Speaker 1That's sweet. We're working on it. I mean, we had a really rough childhood, so I see him, but yeah, we're not, we're not like super close, but I mean, I've forgiven him for it. Forgiving everyone. It's just like, kind of like, how do we interact now? You know? Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah. Everyone, this is Iric Wiggins. Iric just crossed a million dollars in his brand. And I remember us sitting at dinner at Red Ash years ago and you being like, I think I might do this thing. So why don't you just share a little bit about the brand that you launched that just crossed a million in sales?
Speaker 3Sure. So yeah, we, you know, I'm a content creator who built a huge audience in the low carb space. And basically I have always made my money from brand deals and monetization and things like that, but it's always feels a little out of my control. So I was like, if I had my own product similar to my book, which does really well, that would just be another layer of security. But then when I read Ryan's book that also started breaking it down in a very simple way where it's like, well, the brands own whatever I'm selling. I'm selling to my audience, the platforms own my content, Amazon owns my books, but if I have a product, then I will have something for the first time that I just truly own. So I was like, I think I want to launch something. And funny enough, me and Ryan connected in a totally unrelated way, which was you guys just wanting me to work with Sinless. Yeah, that's right. And then I reread your book and I was like, wait, now's the time to do it. So basically our friendship had kind of stopped. It kind of started. We had that dinner at Red Ash and I pretty much remember the conversation. I was like, so it's as simple because it's as simple as me posting about my pasta and people will go buy it. And that's like what happened.
Speaker 2I think that the side of the world that you live in is in content creation and getting eyeballs. You're basically in media. You rent that attention for brand deals and for advertising. And so the idea of building equity or enterprise value was like, what? First of all, with a $30 product or $50 product, how does that calculate into millions of dollars or having a $10 million exit? And that was kind of like the foreign math to you. So at what point did you start to realize that the audience that you built, the eyeballs that you have, the best use of that attention? It may not be renting it out. It may be building an asset that can compound. Where did that start to click?
Speaker 3It's the formula you use in your book. It's the four products at $25 a day. I'm glad somebody else is saying it. That was like the first aha moment where it was like, wait, this is, it just was like, that seems a little too easy. And that's actually what I said to you. I was like, wait, it just sounds too easy. It was not easy. But it was very simple.
Speaker 2We were talking over there about the numbers and how every one of those numbers matters. And you're used to just seeing the headline number of how many views or how many likes a post got. And my entire world is building up an audience of 250 people that really, really care. So I was hoping you could share in your own words that difference and how we talked about
Speaker 3that. Yes. So basically as a content creator, the goal is like, I need to get a million views every day or I need to get 10,000 likes on this ad. So this brand rebooks me and you're just like so obsessed with these huge numbers that it's like totally different than actually building a brand. Because like I said, the, if you have 25 people buying a product every day, that adds up over a year. So I guess it's like the ability to zoom out and be like, yeah, but what is this? It's like, I'm going to buy this over the course of a year. And then if they keep buying it again and then if they subscribe to it and it's just like, I guess you just kind of have to zoom out and, but, but I will say it's still chasing big numbers because 25 customers paying 35 bucks is still a pretty big number. But it's like, you just have to be like, yeah, but that's 35 people. That's not 35,000 views or $7,000.
Speaker 2Right. I think you are used to just seeing the very top. Number, which is 35,000 views or 3.5 million views. And all I really care about is how many of those people engaged, opted in and became a customer and had a wonderful experience. And that's actually something I can control. I can control the wonderful experience. I can control necessarily the number of customers, but the system to create the customers. Whereas if you only see the top end of the funnel, the views like that can get really depressing if you are doing that and not getting the. The dopamine dump of getting views. Yes. But when you, when you realize you only need 35 people, it's like, all right, I can do a really good job for these 35 people.
Speaker 3It actually makes you care more about the customer too. Because like you would think, oh, a creator, they're making content that people relate to. It's like, this is all about the viewer. It should be, but it's more about the number and what can I do to repeat this number? But like the strategy of just making one more sale, just getting one more person to enjoy the pasta. The experience with it is very much like more aligned with the, if you provide value, you'll be rewarded kind of mentality.
Speaker 2Would you talk about the first year of being in e-commerce and the things that you had to learn for the first time that, I mean, you weren't a new entrepreneur per se, but this was your first time doing something that with the intention of scaling it to a million dollars and having an exit one day. So what did you have to learn for the first time?
Speaker 3So here's how it started. I can just go through it. I can just go through the first year of what happened, like from start to finish of the first year. All right. So we had the conversation and you basically said, it really is as simple as you just posting it. And because I already have the audience, that's like the tricky part. You have to get an audience if you don't already have one. But because I already had an audience, it really was as simple as put money in to have a product made. You now have a product. Now you just post about it and then it sells. So there's a lot of difficulties along that way. So the first step was developing. I think we spent over a year getting the right formula. You know, I was trying to make a clean and low carb and high protein pasta with no weird ingredients and gluten free and all of that. And a funny story happened. So there's like the flour we were going to use is lupin flour. And it's like the way to make a pasta that's low carb and gluten free. But apparently, the entire supply of lupin flour in North America at the time we were about to manufacture it was eaten by rats. So the guy who runs all of our operations called me and he's like, hey, man, we have a problem. My rat ate my food supply. Yep. And then as soon as I got that call, I was like, oh, no, we have to pivot. Like I can't just wait another year. We just spent a year developing this. So I'm like, what if we don't try to be gluten free anymore? What if we just go for like this is the pasta with the best macros rather than the best macros and gluten free. Did we talk about this around that time? Yeah. This is ringing a bell.
Speaker 2Yep. Yep. So. Then the advice I think I would have given you was stop trying to be for everybody and just pick one route and go really hard. Exactly. That's what I would say today. Is that what I said then too? Yes. All right.
Speaker 3Great. Consistency for the win. And the perfect reference for this is Mission low carb tortillas. So you go to the grocery store if you've ever been on a low carb diet or you track your calories, you can buy these tortillas that are like 35 calories each. They just use fiber instead of carbs and they taste like normal tortillas. But you get the gluten free ones. They don't taste as good. But it's the same macros that just one doesn't taste as good. So I was like, wait, everyone buys Mission tortillas, let's be the Mission tortilla, like the Mission carb balanced tortillas. It's the same macros, but it tastes like normal tortillas of keto pasta, because that genuinely does not exist yet. Every other low carb pasta is gluten free as well. So they get mushy when you overcook them or they have like a weird aftertaste. So the rats eating the lupin flour was like the greatest thing that could have happened because the first batch he sent me using gluten instead of lupin flour and wheat fiber, I was like, oh, my God, this tastes like real pasta.
