense of I wanted to get more out of life and there is always an entrepreneurial spirit in me. And so, 2014 is when I started on Amazon and I was also working on a corker construction job and I honestly thought I was going to be in that type of career the rest of my life. I went to college for Construction Management and so it’s a pretty high profile, very successful career. But the scaling of salaries is driving me a little crazy and so I wasn’t okay with just getting the 5%, switching companies maybe down the line. So, I got into the Amazon world because I thought it was a really great opportunity. At the same time, I’m really conservative so I didn’t go in with a large amount of capital. I started with roughly $5,000 and I got my feet wet in the golfing category. Some of that is due to just my general interest in sports and it was a product that there weren’t a lot of competitors in that category. It was something I was interested in and something that I thought I could innovate a little bit in that category and become the leader. And within a year I actually did become the leader. I became the number one seller for that specific product.

Joe: And you have a job the whole time, Jon, or did you quit?

Jon: Yeah, actually I worked full time until 2016.

Joe: Excellent. Okay, that’s good to hear.

Jon: Yeah.

Joe: That’s what I like to hear. It’s a less risky path for people.

Jon: Yeah, I’m married, I have a son and so their needs actually come first. I had to make sure that I wasn’t putting my family in a bad financial position. So, yeah, I definitely worked with factories in eight. I spent a lot of hours. My wife was very sacrificial, allowing me to spend all that extra time. We used to have conversations about this that we’re building a business in the future and there’s some sacrifice that has to be made for that. And that’s just part of life. Anyone who says that it’s easy and it doesn’t take that much time is a complete lie. It’s a lot of work and very, very stressful but it definitely paid off.

Joe: Yeah, you’ve got five brands over that time period as well, not that just one?

Jon: Right and part of that story is just pursuing products that I had an interest in. And not all the brands were successful. Some of the brands were definitely not successful but thankfully the vast majority of my brands took off and became leaders in their respective categories.

Joe: Okay, so just to review and just to understand fully who you are, what you’ve done, because we’re going to talk about some of the nitty-gritty here. But in the last year that you sold the business, you did about six and a half million in revenue. You ran the business side by side with being a new dad and a full-time job for a couple of years before you exited. You had five brands and ultimately you sold for mid-seven figures. We’re not going to give away the detail here, but an amount that is a life-changing figure that would have taken you 20 years in your construction business to earn probably maybe even more, right?

Jon: Oh, yeah.

Joe: Over the over the five years or so that you were running the Amazon business, I always love asking this question and it’s a tough one because you haven’t done the math yet but did you take and make more money as you were running the business; take more cash out of the business for you and your family during that five-year period, or did you get more when you sold the business?

Jon: Oh, I definitely got more when I saw the business. One of the driving factors behind the success of my business was the vast majority of the money; any profits that we got were reinvested. That helped us launch products faster. It helped us launch new variations faster and so that allowed us to grow the business very, very quickly.

Joe: You must have taken something out for yourself, though, I would assume.

Jon: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Joe: Just enough to live off of, was your wife working?

Jon: No, my wife is a stay-at-home mom. In 2016 when I went full time with Amazon, the goal was to pay myself a salary that mimics my salary at my job and then as the business grew to continue to scale that up from there. And of course, at Christmas time because of the sales and the profits there, doing things like small bonuses and things like that. Yeah, the money that I paid myself definitely increased over time. In the first two years, I paid myself very little just because I was obsessed with growing the business. And honestly, from the very beginning of starting the business, I had a number in mind for my exit someday. A lot of people will say they have vision boards mine was a very specific number. It was in the multiple seven figures and everything I did in the business was geared towards that end goal. And so that’s everything from having all my brands under one seller account, all my bookkeeping, just keeping everything clean, strong tax records.

Joe: Preaching to the choir, I love that. I love all of it. That’s great. It’s a clean and easy deal. Did that enable you; was your buyer and SBA buyer or were they a cash buyer?

Jon: He was an SBA buyer and the package deal for that was kind of interesting. Roughly 75% was upfront cash and then the rest was split between the seller note over five years and then an earn-out in perpetuity. And so that actually wasn’t originally in the contract and with my lawyer at my side, we negotiated that to be perpetuity so I’ll get the money eventually.

Joe: Wow, that’s fantastic. That part of it was probably outside the SBA guidelines though, yes?

