How to start and sell a business in less than 3 years - Damien Law

All right guys welcome back it's been a minute since we've done a podcast just because like been super busy a lot of new projects We'll get in we'll talk about that a little bit But more importantly like I just don't do them unless I really really want to these days I've been really wanting to interview or more just like have a long conversation Documented conversation with Damien for a while got a lot of cool businesses a really cool story But before we get into that This is the I don't do I don't do sponsorships or any of that shit So uh, this is the last opportunity for this cohort of outliers if you guys are new here outliers is essentially my private group For founders investors top talent creatives. We got artists athletes pretty much anyone who's young and in the top 1% of the 1% of our age group I think the ages ages range from like 19 to 51 I think is the oldest guy, but it's mainly guys in their 20s So if you're a young killer. If you've done over seven figures in your business and your creative endeavors and your ventures Whatever and you're interested in joining now's the last chance So I'll leave a link to apply below but without further further ado, but like well come on. Thank you, bro Thanks for having me. Yeah, so I'll give a little intro for Damien and then and then we'll get right into his story the the deeper parts of it but Very young successful entrepreneur. What I think is really really cool about your story is you had an exit very early And that's kind of the first thing I want to talk about, but you know before that like right now You have a couple different companies. You're building. What's the main one right now? It's a gummy company gummy company. Okay. What are you guys doing you said like three million this year? Yeah, we're gonna hit three million this year Majority sold on take talk shop in Amazon. Okay, so that'll be really interesting to get into and talk about because I know A lot of people are curious how to start they they kind of look at it as like new marketplace new new field I don't they don't know where to start. So I'm curious to hear like your strategy and what you're doing because we're getting started on take talk shop as well We've been direct to store so far pretty much. Yeah But that wasn't your first company, right? How many businesses have you started? Before this one I'd say to so my first one freshman year during college Dropped out and was like I got to figure some shit out. So I met one of my buddies because I lost a vape out of frat party and I basically posted on my snapchat story I was like hey lost my vape and he won't got a extra one and this guy who I haven't seen shout out Ben Replied my story as like I'm actually 10 minutes away from you because during that time I was living like 20 minutes outside the city for college and He swiped up his album to be there in 10 minutes. He came to my house and we started like catching up and We were just like what he what have you guys been up to kind of thing And he told me that he started a digital marketing agency and like to me at the time I was like what the fuck is digital marketing And I was like how much are you making from that? And he was like 20 grand a month. I was like what the fuck? So then I just went down this like deep rabbit hole he gave me my first business book, which was a rich dad poor dad Have you read that one? Of course. Yeah. I feel like that's like the Natural progression. There's like there's a couple of like main ones that everyone starts with and then you just start going down the rabbit hole. Yeah Um, and then I just went down a rabbit hole on YouTube how to make money online Ended up on got this ad from this OG course seller called Kevin David. I don't know if you know who that is But I'm pretty sure he's like in a lawsuit right now for like 20 million dollars for like scamming Seems like all those guys are right. Yeah, I don't want to call out But uh, but anyways, I bought his course it was like $997 on how to sell on Amazon FBA and then For the next six months, I was just basically trying to find a product and ultimately landed on a meditation cushion So that was my first ever company I launched that head September of 2019. Yeah, September August 2019 and that was my first thing and then my second thing was a protein cookie company Well before the protein cookie company which was a success How did the Meditation cushion go? Yeah, we scaled up to like our highest month ever was like 50 grand a month That's not bad for first business. Yeah, for to me at the time. That was like a lot a lot. Yeah, in college That's definitely a lot and why why did you pick that? You saw I imagine he did some research right there was like some market research some data You're like, okay, there's a trending product. Yeah, it was mainly like okay What is the keyword search for so for Amazon right there's like keyword searches like how many people are looking it up a month And I think at the time it was like 20,000 searches a month and like When you look at the first page of Amazon you kind of look at the the reviews right so like for example if the first page Every single product has like a hundred two hundred reviews that means that you can pretty much rank super easily on that keyword Versus like if you're selling like Apple cider vinegar or something if you could type that in there's probably like Golly with like 60,000 searches 60,000 reviews So it was a mixture of you know how many reviews search volume is a room to kind of differentiate Um, if you guys look at it. It's called unique wellness meditation cushion Um, it came in like a beautiful kind of gift-friendly packaging. Oh, it's still selling. No, no, no, but you can probably find it online somewhere Um came in a nice box came in a duffle bag with the cushion itself bought it for like nine bucks and we sold it for like 49 It's a pretty good margin. Yes. It's not bad from China from China. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Okay, so then how long after that did you get into The pro what's the name of the protein company? I got fin good. I think that's a great name Yeah, and so how old were you when you started that are 20 or 21 2021 and how long after that first business did you stumble across that product? Yeah, so I stopped doing the cushion probably in 2020 and then I started the cookies in 2021 during covid And yeah because I had nothing else to do besides like bake and workout And I got really really into baking um, I was living with my ex-girlfriend at the time and uh, there was really nothing else for us to do except bake and so I made these like protein cookies because I tried the the quest ones and they were horrible So I was like, I think I can make something better and I just started giving them to friends and they liked it and I was like Fuck it. Let me just make a cookie. I love that dude. That's exactly how I started my business. I feel like there's There's two ways you go you either do a shit ton of research. Yeah, look at all the data. You go, okay trending product here uh General trend here. Maybe it's health and wellness. Maybe it's nutraceuticals. Maybe it's something with collagen whatever Right yeah, and then you you start with the data and then you pick a product Where everyone is moving and then there's the other type types of people more some kind of your own itch solving your own problem Literally bro like I feel like those businesses are always more fun to run. They're definitely more fun. I personally I think they're a lot more Difficult in the start because you're trying to make something new You're maybe not even necessarily something new. I mean that's that's challenging in and of itself, but like When you build a business around a product just because you wanted it and not because other people necessarily want it without doing the research of the data It can work, but it's definitely more challenging in the beginning like for me like I just I wanted to make a cool pair of workout shorts I couldn't find any workout shorts. I liked and um I didn't do any research I didn't know anything about clothing. I didn't know anything about e-commerce I don't know anything about anything to be honest and then jump right into jump right in and you know Soon realized like after you know a year of selling shit is fucking hard It's hard dude, but we made it work though. It's going really well right now, but um Yeah, my my thinking is always just like if I have this problem chances are that other people would do yeah No, I agree hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, so that's so at that point What for anyone watching that's like never started the business? Maybe they have an idea for something everyone's got an idea right but maybe they have an idea for something They're like I know this would be big What's the like step One through ten of getting from an idea to like your first product and then launching it or what was it for you? What was it like back then or what what is it like now? Well, let's let's do a comparison like what did you do back then and what would you have done differently if you could redo it? If I were to redo it, I would move a lot faster It took me from the moment that I actually bought that course to the moment I actually launched my first ever product It was probably like eight months and I think I could have done it in like two and a half For sure, I mean like a year to make the LLC, but I think a lot of it is not like So you ever you ever met someone like Yeah, I'm trying to business. I'm working on the LLC and now that you you've been on the other side