Speaker 2So what step of the eight step process did he just do there? Busted it's all that's all step one going from I'm just going to make a great product that appeals to everybody to OK, I've got one person in mind and that person is going to be the person that's obsessed with tracking their macros and I'm going to make a pasta
Speaker 3for them. Which was me at the time. I had just downloaded my fitness pal a year before that I had went from like a crazy keto person to like, oh, all that matters is your macros and your calories. So I literally was the ideal customer for this product.
Speaker 2How did you launch it?
Speaker 3So, step one, We made the product and I actually liked it. There's a couple of steps in between that and launching it though, because I had to commit to order inventory. I feel like that's important to talk about. I'm trying to remember even how much it was. The numbers we've done in the past year, it seems ridiculous that I was so terrified to put money into this. Let's just call it $50,000. I had to put in 50K to make this pasta, get it manufactured and have it sent to Amazon. I was so scared. It was like, nobody's gonna buy this. I've promoted products before for other brands that sold seven orders. What if this happens with my pasta? I'm gonna be ruined. And I just kept going back and forth with like, man, this is a big number. But I pulled the trigger. I was like, all right, whatever, I'm gonna order it. So we order the pasta. And then there were a bunch of trials there that I don't think a lot of people know whenever you make a product for the first time, it's not gonna be a smooth manufacturing process if it's a new product. So we broke the pasta factory's machine because there was too much protein in our pasta. -
Speaker 2That actually would make a good ad. -
Speaker 3Yeah, I think I did. I talked about it. -
Speaker 2It's too buff for the pasta machine. -
Speaker 3Yes, yep. So basically, we got rid of trying to be gluten free. That gave me clarity in who I was serving. Then I got over the hump of letting go of the 50k to get it all made. And then we, it's like November, 2024, and it breaks the pasta machine. I'm getting calls like, hey, this is gonna cost you another 5k. I'm like, it was such a big deal at the time. -
Speaker 2That Ryan Daniel Moran guy was a scam artist this whole time. -
Speaker 3Yes. But I just am like, look, stay an extra week and let's just do it. Let's just, let's figure out how to make this pasta work. So we get it made. We get it all shipped. And then February was our launch date. So the way I talked about it. The way it sells is a lot different than I imagined. I had all these ads recorded before launching it that was like, here's why this is the best pasta. Here's the macros, here's all of this. And those did okay. But the ones that actually sold the best are where I'm just like, I make a recipe and I'm like, and then add my keto pasta. And they're like, what's your keto pasta? And then I replied to them, here it is, go get it. And it's like, that's how I got to a million dollars. So it's like literally just posting about it and then telling people to go buy it. -
Speaker 2Did you launch straight on Amazon? Did you take pre-orders? What was the strategy to get that first? -
Speaker 3So I took a shortcut. I hired an Amazon agency who basically got us into Amazon. So the factory made it. And then the Amazon agency handled actually getting it from the factory to Amazon and getting the, what is it? The page made and all of that. Getting our images made. I hired a photographer, but so that happened. And then as far as getting people to go buy it, I just post a story with the link or I post a reel as like a recipe video. And you know, you don't need a huge audience to get a viral reel. So the thing is like, with recipe videos especially, anyone could make a recipe video and there's a one in a hundred chance that reaches a hundred thousand people, even if you have zero followers, because the algorithms, just one video may get put in front of a lot of people. So it's like, I think just making recipe videos with it is like what drives most of our sales. But now it's like the Amazon ads do a lot of lifting. -
Speaker 2And what was the growth trajectory? Like first month? Did how much in sales and did that fluctuate or did it kind of compound over the course of the year? -
Speaker 3Could I pull out my phone and look at the seller dashboard and go over like the exact numbers? -
Speaker 2Would you guys like to see those exact numbers?
Speaker 3Okay. - So, so month one, let's see, February, 2025. It's crazy looking at it.
Speaker 2Like how the. - Lean over and show it the camera. -
Speaker 3Okay. But I don't know if there's any, there's nothing personal in there. I don't think so. We're good. Okay. So February, 2025, we did 30K. That was when we launched it. And that was. -
Speaker 2I want to pause on that because you did, you did 30,000 in sales first month. That's good. It's not crazy. It's not like sell the farm and put it all into this business. It's like, that's a, that's a good, healthy launch. - Yes. - And that's to an audience of what? 8 million people? -
Speaker 3At the time, probably at 9 million. -
Speaker 2Okay. So 9 million people, $30,000 launch. Now some people will say that about, oh, you have to have a 9 million person audience to have a $30,000 launch. I double click on that because you guys have heard me tell story after story after story. Katie, how big was your email list when you launched? - 60. - 60 people, six, zero people. And your launch was like, 7,500, 8,000. Okay. So you see how the numbers don't exactly add up here. You know, 70, 70 people. Was that it? - 60. - 60 people. Okay. Six, zero people equals 8,000 or 9 million people equals 30,000. It's like, okay. The process of building this brand must be different than aggregating eyeballs and renting them. - Yes. - Right? So this is why I say you don't need that many people to stick the launch and then start to
Speaker 1somehow move just whatever sparkling. And then I'll just have that there. Oh, I felt it right away. I told him, yeah. I mean, this feels amazing. Thank you, bro. I appreciate that. Yeah. I'm going to keep coming visit. I don't really have a house here anymore to live, but I can come visit. Yeah. - Flights. - Flights. - Flights. - Flights. - Flights. - Flights. - Oh, a ceremony. - A ceremony. - Oh, cool. - We're good. - Swim on the counter, maybe. - Okay, we're good. - Okay. - All right. - All right. - All right. - Cool. - Cool. - All right. -
Speaker 2All right. - So first month you do 30,000, great. Like good start. Then what happened? -
Speaker 3Which by the way is 1,000 people. -
Speaker 21,000 buyers. - Yes.
Speaker 3So I feel like when you have a brand and you just look at the number, kind of like we were saying earlier, it's like, it's 1,000 people. You can have, you know, one of my first jobs, I like sold sheets and Sam's Club. We probably talked to 1,000 people in a week. I don't know. What is it? How many people walk by you? And if you're there for eight hours? Like it's like, 1,000 people is not as crazy as $30,000, like when you're just starting out. But all right, so let's go to the next couple months. So from there, we ran out of stock. So we had March was under 30,000. April was like 10,000.