Jon: That’s completely outside the contract.

Joe: Good, good, good. Understood. Okay, so you learned an awful lot, you had five brands, some were successes, some were failures along the way, and you’re now helping other people as well. What are some of the basic tips that you would give somebody if they’re just starting out? So this podcast, even though you had a multiple seven-figure exit, even though you’ve operated five brands, you’re really focused on helping people that are just starting out more than anything else. What are some of the basic things that somebody should look for if they’re, let’s say, either starting out or if they’re buying a small Amazon business, that might be a couple of hundred thousand dollars in total value?

Jon: So it sounds cliché but follow your passion. That’s something that I tell my clients and friends and family who are interested in starting an Amazon business. Do something that you’re generally interested in. And it doesn’t have to be your ultimate passion. For example, golfing was never the ultimate sport. It was just a general interest in it. But go into something that you have some sort of interest in because at some point you will have hurdles and you will have issues with your business. So, for example, you might have to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night talking with one of your factories about resolving quality issues on a previous purchase order. You got to be invested in that product and if it’s not a product that you’re interested in, for example, I would never go into women’s makeup because I have zero interest in it. I just don’t know if I would be totally in it once I hit those bumps in the road.

Joe: Yeah, and I’ve heard people say just the opposite, except for that part of the bumps in the road. So you could be product agnostic, but it helps, it’s not an absolute requirement, it helps, as you’re saying, to have some passion about the product. If you’re going to end up on a call at 11 o’clock on a Friday night with a manufacturer on the other side of the world to work out some kinks in the detail, if you’re not passionate about it, if you’re not interested, if you hate it, you’d probably think about doing something else.

Jon: Yeah, and I think along this subject too it’s even deeper than that. I mean, so often, you’re going to have other competitors for your product. There is so much innovation and improvement in your product that takes place over time. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be looking at makeup and spending hours and hours and hours trying to get a better formula because I just don’t care about it. One of my other product lines was an outdoor kid’s product. The mission behind that brand was actually to encourage kids to rediscover the great outdoors. So many kids are on tech now and they spend hours and hours inside on the Switch and on iPads that; and this is how I parent as a dad, too is I encourage my son to go spend hours outside.

Joe: How old is your son?

Jon: He’s five.

Joe: Okay, wait until they’re teenagers. It gets even worse, man. It gets even worse. They’re playing with friends all the time it’s just online I tell you. So, yeah, have some passion about what you do. There’s no question about it. You started with 5,000 bucks. Are you helping people that haven’t even picked a product yet or those that have a product idea and has sourced it and are really just trying to figure out how to how to get some traffic on?

Jon: Yeah, obviously it depends. Some of my clients definitely have product ideas and they’re already innovating and they want to go into a category where it’s going to be truly unique and different. And then others are still in the brainstorming stage. My job is to just advise and help them along the journey all the way through sourcing and getting on to Amazon and launching. But there is so much that goes into the product research phase, and that’s what I tell people, is just expect to spend hours and hours researching and researching because this is your money you’re talking about. And some people take out loans. This is real stuff. You need to be 100% sure that you’re in it for the long haul with your product. So, it comes down to researching the estimated revenues for that product. The thing that made me the most successful was innovating products that had some negative reviews. So I would harness all those reviews and fix all the problems.

Joe: How do you do that with the manufacturer on the other side of the world?

Jon: It’s pretty incredible. I actually never visited any of my factories. I had four factories and it was all through phone calls, Skype, and emails.

Joe: And it worked, not a problem. So are you working with a product innovation firm that’s doing industrial design work for you or are you just sketching it out yourself and asking for innovations from the manufacturer?

Jon: No, actually, the innovations were things that; again, because I was in product categories that I had a deep interest in, I was able to innovate myself.

Joe: And do you then just put a drawing in front of that manufacturer and say can you do this?

Jon: Exactly. Yeah, sketches are really useful, and then something that blew me away was how intellectual or sophisticated the Chinese factories were. They actually had 3D modeling engineering guys in-house. And I worked with some big boys. The factory for the golfing product that I sold, they actually supplied some products for the PGA Tour. One of the keys to my success was working with factories that were not starting out their journey as a factory. These were very established factories that sold products to Walmart and brick and mortar companies.