of that you're like Well, you're like okay, but yeah, look at it. I was kind of like a dumbass too I paid a lot of attention to things that didn't really fucking matter That's how I start how do I actually make an LLC like what do I have to worry with taxes? It's like none of that should matters until you make sales 100% bro So like nowadays whenever I launch something I'm like I try to get a sale as fast as possible to see if it actually works But back then, I mean, you know LLC figuring out taxes like how do I pay myself like all the shit that doesn't actually matter But you live and you learn I'd say but I'd think finding the right product is Majority of the hard work. I yeah one of the one of the biggest lessons I think I've learned over the past like six years is It doesn't matter what boat you're in, but sorry. No, I pre-fucked that up Doesn't matter how hard you row, but what boat you're in yeah, so like product market fit is like everything And with the right market and the right market. Yeah if you can capitalize on like a growing trend like, I mean, look at like beef tallow, you know, she'll like that. But yeah, I'd say set one to 10. What I would do is I would find a right product, so make sure it has good margins, has subscription potential. Like that's one thing that I've learned with the past two businesses, especially with the cushions, it's like, someone buys it once, they're probably not gonna buy something again. Some must have subscription, or some sort of LTV, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Solve some sort of insecurity or problem, ideally like something that is super painful that someone would pay a lot of money to solve. So like weight loss, hair loss, acne, bloating, yeah, lust, all that sort of stuff. And like one of my favorite examples for that is like, have you heard of the company Jolie? Yeah, of course, I just bought one actually. Haven't had it installed yet, but it's sitting on my face. Yeah, it's great, I love that kind of. You have one? Yeah, I have one. So is it like light changing or whatever? I mean, I like, I'll send the payment link in the indiscriminate Jolie. Yeah, you gotta get it affiliate like after this. But I love that company and a company called Clean Skin Club, 'cause I mean, shower filters have been around for so long, same with like paper towels, but they just found an angle to talk about, which is acne and hair loss. And they just positioned their product against it. And it's a much better play than saying, this just cleans your water, you know what I mean? That's such a good lesson that you don't necessarily need to create something new or reinvent the wheel. You just need a new angle for 100%. And I remember like we were really out of bottleneck. We had a bottleneck for a while. We just couldn't get above like whatever it was a 100k a month. And I really thought like, well, maybe there's just too many clothes out there. Yeah, there's too many active wear brands. I really like, I never thought about giving up, but I was like, oh, this is just so tough. We just clunked it past it. And then I met my mentor who fucking is doing like half a billion this year selling hoodies and sweats. And that's more saturated than active. - Yeah, he's in sweats and he's like, bro, you just need to have your angle. - 100%. - Yeah. I mean, you can't really invent something new nowadays. - Yeah. - But you just gotta find an angle that no one else is talking about. Like for example, if you're selling, this would put him on the spot, like a bloating product. Like there's so many different bloating products, but how can you find like an angle, right? It's like, okay, who are you selling to? What problems do they have? Read the reviews. So like for example, I know that girls wake up feeling super bloated and pregnant. Like can you sell a de-bloat PM? Like something that someone drinks before they go to bed so that they don't have to fake up feeling pregnant. So like that would be a super unique angle that you can carve in a super saturated market where everyone's just selling like a me too, kind of de-bloat product. - Yeah, and as long as you have a great, great UGC, massive amounts of volume, then you couldn't probably scale that. There you go, someone take that. - Yeah, yeah, someone please take that. But yeah, find a product, find a manufacturer, get quotes. What I like to do nowadays is, I like to do like a validation strategy. So I didn't coin this, but I took it from the guy who started Kettle and Fire, Justin, something, mayors, do you know him? - I know the business, but I don't know. - Yeah, yeah, but I read this post, like a blog post like a year ago, and I thought it was genius. But basically what he did, and what I do nowadays, is you basically create a landing page, you create like a mockup of the product, couple ad creatives, and then you just set a price. And then you just run those ad creatives on meta to see if you can get like purchases. And if you can get some, then you just like, send out an email to people saying like, hey, we don't actually have the product, so we call for you to be fun. That sort of stuff. - The kill crew guys used to do that all the time. - Who? - The kill crew, you ever heard a kill crew? That's why I started my business actually, 'cause I saw them doing it, and I was like, oh, I could probably do that. But they would do the same thing. They would just throw a slap, a ton of different designs on shorts, it didn't even look like a real product. That's the thing. You could low-key tell that it was like, there was some such shit there, but like you would click on one of the ads, you'd buy it, and then you'd get an email saying, oh, sorry, our shipment got delayed, whatever. - Yeah, and so I think it's like, consciously making the decision to not procrastinating making that for sale. And so I'd say like, if you're juggling a couple ideas, just make three landing pages, a couple ad creatives, run all of those, whichever one does the best, just roll with that one. I made the mistake of just like jerking off and just like worrying about the raw product. - That's just the process though, you know? I think every entrepreneur looking back if they were asked, could you go back and do it significantly faster, they would say, yeah, 100%, right? But that's what's so cool about entrepreneurship and starting your own business is like, there's really no such thing as losing. You can fail, but then you just start over and do it again. Like if anything, I think so many people are afraid, like what if I started business and it fails? If anything, you starting a business and failing is probably the best thing that could ever happen to you. 'Cause you're gonna learn a lot and you're now gonna find an even better industry, a better product, whatever, like, it would be so rare for someone to start their first business in Hickgold. - Yeah. - Because like you don't know what you, I don't know anybody, not as single person. - You don't know anyone? - I'm trying to think. - I'm not a successful person, every person that I know that, oh, actually you know what? The one guy I do know who's crazy successful, who it was his first business is another guy, my last podcast guest, who's an outliers as well. He's named Michael Suki, he's here in Austin as well. They're doing like fucking, I don't know, 60, 70 million a year solar company, third year. - What do they sell? - Solar. - No way. - Yeah. He figured out like a hack in the solar and it's pretty much. - Interesting, yeah. - Yeah, he like completely, 'cause it was all these like old heads. - Uh-huh. - And he kind of came in with like this new approach and just dominated. - Yeah, yeah. - And he started as a solar sales rep. - Interesting. - He was like, I'm gonna start my own, I see all these inefficiencies, I'm gonna start my own company. - Smart. - So for anyone watching, if someone wanted to start an e-commerce brand, there's gonna be a lot of people that are thinking like, I don't have enough money and you know, it's just not for me. Like how much money do you need, you think? - I mean, I started my first brand with like $5,000 and I got like, I think it was like, the pillow one. - Yeah, I got like 500 units and then I just reinvested all the profits into buying 1,000 units and 2,500 units and 5,000 units. But I mean, I don't think realistically, you can start a brand for like less than $5,000. - Yeah, I think I started mine with $5,000, my co-founder, my cousin put it for. - Yeah. - Yes. - And you can't get $5,000, bro, you're fucking cooked. Someone was commenting that on my video the other day. Well, not everyone has $5,000. I'm like, dude, sorry, you know, like figure it out, bro. - Yeah, get it yourself. - Is that your excuse, bro? - I mean, I saved up my $5,000. I was working at a place called Bridges back in Vancouver during the summer and I saved up my money there and then I started my brand. So yeah. - Yeah, I mean, you started calling it. - I sold Viagra. - Really? - That's how I got my money for the five nights, right? - I sold Viagra and alcohol. - Yeah, I sold weed in high school and I blew it all and alcohol. - It's actually funny, the number of founders I meet that this is horrible, not giving this advice to anyone, but the number of founders that I meet that like sold some sort of substance, substance and that's how they got their money to start their first, 'cause the truth is like selling jokes is a business, right? You need a product, there needs to be demand, you gotta undercut the competition. - Baby, I'm an entrepreneur. - Yeah, but it's like, I know a lot of people that started that way, which is horrible, but yeah, I say it was