Speaker 2May was-- - Are any of you feeling a lot better about yourself? Okay, the guy with the huge following, sales go down after launch, it happens all the time. -
Speaker 3Yep, so May was right at 30,000. Then June, we started to get some traction. Let's say we were at 40. July was our, I remember when July happened because it was, what is the Amazon? - Prime day? - It was prime day, yeah. So we did 70,000. We did 77,000 in July. And that was like a huge jump. That was basically double what we were used to. And I, the main difference from there is like the way I talked about the pasta. And this is like really important. I, the first couple months when I promoted it, like I said, I felt like I had to go through all the talking points. You know, whenever as an influencer, whenever you work with brands, they send you this giant sheet of talking points. Because you need to talk about all the benefits of their product. And when you do those videos, the conversions are like 35 people buy it or 12 people buy it. Versus if you're just like, hey, I really like this. Then a hundred people buy it or whatever it is. So that's kind of what changed starting in July. I dropped all the talking points and I literally just said my keto pasta, like go get it. And the sales really started taking off. -
Speaker 2So you stopped being, so formulaic with how you promoted your product. - Yes. - And just started working it more into the natural content creation process. - Yes. - And by the way, still at this time, you barely have an email list. Do you even have an email list at this point? - I think, I think, yes. - Okay, I almost needed to sleep with Iric to convince him to build an email list. - Yes. - So skipping everything that I believe in and going just for straight from post to sale. So we probably, could have improved that process a little bit, but you built a million dollar business, so I can't complain too much. -
Speaker 3Yes. July was our biggest month at that point and then August went down a little bit because no Prime Day. $69,000 and then what was September went back up to $77,000. So here's where it's starting to compound. And then October and November are where I was like getting a lot of confidence. They were both basically the same at $100,000. I think what we had going for us in October was they did another Prime Day or was it Deal Day? So I noticed that for a $35 product, which is three eight-ounce bags of my pasta, the actual, whenever we put it on sale for like under $30, sales go way up. So it is like a, I wonder if we just were permanently under $30. Could I be on track to do two million? I don't know. We can figure that one out.
Speaker 2Yeah. You notice how for about five months it was like up and down fluctuating, some decent months, bad months, and then it was around month six that you started, six or eight, you started to get some real traction. Yep. Can you point to anything that happened in that time frame where the compounding returns started to kick on?
Speaker 3It could be the fact that we started putting money into Amazon ads. Up until that point we really weren't running any because we just didn't have enough stock. And then after the whole February, March, April, May, June, I had gotten enough deposits from Amazon that we could like order more. And and then I was confident to start running ads because being out of stock sucked. So I think it was running ads and then just the accumulation of reviews. Yeah. And it's like every time I get a bad review, I make sure to go ask my audience for good reviews, or not good, but just like, hey, leave a review. And if they like you, they'll leave a good review. Do you respond to
Speaker 2those bad reviews?
Speaker 3Yeah, I love it. I love, I think that bad reviews are helpful. It's like if someone tells me that it tastes terrible, or that it's so chewy, it tastes like cardboard, I'm like, thank you. We're working on making it softer, you know. I would prefer to get bad reviews because I just want it to be as good as possible. Do you post them? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah?
Speaker 2Yeah. What's the, how does the audience respond when
Speaker 3that happens? They love it. It's, if you have an audience who likes you, and you guys have a good relationship, and then someone says, because my bad reviews aren't always, oh, the pasta was chewy. When you're a content creator, you also get a ton of people who just hate you for some reason. They hate my voice, or the way that I'm like sloppy when I'm cooking. So usually they'll say something personal in the bad review. So I will take that bad review, and then stitch it onto the screen, and open my phone, and be like, somebody commented this, and I just want to say thank you. You must be having a tough day. I wish I could give you a hug. But to everyone who did buy the pasta, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Buy the pasta. Also, thank you. I love you guys. And then the response is great. It's, yeah. So I think there's value in leveraging the bad reviews to, it's like, if something bad happens, how can you be like, I don't accept this negatively impacting my life. How can I make it positive?
Speaker 2Yeah. Audiences go crazy for that amount of, I just call it authenticity, or seeing behind the curtain, because you're no longer just, showing the best parts of everything, because everybody is going through those types of bumps along the way. So they rally to support when they relate to that. So tell me a little bit about when you flipped into that confidence mode that you mentioned. You said around November, December, you started to be like, okay, maybe this is a thing. Like, I'm knocking on the door of a million
Speaker 3dollar business. December, so December, I got a lot of, even though we went from 100,000 in October, to 100,000 in November, to 80,000 in December. That was actually when I got the most confidence, because I didn't post once in December about the pasta. I wanted to see, do people genuinely like eating this pasta? Or, because basically the whole, the whole point of this is, I don't want people to buy it because I'm some guy they like on Instagram. So they're going to buy my pasta. I want them to buy it because they want a keto pasta with good macros that they enjoy eating. So in December, I was like, look, we're spending all this money on Amazon ads. I basically said whatever, so to the agency, I said, whatever our profit is, let's just roll it back into ads. So we're spending all this money. And I'm like, is this even doing anything? Or are the sales just coming from when I post about it? But December came and I said, I'm just not going to post. And I didn't post once and we still did 80,000 that month. So I was like, okay, I think something is working that isn't just me. Yeah. And that's the most important thing for an exit too. If you're like an influencer owned company, there's a good argument that if I want to sell the pasta, people are going to be like, yeah, but if you're not promoting it, is anyone going to buy it? Right. And it's like December proved that yes, they will.
Speaker 2So one of the things that I hammer into the brains of my community is one-to-one outreach, is interacting with everybody who leaves a comment, every new follower, every customer. Most people don't have a audience. So that one-to-one interaction matters a lot. You've got a 9 million person audience. So how much one-to-one interaction, if any, were you doing in order to grease the wheels to get sales?
Speaker 3At the beginning, all of it. So you can have 10 million followers and you can have posts getting millions of views, but you don't get millions of comments. And you don't get millions of DMs. So you might get a hundred DMs a day and 500 comments a day. That is not much time. Like, that's not all day sitting there typing.
Speaker 2I'm so glad you said that because I have a hard time getting the people with five comments to reply to their damn comments. 500 comments is not a big
Speaker 3deal. It's like the, that's how I built my whole brand was in 2018, I got really into GaryVee and he said, I would, when I started building my personal brand, I would reply to every single person who mentioned me on Twitter. And I was like, oh, cool. Let me do this. In 2018, Keto was very popular. So I would search the hashtag Keto on Instagram and every single person that posted, I would just say something on their post about what, whatever I liked about their post, or if I related to what they were saying, or if the food they posted looked good, I'd be like, that looks so good. And I basically, so like my whole thing is responding to everyone is so valuable and you, and you make friends. Like there are so many people, shout out to Didi. She is one of my followers who always would join my lives. Um, we were just messaging the other day about like a walking pad because she talked about needing to get her steps up, but this is just someone who follows me that I've like become friends with. And I could think of a hundred people like this, like the, the amount of like replies you're willing to do is because at the end of the day, that is where the, the business grows is like, and providing value. And that if people like you, they're more likely to support your product. And if your product is good, they're more likely to tell other people about it.