Joe: Yeah. For those listening one of the additional options is Gembah, www.Gembah.com. We had Zach on the podcast here. It’s a product innovation company, its industrial designers that can do that. If you’re not good at drawing and innovating, they can do that work for you so that you present a more professional look to the manufacturer. Okay, so advise number one, spend a lot of time on deciding what product and product categories you’re going to go into because this is where you’re going to be spending all of your money in the future years, yes?

Jon: 100%, and all your time.

Joe: All right, let’s just say we picked a great product. What’s next? I mean, is it simple photography, put the listing up, look at basic stuff in terms of recommendations from Amazon? Are you using a launch service like Viral Launch or are you using some other launch service or a combination of different things?

Jon: Yeah, for launching, I can get into that in a second. So, the next step that worked really well for me was doing a ton of screening with the factories. And then what I would do is I would do three final samples and we’re dealing with weeks and weeks of communications here. Like this is a long process to make sure that my factory is the best of the best. So I would test the factories over email and I would ask oddball questions. I would also come across as the VP of Logistics or the VP of Product Innovation. So I would definitely present myself as an image of a large corporation. They never thought that I was a mom and pop shop in the States. But getting three samples from three strong factories was really successful for me.

Joe: Three samples from each or one sample from each?

Jon: Sorry, one sample from each factory. And then I would stress-test those products, use them, inspect them, see how they feel in my hand. I would do all those types of things. I ask friends and family what they thought of the products. That was a very common process. And then I ended up after taking in all that data, deciding on my final factory.

Joe: This may be a basic question, but I assume you’re paying for the sample and paying to have it shipped, right? They’re not sending free samples and free shipping.

Jon: Correct.

Joe: So you’re going to spend several hundred to a thousand dollars in just reviewing product samples I would assume, depending upon product cost of course?

Jon: I would say a couple of hundred.

Joe: Expected, and that’s an incredible investment that you have to make, right? You can’t just look at some stuff and get one sample and off you go.

Jon: Yeah, so it’s common to see that everywhere right now. It’s like you can skip all those steps and you don’t need to worry about that. There is some time and money upfront that is going to save your butt long term. 100%.

Joe: So then if you’ve got the product samples; let’s say you want to innovate on all three, let’s say they’re pretty close but you want a thicker grip on a handle or something like that, are you asking the manufacturers all three just to see how they respond and react and work with you in terms of innovation?

Jon: 100% and part of that is also testing how flexible they are as a factory and how easy they are to work with.

Joe: Okay.

Jon: If they put up a big fight and complain about things, that’s going to be a red flag for me. In the factories that I ended up working with, the answer was always yes. Their response was yes, we can do that. Yes, we want your business. Yes, yes, yes. Those are the guys that I ended up working with. The ones who caused issues for me and said, no, we can’t do that, that’s going to cost $5,000, I just got rid of those guys off the bat.

Joe: All right, so what’s next? You’ve tested three manufacturers. You chose a product, you innovated the product, and you’re at the point where you’ve got the final decision on what you’re going to invest your money in. What’s next after that?

Jon: So at that point, you have your final sample, and hopefully you have that in hand, typically production, depending on how many units. My test unit order was always 250 units, sometimes 500 units. So what I would do is while production is happening, whether that’s two weeks or four weeks, I would have my final sample sent to a professional photography firm. In the very beginning, I actually took pictures myself and had a designer kind of edit my pictures and pump up the colors a little bit. But later down the road, when I was launching product after product, I’d send the products to a professional photography firm and have them do the enhanced brand content just to tie in the branding for my product. Because in the beginning, I sold a lot of random products, and then as time went on and I got more educated on it, I realized I need to be establishing my brand. I need people to come to Amazon for that specific golfing product. I want them to see my name and think quality and fantastic customer service. That’s what I wanted them to remember about me. And so part of that is beautiful packaging, part of that is beautiful enhanced brand content. I had videos as my seventh picture on the listing.

Joe: I was just going to ask that. How many of your listings had videos on them, all of them?

Jon: The two largest brands had videos and that was kind of like a cost decision because the videos that I went with were extremely high production videos. And not everyone has to do fancy videos. The reason why we justified that was those brands were very, very large. We’re talking big revenue numbers so it was something that I felt was needed.

Joe: You didn’t do that out of the gate on that first golfing product I assume, right? Plus, it was 2014. It probably wasn’t an option for you.