probably the first business ever. It's like you're bartering, you're trading things, right? - Yeah. - And by low sell high paid. - Yeah. - You said about, I really like what you said about not getting distracted by the things that don't matter. - Yeah, get your first sale as fast as possible. Don't worry about the other shit. Everything can be solved by more sales. You don't even need a fucking website in the beginning, like come up with your idea for a product, get a sample, once you have a sample, show it to your friends, show it to your peers, show it to your mom's friends if it's like a de-blowning product in them or something. Bring it, bring your sample, your product to whoever you think is gonna be your ideal customer, get their feedback. If they like it, order 100 units, 500 units, something small. Go start selling the fucking pull-up to people's doors if you have to. - Yeah, do whatever you can. I mean, I'll tell you an interesting story on how I sold my first 4,000 units of cookies. - Oh yeah, let's hear it. So what I started doing, this was back in like, how much did you put into that by the way? - 15, okay. - Yeah, so yeah, 15, what was I gonna say? And did you make them in the States? - Mm-hmm. - A co-packer or something? - Yeah, Cali, Cali. Horrible co-packer, I'm not gonna name them, but I've still hear a lot of horror stories. - Yeah, absolutely, horrible co-packer. Took me like a year to actually get something out. But so I started posting TikToks in 2021. First ever TikTok I made was about how I dropped out of college to start a cookie company. And I still remember this, it was like December 2021. And it was at like one in the morning. I was scrolling on TikTok and I saw this one girl who was talking about how she quitterful time job to start like a Boba company. And that video got like three million views. And I was like, you know what, fuck it. I'm just gonna make, I'm gonna rip this video. - Oh yeah. - So I made this video at like one in the morning on like a random Tuesday. Woke up the next day, it was at like 20,000 views. I was like, holy shit. And in my TikTok link and bye. I had a like an opt-in page where people can like put in their emails and their name and all that stuff and Over the next like week that video got I think it's up to like 800,000 views now Yeah, and I got 4,000 people on an email list and then that was December and so our production run wasn't gonna be done till like April And so throughout those the next month what I did was I basically emailed everyone Every single week you could be like hey guys like you know, we're in production right now like it should be done here or like hey guys You know, I'm feeling kind of stressed like they said they're gonna finish it by this day, but it's like delayed So just kind of like documenting the process fire on email and then also on tick-tock And the way we kind of like did it was we ended the email saying like reply to this with a I'm in if you're like gonna buy on the first day Something and so like it kind of like juice the the email engagement a lot. Yeah, and I knew that I was gonna launch to like April and this was Jan 1st week of January, so I was like fuck it. I'm gonna do a pre-order and so on January 27th of 2022 or 2021 We basically sent out an email saying like like the week before saying hey, we're gonna do pre-orders We only have 4,000 units. We have 5,000 people on this email list like go get it. That's a great way to frame it. Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, and we said like we haven't even promoted this on on social media, which is a more people And so we sent out that email Funny story put together the the entire website it didn't save and so the night before we were actually gonna launch the pre-orders I stayed up to like six in the morning like putting it back together and I didn't wake up to 10 in the morning But the the email went out at 9 in the morning. So I woke up. It was like Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding like that entire sound. It was like the best sound of all time So how was she guys make on that launch like 30 grand nice, bro. That's such a good Yeah, it was story money and lesson for anyone young starting a business for the first time wanting to start a business You really got to do it ever it takes so much of it is is about FOMO and scarcity and urgency You know especially these days with so many businesses out there and like a lot of people are getting really really good at marketing You have to create some sort of scarcity hype or urgency. Yeah, or or or or a flash sale or Convince people that they have to buy like you just cannot even if your product is great The last thing you want is someone saying oh, that's dope. I'll go check this out later Yeah, you got a for some to buy now however you can yeah, that's a great like launch story, honestly Yeah, it was pretty dope. So what was the date on that or the month maybe January 27th, that's when we launched pre-orders and then we didn't ship shit out to like April or May, but then during that time during that time we just kept everyone like updated. Yeah, weekly emails We had probably had like five refunds. That's what a that's what Jake. Do you know Jake Levy right leavey Jake Levy he did the same thing Yeah, he posted on say I think documenting your story as a young entrepreneur is the dope not it's not even It's a necessity these days. I think so yeah, you're at a disadvantage if if if you if there's a face attached to your brand and you're a cool Likeable person and people trust you like that is such an advantage your business has that a lot of other businesses Delt because their founders just aren't willing to oh, I don't want I don't want people to know who I am I don't want to be in front of the camera. Yeah, I mean also I think it's just cool because you can look I was like scrolling on my phone the other day and I was looking at like old pictures And I was like I'm so happy That like I filmed this part. Yeah, I can show my kids this. That's that's a great way to look at it Yeah, like I want to document my story I don't know if that was you and I that was talking about the silly day, but I was talking to someone about how like we see so little Of our parents as is yeah, and we know so little of their stories like I remember there is this book that popped off on tick-tock shop Called like mom. I went to hear your story Yeah, whoever fucking wrote that yeah, 30 page book made millions millions mass. I'm so jealous of that one But it's like and I would get pissed seeing all these tick-tock shop videos like if your parents are still alive Don't pass up on this opportunity. I'm like this guy just made a hundred grand commissions But the truth is that's such a great product because there really is a need for that because Yeah, we don't know anything about our parents. They're so You know, they're so like unwilling to share stories usually especially ads, and so for you to document your story And if one day for your for your kid to be able to go back and watch all that bro That's that's a gift you're giving them so yeah, and then you have to benefits your business on top I mean, I think we I think we built a pretty dope community of just people like because I feel like no one actually wants to see Infographics on an Instagram page, you know like people want to follow people's story Even if it's for like the wrong reasons like seeing if they actually fail, you know, like look at Jake Pine is Yeah, look at you look at Jake Paul like people want to watch him to seem get knocked out Or they just want to like see your story and kind of see how you come up So I'm a big big big believer in Documentary journey whether through like video or even like text, you know like Twitter linked in whatever Yeah, that's why we should have done a better job of that really like Walking people through the process of our business on the early days. Okay, so you launched it You got a really successful launch. Yeah, uh, you know compared to the size of the order and everything and then You scaled this business for how long before you guys decided you wanted to sell from 2021 to April 2024 is when it's sold yeah, yeah, so what is that three and a half years three and a half years? Yeah, we're gonna Half years and why did you want to sell? For the money Okay, so what made you think I'm gonna make more money and it's more worth my time to exit now. I was paying myself $2,000 from luck with that business But yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone knows the margins of food companies, but they're not great. That's why you see like food companies having to Raise like hundreds of millions of dollars to even scale to because I mean think about it You're like buying something for a dollar or two dollars and you can sell for five dollars max Well, that's but that's the thing about food and um and and drinks as well like what like water companies um Is like yeah, the margins are asked and you're unprofitable for fucking a decade Well, you can have a huge payoff at the yeah, if you can last if you can last like okay like path water, bro Yeah, I mean we got we raised $25,000. That's like the most we got. Oh, you raise I didn't know you raised like friends and family nice. How much should you give away? What was the valuation at that point? Uh, we gave it away at a hundred thousand dollars. You give a 25% of the company. No 10% Wait, how does that make sense? Wait, hold on you get you got 25k 25k at a hundred 25% sorry damn Oh, okay, you give away 25% right off the road. Yeah, to my parents. Did you have a co-founder? Um, it's a complicate Okay, we'll skip that part. So