Speaker 2And like, or leave a review or add it to subscribe and save or buy through a keyword or post about it on social media. It's all people. And I think when you forget that there's people behind all of the numbers, you tend to look for shortcuts. Yes. But when you realize that there's just people, then every interaction matters. Yes. you go right next to my friend and we bumped into each other yesterday. I wanted her to be here. So Iric, obviously you create a lot of content and primarily you want to grow the audience. The audience versus going for the ask and when you go for the ask, does it ever compromise the growth of the audience that comes organically when you're just in that mode?
Speaker 3So I would say reach is like my oxygen as the content creator. It's like I, that is all that matters is, is this post going to do good? Then I will have a good day. Is this post going to do bad? Then I will have a bad day. That is the life of a content creator.
Speaker 2Okay. Can anyone relate to that in their own, like their sales are going to be good. So I'm going to have a good day. Sales are bad. So I'm going to have a bad day. So Chris is pouring a drink as we go over that statement.
Speaker 3So I would say when, whenever I'm trying to sell something that is still like, even if this is going to get me $20,000 in sales. I don't care. I'm not going to post it if it's going to hurt my reach. However, the more reach, the better my pasta sells. Like I said, the talking points kind of, you know, like I thought that diving deep into what's so amazing about this pasta would make more people buy it. But the reality is, well, less people share it and less people repost it and less people like it because they're like, oh, he's just selling me something. So I would say, I don't even think about selling at all. I just think about, hey, this is the pasta that I use.
Speaker 2Oh, that's really interesting. I'm really glad you said that because it makes me think what one of my brands, Switch Supplements, we have a sleep supplement. That product does about $100,000 a month in sales. And I can't tell you how many of my personal friends that I didn't even know bought the product, bought it, put it on subscribe and save, told friends about it. They're super fans of the product. And I ask them, how did you discover it? And they usually say, well, because you posted your ordering data on Instagram and you tagged your own company. And that's, I never quite understood that about like, oh, that's like a, that's a happy accident that they found it. But when you say it, it actually makes sense that I'm just incorporating it into my life and saying, I'm using the sleep supplement versus holding it up to the camera and saying, let me tell you about the blend of this amazing sleep supplement. That, that, that content way overrated, but showing it in the context of here's how I use it in the context of my life. This is how most people discover it. And that's what, that's what you're saying about the pasta.
Speaker 3Think about ads. Like think about a commercial for like, what is a common product people buy? Like, let's say the Dyson, if you're a girl, my wife wants like the Dyson air wrap, right? It's like this thing for your hair. Do you know, do you know how much more to buy that? If your friend tells you how amazing it is, then if you see 77 advertisements for it, it's like you, the ads just go in, like they just go right past you. So it's like the less it feels like an ad or like you're selling something. And the more it's like a friend giving a recommendation, the more it's going to sell. It's just, yeah. I, I hate when brands send me talking points for ads because it's like, I know nobody's going to buy this, even though that is your goal. That's so true.
Speaker 2So there's, there's going to be people listening to this who are content creators or who have audiences that are now intrigued that you pursued a different business model. And they're now going to be asking themselves, okay, if I were to go this direction, what would I sell? How did you go about determining that the keto pasta was the first thing that you wanted to bring to market?
Speaker 3Because everything else has already existed for forever. It's like since, so when keto started, in 2018 is like this fad diet that was like super popular and everyone was doing it. Every brand created a keto product. So there were low carb tortillas and protein bars with low carbs and like keto cookies. And so everything existed except a good keto pasta. There weren't like a couple, but nothing that you could just go into Walmart and buy. And that's kind of what made the pasta. So, like apparent that this was the way it was going to be, but it wasn't the way it was going to be. And I was like, well, this is what I have to do because it's like you just go into the grocery store and there's a keto version of everything except pasta. And so that's kind of what I identified. I was like, well, these do exist, but not like at scale.
Speaker 2So have you made a point to stay in the keto lane or have you started to move more into like macro balanced or high protein? Because your entire brand was built around keto. And I used to joke that you're like, one of two relevant keto influencers left, you know, like the two last of this species. And now you're not keto anymore either. So have you made that pivot or have you decided to stay in the lane and making a keto pasta?
Speaker 3I think there will always be people. Well, here's the thing about a keto pasta. You don't even have to promote it to people doing a low carb diet because it just has less calories. So it's like, if you're a bodybuilder who eats rice and chicken at every meal, you can have a meal of chicken and keto pasta that's going to not add 200 calories to that meal during a cut. So it's like, there's a million reasons why taking the carbs out of pasta doesn't have to mean you're on a low carb diet. So that's one reason. Just get your carbs from more satiating foods like potatoes and fruit rather than noodles. But also there's a lot of people who have like blood sugar issues. So I think I can help both of those people.
Speaker 2So you, but you went in the direction of still calling it keto or low carb, knowing that that would attract that audience, but it would also bring the other audiences with them.
Speaker 3Yes, because people, so it's easy for me to promote to my audience and say my keto pasta, but if someone's just scrolling on Amazon who tracks their calories, they have an understanding that if this pasta has a hundred calories, they're going to be able to promote it to a hundred other people. So I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2do any of this. This is just an example of what the deck might look like. And over the course of a day or so, we'd set up everything that needs to happen for this company to be worth $10 million. Then we're going to start filling in those pieces. And we're going to start filling in those pieces by filling in those roles or by going to another channel or by setting up a timetable for the next product launch. My guess for you is the next step to answer your question of what to do every day is you're now at the point where it would make sense for you to start building the waiting list for product number two. So if you wanted something to do every day, I would be posting about the waiting list in your stories, just showing it being used, showing the prototype, showing how many days are left once a day, sending people over to the waiting list so that when you have that second product ready, it. Has an audience ready to launch.
Speaker 3So to jump in here, speaking of the second product, so this will give you some more information. So when we first launched, we had seven SKUs. This was a terrible mistake. I was so convinced that selling flavored pasta would be the game changer that makes everyone go buy it. So we had roasted garlic, sun-dried tomato, and plain. Well, when we launched, 90% of people just wanted plain. So when I talked about. When I talked about our sales in February last year being high and then March and April being down, it's because we sold out of plain and all that was left were the flavors and nobody wanted the flavors. So that's why those months were lower. So basically, we were like, at this point, I'm just ready to scrap all of the flavors. We still have a variety. So now we have two SKUs. We have the three-pack of plain and the three-variety pack.
Speaker 2Would you like to know why that is? Yes. So if you add a variation, whether that is a flavor, or a sizing change, or a color difference, that can improve sales, but it'll improve sales by like maybe 20%, right? Because somebody is probably only going to buy plain or roasted garlic. But if somebody was not convinced to buy this product, they're probably not going to buy because you have a new flavor. So you don't. You might get a small conversion increase, but it might be 15% to 20%. But if you launch a second product, that second product could have the potential to double the business because people who bought product number one are going to come back and buy product number two. People who didn't buy product one because they didn't want it, see product number two and buy it, like it, come back and buy product number one. And you get this compounding effect that happens. Plus, you have people who buy both of them and your average customer value goes up. So you might get a small increase from the variations, but you can have a monumental 50% to 200% increase from having a second complementary product.