Jon: No. I don’t remember the year that they allowed videos on the listing. I think it was maybe starting to happen in 2017-ish but yeah, in the very beginning you were locked out of everything. You had a paragraph for your description; you had bullet points, and then seven pictures. That was it.

Joe: Yeah. Okay, so now you’ve ordered products, you ordered 250 units, spent a couple of hundred bucks on samples, you got another final sample you sent off to a photographer. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got a whole lot of money left if you’re starting out with five grand. I guess it depends on how much product cost is.

Jon: That initial investment can range drastically. My first product in the golfing category, I sourced it for a dollar a unit.

Joe: Well, that makes a difference, that it explains it right there.

Jon: Yeah, exactly, it makes a huge difference. And I did that on purpose just because I’m so financially conservative that I wanted to learn the logistics process of Amazon and if I did screw something up along the way, whether that was customs or something at Amazon, I wanted that capital invested a tad small.

Joe: And if you were in a competitive space that would have meant the barriers to entry in terms of cost are pretty low. A year later you said you wound up with the top listing, but did you start to see competitors come in pretty rapidly after that?

Jon: Oh, yeah, 100%. And I think what drives that is people see a new seller take over that category and then they see all the revenue go to me and then they think, oh shoot, I’m going to mimic him and I’m going to come in and take some of the revenue. And that’s part of life is you have to; and when I mentioned innovation, you have to be constantly innovating your products. So I ended up adding a special device to my golfing product that actually had a patent for it. No one else could do that but that was kind of like an additional tweak I did for the products that made my listing unique and different from all the other listings. That’s just the harsh reality of Amazon is once you become a category leader, you will have a lot of other people come in and mimic you.

Joe: And the way to fight that is to innovate.

Jon: Innovate, be the best, and when you think your pictures are good just get even better pictures.

Joe: Yeah, I hear you. All right, so now we’ve got the product. You’ve ordered it. You are starting to have your photos done. What’s next? I had mentioned launches and systems and things of that nature, where are you helping your clients and advising them to go from there?

Jon: I’m different in the world of Amazon because most of my products; actually all the products were done organically and so my strategy is a little slower than other sellers.

Joe: Let’s define what you mean there organically.

Jon: So for example, never using services like Viral Launch or other services where you’re paying discounted rates or using websites to launch your products.

Joe: You simply put the listings up on Amazon use Amazon Sponsored Ads and off you went?

Jon: It’s a little more than that.

Joe: It always is. I’d like to simplify things and dumb it down but I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, yeah. But no launch services, nothing like that?

Jon: Right and so what was really beneficial was really actually humorous autoresponder emails. So we use a service called Feedback that was really, really successful. Alongside that doing a little bit of a giveaway through the early reviewer program and then just pumping PPC, to be honest with you. And so typically we do like slightly reduced cost for the products to be priced a little lower; nothing too drastic because that can mess up your Lightning Deals down the road. So we would reduce it a little bit and just funnel a ton of money into PPC. And then we had an autoresponder series on average two to three emails.

Joe: So explain the autoresponder part because you don’t have control of the customer. This is after they buy the product? I’m confused on the autoresponder part.

Jon: This is right after someone buys the product. So one email goes out three days after they receive the product and then another one goes out seven days and another one goes out 14 days. And those are all tweets specifically to be kind of funny. So many people open up emails and to be honest with you, most people don’t open their emails very often. So having a really funny title for the email and then the actual body of the email being short and sweet and using a joke or something about the product was really, really helpful.

Joe: I got you. So, you’re not breaking even upfront, I assume, because you’re spending a lot of money on Pay-Per-Click.

Jon: No, I’m definitely in the red when I first started. Pretty much all my product launches started in the red.

Joe: How long are they in the red for?

Jon: Probably a minimum of six months because I’m doing it organically.

Joe: So, how many products are you launching in the first year; two or are you going after more?

Jon: The first year was two products actually.

Joe: So, if somebody is coming to you with a little bit bigger of a budget and let’s say they’ve got 20 grand and they’re really needing your guidance to get launched and they’ve got an idea of the product. Are we still looking at losing money or breaking even for the first six months, eventually breaking and making a little bit?