you scale this thing You sold it How much did you sell for? Uh, high six figure. I can't say okay. Yeah, it's a high six. That's pretty solid. Yeah, how old 23 23 Okay, so you know close to a billion dollar payout sit around there 23 years old. That's sweet Um, what was that process like? I mean it started back in August of 2023. So that's what like eight months. Yeah, eight month process eight month process. That's pretty normal Yeah, it's pretty nice. I've heard people like take like a year and a half to actually get the deal done um But it started in august I got connected to a guy who basically owns a private equity um And they have a bunch of other better for you stacking companies. And so that kind of started the conversation um You know sent in financials like letters m10 like all of that stuff And um, I mean during those eight months It's it's a weird kind of feeling because you're like I might sell it. I may not sell it, but you kind of got to Keep business going, you know, yeah, it's like a weird feeling um how many hours a day was that taken out of your time to work on the actual business Probably like at least four hours a day. It's hours a day for eight months pretty much That's that's kind of what I've heard because it's a lot of like meat It's a lot of calls going back and forth the pairing documents like all that shit Um, I mean you've raised money, right? I raised money. I mean it's a full-time job Yeah, so yeah, it's kind of the same thing um The problem with that the or not the problem, but the The difficult part with selling a business from what I understand what I've heard is You know, you're spending money on lawyers. You're taking time away from the business You're eight months in seven months in whatever. Yeah, at that point you're probably so fucking fed up You're probably like all right. You just put whatever offer they give you exactly. Yeah, I mean I know two guys Who have recently sold their companies for like a significant amount of money And it's taken around that like one year timeline and I and I talked to them recently And I'm like hit like how do you feel is like I'm just glad it's over Yeah, and like you're just kind of like drained and like exhausted from the whole process that like you're just happy It's done. That's what Rob told me Rob the bank. Yeah, it's like bro. They fuck you like they they come in They fucking lowball the shit out of you at the very end because they know that yeah, you know But I wonder If you're able to continue to actually scale your business while you're going through that acquisition process Yeah, you know, you think about it like okay, you've put all this time in four hours a day You spent 50 grand on lawyers whatever like So has the private equity firm and especially if you've actually been able to scale your business and not just cost I wonder if there is a way to shift the power dynamic at the very end and be like, you know what guys like we were expecting to grow 60% by this time this year, but we grew 100. So honestly, I want a 10x. Yeah, honestly, bro, I was like so checked out from that business. I mean, I was running it for like three years, just like, so long shit. I had like a partner at one point, but that yeah, yeah, that's a complicated story. Okay, so wait, so eight months, four hours a day, what are they trying to ask you in those four hours? Like, they're just asking for like, PNL's like documents, opportunity of growth, a lot of phone calls, making sure everything's like legit, transferring of everything, and just having like lawyers kind of take a look at, and like, accountants to take a look at like your financials and all that stuff. I would worry that you're essentially giving away this secret sauce to an organization that has all of the resources and ability and talent to go and just fucking rip it off. Well, yeah, their thing is just like they didn't have a cookie company, and so they wanted to bring one on instead of starting someone, starting new. But think about that, though, first of all, what if they, like, what if you just told them, every, oh, this is my manufacturer, this is my margin. Oh, we didn't, we didn't tell them the manufacturers and everything. Okay, but like, still though, that's really not that complicated part. Like, you know, does that make sense? That's what I would be worried about is like, yeah, if someone were to try and acquire, I don't even want to sell, but if someone were to try, knowing what I know now, my UGC system or whatever, like they could literally just go rip it off. Yeah, I mean, knowing what I know now, if I do end up selling the current company, I have right now, I would have done it like differently, but I was just a naive 23-year-old kid trying to just like make my first bit of money. Okay, so let's talk about it, though. What would you, like, for anyone going through it right now, maybe they're thinking about raising, I mean, not sorry, they're thinking about it. Yeah, so we actually exited at probably the one of the worst times, too. Our last three months were down month over month, but we got like an offer on the table. I was dealing with some stuff with my partner at the time, and I needed a, like, capital. And so we just kind of, it was more of like a, how do you put this, like a desperation sell? What kind of valuation did you get on the yearly revenue you guys were doing? A 1x. A 1x on yearly or not, you bet it, right? On revenue. Okay. Yeah. 1x on revenue. Is that normal? Is that super low? No, dude. I've seen food companies get acquired for like four times revenue. So we sold probably at the worst possible time, but at the same time, I don't regret it because it gave me capital so that I can have like a little bit peace of mind. Yeah. And now you're in a better opportunity. Now I'm in a better opportunity. But I, I think I learned everything about business running that cookie company. It like taught me what I wanted and what I didn't want in a brand. I would never touch food again, though. Never. What are the main, what are the three biggest reasons? Why not to touch food requires a lot of capital, not great margins. You need incredible economies of scale to make it work versus if you sell like beauty or supplements, you turn that over so quickly cash wise versus like food. It's like a very, very slow process. And you got to worry about expiration. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So. Okay. So if you could go back for in your three minutes to warn younger Damien like, Hey, the second you made that phone call saying, Hey, we're interested in selling like, what would you tell them? Three things. Like someone called me to say like, I was thinking of selling on that on that first day when you got in contact with whoever, whatever representative from that private equity firm. And you've decided, okay, I am going to sell that's for sure. If you could go back and tell younger Damien three pieces of information to help him through that process or potentially make a better outcome at the end, what would you say? I think scale it back up for the next three months and be patient. Get greedy, and I think like control what you can control. I think those are kind of the three. But like I said, I don't regret it at all. I would have definitely done things differently. But I think, you know, you kind of live and you learn and sure. Yeah. That's what I would say. One two. Sorry. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, but like I learned so much from that business. And you know, even if I didn't get like an outcome out of that, I would have been fine right now because I learned just like so much from that. Yeah. It was a brutal fucking grind for three years, like legit. It was like the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Yeah. Like two grand a month, dude, I barely could pay rent. But I feel you there. If I didn't have social media, I don't know what I'd be doing because I didn't pay myself for six months of the year, just started still making less than some of my employees. Yeah. I don't think people realize that with like Ecom, the more you grow, the less you can kind of pay yourself. Anyway. Yeah. I was just talking to someone. Who was it? I was just talking to someone a few days ago and they're like, I'm thinking about getting into Ecom and I'm like, dude, yeah, I think if you have patience and you can see it out for the next three to five years, pay yourself a very minimal salary, then I would say do it. Yeah. But if you're just trying to get your first $100,000 liquid, then I don't think that's like the best vehicle for sure. I think the one like, I think there's two benefits to Ecomers that I know I'm really talking about. One of them is from a skill standpoint and one of them is from a branding standpoint, your personal brand, your notoriety. I think the great part about Ecom is once you can pull something off in Ecom, you really can do anything. I can pay you. Like we were just talking about this when we were at coffee the other day. There's so many amazing stories and great examples of founders who did well in Ecom. Maybe they made like low eight figures, sold the business. They made like 10, 20, 30 million and then they got into SaaS or web apps or tech or software and then that's how they got there gives you a lot of $200,000 exit because the thing about Ecom is like, and Blake Anderson is also a great example of this. He's the Kalei guy. Yeah, Kalei, Umax, Ridge, GBT, all that. So reason I point him out is because Ecomers essentially always is like the first to adopt the newest marketing, the newest trends. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like with UGC, like the first companies, the first brands to utilize UGC, were drop shipping in Ecomers, right? And then after a while, then like the guys in the app space and the AI space, like then they start noticing like, wait a minute, like, yeah, I mean, you look at that here. You look at that right now with like TikTok shop, right? You're trying to get as many people posting as many different videos on as many different accounts as possible. Yeah. And like now you look at Kalei, Quitter, Clually, like all these different faps and drawing apps in the country. Yeah. It's the same thing. And it's the same thing. They're just, they're taking like marketing methods that were, I don't want to say invented that were popularized by Ecomers brands, right? So I think that's the number one asset of being in Ecomers is like, if you configure it out, you can go to like operations, finance. Yeah. Like so many move products, so many different moving pieces, so many moving pieces. It's so annoying, like the supply chain app, like you get into Ecomers. This is how I look at it. Everyone gets into Ecomers because you're like, I have a great idea for product. It's a sexy business. Yeah, it's sexy. So that was the second part is like, you get into it because you're like, oh, I have a great idea for a product and how cool would my friends think I am if I had like a clothing brand? Yeah. That's how I can be company. That's why I wanted to get into it. It's like, how cool would it be if like my friends use my products? It's cool. And there's actually nothing cooler than seeing someone eat your product, right? If you have a protein bar, you have a cookie like eat, like watching someone enjoy something that you're making. It is so sick. Someone buying your clothes, someone at the gym, where I should be like, that's sick. But you make no money, but you learn a lot and but what no one gets into Ecomers expecting in my opinion is the fucking supply chain side of things. Well, bro, we ran out of stock for like, dude, like two months back in September for my new company. And we probably lost out on like 300 grand, like we had, we went on like a generational run on like TikTok shop and we lost some momentum and it was like the hardest thing to ever get back. Yeah. And so I think that's also another good piece of advice is like, if you have hype, if you have momentum on your side, try your best not to lose it. Otherwise it's very hard to get back. But then you run into that, that issue of like, for example, if you have momentum and you're like, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to throw my balls on the table. I'm going to place the biggest order I've ever placed in my life. I'm going to, I don't even have enough money to do it. So I'm going to max out a credit card or take out a fucking PayPal loan, whatever Shopify credit loan. Like, you do that. Yeah. And then what happens if that momentum dies before the product arrives? Fucking cooked, bro. Yeah, that's like what happened to us in the early days and then you got to go raise money and then you go so There's just so many moving parts of e-commerce Yeah, and then if you can get into ass or at ass Yeah, what is this guy asked then if you can get into the ass If you can get into like AI or tech or anything You have one product and you could sell it a million times. Yeah, so so much more skilled. I think that's usually like the typical Storyline that people go through but that being said once you do figure out e-commerce It's actually not that hard to do it again. You got connections. Do you have the channels? Yeah, you understand marketing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, I love e-com though. I think it's great. It's a great business model Look as like the way I think about it is like Now that I'm like in a more financially stable place that I don't need to operate from a place of lack I can run my brand so much more differently and like aim to exit it for 50 A hundred million dollars first is just like making really rash short-term decisions within the brand Which is how I did it in the cookie company, you know, yeah, you got to go through that though. Yeah, for sure after you exited What did you do? Did you go on a little hiatus? Like did you get right into the next thing? Yeah, I mean I bought I bought a car. I did the typical stuff travel a little bit and car for real estate. I got a Porsche. Yeah. I saw it. It's pretty sweet So that's yeah But dude, I mean after a month or in a half, I would say it just kind of like fades away a little bit and you're like this is kind of baseline Um, and so during that time was when TikTok shop started like popping off. This was like April of last year And I had met a buddy at the gym Albert who runs a company called Promethex And met him in the sauna got coffee with him and was telling him about like TikTok shop And he was like, you know, we're looking to crack that channel. Do you have any experience? I was like fuck yeah, I've experienced Did you? No, bro. I had no experience with TikTok. Well, I did like, you know Make TikToks, but I didn't have experience with TikTok shop. I love that bro. That's what it takes. Yeah, that's how you know Someone's got it like they're they see an opportunity like yeah, yeah, I'm your guy. Yeah, dude. I know how to do it. I mean I think I'm like pretty good at Amazon. Um, so I was like if I can figure Amazon. I mean how hard can TikTok choppy? And so um, I work as a contractor for Promethex, you know, getting paid to learn how to actually run TikTok shop First month, I think we did like 20 grand and then second month we did like 40 or 50 and then third month we did like 110 and so like during those three months I was like holy shit like you can have one Video get posted and you know, you get $20,000 in sales from it Um, which has never been seen before, you know, like it's a win-win-win situation It was also a little inflated dough back then. Yeah, for sure like there was like the subsidies and all like I posted TikTok shop videos That got like 50k sales and I didn't deserve it at all. Yeah I mean, I still see that shit nowadays. So like I have a buddy who runs a A supplement brand that does like $9 million a month And like keep one of his top video made like 140 grand. Jesus. We're just stupid in AI video And AI video. Yeah. Wow. Let's do it. I'll show you after um But yeah, so during that time I basically Learn how to run TikTok shop started kind of like a mini agency It was like Albert then referred me to another brand and then another brand and another brand And we I was managing like five different brands at once on their on their shop And at one point I was just like I fucking hate this like I hate managing clients I hate talking to people and I just want to do my own thing And so like at the time I was running the agency, but then I was like I really want to like start up my own thing You know, I feel like once you kind of like Start your own businesses. It's it's kind of hard to go back to working for other people Yeah, you know, I mean um, so I kind of use that as just like an experience of learning the platform and then in June I came about my my business idea which is uh is called tannies. It's a it's a tannin gummy And so I was getting gummy. Yeah. Did I tell you not tell you? I don't think you told me about that Did I not tell you this? Maybe we briefly went over it. Yeah, but it's a it's a tannin gummy It's exactly what it sounds like um, I basically saw a TikTok With like eight million views of a chick who like held up these like two supplements and was like I got tan by taking these two supplements for like 30 days And then at the time like gummies were really big So uh creating gummies like everything was like being gamified So I was like, you know what if this video got eight million views and everyone in the comments were like Where do I buy this and if I put it in a gummy form, no people would buy it And so that's that's kind of what I did. So like I came came up with the idea in June and then we launched on september 15th um and within your 2024. Oh nice. And so what was that? Let's let's send a year ago. Yeah, let's like nine months. Uh huh And what are you guys doing a month right now? Uh around like a hundred and fifty K. That's awesome. Yeah We had uh the first like three months. We did like 500 grand um So like within the first 22 days of launching we hit our first hundred grand Um, and it was just purely off just affiliate videos. So we had like 25 different creators on retainer Um, and then we paid them like a 30% commission too And say there were like super heavily incentivized to post videos And the cool thing is like once a video pops off You just send that video to all of your other creators and tell them to recreate it And so I remember within our first week of launching we had this one chick her name summer She made a video talking about like gummies that can make you tan And it was stitching This like video of this doctor talking about like acid xanthin which is one of the ingredients how it can increase pigment in your skin And um she made a stitch to that talking about like Tannies and how it can make you tan And that video got like I think like 300,000 views And so we just basically took that video told all our creators and be like hey You know this video about 300,000 views they generated her like $5,000 in commission go recreate it Um, and for the next 72 hours we're gonna increase your commission from 30% to 35% Um, it's a further like incentivizing to post as many different videos as possible. Yeah Um, and so I think at one point we had like 1500 Affiliates just ripping content Um, and then we just took the top performing videos got the spark code for it and then just like ran those as ads to further after the Organic organic views died Nice. Yeah, and it still is that strategy still going but oh, they just got rid of actual yeah, so it's only GMV max now Got you. Yeah, but I mean this was like almost a year ago. I think uh It's a little bit more different now in the sense that It's kind of harder to get creators to want to work with you uh really hard really fucking hard especially the good ones Yeah, because they're all flocking to the goalies the Nello's like the big big brand neurogum the big big brands who are paying You know giving them fucking brickal Apartments, you know Like importers and all this sort of shit um, and so I see like a huge transition nowadays to like Kind of like clipping um Where with like AI. I think that's what we're like really really going like we right now We have like five creators versus like back then outer peak. We had like 40 On retainer and it was just a bitch to manage, you know creators have a lot of ego. They're always more You always have to like give up, you know A large percentage of your margin to make them happy and so I think now with like AI We're really really testing AI videos and creating hundreds of videos a day and just posting them on As many shop accounts as possible and Okay, two questions on that You think they're good enough to like convert. Yeah, are you What are you using what tools? Oh Well, I'm using like the tool that I oh what you made Okay, I don't mean her son. All right plug now so tell it tell everyone what you're working on because I agree like if it works That's fucking game. Yeah, yeah, so I mean um it actually got inspired by my buddy Who runs a supplement brand and he launched a new skew and um All his videos are AI videos and his top video was just a video of an AI woman talking on stage What's just like you know talking about how like you know if you want your immunity It's not beats. It's not you know turmeric all that sort of stuff and I saw that and I was like how do I actually recreate this but like make it 5,000 videos a month that um You know there's a bunch of other tools out there like hey Jen arc ads make ugc But uh you're only limited to like 20 videos a month um and so I basically made like a AI ugc tool that lets you create unlimited videos So you can make like you know those green screen AI videos with a corner person with like a slideshow or a video Um you can customize it however you want you can you know literally create A thousand videos a day that seems like it'd be the best strategy the green screen because I remember like neuro gum All of their best videos were like clips like the like a shark tank clip Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a Joe Rogan clip. Yeah, and so it You know if you're pulling stuff that people recognize and then you're just throwing your little AI out Avatar on the core. 100%. That seems like it'd be super effective. The founder actually did a podcast with the founder of Iconic, like the Canvas. I don't know if you know who put that company, but is it open residency? That one? Yes. Yeah, fire pod. One of the best business podcasts. 100%. I mean, he explained it super well. He just tries to get as much content as possible out there with like Steve Aoki, Shark Tank, Joe Rogan, all that sort of stuff. And he knows that his creators are just going to clip it and just post it and that's like their strategy, you know? And so like for us, I mean, we don't have Shark Tank or Joe Rogan. And so we're just like, you know, if we post 5,000 videos out there a month, like something has to go viral. And so like I know a lot of people talk about like quality over quantity, but I'm a big believer in that, you know, if you post enough quantity, you'll find some quality. I fully agree. You need to. They're like, you know, half decade ago, you'd see brands that were doing a million a month and they'd have 30 creatives running. Yeah. If you're doing a million a month these days, you need like fucking 300, 1000, like, we're capped. Do you ever get capped on your ad limit? We don't really run ads that. Oh, really? I'm interesting. Yeah, we don't really run ads. Why don't you take your best TikTok shop videos and run ads on those? We do. But our GMV Max doesn't spend that much on meta. We do. Yeah. But we can't scale past like $2,000 a day. Why? I don't know. What without rail is dipping? You mean? Yeah. Interesting. But if they're that great on TikTok shop, you'd think that they'd be working really well online. Our best creative is from TikTok shop. But yeah, we just can't. I mean, I got to talk to my ad guy for about this, but yeah, any time we just like try to scale past $2,000 a day on meta, it just like takes performance for some reason. I've heard from someone, I forget who it was. I was listening. No, it was a podcast. Now that I'm thinking about it, I was watching a podcast and someone was saying something similar and they were saying that there's kind of just like this like this cliff and you have to just fucking force your way past it. And then you even start to see better results. Like you might be at like a 3x row as at 2k a day. And then you start going past that. You get to like $2,500 or $3,000 or $2,500, huh? You're running out of three. We're doing like, I mean, a great day for us is like a 2.5. We're doing we're at like a 3 and I think we're doing like 4 or 5k a day, not as bad. I'm trying to crank that past, so that being said though, I have much higher AOV potential because I have multiple products, but like you don't have to worry about like refunds in shilling. I mean, so it's just a different business model. I think in general, yeah, we just try to get a subscription. Yeah. Yeah. So it's definitely much different, but what this guy was saying is that like he was stuck there forever, he just said, "Fuck it, enforce past it," and just like toggled spend or something. Yeah. He just like forced his way past and then once he got up to like 7k a day and spend, Israel has actually started going up. Interesting. Which was so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not the best like Facebook ads guy. I think like where I'm really good at is like just like organic. I got a buddy I'll connect you with. Stud dude. He lives here in Austin and he's like, yeah, and you would never know this dude's doing like a couple of a couple of million a month. I don't want to say his name because I don't think so. I'll tell you. Okay. Yeah. He's doing a lot. Okay. Yeah. And you'd be like, what the fuck? Like when you hear, is it like a boring business? Yeah. Okay. Like like one of those businesses where I know a couple guys like this, they're Facebook monsters and they have businesses that are so that have so little brand that like anyone could low-key go in and like rip off their products like Markings your result. More of like product market fit, honestly. Like I know this, I know this one guy in San Diego who showed me his Shopify. He's doing 2.7 million a month. I think it was when he showed me this was like six months ago, 2.7 million a month. So like I saw it was real. He showed me his dashboard and everything. I'm like, dude, what's the product? He goes, he goes, I'm never going to show a sole product. I said, I don't care if you're my fucking brother. He's like, I'm not telling anyone what this is because because he has no brand. He literally told me he's like, bro, I don't have a brand like you like that's the thing like a, what's his goal with it just to sell it? He's going to say that's what he does, bro. He's he's he's how successful like he finds a he finds a product that's so niche. It's usually products that are like, like subscription based or no, no, no. It's usually products that hit like one of the insecurities that you were talking about to like an older demograph. Yeah, like 40 and 50, those are honestly the goaded demo 40, 56 year old women go to the app money. Yeah. They're tweaking their balls. They're tweaking. They're tweaking their balls off because they're reaching an age where they're a look to severely start to decline. And this sounds so horrible, but like you're really at like probably peak in security when you're at like 50 years old as a woman because hopefully there's no 50 year old woman. Watching this. Yeah. No, and it's really sad, but it makes sense like from a, like a bird's eye view, right? Like you're, you're, you're kind of peak, you're past your peak. You're maybe starting to worry like if you're not married yet, you start really tweaking about being alone, you start speaking about being, you know, menopause being left by your husband, all these things. It's really sad. Yeah. Well, like that is like probably the most sensitive decade of a woman's life in my opinion. I agree. And they also have money and also really unfortunately they're very goalable. Like when, like it is really hard to convince young guys and girls to buy, especially guys. Yeah. Yeah. It's so hard to convince young men to buy shit because our egos are, we're very logical. We're logical, but there's also like, there's ego involved. Yeah. Like you'll always see in the description a TikTok shop videos. How do I buy this without giving you commission, right? Yeah. Like saying this, you'll see a product and the TikTok shoppers these days are so good. You'll be like, damn, that's actually, like I might actually need that. Yeah. That's a fire phone stand or fire supplement, but you just don't want to give that guy a commission. You know, you're like, this guy, right? You're like, I want that product, but I'm not going to buy it because I don't want this guy to make some money. And if you think about it, that's so bizarre and it's so rooted in ego and it's, it's just dumb, honestly, but it's pretty hard to sell the young guys because they're, they're so understanding of the, the consumer psychology and these tricks that these TikTok shoppers are planning to get you to purchase. Yeah. Whereas like 40 and 50 year old women, I mean, bro, like it's probably really easy to sell, I don't even sell to them. So this is just what I've heard. Yeah. It's like really easy to sell to them. Yeah. I'm thinking of starting like a new brand, like a protein coffee brand, and I might just market it to like that demo, but do you really think like 40 and 50 year old women would want protein coffee? Yeah. If you market it as a way to help them boost their metabolism, I think a weight loss coffee without saying that it's weight loss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know how like, ozampic is huge right now. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen that whole like natures ozampic angle work on TikTok, but there's a brand called Urba Magic and they sell a Urba Mate powder tea product. And like Urba Mate traditionally, it's for energy and focus. But the entire selling angle for that product is natures ozampic. How like you drink this and like, like it shrinks you kind of thing. Interesting. So I might try that out with a buddy. My mentor just sent me, he's like, he's texted me in my co-founder yesterday. He's like, you guys got to check this out. It's this company that makes tank tops that make you sweat more. And they're doing like, yeah, this goes back to like the whole angle thing. I got to check this. He told me he's like, bro, he's like, this company's doing like, it was either like a hundred or two hundred million a year. What? Yeah. Let's see what he said. In tops that make you sweat more. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but he said that's insane. Three million unit sold. So I don't know what TikTok, no overall, I think they like, they like just launched, it's got a horrible name. I don't want to call them out in my opinion, but it's got a really weird name. And they've sold three million units and I'm looking at their creatives and stuff. I'm like, bro, these are fucking not that good for the fuck you want to sweat more. It's a it's a it's a tank top that you put on and it's got like plastic on the inside. So you just start sweating like crazy, probably really bad for you to be honest. There's probably going to be studies that come out that it's bad for you. I would imagine, but what's the benefit? You sweat. It's it's the weight loss tank top. Like it just. Oh. So that was my point here. I've seen something like doing so well because there's so many people that are seeing that I want to lose weight. That's like really the most like lucrative security, best marketing. And and so that's what my point here is is like this guy that I know that does like, you know, almost three million a month. He makes these products that are super niche that solve the insecurities of like very specific demographics that are not normally targeted. Yeah. He runs them up and then he'll go and he'll exit for like 20 or 30 million after start like less than 12 months after starting it. - Yeah. the private like he has like the deals with the private equity companies. They know him. They've already vetted him. So his acquisition process is like max max a couple of months because he just does it with the same company over and over. And what he'll do is he'll like get the product off the ground. He'll prove product market fit. He'll prove that he's able to scale it fast. And then they'll come in and they'll turn it into an actual brand later down the line. He just acquisition maxing exactly. So he has no brand on these products. That's awesome. That's actually a great one. Oh, yeah. He's a genius. And that's why he like won't tell me or anyone because he's like, bro, you could steal it. He's like, no one can go steal Haas, bro. Like no, no one can go compete and take your customers if you keep your brand and you keep them happy. Well, I want to ask you a question. Sure. If you tried to sell Haas tomorrow, do you think a big thing that they would object is because your name is too attached to it? I don't think so at all because my name's like really not attached to it these days. Like sure, I talk about it and stuff, but like all of the sale, maybe like 80 to 90% of the sales came from me in year one. Yeah. My platform, it was like merch essentially. Yeah. All of year two, I essentially removed completely removed myself from God's nest. Got it, got it. I wasn't on the Instagram. I wasn't on the website anywhere. I wasn't even making ads anymore. Not even TikTok shop videos for quite some time. And I really, and what happened is not only did the business's income drop a ton and growth slowed because it was relying on me, but also my personal income slowed a lot because I was making commissions off of it. But it was absolutely necessary. You made commissions off your own cup. Yeah. Because I make some talk, because I've never paid myself a salary. Okay. Okay. Okay. So instead of paying myself a salary, yeah. I looked at it as like, okay, let me just post a TikTok shop video. It makes the business 10 grand. I get $1,500, 15%. That's how I pay the bills. And I ensure that the company's making money. And so I removed myself from the business and it could totally survive without me. That being said, I just brought in like the old number two from ASRB. I think I told you about that. And literally on our call yesterday, or yeah, yeah, I do like a leadership call with him every week. And he was like, bro, I'm not going to lie. Like your business is fucking chaos, bro. He's like, he's like, he's like, well, you've built is amazing. And he's like this, like he only joy, like this dude is managing 60, 70 people out of 80 million dollar a year company. Like the only reason he joined is because he really does believe in me and the vision and the team and what we can accomplish. But that being said, he's like, dude, yeah, he's like, this shit is chaos. He's like, he's like, you have no systems. You have no SOPs. You have no, he's like, you have no, like structure structure in terms of like if someone knew where to come in, the only way they would figure out what was going on is if like the person before them had explained it to them, but that puts you at risk. And I was like, dude, yeah, I mean, that's why you're here. And he's like, yeah, absolutely. So that's why we brought him in is because he's Mr. SOP, right? So like, he's really had to try to get that Instagram handle for him. Yeah, that'll be his birthday, but like, I know what I'm good at. I'm good at yapping. I'm good at talking. I'm good at bringing people together. I'm going to tell me the origin of Shelby staff. Yeah, well, I'm good at selling. I'm the salesman. And I even when I sat down with this guy, he literally told me that he's like, bro, you're good at selling like my job coming in is to make sure that you never have to worry about anything on the back end. Yeah. And I mean, it's I think it's super important. I think like with every single successful company, there's the visionary and then there's like the guy, what do you call it, visionary and operator? Yeah, yeah, operator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's important. You can't have one of the one without the other. Yeah, absolutely. You definitely need both. And usually like what's really great is in my opinion, when you have a visionary, an operator, and then a product guy. So I actually think like a three-headed dragon is the best because then everyone can really just focus on their strengths. For sure. One guy creates something that everyone wants to use, whether it's a physical product, whether it's some sort of tech, one guy is in charge of selling that vision to the world, setting the pace. That's super important. Obviously, that's the leader of the CEO's job, determining like the tone of the culture and making sure shit's getting done on time, being super aggressive. And then you had the operator, which is like making sure that the lights stay on. Yeah. And then eventually finance guy. Yeah. But I think if an interesting exercise for anyone who's actually trying to start something is use AI as much as possible. Yeah, absolutely. What I do, and I've tested this out too, and it works amazing, is going to a website called FastMoss. Go on a website called FastMoss, and then just find a training product. So maybe it's, to try to think of something right now, like an NAD product. And so it ties into anti-aging, right? Go, transcribe the top five videos, put it in chat GPT, and be based on these viral videos and product. Tell me exactly why people are buying so much of it and what is the main problem itself. And then once it, you know, it spits it out, it's like anti-aging, you know, feeling like themselves again, blah, blah, blah. Then you can ask it to be like, okay, based on everything you know, give me product ideas that solve a similar problem as this. And it'll list out like a bunch of different products. And then what you can do is like, okay, let's say it's, you know, meth lane blue, right? You can then take that product, go on Amazon, look at what the search volume is, go on Google trends, see if it's on the up and up, go and take talk, see if there's, you know, existing viral videos on it, and just kind of validate it and see, you know, what are the angles that I can, you know, if everyone's doing a capsule or, or sorry, drops, can you do a capsule or gummy, right? If everyone's marketing to men, can you market it to women? So just kind of find those little pockets. But yeah, I would heavily, heavily use chat GPT and AI to find like product ideas based on viral scripts of winning products for everything. Like if you're not using one, I'm really glad you brought that up. If you're starting a business in this day and age and you're not using, I'm going to say, let me know if I'm missing any, chat GPT number one, fast moss, honestly, even like, what's that one like viral, the daily viral, yeah, particle, like never use that one. You've never used particle particles like, I know what it is. Okay, yeah, so for everyone watching particle, especially for clothing brands, it's great. Any e-commerce business, if you want to go look at the data of your competitors, use particle. Yeah, use code squared for it. Yeah, use code squared. Those guys love you because I shout them out all the time. But and I'll, if you're watching this Tanner, I'll send you the invoice right after this. But yeah, essentially what you can do is like, for example, clothing, if I were to just say, oh, I want to drop a pair of royal blue sweats because I think it'd look cool. I'm almost asking to lose money. So what I would want to do is I'd use particle to look at all of my competitors. So I'd look at like aloe, viori, lulu, maybe ASRV, gym shark, whatever. And you'd look for like, what are their best selling products? Yeah, 100%. And then what are the best selling colors? And then you would copy those and or maybe make them better. But if you're not using data, data tools and AI on a daily basis, you are, you're asking to lose. Like someone else will beat you. It's, it's the equivalent in this day and age of like, trying to cut down a tree with a knife. And then somebody else has like a chainsaw. Like you're, you're not, you're not. You're just, you can use AI to build your entire brand. Like find your product. Ask AI to help you create a clinically dose formula. So that's what I do. I just type in help me create a clinically dose formula for, you know, blank. And then once it spits that out, you'd say, like, give me 10 contract manufacturers in the United States. I can make this bang. You got your list. You can say, like, help me create a manufacturer outreach template, including my formula. Keep it short bang. You got your template. You send it off. And then with your mock up, what you can do is like, you know, for example, if I'm selling the, the methylene blue, you can say something like, um, based on based on, you know, I am launching a methylene blue gummy product based on what you know, help me create a buyer persona, right? It spits out that buyer persona. Um, and then you can say, like, help me create a brand and packaging guideline. Bang. You got that based on your packaging guideline, help me create a prompt to input to create my packaging mock up. Yeah. And then it creates a packaging mock up. Um, and then what you can do too for ad creatives is like, go on, um, fuck why am I blinking? Facebook ad library, you know, it's a free tool. Go look at, you know, brands that are crushing on meta, like, you know, groons or atria or atria. Yeah. Do that, um, you know, screenshot the image and then replace it with the text and benefits and mock up of your product. It's like, there you go, bang. You got ad creatives. Um, Chat GBT will literally tell you how to build a business. And the only part that's going to be left to you is actually going through and doing it and maybe coming up with like your angle. Yeah. I haven't seen Chat GBT. I haven't seen AI tools that are good enough to actually come up with a good angle yet. That's where you need to get creative. Yeah. I think if you, so I have a cloud prompt, do you use cloud? Not as much as I should. Cloud is a lot better at do. Could you send me your prompt actually? Yeah. Yeah. I have an entire project with like, um, everything with my brand, um, YouTube videos on like how to to write good scripts, hook, storytelling, all that stuff. a 13 page document of just like viral scripts. And then all I got to do to get scripts is like, help me create a, oh, and my buyer persona. And then I just say like, help me come up with three take viral TikTok angles based on my buyer persona's most pressing insecurity. And so it spits out like three different angles. And then what I do now is I take those three angles. I come up with like, you know, scripts. And then I use like my AI tool. And I just create like hundreds of videos based on those three. And then I test. And then I see which angle actually works the best. So for example, for tannies right now, it's, are you scared of getting burnt in the sun for some reason? That just works. So like acting as a, what do you call it? Nature sunscreen. Yeah. So that angle is really working. But we tested like five different angles. And that one just worked the best. So then now we're doubling down on that angle by testing different avatars, changing the hook, changing, you know, part of the body. And like optimizing stuff. But like we just try to test as many different angles as possible. And then once it works, we just kind of double it down and change the format. Yeah. That's far. I'm going to have to get that out. One thing that I'm trying to get better at is figuring out how to fully utilize cloud, right? Because Hudson always tells me he's like, you got to be using cloud. I'm just like, I'll try it. I honestly think cloud is a lot better than chashier. Really? Okay. Chashier is usually make images, but yeah. Yeah. How many employees do you have right now? None. That's crazy. We have, we have, I fucking 12, four contractors. And that's it. It's why that's the thing everyone's watching. That's like it's, I'm Jake Levy as well. Like no employees, I'm pretty sure does three, four, and a KM month. Like yeah, you really can build a business to a couple million a year by yourself. 100% especially with AI now. Yeah, you can do it all pretty much. So, but I also think it depends on what kind of business you want to build. Yeah. Like if you want to just be building a business that generates cash flow, does a couple hundred grand a month great. If you want to build a 10 million dollar a year company, that's a whole different approach. For sure. Or a brand if you really want to build like a really strong brand, yeah, really need a lot of alternating opinions. Exactly. Yeah. Like for example, like for for the brand that I'm running right now, like I don't really want to build it into like crazy big brand or like a cash kind of like my name behind it. But your goal is an exit. Yeah, again, for this one. Yeah. Well, then sorry, go ahead. But then like the protein coffee idea that I'm playing around with, that is something that like I use every single day. And I can see myself running that business for like the next five years and like selling it for like a hundred million dollars. Okay. So final like two questions or so. How many different things are you working on right now? Three. I'm the same way. I work on like a ton of different shit because I get bored. But I guess so bored. Is that your reason as well? Like people always ask me that don't you think if you just did one thing you can go further, but I a hundred percent agree that you should just do one thing. I literally told myself that I would not do more than like two things, but here we are. But for some reason, I manage my time a lot better if that makes sense. Because like if you're juggling like three things, you're like, okay, Monday I got to get this shit done Tuesday. I got to focus on this Wednesday. I got to do this versus like if you're working at least for me. And like there's no right answer. But if I'm working on one thing, I will procrastinate my dick off. It's like like just like I'll just take so much time for me to get one thing done. I agree, dude. And if you are really good like on the topic of focusing on what you're good at and your skill sets, sometimes there's just not enough for you to do. Like from like a selling perspective, like I completely agree, if you're good at one thing and you can do that in multiple different businesses, like that's going to make you really good at that one thing. But for each of those businesses. Yeah, but I would not recommend someone just starting out to do three things. Absolutely, and then I definitely got to go with it. But I think for for you and me, it's like all everything is connected. Yeah. And so like if one thing does well, it trickles down to the other projects. 100%. So that's kind of how I think about it. It's like, if I build a good brand, you know, more people are going to see that I'm building a cool brand to sign up for the tool, you know, all that sort of stuff. But if I was just starting out, I mean, no one knows who the fuck I am. So I would just focus on doing one thing really well and just stick to that. Hell yeah, bro. Well, dude, I appreciate you coming on. This is yeah. I hope everyone watching learn something or got something out of it. I just told Damien, he's got to start posting on socials a lot more. And he's been doing like his videos are saw. So I'm a link all of this stuff down below. We'll drop this video as soon as I as soon as I get it, honestly, and then go give him a follow on all his pages. And once again, if you guys made it to the end, if you're a killer, like we have had over a thousand people apply since I started it is only about 56 57 guys in the group I think right now. But if you're a killer, if you're a monster and you want to be a part of outliers, I'll leave a link to apply as well, but thanks for having me, bro.