Speaker 3Which leads me to this question. So we are about to launch a new shape, which is penne. So our current shape is rotini, it's the twisty noodles. And the next one is penne, which is like in production right now. But then we're going to do rice. Is penne, considered the second product or do you think that's more along the lines of like a flavor variation? I think it's more along the lines of a variation. So I shouldn't expect penne to double our business. I would not expect it
Speaker 2to double the business. I would expect that if you were to launch rice, that that may double the business. But variations of different pastas will have a modest increase. So when we're laying this out in your product roadmap, I would want us to look at, okay, we're going to do noodles. We're going to do rice. We're going to do, and then two other very different products, not what variations are we going to have. And this is how, if we look at it, if we assume, and I know this is not fair math, but let's just assume that every time you release a product, sales double. So you go from 1 million to 2 million to 4 million to 8 million. You need to have four very different products and you have an $8 million business that can sell for between five and $10 million. So it can double. It can be that simple.
Speaker 3Okay. So this leads to my next question. So launching the rice will probably cost me, let's just call it another $50,000. Basically, Keto Snacks has been funding all of this. Keto Snacks is about to buy a house. And despite living well above my burn rate and all of that, I have a lot of anxiety about the increase in what our mortgage is going to be. It's like double. So I think I'm fine. I think I'm going to be okay. But my backup plan, the part of-
Speaker 2Are any of you relieved that this still goes on in your brain, no matter what level you're at?
Speaker 3Yeah. I'm going to be broke tomorrow is what's always going on in my mind. So if I do just say, let me just put X, say the rice, because there's always something that goes wrong, say the rice ends up costing me a hundred K, but it doubles the business. Is there, I'm not taking anything out of the business right now. If our margins are good, like 30%, is there an argument that once we're doing 2 million, if I ever needed to, just to calm the anxious part of me, that's going to be broke tomorrow. Is there a reasonable way to say, hey, if you launch the rice and it puts you at a 2 million run rate, you probably can pull out a hundred K a year from the brand. Because that's kind of like what I'm hesitant on is like, I don't want to part with a bunch of cash this year and then have a down year next year with the higher mortgage. It's like, that's kind of-
Speaker 2There are multiple ways to crack this nut. The most direct way that you could do tomorrow is you could pre-sell the rice. So especially with your audience and now that you have customers on a first product, if you go promote the pre-launch of the, I'm guessing it's keto rice or lower carb rice. If you do that and you sell 2,000 units at $30, that is $60,000.
Speaker 3Which is how much it costs to launch it.
Speaker 2Okay, great. So now it's paid for, right? And it's, you've already, you've already got more than 2,000 customers, got more than 2,000 people on an email list. You talk about it publicly as an experiment and you're probably going to pre-sell all of that inventory and get as much as you need in order to do the inventory, Ron, and now it's risk-free.
Speaker 3That's, that's the whole thing. That's where I was when I was launching the pasta too, by the way, is I didn't want to put money into it because it's always a risk, you know, it's like, what if nobody buys it? Right. So you can do that. That is- But here's the thing. So there's another level of risk, which is, but I'm not allowed to take money out of the company.
Speaker 2Okay. So let's talk about how to crack that nut next. So for where you are in the, you know, four years to 10 million journey, I'm, you're not paying yourself and I'm guessing that you're bootstrapping all of it and returning all of your profits back into the company. Yes. Is that right? So one of the things I like, this is not a recommendation, but this is something that we advise everyone who's going through like the capitalism incubator over a million dollars, something that they should consider is, when you have a product that is getting consistent sales of at least $25,000 to $50,000 a month, it is worth considering financing that inventory with debt. Okay. Are you using any inventory financing now? No. Okay. So let me run you through the numbers just real quick. Okay. If you have a $100,000 purchase order for inventory, most brands like yours are going to take the $100,000 in profits that are in the bank account and you're going to save that $100,000 in profits that are in the bank account. They're going to send it to the manufacturer and it's going to sit there for three months while they make the pasta, then they're going to send you the pasta and you've got to sell it for the next three months until your $100,000 replenishes and then you've got some leftover for the inventory that's there and then you've got to make another order. Does this sound familiar? Okay. So over the course of six months, you might turn that $100,000 into $200,000. Great ROI, right? Well, we can do this in a smarter way, I think, which is if we, instead of sending the $100,000 over to the manufacturer, we get a loan for $100,000. We send the loan of $100,000 to the manufacturer. Now we have $100,000 in our bank account and we owe $100,000. Over time, we might accrue 10% interest on that $100,000. So our real cost of that is $100,000. That inventory is $10,000. Our cost to us is $10,000 and we're going to sell that inventory for $200,000. So instead of having a two-to-one ROI, we have a 20-to-one ROI. Just real quick, now we've freed up $90,000, actually $100,000 in today's what's in the bank to invest into product development, to put into advertising. What do you know? Pay ourselves a little bit of money because us calming down and not being anxious about money is actually the best investment that the business could possibly have. and the debt gets paid for once the inventory sells in the same way that it would be paid for if you weren't financing it with
Speaker 3debt ah that makes
Speaker 2sense so that's option number two how does that feel
Speaker 3that feels good and it makes me think that you know a lot of the obstacles to growth are like emotions and psychology it's like if I was just a machine who only made decisions based on what will grow the business I would just go put my family in a studio apartment I would just be like let's just put every single dollar that comes my way into growing the business and it will be worth ten million dollars twice but it's like kind of what you're saying is like taking debt can get me out of the equation it's like hey I'm not you can get your angst about money exactly out of the equation yes yep exactly and it and that is
Speaker 2actually what will grow the business the fastest because now you've got a hundred grand in retained earnings that you can put into more profitable investments you know putting a hundred thousand dollars into an inventory order is not your best ROI because that hundred grand could be used to buy the first round of product number two mm-hmm and that could double the business so it's a much better investment to put that hundred grand into product number two than it is to tie it up an inventory for product number one much smarter to have debt other people's money financed the first product that you know is going to sell and free up the profits to put into more profitable investments
Speaker 3ah so like when it's time for us to be like hey we're gonna run out again keto snacks you got to put some money into this I can be like okay let me take debt to fund the thing that's already selling and instead of now taking money out of my pocket to fund that I can take the money out of my pocket to make the rice
Speaker 2happen bingo you could also use debt to fund product number one pre-launch product number two yes and pay yourself exactly the money that's in the bank yeah yes that is also enough
Speaker 3which I do not plan on paying myself by the way the that is only the part of me if everything collapses if being an influencer is no longer sustainable then I go down the road of paying I'm laughing because I'm
Speaker 2just I'm just so happy it's everyone just so I'm
Speaker 3just but but it's like these are I guess these are the things that will help me get to 10 like I have to iron out all of these kinks before I can get to 10 million dollars because I feel like I am in the way a little bit and it's like what can I do to get myself out of the way yes so so you are
Speaker 2at the point now where it makes sense for you to start building out the team you've got a million dollar business you don't need the cash from this you're going to grow probably to two two and a half over the next 12 to 18 months now is the time for you to start looking at what that team looks like and in our process the first hire is taking the platform that you're taking your sales on and making sure you have really good support so that you can walk away and sales are still going to happen sounds like you're about 80% of the way there
Speaker 3anyway so I haven't I have an Amazon agency I have shout out to chef Gabe I have a guy who has a whole company now that helps me with all of this so we they do projections and placing our next order and helping to get our cogs down and all of that so I have I could step away and like I said in December I did step away yeah but the growth comes from two things me posting and me putting money into it yep so it's like where I guess a team so who is the next hire so so in
Speaker 2our process once we have eliminated the low-level tasks which you've done at least partially the next hire is gonna be a brand manager and a brand manager is a full or part-time person who is you can call this person a COO if you want to go that level a project manager this is your number two this is the person who is taking the vision that's in your head and that deck that we laid out and say these are gonna be the next products this is gonna be the plan you're now in charge of moving this forward and now you're gonna go into either continuing to post or taking a step back or building the rest of the team or working on the next product that's the next person whose job it is to make sure that like the house is secure no matter what you do and now you're freed up to actually go build a vision sometimes that vision is gonna be more excited about keto snacks sometimes it's gonna be about carefree pasta and or carefree kitchen and you're gonna be able to follow that excitement because you already have a brand manager
Speaker 3in place okay okay so next question so what do the numbers look like if I just let's just say 10 million right we're doing a million say we launched the rice and things keep going well with the pasta and now next year we're doing 2 million and say we have 30% I'm sure once we're doing 2 million and we're placing bigger orders the margins for the pasta go down a little but it's basically just like they go up a little the cost go down the cost go down oh yes yes that we get better margins um so what do like what do the numbers look like in a 10 million dollar exit as far as like just sales and how much is going into my bank account from those sales so we can we
Speaker 2can go poor man's math just to set up some targets yes right and then we can go refine it a little bit your poor man's math equation is gonna be that your business will sell for approximately one time top one times top line revenue or four ish times EBITDA so if your brand is doing 2.5 million in profit four to five times that that's your ten million dollar exit so the two
Speaker 3numbers I should be focused on are getting to 2.5 million in profit or ten million in revenue poor man's math right but it's like just like when I'm like yeah just like when I'm fully zoomed out
Speaker 2like those are it's again like for brevity a way over simplification if you're just looking for permission to go pursue ten million dollars yes go pursue ten million dollars but there's other there's other levers that we can pull there in order to get to that number faster for example who you sell to matters a great deal you know Kraft coming to you will pay ten million dollars for this if they got your audience with it you know Kraft if Kraft is only gonna care about distribution so they're gonna look at a million dollar business be like we don't care about that we care about the distribution they might pay ten million dollars for the brand now if it came with a certain size of audience or some other magic thing that made their entire portfolio more profitable or more valuable versus you know the guy who just went through Cody Sanchez's course about buying businesses is gonna be negotiating only on top line and profit because he or she is not you and is not looking at the total enterprise value they're looking at the cash flow that he or she is gonna make by having a blue collar business so who you sell to is going to matter a tremendous amount so that four times profit or four times profit is poor man's math assuming lots of different factors but you may sell for ten million dollars when you hit five million revenue because a strategic acquirer looks at you and says this is a perfect complement to our portfolio let's buy this another factor that falls into this is once you cross that that million dollars in profit valuations go up several points so if you're doing five hundred thousand EBITDA you might only sell for three or four X so you might get two million bucks but as soon as you're over a million you can sell four five sometimes six X and so the the multiple goes up not just the number so that's it that's another factor we could do this all day yeah we could pull it all the all these factors no
Speaker 3you've explained it well okay that makes sense oh yeah it's a wild story well I was actually
Speaker 1born pretty perfect I was actually born with some gifts where I could give I was giving therapy to my family I was giving therapy basically to adults when I was four I was able to just see see through their mind and very emotionally intelligent and then you know just from being in America and all the crazy toxins and in programming and stuff trauma that goes on I just shut down and became you know on the autism spectrum suicidal depressed social anxiety dissociated and lots of health issues and you know try the traditional route it's got worse and worse and worse and just hit a dead end where it's like look like I can't live like this anymore and uh that's when I woke up from a dream one day and the dream said if you go to this place at this time your life will change forever and I was like what so yeah so that's how it started I I was 20 years old so that's when it started oh yeah I was living in hell for most of my life you know and even even then it was a very long journey because that that experience I went to so the day to
Speaker 3day you've talked about hiring a brand manager basically someone I tell my vision to and they make it happen where do I find this brand manager
Speaker 2the best people that you could possibly hire I don't like a low level entry level are going to come from your audience they're going to be your super fans if however you wanted to not train someone, you wanted somebody who was better than you, you wanted to truly walk away, then you might be looking more at, okay, I'm going to do the traditional recruiter route and poach somebody away from this brand that I admire. So the two routes are somebody works under you and they learn everything about you and everything about the business and you're training them up and that's a more entry level person. It's going to be more work on you, but that person is going to come in, take things off your plate and start to learn the business and transition over into running this business. You might even call that person an EA, an executive assistant. Like their job is to take things off your plate until they can run the company. Or if you're like, I need somebody who can help me grow this to a $10 million company because I just want to think about product launches and I want to think about scale and I want to think about vision, then you might be looking at a company that you admire and trying to recruit somebody from there. You're looking for like a project manager over at that pasta company. You're looking for that food brand and you're going to offer them maybe an equity position or upside and now you're freed up to think about sprinting to $10 million.
Speaker 3Okay, another question. So in the meantime, before I hire a brand manager, let's just say we're spending $500 a day on Amazon ads and I don't really know what, like I said, I don't know if, I'm sure they're working because December I didn't post and we still. I still sold a lot of pasta, but it's like, how often should I be experimenting with like the types of ads? Or maybe I should take half of that and put it into meta ads, because you can't just sell to your audience all the time, right? So like, especially for me with an audience, I can't just post about it every day because I have brands who pay me to post about their product today.