Jon: That is so dependent on the category that you’re in. If you go into a category where you’re competing with guys that have 500 reviews or a thousand reviews; let’s say the top 10 sellers have a thousand reviews, it’s going to take some time and you’re going to have to burn through some cash. And the reason why is PPC gets more expensive every single day. That’s just the reality of it. And everyone is competing for those keywords. And so, for example, with my products, I always outbid my competitors for the top search volume keywords, and the reason why is that that drove incredible sales to my listing. And PPC was actually the highest cost in terms of expenses for my business.

Joe: Do you know what it was overall as a percentage of your revenue?

Jon: Oh, man.

Joe: I’m typically seeing anywhere between 10 and 20%.

Jon: Yeah, I want to say was more like 25%.

Joe: Okay.

Jon: If we’re dealing with the PPC costs alone my CPA would just look at me and be like, man, you guys are spending a lot of money on PPC. But that’s just the reality of the business.

Joe: But your CPA still has a day job? You get to do whatever the hell you want at this point in your life, right?

Jon: Yes sir.

Joe: Then who is right, you or the CPA? I think you were.

Jon: Those expenses look kind of scary, but when you’re looking at the percentage of revenue, it becomes a little less scary.

Joe: Yeah. Now do all; I know the answer to this, but not all product launches are going to take six months to start to get traction and breakeven, did you have any in your five-year stretch where you would see some just home runs out of the gate or get some profitability within the first one to two months?

Jon: The kid’s product took off very fast and that was a very organic launch. And the reason why was there were maybe two or three sellers for that product and they had an inferior quality problem. So if you go look at the reviews, the actual liner of the material for the toy would just deteriorate like within a month under the sun. And so we innovated and we got the best liner possible, got UV-resistant liner and improved the product drastically and that took off with beautiful pictures. We actually hired some models; some family members actually took pictures with the product and just focused on quality for that product. People bought it and I realized, wow, this is like; it showed up in the reviews, your product is as lasting a long, long time. And that became very successful, very quick.

Joe: And it was all from looking at other listings and the negative reviews that those had and innovating and improving the product?

Jon: Correct.

Joe: Yeah, pretty cool. How hard is it, though, to find a category where there are only two or three sellers? It seems like an impossible task these days, is it not?

Jon: So Amazon is definitely; there’s a lot more competition now. I think the secret’s out about FBA.

Joe: It might be, yeah.

Jon: It’s definitely harder now. I think that most categories are going to have far more than two to three sellers and so what I always recommend is even if there’s seven sellers, you can break into those market segments as long as you’re not dealing with sellers that have like a thousand reviews. If seven of them have 75 reviews or maybe 200 reviews, that’s something that you can definitely go into and compete with. But there is always going to be a hole in the market. There’s always going to be a chance to innovate and do something and spend the time to make the best product possible that lots of other people aren’t going to do. And one example was actually the leather goods category that I was in. It was specifically for men. We drilled down all the way into the product packaging. A lot of people don’t do that. They would get their leather goods products and they’d open it up from the box and it’s in a polybag, right? That’s not an experience.

Joe: Right.

Jon: So our idea was let’s make it an experience for this person to open it up and sell everything down to the custom packaging for the box down to a branded tissue with branded tape. So whenever the person opened this product up, they knew that they were receiving a high end, high-quality product that was different from everyone else. So that’s just like; it sounds kind of silly, but no one spends time with packaging and what does it feel like when you open up that product at home?

Joe: It’s because it’s not sexy. They spend time on marketing and topline revenues and talk about it with their friends because it’s sexy. But packaging and good bookkeeping and good branding and good photos and videos and the profit is actually what puts you in the best position possible, which is doing whatever you want at this point in your life.

Jon: Yeah, definitely. What’s interesting about that is the customers would actually talk about all the nitty-gritty details that I spent time on. That would come up as content and some of those reviews would be the top-rated reviews. Someone left a review on one of the leather goods products and it was this detailed long review with pictures and they went out of their way to be like, I’ve never opened a product from Amazon and the packaging was just stunning. So I was like, yes, it worked. And so other customers who are on Amazon obviously see the top-rated reviews and see that type of content and it definitely helps and it soon became a leader in that category.

Joe: Cool. Jon, we’re a little short on time, but I wanted to ask you, what are some of the biggest challenges you think folks are going to face?