Speaker 2This is an excellent question, Arik, and you're in a bit of a unique position with this, but let me. let me give you the standard answer first, and then I'll customize it a little bit. Right now, you have a million dollar business on Amazon alone, where you are running ads and talking about it sometimes, and you got to a million dollars and you can walk away from it and now you're looking at product number two. Don't change a damn thing. Okay. That's this, that's what I would tell most people, right? And that would still be good applicable advice for you. Like, you have a doubling. Like, you have $2 million just like right in front of you. Like, if you don't change a damn thing, you'll be at $2 million and probably four. So we don't need to worry about adding other channels or running Facebook ads or changing up anything in the strategy because we have a pipeline to get to the goal of $10 million exit without changing much. However, with you specifically. You have a TikTok audience and it may be worth considering adding TikTok Shop to your strategy. I actually wouldn't recommend it for you as the next step, but maybe two or three steps from now, TikTok Shop may double just the pasta itself. And I would consider making that the second channel. Again, I know I'm repeating myself, but there's a couple of steps that I would put in between there. But I would suggest that be your second move rather than other advertising channels because you've just got this obvious win in front of you that is perfect for the business that you've already built.
Speaker 3So if I want a $5 million to $10 million exit, as long as I just keep doing what I've been doing and keep launching new products that people actually want, I'm probably on my way if I just don't change a thing. But I can get there faster if I. It's kind of where I'm getting to is you're saying, "You can add a sales channel or you can add a product, and those are all ways to double the business." So it's like every time you add something, you can grow. So whether I add a new product or I add a new distribution like TikTok Shop, that's an opportunity for growth. So my day-to-day should be. Because my day-to-day is just what keeps making Keto Snacks money, not what keeps making Carefree Kitchen money. It's crazy. I basically don't do anything. I mean, I don't do anything for the pasta company at this point, other than twice a week. It's really hard. Yeah. But it shows the value of building an audience. Because I wouldn't have got this much traction and momentum without an audience. But it's like. So my day-to-day is just continuing to nurture my audience, and that translates to Carefree
Speaker 2Kitchen. That is true. The question that will come up is, as you double and double again, what's going to break? And you will have. You will have operational things break. You will have supply chain things break. You will have customer service loops break. So those are the things that we need to start putting people in place so that you are not pulled from nurturing audience to answering this angry customer email or worrying about this PO that's a little bit late because you didn't see it, you were posting content. So that's why I say that adding another channel is a couple steps from now, because there's a couple team additions that I would recommend. I would recommend slip in here before we go aggressively double the business. But assuming those things were in place and they didn't break, yes. Adding another product, probably going to double the business. Adding another channel, probably going to double the business.
Speaker 3Can you get tactical about TikTok shop? What do you want to know? Like if I just wanted to go home and spend the next week just every waking hour making TikTok shop a success, what would that look like?
Speaker 2Okay. So for most people. TikTok shop is all about getting influencers and other people to do content that they tie to TikTok shop. And the grind of TikTok shop is getting to that first 100,000 in sales through other creators. Because once you're at about 100,000 in total sales on TikTok, you start to show up in their marketplace and be fed to other creators and influencers who will then organically pick you up and post about you. For you, you're going to blitz right through that. Because you've got a following on there and you can whip out content very quickly. So once you're set up on TikTok shop and you make a few videos that are not sending people to Amazon, they're actually natively got the TikTok shop button on that piece of content, you have $100,000 in sales after a couple of months. You might put some ad dollars behind the posts that do fairly well. You'll be able to track all of that in TikTok shop. Now you're starting to show up organically. You're starting to show up organically in the TikTok marketplace.
Speaker 3So it's basically like a different game. So the game I play on Instagram and Facebook is I make a recipe video. Let's just say they're very quick. So like, let's just say if you mix or if you put marinara sauce, Alfredo sauce, chicken, and my keto pasta in a crock pot for four hours, you get the best dinner. And then in the caption, I say, find my keto pasta by searching Carefree Kitchen keto pasta on Amazon. And then that leads to a $5,000. $5,000 boost or $10,000 boost in sales. But if a post doesn't result in as many sales, I know the one that did well would be smarter to put ad dollars behind. So it's like, okay, well, I can take what's working on Meta and just do that same strategy on Facebook or on TikTok. But it's like the hurdle is how do I actually get my product on TikTok shop is kind of what I meant when I said tactical.
Speaker 2Okay. So it's a process just like getting set up on Amazon. You submit some forms, you go through the application process, you send inventory over
Speaker 3there. So basically the same way that when I manufacture pasta, we send 10,000 pounds to Amazon. I would then tell the guy who manufactures that, hey, we're also going to send 2,500 pounds to this warehouse that fulfills for TikTok. That's correct. So it's basically just like Amazon.
Speaker 2Correct. Now, you can actually get TikTok and Amazon fulfillment to talk to one another. But for simple terms, let's just assume you're going to send them to two different places. Is it smarter to send it directly? Yeah, from a cost perspective, yes. Now here's where you're going to benefit from TikTok shop. When you do an Instagram video, you say you take these ingredients, you take my keto pasta. Yay. And people go over to Amazon, type it in, find it, click the cart, buy it. Great. Big sales day. TikTok, they watch the video and they hit buy. So it's right there.
Speaker 3So it could actually not just double it, but it could be more than double it. It could. If we're spending, say, 15K a month on Amazon ads, if I'm spending 15K a month on TikTok ads. We're doing it with content that already performs well and converts well. Is 15K a month likely to translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in TikTok shop sales
Speaker 2or is there no way to know? Let's not speculate just yet because we haven't even seen what the organic response is.
Speaker 3Well, the organic response is good. I get similar engagement on TikTok as I do on the other platforms.
Speaker 2But you're not set up on TikTok shop. I'm not on TikTok. - So you may discover that just being able to have it bought right on TikTok way outperforms anything that is going over to Amazon. Doesn't mean it will, but in a lot of cases it does. So I would suggest you test that and then you worry about what you're going to spend on TikTok. And once again, we are assuming that this is something that's going to be done right away. I would suggest a few other steps before you go this route because I don't think it would be a good idea to scale that quickly. But three, six months from now, this may be a lever that you want to pull.
Speaker 3Okay. And should I, does running out of stock on TikTok shop damage you the way it does on Amazon? Not as bad. Because TikTok can be turned
Speaker 2on much faster, whereas Amazon is a compounding machine that you've got to keep feeding. And you can respond, like you can get back to where you were when you run out of stock on Amazon, but it does happen.
Speaker 3Okay. That's important to know because if I do do this as a test, it's like, I don't have unlimited inventory. So I have to decide, are we going to send 10% of this batch or 20%? It's like you're saying if you want to do a small test, it's not a huge deal because it doesn't matter if you run out of stock.
Speaker 2That's correct. That's correct. Cool. Yeah. Don't do it at the expense of Amazon because that is already a seven figure business.
Speaker 3So no matter what I do, do not hurt the thing that's working. Correct. Yes. And that's why you say hire. Hire someone because if I'm in the way.
Speaker 2There are some defensible moves that need to be made to make sure that this very healthy, growing seven figure business continues to maintain its growth rate. And then there are experiments you can run to see if you want to make the boat move faster.
Speaker 1Prescriptions and everything else. And I was like, wow, I got to learn about this. So then I went to India, then I went to the Amazon jungle and lived with an African shaman for close to a year, all around the world for 15 years, traveled to heal myself. And from that, I realized like, oh, wow, this is really exciting. I can support other people with this and share what I learned. I could, I could speak, but it was kind of, it felt like no one else was real. I was in this bubble. It was. And so like, I couldn't really make eye contact. I couldn't be authentic. I couldn't explain it. I couldn't express my desires. I couldn't do basic social things. So I was like super fake and I was very intelligent in some ways. You know, the intellect was there and I could read or, you know, get a high grade on a, on a test, but I could barely be myself or I couldn't believe people loved me and was just extremely insecure. Just all these complexes, you know, extreme. Oh, totally prisoner. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's still a work in progress. You know, I'm, I'm always, you know, biohacking and learning more every day, but I feel so healed now. And I just like, it's time to share this with the world. And I created a school to help remind people, like, how does reality work? We never get the life tutorial. You come to earth. You're like, how does your mind work? How do you manifest things? Right. How do you want it? If you want to change something, I believe something. I believe something. I believe something. I believe something. How do you do that? So we're just given this software and we're like, okay, go, you're free.
Speaker 2Now, all that happens is that you grow 10% a month this year. You've tripled the business.
Speaker 3But the problem is we, we may go down because like I said, Oh, the keto diet, people jump on it the first three months of the year, and then they hop off of it. Should I, how do you, how do you respond to those? Okay. So let's say March is like, we went from one 40 to let's say one 20 this month. Let's say it goes to 100 in March. Do I just say, Oh, that makes sense. More people just fell off the bandwagon and stopped ordering keto pasta. Or do I say something must be going wrong. We have to go figure out
Speaker 2what's wrong. You invest in stocks. Okay. Do you invest in stocks? Yes. Okay. So you ever hear people talk about bubbles and they're being like a 20%? Correction coming. Okay. What do you, what do you, what do you do to hedge against the 20% correction? Nothing. Right now. Why is that?
Speaker 3Because if you just stay in the market, you generally end
Speaker 2up ahead. There is that. And also you don't know when the bubble is going to burst. So if in a lot of cases, when people are worried about bubbles or 20% pullbacks, the market will go up another 15, 20% before there is. A bubble that bursts and you come down another 20%. So that pullback is actually still higher than where you were previously.
Speaker 3Ah, it's like the, if January is one 40 and then we go down in February, it's still like triple what last February was.
Speaker 2Yes. And so your job is to continue those tailwinds. And so it doesn't necessarily mean something is broken. If you were to see three months of consistent downward trends, now it's time to investigate something. But in most cases for a business like yours, you are growing so fast in the aggregate that your job is just to continue those tailwinds. And what does that look like? It means being really good to your customers, getting lots of reviews, posting those reviews, responding to negative reviews, posting about the product once in a while, when it feels good, building the email list. That's what it looks like. And as you do that, those compounding returns continue to add up. Add up over the next 12 months. So you can become less and less affected by seasonality because you have people on subscribe and save and repeat customers and people discovering you for the first time. And you, you don't worry about those temporary downturns so much. Then a few months from now, you launch product number two, and these are the things you think about rather than what happens if there's a seasonal downturn.
Speaker 3That makes sense.
Speaker 2Okay. So I think you're sitting on a $10 million business. Uh, I've seen a few of these. So this one looks really obvious to me. Is there anything else that you feel like is in your way of doing that? Because right to me, it just looks like more good products in time and the right team.
Speaker 3Yeah. I would just say, I think, I think I'm the only person in the way. And it's like, the more I can take advice like this and do the things, you know, I'm not the person in the way because you're also the driver. I'm also the driver. It's like, if I keep responding to every comment and every time someone messages me about the pasta and say they love it and I say, oh, did you leave a review yet? It's like, it's like, so I'm in the game of you post and then you get 3 million views and that feels, you get a huge surge of dopamine. And then also, or a brand emails you and they're like, we want to pay you $20,000 for this campaign and you get a huge surge of dopamine. But it's like the, the 10 DMs you sent to that day, aren't as rewarding. Right. But it's like, I just need, I need to attach replying to those 10 messages with some sort of, it just, I guess it just comes down to discipline. Like, it's like, you don't need a huge reward to do the things.
Speaker 2There is that, but once again, I shared with you that the plan getting beyond a million is different than the plan of getting to a million. And there are some boring systems, that you start to develop over a million so that your team is continuously reaching out to customers and asking them for reviews.
Speaker 3So like you said, a brand manager. Yes. That's where I can refocus on the,
Speaker 2the other things. You go launch the rice and you're suddenly excited to go ask for those 10 reviews. Yes. Because going from zero reviews to 10 reviews is actually a great dopamine dump.
Speaker 3Exactly. But going
Speaker 2from 600 reviews to 610 reviews, not a very good dopamine day. Exactly. Yes. So you are freed up to focus on the next shiny object that grows the business while the team is maintaining the systems that just need to be there to grow the overall health of the business.
Speaker 3I think that's a good, the shiny object is, is like a good way to put it because it is like, that is, that is the way to make myself excited. And when I'm excited, I, I can kill it. I can just run through walls. It's like, but when I'm not excited, it's like a little more of like a, like tough journey.
Speaker 2Yeah. And that means that the next step for you is to have proper people in place to support the boring stuff. And you're never, you're never going to believe this. There are people actually like the boring stuff. Yeah. They want to do the boring stuff. And now you're freed up to go pursue the next breakthrough, which is what is going to take this to 10 million bucks. Yep. Great. Thank you.
Speaker 3I'm very excited to get there. I'm rooting for you, dude.
Speaker 2Really excited. Give it up for Iric Wiggins. Thank you. But you know, the most
Speaker 1important thing for me is there's also an alchemical process of your soul, your consciousness. And we've, I believe that life is a school and love is the lesson. So we're brought here, your deepest issues, right? Your deepest challenges can become your most powerful strengths and opportunities. If you learn how to alchemize them, which is, you know, forgiving people, you know, learning the lesson and really leaning into it, a really powerful process happens within us. And, you know, for me, like emotions were like impossible for me, like looping, looping, looping and, and how, and then, you know, now I guide people around the world, you know, thousands of people, including some of the top founders of fortune 500 companies with their, how to use their mind and emotions, because I was able to just go there and, and, I really dig into that. Let's do it. Let's go. I love that question. I mean, there's a lot we can go into. You know, from living with different tribes and masters for many years, some of the things I learned is energy techniques, right? Everything is really energy, right? Everything is vibrating, right? And so in meditations, within two to three minutes, a lot of people are like, whoa, I started seeing visions and going deep like really fast as soon as I closed my eyes. And, you know, so part of it.
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