Jon: I think the biggest challenge is definitely just not getting swept up in sexy products. I’ve seen this online so much, just this huge push for going into supplements, for example. I tell my clients, do not do supplements. Don’t go into that category. Don’t do it. Don’t do products that go on people’s skin. Don’t go into products where you’re ingesting things. I’m always recommending kind of simpler products that are very, very low risk. And don’t go into knives; things where people can get injured. So, just focusing on a product that you’re interested in and it’s low risk. And that’s always tough because you see the revenues that other sexy products are bringing in and people get swept up in that.

Joe: This is one of the first times I wish I just hadn’t asked that question because I sold; my own company was a digestive wellness supplement company. I’ve got a good friend that’s selling his makeup business for like 40 million dollars. We have, as a company supplement companies that are under contract for anywhere from two to 20 million dollars. And I think when they’re when they’re done right, they’re done right.

Jon: Exactly, and I would never want to give the impression that it’s not possible. It’s just my conservative nature kind of stays away from those types of product lines. And you have to be you definitely have to be a more sophisticated seller to…

Joe: These guys are. These guys are all very, very smart, very good at what they do, have SOPs that’ll pass on to the owners of the business, as did mine. And it’s competitive, right? It’s that they are low barriers to entry cost-wise.

Jon: Extremely, you have to have big capital and that’s one of the barriers for sure.

Joe: Yeah. Well, I think it is a nice; it’s a low barrier to entry to buy into the product category, but then you’ve got to rank and that’s where the additional capital and expertise goes. It’s very, very challenging. All right, so how do people reach out to you? I see its www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com, but ideally, let’s talk about who your typical client would be and how they reach out to you.

Jon: Yeah. So the easiest way to reach out is to go to my website, www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com or you can email me Jon@BlackLabelAdvisor.com. My passion is to help other people replicate my story. So many people I talk to you are they’ll see my story and they’ll say, oh my gosh, that’s a dream, you know? And I used to think it was a dream too. And when I closed on the sale of the business, it was a dream come true to see the money come through. It was an unbelievable feeling that you just never think it’s ever going to happen. I have recommendations and systems and third party companies I highly recommend. Along the way, I made mistakes myself and my passion is to help people avoid those mistakes and grow their business faster just because of all the experience I have and just help them along the journey with the end goal of selling someday.

Joe: Yeah, I like it, folks. Jon is not somebody who can’t so he teaches. He actually did it. He built an Amazon business with five brands, sold for a multiple seven figures, and now he’s helping them. And that’s what we do at Quiet Light, we help first. We want to help you succeed. Strangely enough, it actually helps us in the long run too, right? Somebody listening in the audience hire somebody like John who has real-life experience to give real-life advice to help them succeed in their online business. That person will come around at Quiet Light someday as well. So with that look around, who can you help? Help out your neighbor, help your friend that’s in the online space and keep helping, it’ll come back around too in time.

Jon: Definitely.

Joe: Jon, I appreciate your time. BlackLabelAdvisor.com folks, reach out and connect with Jon if you need some help to help get your Amazon business off the ground.

Jon: Awesome. Thanks, Joe.

• The most interesting thing about Judson.
• The importance of storytelling in branding.
• Why demos are great for conversions.
• A personal touch is important to branding.
• How to shoot a successful unboxing video.
• Crafting a business’ image.
• Working with new and established businesses.

• When she stumbled on Ecommerce, she realized it was a good fit.
• How Amazon has changed since she started.
• Why outside funding sources are necessary.
• The importance of Mastermind groups.
• Living through rocky periods.
• Explaining rebates.
• Kellianne’s consulting methods.

• The typical Shipping Tree client.
• Deciphering quotes from 3PLs.
• The best integration models for 3PLs.
• How using a 3PL can save money.
• Commerce zones.
• Different types of Amazon seller accounts.

• Phillip’s background in E-commerce.
• Why email is still powerful despite expanded advertising options.
• The misstep of shooting from the hip.
• How to start out on the right foot.
  • Offers
  • Trust-builders.
  • Content
• The efficacy of social media advertising.
• Getting past personal biases.
• Sharing a name with a famous quarterback.

• An abbreviated version of Chris’ work history.
• Earning a CBI after becoming a board certified broker.
• Chris’ buy-side brokering experience.
• Potentially creating short films about clients.
• Tips for sellers.
• How he leads buyers through the process.
• Why Chris spends time with and coaches buyers.

• Why accounting is a daily, weekly, and monthly endeavor.
• The best accounting software.
• Setting clients up for accrual.
• Understanding the technological ecosystem.
• Switching from cash-basis accounting.
• Refining the process of cash flow projections.
• Why cash is king.
• One thing to increase optimization.

• Revenue-based multipliers.
• What happens when SaaS businesses scale.
• The ideal scenario for revenue growth.
• SaaS valuation metrics.
• Why there is a bias towards monthly plan revenue.
• Comparing scaling a business to dating.
• Takeaways from David’s guide.

• How and why Steven started his agency.
• Dealing with Amazon account suspensions.
• Best ways to rank organically on Amazon.
• The outlook for American-made products.
• The number one action item in advertising.
• A major success story for Steven’s agency.
• How to hone in on what changes will make a difference.

• Why an Ecommerce business may be undervalued.
• What makes it hard to identify gross profit trends.
• Rewards vs. cash back credit cards.
• The less-than-obvious ways to gain instant equity.
  • Examples include:
    • Renegotiating costs.
    • Net 90 terms.
  • The China Magic Mastermind’s methods and why they’re so effective.

• How they got their start during the “wild west” period of Ecommerce.
• How to structure your business when you get paid “per page reads”.
• The Right Way and The Wrong Way to drive traffic.
• Building an algorithm-proof business.
• The “right” types of books.
• Delayed profitability and building your back-catalogue.
• How Joe and Mike are planning their eventual exit.
• The four pillars of value.

• How working in accounting led Matthew to where he is today.
• The three pillars of ecommerce:
  • Inventory management.
  • Website management.
  • Advertising
• Assessing your sales.
• Managing the core elements of your business.
• Tracking customers.
• Keeping an eye on the value of your inventory.
• Why commingling expenses is harmful.

• Brian’s typical entrepreneurial journey.
• How Janine’s parents influenced her career.
• When they started to see sales.
• Why you shouldn’t get stuck on branding on packaging.
• Why there are no excuses for working less.
• When to consider the exit process.
• Why Mastermind groups are important.
• How much Brian and Janine made on their exit.
• Logic over emotion.
• How their level-headed nature was key to their success.
• Their emotional response to their exit.

• Norm’s experience with Ecommerce.
• Why his company still does press releases.
• The benefits of a press release for Amazon sellers.
• The importance of consistent press releases.
• The popularity of his webinars.
• Blogging and keyword stuffing.
• Brands for which PR works best.
• What to do when your keywords drop in ranking.
• Checking in on competitors.

• The emotional rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur.
• His early struggles.
• Launching his business with $5000 in credit.
• Sacrifices Joe had to make to keep his business afloat.
• Siphoning vs. reinvesting.
• How he ran his initial campaign.
• Which accounting resources he used on a tight budget.
• His competitive nature and how it drives him.
• Making the decision to sell.

• How he came up with this concept.
• Why face-to-face interaction is important.
• Forecasting sales, inventory requirements, and pay-out per unit.
• Using market data to help with forecasting.
• The formula/numbers Dan uses.
• Making sure your offer is win-win.
• Timing your requests.
• Having perseverance when it comes to your requests.
• Traveling to China.

• How buyers have a big appetite for deals, but they might not find as big of an opportunity for steep discounts
• Will our shopping habits permanently change after COVID-19, and what impact will that behavior have on the value of businesses?
• Are online businesses a stable investment?
• Will blips in the supply chain have an adverse effect on valuations?
• How profitable businesses will always have some value to a buyer
• How much impact might there be on multiples?

• The efficiency of the marketplace.
• Why cash is king.
• Incentives for having payroll employees.
• Why Dave decided to sell.
• Knowing when it’s right to sell.
• Is selling at a loss the wrong move?
• If the pandemic has slowed down or changed deals.
• Is this a good market for first time buyers?
• How to keep your business stocked and afloat during the pandemic.

Transcription

• Being a “connector of people”.
• The roots of China Magic.
• Why it’s important to trust the wisdom of others.
• The China Magic schedule.
• Splitting the China Magic Mastermind into smaller groups.
• The Canton Fair.
• The percentage of women at Mastermind events.

Transcription: