Asking 3 young millionaires how they make $1.8M, $5M, & $12M/year

Pitching businesses live

0:00All right. Today we're playing Shoot Your Shot, where we let founders come in, sit in the hot seat, and pitch us their business. We've got founders that have million-dollar businesses all the way up to $100 million businesses. They get 15 minutes, and in it, they start by telling us the one big number. Give us the pitch and shoot the shot. They get to ask us any questions that they want. Yeah. We've done this in New York City. This time, it's in San Francisco. Whether you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, if you're working out right now, whatever you're doing right now, you need to stop and go to Spotify or go to YouTube. Look us up on My First Million, and let us know in the comments which city you want us to go to next.

0:33All right. Let's do it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never look. All right. You want to bring the first guy out? All right. Let's bring him out.

0:47What's up? How's it going?

Selling backup generators

0:51Nick, what's good? Hit us with the big number. All right. So, I'm running a backup generator company in California. Okay. We're doing about $12 million in ARR right now. Wow. And we've got line of sight to $14 million this year and contracted to go out to around $25 million. Okay. So, the big number is $12 million in revenue, and what are you providing for people you provide? Backup generator sales and service. So, what does that mean? Like, I'm a house, I'm a homeowner out here. That's right. I would just buy a unit, I rent a unit, or you sell it to power companies? We'll sell generators.

1:22Like a generac. We'll service generators. We typically do higher-end units. Our clientele are typically the, like, high-end estate properties, as well as large, more regulated facilities. So, every telecom tower, every nursing home, every police station, fire station, every data center. So, it's B2B. Mostly B2B. And the product that the high-end estate properties get, it's an industrial product. It's all these businesses that, as soon as somebody says them, I'm like, ah, of course. Yet, they've been a complete blind spot to me my entire life.

1:52I've never thought about it once. And I always wonder, how did that guy start thinking about this? So, how did you realize this is a business I could go be a part of? So, I started my career in management consulting, where you dabble around a bunch of different industries. At one point, I landed in a corporate job at NRG, a large power company in the U.S., was doing innovation projects there, strategy. And one of the areas we had the hardest time finding good expertise in was backup generators. And a backup generator is, if your power goes down for one minute or 12 hours because of a storm or an earthquake or something, this thing kicks on, you're good to go.

2:26You do not want the power to go out when you're on the surgery table. Unless there's a backup generator there to cover. And so, every surgery center, every hospital, they've all got them. When did you start the company? So, I acquired the first one. And so, this has been an acquisition venture. It started with a thesis, went around looking, trying to find a service provider to buy. We bought our first one in January 2024 and then bought a second one about five to six months later. And describe the industry. So, is this a bunch of mom-and-pop companies, a few large players? What does the industry even look like?

2:56So, very barbelled. We go head-to-head up against big, big industrial names like Caterpillar and Cummins and Generac on the direct side where we're competing for the business of marquee names, big counties, big state contracts, and things like that. We also go head-to-head against the small mom-and-pop players. But really, the lion's share of the market is owned by the bigger platforms. So, you did a search. You quit your job and did a search. You searched on the side. What did you do? So, this was actually, this is my third search venture.

3:26I had done, my first one was an office plant company. What? An office plant company. Plants? Yep. Like? Yep. Probably, possibly those. How'd that go? That's, still own it. You own it? Bought it in 2017. We've done 14 acquisitions on that platform. Hold on. How much revenue does that do? That's around 10 million. What? You owed it out, right? Me and my partner. Yeah. Okay. Just two of us. How much EBITDA? A little over two. Was that a thesis or that was I stumbled into a guy who owned a plant?

3:57That was a failed venture-backed startup. There's got to be an easier way to make money. Sitting on my couch, cruising BizBuySell in the way that a lot of people do with Zillow instead of... You had a venture company that failed. Yep. And so you were like a management consultant. I wasn't the founder. But you were like a management consultant nerd. You were just like an academic... Totally. Like nerdy guy. Ivory tower. Here's your board deck. Yeah. You're like, all right, now I need to get after it. So this company, it failed. Now we're going to get into plants. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to buy something. We bought it with an SBA loan.

4:28It was like the polar opposite of what I had been doing throughout my career, which is a mix of like management consulting boardroom, fortune 500 type of stuff. And venture backed startups. And I guess there's a third leg to that, which is kind of the small business world. You did plants. Then what? We carved out a portfolio of commercial landscaping contracts in that plant business and sold that to private equity. How much did you sell for? Just a little over a million. Okay. So that was cool. But it was 20% of my cash flow and like 80% of my headaches.

4:59Got it. And that freed me up. Because I was like the biz dev guy. I was finding the plant acquisitions. That business, I built it. I did the first acquisition. I did four after that. And then I kind of handed it off to my partner to run data. So you like doing the search, the biz dev, and you like doing the M&A. You have a partner who does operations or? Yeah, that's right. How much did you raise for this third business? What's it called? It's called On Point? On Point. So this is the first time we've raised outside money because we felt that given where the macros were in terms of electricity demand booming, data center market booming, electrical contractors booming, we felt like to meet the opportunity where it was going to be, we needed to raise some outside capital.

5:40So we brought in $6.5 million. We did a significant chunk of it, but there's about $5 million of outside investment in this one. And how big is this going to get? I don't know yet. I think this business can get really, really big. Hundreds of millions? Hundreds of millions. I think we can get to, the question will be, it's really revenue throughput. Do we have the technicians to pull off the work? I've got the work contracted. It's purely an execution game at this point. And so describe, you said you go up against Caterpillar and these other larger players. What axes do you need to compete on? Is it price? Is it, how do you win the pitch?

Using AI for quotes

6:11100% speed. They are slow. They're good at what they do, but they're very slow. What's the speed difference? How long versus how long? For us, AI has been an absolutely central part of our strategy of speeding up every single process in that business. I need to be able to deliver a quote while my guy's there. These are complex machines with a very difficult part supply chain. It can take weeks to turn around a quote from a, hey, your generator's broken to, hey, here's what it's going to cost me to fix it. And when we can do it. It's very, very slow business and it's very, very difficult because of all the research

6:42and tribal knowledge and it's spread across all these different vendors. How do you use AI to speed up that quote? Let's say the guy standing there, understanding what's the issue. Yep. Is he inputting something on his phone and he's getting, what do you have? And we've done all the backend work of every document that we have ever produced as a company has been ingested and studied by AI. We've built a retrieval augmented system so that we can do research on the fly and produce answers on the fly. This is great. So there's companies, I've got a friend that owns an HVAC company and it does close to

7:15200 million in revenue. And he was complaining and lamenting overall, my business sucks for this reason, his business, you know, you're stuck for that reason. And he was telling me like, he was like, well, we just have to get better at buying Google AdWords. And he was like, the demand's there. Like, I just have to like operate. And I was like, so envious of that because that's not what I have. I've got to like teach people what it is and whatever. Are you in the weeds of training people or is your personal job just finding who else you're going to buy? So we've kind of put a pause on M&A right now. We're really trying to nail the operational workflows.

7:47And that's what you're doing. And AI support. And I'm doing a lot of the building myself. Is it a pain in the ass to train these technicians? I'd say it's more than a pain in the ass. It's impossible. Like this is very, very. Training or finding them? Both. Because A, there's not enough of them. Those that exist are on their way out, not in. And who is they? Field technicians. I know. But what do they, like, are they in the same category of an HVAC person where like, if you give me eight weeks of your time, I could teach you how to do this, but it's hard to find someone who's willing to do it. So I'd say not far off of that.

8:17Okay. It's mechanical. It's electrical. And it's both. And usually very few guys are good at both. It's increasingly instrumentation and controls. So there's more computer and like troubleshooting diagnostics. How much does a field technician make? Is this like a job that people are going to want because it pays really well? This is a good job. This is an opportunity where the elite field technicians, they will clear well into the six figures. A guy with a high school education. But it takes time to accumulate the experience. And you don't see a lot of generators. So experience accumulates slowly.

8:47Even in HVAC, you might do, you know, three, four service calls a day. Our guys are doing one or two service calls a day. And the consequences are massive. The consequences are massive. How big is the average contract? Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free

9:21resource for you guys. Back to the show.

Service contracts and labor

9:23How big is the average contract? It varies tremendously depending on whether you're dealing with, you know, a three-megawatt unit at an AWS data center or a Frank and Shirley's generator in their backyard. For the, you know, data center units, you're probably talking $25,000 a year in service revenue. And is there ever churn? There is, but generally they kind of want accountability on the vendor. And so, and that is one thing that's hard about competing against Caterpillar, right? Like the, the facilities guys are like, well, I hired Caterpillar and they couldn't figure

9:56it out. So, right. So, so let me make sure I understand. It sounds like you do, you sell the generators, but you service them. I would guess servicing is more than new, new sales. Yeah. And you get brought in directly by the facility or by the guy, whoever the company is that made that, they, they put service, they need service technicians out in the field everywhere. So they subcontract out to you. So we're an independent. So we have to, we have to eat what we kill basically. So you go straight to the facility. We got to go straight to the facility. We can work through the project, through the facilities operations companies like the JLLs and CBRE real estate.

10:27And now you're, you're saying my biggest bottleneck is I got to get enough technicians to be able to service the workload that we have. How are you going to solve that problem? So we're still figuring it out. We've got, you know, we've got every recruiter spun up sending us leads. It's some of it is like, you can pay to bring guys here. Will they stay here? Open question. I'd say we can find the guys who says that he knows how to fix those things. Can we select for the guys who actually know how to fix those things? That's, I think we've had a harder, we've had an easier time finding people and getting

11:00them in the door and selling them on joining our company than we have had being damn certain that when that guy shows up there, he's going to find the problem and fix the, and fix it. But what did the, um, like we, this is the second time we've mentioned him, but like, you know, Tommy Mello, the A1 garage door guy, have you heard of that guy? Yes. Um, and then there's like tons of these like influencers who are legit business guys. What have they done to like, cause they have all had the exact same thing where they're like, you know, garage doors, like a lot of the people who come to me are kind of like problematic and I got to teach him how to like, I think he said, he's like, we teach him how to like pet the dog.

11:31You pet the dog right when you come in, you ask, may I come in? He does like sales excellence. Yeah. But still, he needs the technicians to go do the work. One of the things we always talk about is like, uh, as an entrepreneur, it's easy to feel like I have this, this problem, this burden, and it's like unique to me. And it's like very few problems in your business haven't already been solved by somebody else. So the easy thing to ask them, who else has solved this problem and how the heck did they do it? So he's saying, how the heck did the garage tech, how did the garage companies get a scale up their technician force? Who do you look at? That's already done this.

12:03So you basically have to start a trade school. You are the trade school. You have to bring these guys up. My AC buddy who I'm referring to, he has Hoffman University. You have to. Have you done that? Not yet. We're not big enough to do it just yet. We're working on building our shop, building, we have a third bay in our shop that is the training bay. And we've handed our lead technician, you know, an assignment to, we got to build out our own training capabilities. We've built the digital side of it. So turning every job we do into a training experience that can be relayed under the team, because I need the guys to get more than one rep a day, right?

12:37If I can turn every rep we do that day into a bunch of reps. How are you turning it into like a simulation? So as guys submit their field reports, we have a pre-job briefing. So we prepare these guys to go out to the field like they're CIA agents being dropped into Afghanistan, right? Here's everything we know about this unit. Here's everything we've ever seen. Like they play it on their phone. They can listen and hear, hey, this is what I'm, this is what I'm facing. And so, and that's the AI side. Then they do their report and they document their findings in the report.

13:08And we've got a pretty slick data collection process where they can use their voice to produce their report. We've got AI reading everything that they do, everything that they say. And then at the end of the process, when they submit their report, we will flag the reports that are the best training material. When you're laying in bed at night and you're thinking, if we can do this, this, and this, maybe in five years we could sell, or maybe I can have this much annual income, or like whatever that number, that vanity thing is, for you, what is that? Man, I think for me, this is my third time around.

13:42And I feel like I'm doing this because I chose this. I wanted to be doing this. So it's kind of about like, what are all the cool capabilities that we could build that have never been possible before? Okay. And be specific though, when you're like, when you're thinking about this, you're like, what is that? Like, what really gets you going? I think making like really great jobs for these tradesmen, helping them, like ordinary people achieve like really, really extraordinary performance. Yeah. I'm like super excited about what we're going to be able to do and like how we're going to be able to empower people who have never really worked for a company that gave a crap

14:16that much about the process. There was this really cool company, I forget the name, but they took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or some huge national publication. And they played off this idea of like, you know how like your grandfather walked me around the city and he's like, you see that building? I made that, you know? And he was just part of the construction crew or like, you know, look, about 50 years ago, we installed this thing because here, and there's like this pride and the ad that they put out because they were trying to recruit people is, do you really want to brag to your kids that you made B2B software just a little bit better? You know, something like that.

14:46And like, I wonder if there's like some cool, like mission driven, like angles that you could take to this, like recruiting, because when you talk about like, I'm passionate about giving like everyday guys like a chance to like do something interesting. No, it's an interesting idea. And I think there's definitely a point of pride over, oh, we work on, you know, it's kind of fun too, because we work on a lot of high end properties. So these are like, you know, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous type of stuff where we work on those properties. We put those generators in. And the mission critical hospitals, whatnot. And that, right. There's such an important duty. Seems like, like I coached high school basketball this year and our star player, the power forward,

15:20he's graduating. We were like, do you want to go play in college? We can get you in front of some scouts. And he's like, I'm going to trade school. He's like, I'm not going to, trade school doesn't have a basketball team. He wanted to go work for, you know, he wanted to become like an electrician, but like crazy stuff, like hanging out of a helicopter, doing some repair and some crazy site. And it made me realize, you know, there's probably a lot of people who are like, have the talent, you know, whether it's veterans, whether it's ex-athletes, they kind of like the idea of doing certain types of work, getting paid really well for it, not having to go to

15:52a four-year university. And I wonder how you can surface more of them faster or where they're going today that you can tap into that flow. I think the stigma of the trades is gone. I think that is behind us. Like the things that we were told when we were, you know, coming up, like, you know, you got to go to college, better make sure it's a good one, yada, yada. I think that there's some of that still there, but like, I think the stigma of going into the trades is behind us. And now it's like, this is the opportunity for the tradesman's craft to shine. Right. And we're trying to give them the tools so that they really can.

16:23And so that they can grow faster, learn faster. Well, nobody's built a great brand around the trade school, right? Like, is there a, what's Harvard, what's Stanford for, for that, right? Like, where could you be proud that you got into, that you're going, that you're coming out like a Navy SEAL who's going to be able to do all these amazing things? That to me is an even bigger opportunity than what you're currently doing. Because that's like $152,000. Yeah. It serves all kinds of industries, you know. And there are some, they're really niche, you know, and they're with that specific trade. Yeah. And so it's, there's not like a big one that everybody would know.

16:53Oh, that's the stamp of approval. But there's not a Harvard of the trades in general, which I do think there's like an excellent opportunity there. And I would love to work on that. I feel like right now I'm working toward that and I need to understand it at a level of depth and have solved it for one quarter of the universe so that we could think about, okay, what would, how would you next level this thing? You have very kinetic and contagious energy. I have a feeling that in the next four or five years, you're going to be significantly further along than where you are now. It's very evident. You picked an amazing space and it's so cool.

17:26You know, we had a guy, the last guy was like a franchise guy and you're, you, you're doing entrepreneurship through search and acquisition. I just love all the different styles. So I appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me. All right. We appreciate you. Thank you.

17:42Hey, let's take a quick break. You know, that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content. That someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. We have someone else. Welcome.

18:13How's it going? Good. Excellent posture. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. You scream good posture. I work on it. Yeah. Look at this guy. Jeez. Up my game a little bit here. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All right. What's your name? What's up guys? I'm Kevin. Kevin. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to Shoot Your Shot.

Exiting a franchise

18:29Hit us with the big number to start. So big's relative. My number is 1.8 million. I think I'm a little unique with this setup because I actually just sold my business about two, three weeks ago. Nice. That's what I sold it for. Starter business on the board. Wait. So you are- You just exited at 1.8? Just exited at 1.8. Yeah. That was a sale price. What did you sell for $1.8 million? It was a franchise business called Smash My Trash. Smash My Trash. Oh, I've heard of this. Have you heard of this before? No. What is Smash My Trash? Explain. Yeah. So the basic concept is companies that produce a lot of trash, industrial businesses, warehouses,

19:02factories, things like that, throw away a lot of stuff in these open top dumpsters that are these rectangles that hold like 40 cubic yards of stuff. The pricing model is that every time you fill it up and you need a new one, you have to get it replaced and that can cost like $1,000. Yeah. I used to like get on top of ours and like jump up and down. That's it. Imagine. If a giant thing came and smashed the trash down. I thought I was going to like hire someone to come and jump on the trash for me. That was it. No. So we have these trucks that back up to the dumpster. Like you said, Sean, there's a crane on the back with this spinning spike yarn that

19:33goes in, pushes the trash down. The deal is basically, let's say you get 10 pickups a month, a thousand bucks. That's $10,000 a month you're spending on trash. We'll get you down to just round numbers five and we'll split the savings with you. Wait. So one, a large company will spend 10 grand a month in trash? Yeah. Or more. Who? Like a warehouse? Big factories, production facilities in like agricultural California is where I was doing a lot of work. Wow. Companies that just- So these are like, you just go to the parking lot. There's a huge dumpster back there. That's, that was the opportunity.

20:03That's the opportunity. Is to smash the trash down so you have to do less pickups per thing because you're paying per pickup. That's it. And do smash, smashing trucks exist already? It was a new concept. So it's a franchise. This guy came up with the idea, started growing fast, decided to franchise it. So these didn't really exist. They exist in Europe, but they're like mounted to the side of the building. So those companies would back the dumpster up. So the insight was throw these things on a truck, have them drive around and do it as like a mobile service. So you bought a franchise and then now sold your franchise.

20:35Correct. One location. How many? Five locations. Five locations. How much did it cost to buy in? I bought it in chunks. So I think my buy-in was like 185K. Up front? Up front. And then I- How did you have money before? I worked in tech. I was like, somebody who worked in SaaS and had like the W2 thing. Sales or what were you doing? Yeah, I was in like sales and product and stuff like that. Like the kind of classic Bay Area W2 thing. So this is so interesting. So you're just sitting there at the office. You got a good job. You're working in tech. And yet you're like, I need to get out there amongst the trash.

21:05What was the chain of events that led you to like quit this safe thing and go buy into a smash my trash franchise?

Cold calling industrial sites

21:14Yeah, it was a couple of things.

Cold calling industrial sites

21:15It was like a growing sense of dissatisfaction. I like, I kind of started to realize late in life that I wanted to work for myself. And I was also like in this venture world where you're like going after like the next round of funding, this eventual exit. And I didn't, I was like blind to the way that a lot of the world worked in terms of like cash flowing blue collar businesses. And I started to get bit by that bug a little bit. Like I started hearing stuff about that and I got interested. And then it was really when I got married and went on my honeymoon. And I waited till like the last minute to book our honeymoon.

21:45So we stayed at places that like we probably shouldn't have gone to. They were nicer than we otherwise would have started talking about, started talking to people there at the pool and stuff and been like, no way there's blue collar thing. All the rich guys are trash people. People make cash doing businesses that are off the beaten path. Do you remember like, what were they, what were they saying? What did they do? So one guy did like real estate. One guy did like a food truck, but like did like a food truck, like as a serious operation, like had many of them. I had also had the seed planted on my bachelor party. I was there with my friend who was in private equity and he actually got in, smashed my

22:16trash before me. Gotcha. So he planted the seed and he was a private equity guy. Of the 180, how much of, was that a huge chunk of your savings? I did 85 myself. A buddy gave me 70. And then, so that was like the equity. And then I did a $350,000 SBA loan as well. Were you like, I'm all in, this has to work? Or was this like a safe, like I'm putting a small amount in, I'm hedging it. It felt like a pretty safe side bet. I had more than that, that I would have been able to, but it felt uncomfortable. Okay. So you, you decide to go in, you buy one.

22:49What happens? So I actually bought three out of the gate. Okay. I bought, I bought three territories out of the gate. Now territories in franchise world, like a lot of times people picture restaurants where like it's clearly a unit. This is the area. So, I mean, it's really one business. The areas are a little arbitrary. How many years ago was this? This is in 2022. I got started. Okay. So four years, four years ago. So got started. And part of the reason I got into it was I was interested in something where I could draw a direct line between like brute force effort and cash in the bank. I felt like in tech world, I was so many layers abstracted away from like,

23:21That's like a classic Warren Buffett metric, right? Brute force to cash in the bank. Yeah, exactly. So what do you mean? You just meant like, if more people I call, the more money I'm going to make. Right. Like I had this no-brainer offer. I had these people who definitely could use this and 100% could make money. And all I needed to do was go get them to believe me. Yeah. And I could just start making cash. And it wasn't like this promise of some future outcome. And I found that really motivating. Okay. So I paid somebody overseas to like zoom in on Google Satellite View and put pins on every dumpster.

23:55Okay. And like, that was my plan. And I would drive from Walnut Creek down to, you know, San Jose to Salinas, like hour and a half, two hours each way every day. And just like trespass, go into warehouses, try to talk to like the person there who's in charge of the dumpster. Right. And just kind of wielded into existence, started driving beyond the confines of my territory. Zoom in. You go, you drive. Okay. Contractor gives you a pin. You drive to the pin. You get there. You weren't invited. Knock, knock. Now what?

24:25So not even knock, knock. Walk in. Right around to the back where the dumpster is. Okay. So I built this up over time. I learned. Yeah. You don't want to go to the office because the office, they're going to tell you no. So what I would do is I had a red hard hat that I would put on, get the clipboard going, walk into the back and try to find the person who's physically loading the dumpster. You got the red hard hat on, start asking questions. Most of the time they would just tell me. He's like, dude, there's no construction around here. They just think you're the trash contractor for the company. Right. They're just not sure. They're just like, this guy's asking me like, how many pickups do you get?

24:57Who's in charge of it? I start to kind of size the account, get some info. And then I would go to the front armed with info. And then I would, you know, work my way to the decision maker. How many months until your first dollar? Right away. Right away. And the first. How thrilling was that first sale? Oh, it was great. It was great. I was like out with our neighbors when they first, because these are like kind of chunky contracts. We're talking about like large. I mean, for me at the time, you know, a couple thousand bucks a month of recurring revenue. So it only took two, three, four accounts to basically pay my debt service and my driver.

25:30So you had a driver right off the bat? I hired a driver right off the bat. Yeah. And did Smash Bros. Give you this playbook or you were just like, I'm going to red hard hat this? Or they were like, hey, here's why you do it. They didn't tell me about the red hard hat, but they gave you the basic playbook. And then I, before I opened, went around to a couple other franchisees, including my buddy I mentioned, and just was like, show me everything. How do you guys do it? What works? It's sort of like, have you ever seen those videos where someone's, my friend Neville Madora, he's an Indian guy. And during South by Southwest, every year he dresses up like a sheik, like he wears like

26:03a white thing and a hat. And then he's just like, I get it.

26:11And then there's like these Instagram videos of guys who like, they're like, I'm just going to like look like a DJ, whatever that means. And then they get into the club. That's like this version of that. Exactly. People just don't ask questions. So you, this is amazing. Okay. So you said you sold the business now. So year one, do you remember kind of like, what was the P&L? Like what'd you, what'd you make in first year of business? It's hard to say I, because in the first year I bought the two additional franchises. So one day I drove beyond the bounds of my territory and I found like the trash gold mine and I bought those two franchises and bought two more trucks.

26:44Okay. So all the cash went right back in. Were all three territories successful or one sucked, but another one was amazing and made up for it. That was kind of it. There was a great one. There's an okay one. There's a medium one. And then I added on like these two amazing ones. Um, so I had to buy two trucks, had to buy two new, uh, territories. So all the cash went right back into that. I think I probably did like six to 800 K of top line in those first two years. Wow. What was the biggest pain in the ass looking back? The trucks, the operators or, um, not even the operators, fixing the trucks when there's

27:17issues was something I just don't, it's a big truck with hydraulic equipment. And I eventually just kind of adopted the philosophy that like I had a mechanic, he was going to charge me what he charged me and I, he was probably overcharging me. But when there was an issue, I would just overpay for it. You didn't exactly have like a lot of like shopping around you could do for smashing. Yeah. I just wanted to get it done. Like a lot of our accounts, they're paying us a lot of money every month. And if we can't get to them, I just was willing to pay a lot to just solve that problem and have it not be something we deal with. So how much profit, how much take-home income did you do your last year?

27:49So it was kind of like the first two years in the last two years was, were very separate chapters. First two years, I was down there every single day, not taking anything out, reinvesting everything into new trucks and new territories. The last two years, basically 2024 to 2026 summer, it was like maybe around like 450 EBITDA, if you want to call it that, but 150 K that was debt service. So really my take-home was like 300 K. So why sell? So it was, you know, it just, it felt like a starter business. It was always kind of my starter business.

28:20I got into it because I thought it would be like this direct line. It just weighed heavily on me in a number of ways. Like one, these loans, and I got loans for the second two trucks. So this is that first 350 K SBA loan. I got subsequent loans for the other trucks. So that's a personal guarantee in my head every day. A lot of people don't realize franchise agreements also have a personal guarantee where you owe them royalties every month as a percentage of revenue. I think most people know that with franchises, but there's minimum royalties, which means you either pay some percent of your revenue or this fixed amount on a schedule,

28:53whichever is higher. And that's a 10 year long agreement that also has a personal guarantee. So I always felt like I could handle that, but that's like also weighs on you. And just like having these big trucks out every day where like a couple times a year, I'd get a call that was like something bad happened.

Evaluating franchise models

29:12What did it feel like when the wire hit? It was kind of anticlimactic a little bit. So I had already like I'd worked with my accountant. I'm like, all right, tell me like after taxes, after everything, what the number is. I had like seen that number in a Google sheet. And then when it happened, I was very happy. My wife and I, like we had a trip just coincidentally planned for to go somewhere the next day. So we did get to enjoy it. But now it's just like back to baseline kind of. I feel the relief of not having like the responsibility. And like, I don't have my phone on me right now. I'm used to like.

29:42You're walking around, you're raw dogging, you know, phone right now. No phone. What I'm saying is normally I would be stressed out. Like I could go back and there could be just like a bomb dropped on me on my phone where, you know, something went wrong. Who bought it? Was it just somebody else who wanted even more territories or it was like, who's the buyer? It was the neighboring franchisees. So it's a great thing where, you know, I was happy with the amount they paid. I think they're going to, they got a great deal on it for them because they're just going to be able to fold it into their thing. Right. That's how a lot of franchise M&A ends up happening. I have a feeling that you're plotting. You have something that you've been, that you've been thinking about.

30:15What is that? What are the list of things? And also, did you know what that was before you sold or the space gave you the time to figure it out? So the first two years were a dead sprint. The last two years I got it in passive mode. I had two kids and so I wasn't able to go down there every day. So I did a lot of stuff to make it like truly passive. And I spent a lot of that time trying to figure out my next move. I don't want to say too much about what it is, but I do have something in the works. What other opportunities did you consider doing that you did not? So what I got really interested in was like this concept of how you could sell somebody

30:48a financial ROI no-brainer where the only objection is that they don't believe you and it would be like cheap or free to prove it to them. And so I was looking at all kinds of stuff like that. Like I think you can like audit people's utility bills. I think the idea of doing like site speed optimization for e-commerce is kind of interesting. That was like the insight that I thought was like a fun playbook to run that was like pretty straightforward if you're not that smart and you just want to work hard. What's really smart about your approach that I think very few people do is in business,

31:18what most people do is they think about the product. They're like, oh, I love that product or I know about that product or I love this industry. They think about their college major or stupid shit like that. You work backwards from like what type of sale process do I want to do every day? Because that's going to be like 90% of my existence as an entrepreneur is just going and trying to sell, get more business. And so you were like, where's somewhere that I can just brute force you know, get dollars in the bank by going and, you know, calling or showing up on more sites. And then even just now you're like, and the pitch I want to be giving is a,

31:52you definitely are going to make more money. All I got to do is prove it to you. And I can prove it to you on a cost that's very little to me or a quick, quick demo from my side to show you that the value is there. And I think so few people take a sales first approach, but as an entrepreneur, that's actually all you experience in the business is just growing the business mostly. Like the product is very like fungible. You could swap the product out. Yeah. That's I, so what it is for me is I just, I think like you guys, I like business. Like I'm a business nerd. I like hiring. I like selling.

32:23I like figuring out the systems and the processes. So when you have that, you kind of have the luxury of being able to pick a business that you think would be enjoyable and straightforward to run. When are you going to start it? I already started the new thing. So you only, and that's only three weeks ago that you sold. Yeah. Do you have a new mindset with this new one? Like what's changed now that you had that experience going into the new one? Do you have any new rules of how you want to do this? Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping. I found, and this is probably just because I'm more risk averse than I care to admit,

32:53but like this idea of the personal guarantee being tied to a franchise agreement, I really felt like the one way door, you know, irreversible decision thing. So I think going forward, I'm going to try to bootstrap as much as I can and keep my options open as much as I can. What's funny is like maybe your tech coworkers are like, that's, this is very risky. You know, this is like insane what you're doing. What I've noticed talking to a lot of entrepreneurs on here and through my life is that most entrepreneurs, I don't consider myself to be a very risky person at all.

33:27And most say that as well. They're like, I'm not that risky. And like, it's this idea of like, there's a difference between uncertainty, which always exists and risk, which you can reduce. Uncertainty always exists and you just got to get comfortable with that. But you can definitely can like limit the risk and taking those person personal guarantees. That's actually quite risky. And so it's funny to hear that you're a risk adverse person. It's like great fighters. They don't pride themselves on how much, like how much risk they're taking in the fight. It's all, it's really, it's a self-defense hit and don't get hit. Right. And like the best fighters, if you look at like Floyd Mayweather, undergoes undefeated.

33:59He didn't even really get hit that much. Right. He didn't really get hit that much. It's like the black belts understand that it's about minimizing the damage you take while still winning. Yeah. Like there's all these investors and they're like, rule number one, don't lose money. Rule number two, pay attention to rule number one. Yeah. And it's pretty funny. Let me ask you another question. I'm talking to my friend who's a friend from college and he's got a normal job business. He wants to go do something entrepreneurial. And I think he wants to do it very much for the money. But I think truly the benefit would be that he's just going to have a lot more fun. He doesn't like his job and just liking your day matters a lot more.

34:30You had a good job. You did it for four or five years. Did you end up way ahead financially versus where you would have been just taking your salary with raises and savings? Was it a big financial win or was it the life win, the confidence, the fun that you had? Like where was the win? I think about it as like the escape velocity that I needed to go work. I can work for myself for the rest of my life as long as I don't like mess it up. And that's how I think about it. It gave me that escape velocity out of that. And I think financial runway or it was confidence. It's financial runway.

35:01It's confidence. It's experience. It's pattern recognition, skills, and everything like that. And for me, I kind of had to like do the because and really because I bought the business so far from my house, I was going to try to keep my job for like a second there. And then I realized I had to quit it. That was the case for me. I think for other people, the move is to find something you can like step into and test it out a little bit before you fully rip it. We've never done franchises. And I've always been a little skeptical of franchises. It's like franchises seem like great business for the franchisors.

35:33Not the franchisee. And so you did it. You have a good outcome. What's your current perspective on like, is franchises a good place to go? Or like, did you discover some other franchise along the way that you're like, shit, I wish I had done that one. That's now that I understand what makes these work. That's a way better one. Tell me something smart about franchises. I think there's three situations where doing a franchise makes sense. I think the first one is if the franchisor actually has some secret sauce and like the nerdy way that I think about it is if you listen to like the Acquired podcast, they do the seven

36:04powers. If the franchisor gives you one of the seven powers, it could be worth it. So that's brand with like the Midas touch or it's like cornered resource, like the Chick-fil-A recipe. You can only get a Chick-fil-A. That's worth it. Those are rare and in high demand. The second one is if you are going into it to do like a roll up. Franchises are friendly for roll ups, I think, because you just have carbon copies of each other. Like the systems are like the integration is the hard part of a lot of roll ups. The integration of a franchise is just like the people stuff.

36:35It's pretty straightforward to roll up and it's like a walled garden. Like if you're in the system and you have the appetite and the capital to do a roll up, you can do it in a lot of cases. And a lot of franchises are ripe for consolidation because they're incentivized to sell a lot of units because they make franchise fees on each unit. And then what that means is in a couple of years, it's just like begging for consolidation. And the third reason is basically my reason, which like if you're literally not going to do anything else, you're not going to do something unless you feel like you have the training wheels of a franchise, that's what it took for me to do it.

37:08Like I don't regret doing it. I probably won't do another franchise in my career, but like it played a important role in my, uh, it got you where you wanted to go. Right. I wasn't going to do it otherwise. Well, Kevin, you're the, you're the shit. Thank you for doing this. Yeah. Thanks guys. Awesome. Thanks for coming on. Yeah.

37:25Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards, uh, one click and I get savings yield.

37:55It's just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. Bring them in. What's up? What's going on? Oh, good to meet you. Great meeting you. What's up, brother? What's your name? Noam. Noam. Yes. Noam, welcome to the show.

38:26Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Okay. I don't know if they told you what you're getting into, but, uh, maybe start with what we call the big juicy number. So give us one number that'll get us interested. All right. Big juicy number.

Selling heated jaw massagers

38:36We're doing $430,000 a month selling heated jaw massagers. Jaw massagers. Yes, sir. Okay. So that was my nickname in high school. Hey, okay. Less detailed, the better on that one. So do you have one? What is the, what is a heated jaw massager? Okay. Listen, I do have one. It fits in your pocket. Is this like a look maxing thing? See, Steve Jobs had a thousand songs in your pocket. He's got one hot jaw bone in your pocket. Is it kosher to share jaw massagers or is this like a toothbrush? It's, uh, it's super kosher actually.

39:07Okay. Yeah. Uh, it's not going in your mouth, but I mean, so I have two actually. This one is like what we're selling right now. Okay. Uh, it's the Gen 1. It's like 3D printed. Looks like a vape. All right. Um, this one is Gen 2. I'm flying to China tonight actually. So I'm trying to do it, but you basically click this button. Adjustable heat. Gen 1 doesn't work. As far as I can tell. Yeah, that one doesn't work. I gave, I gave all my San Francisco Gen 1s away. I was just at a conference. It's over. I only have this. So, um, but yeah, you, you have the two buttons there. Adjustable heat. Adjustable vibration.

39:38Yeah. There you go. Literally. Okay. So I do this. Yeah. So it's like a couple of things. You have muscle scraping. Is that what we're doing? You know what? Some people are looks maxing, but, um, the main thing actually is it's for people with like TMJ disorders. Right. So, I mean, there are like tens of millions of people out there dealing with like chronic jaw pain. And generally that audience is, uh, is not the looks maxing crowd. My, my main customer is not that, but they do exist. So, so it is TM, TM, TMJ. Can you explain TMJ? Like in America, how one out of every, how many people have it?

40:10Give us something like that. Yeah. So around 5% of people seek treatment, but it's many more that have it and potentially don't even know. So like there are a lot of like really common things that happen. Like the way I started dealing with it was like five years ago, my jaw started clicking on the right side. I was like, okay. I think my mom got this. Like you get it like temporarily sometimes, right? Stress and things like that can bring it up. Is it just annoying or is it dangerous? So the, the clicking, um, if it's pain-free, oftentimes it's, it's just annoying. Some people say up to like one in three people have this at some point in their life, but

40:42for me, it started getting worse. It started clicking on the left and then my jaw started like locking closed. And then that would happen like once a month and then once a week and once a day I would wake up and I couldn't like brush my teeth. I couldn't eat. What causes this? It's a good question. Like a lot of different things can cause it, you know, like clenching, for example, a lot of people have a clenching issue, clenching, grinding at night. Um, some things is like, you know, a lot of looks maxing can actually end up causing this. It could be trauma to the joint. It could be all this for, for lockups specifically. There's like a disc in there and it, you know, it can displace.

41:15And you put this on your jaw, how often and how long? So the idea is a couple of things for, for the musculature, right? Like most people's pain actually ends up coming from like the muscles and because it's overcompensating that kind of stuff. Um, so you're using it as like a scraper, a heater once a day, uh, or like a couple of times a day, 20 minutes a day. That's what the research says you should do, the doctors say. But honestly, it's just like, uh, Hey, I am, I have a flare up. My, my head hurts. Uh, you go in, you, you work on the muscles or you just have like instant heat in your

41:45pocket. Close to half a million a month. Uh, yeah. So you sell like 5 million a year of this. Uh, that's, uh, annualized. Yeah. And it's called, it's called your TMJ pen. It's called your TMJ. How much does it cost? So we're, we're normally $249. Uh, right now there's like a clearance sale. And did you raise funding? No, no, no. It's not very much fully bootstrapped. Yeah. This is, uh, I feel like I would see this on TikTok shop. I would see this like on IG ads late at night. Yeah. Listen, I, I wish I am that guy.

42:16I am that guy on Instagram. I'm the TMJ guy. Actually, I think I've seen you. You're, you're the face of this, right? I am the face of that. I think I've seen you. A lot of rage bait on Instagram. I love it. So what, what's, you said rage bait. Okay. So one of our like biggest, most viral videos is like, I'm on this plane. Right. And, uh, I, this, this character you just went into, this absolute Karen next to me starts like calling me out. She's like, it's like, Hey, you can't be vaping on a plane, you know? And I like get really flustered. I'm like, Oh no, no, it's, it's, it's not a vape. Um, wait, let me explain it. And I'm like, I'm like flustered trying to like explain this, that it's like my invention.

42:47Like I made this, it's for people to drop in. It's not a vape. Um, and that concept got like a hundred million views. Really? Wow. Wow. That's awesome. How did you think of that? Just to go with the Karen on the plane? It's mostly the vape. How does your mind work? It's the vape on the plane, really. It looks like a vape. Everyone tells me that. Right. What's going to stop every Chinese knockoff from coming after you? I mean, listen, at some point, like they're going to come, but the reality is like when I, when I started this, like I, I, I looked, I looked it up.

43:18I was heated and massaging myself like every day with like a mug of water, I'd microwave it, whatever. And I would look it up. And, um, there wasn't a heated massager for the job that there were no products period sold for people with TMJ problems, like not a single one, which was baffling. And so I like not, there was no brand. There was no, you developed the actual device. So I developed this and yeah, like I, I'm the first brand. Did you say you 3d printed this? Yeah. So the way I started the business is cause like, dude, listen, hardware used to be, I think one of the most risky things you can get into making like a hardware device.

43:52Like you'll look at Shark Tank, like people are like, yeah, I spent like a hundred grand making this. And it's like, dude, that was a big mistake.

Prototyping hardware at home

43:59How much did you spend to make the first handful? I spent less than $3,000. And the idea was like, there are like three things that like aligned in this age that we're living in that makes it probably not one of the least risky things that you can do making like a hardware consumer product first, having all the access to like information, like engineering at this point is like low key, kind of easy. Like, okay, don't clip that. But with ChatGPT with YouTube, like I didn't know how to make electronics. I didn't know how to make a PCB.

44:29What were you doing before this? I looked it up. I was, I was a mechanical engineer. I was in college. Like how old are you now? 24. How old is this? Three years since I started making it. And then two years of selling it. And so you're like, I'm an idiot. So you have a 3D printer at home. Yeah. And you're on ChatGPT at the time. And you're like, teach me how to like, you're like, give me a. Well, ChatGPT back in the day was not good enough. But then like, so like there's a motor. I mean, I don't know how electronic. Okay. So what did you do? You're at home. You never made a thing. So what I did, I, so, uh, I wrote out, what do I need this thing to do?

45:00I need it to heat. I need vibration. I need, you know, it to charge. It needs to be portable, whatever. You write out what you want. The obvious thing that it needs is like a PCB. It's a printed circuit board. So it's those little green things. Yeah. It looks like a chip. It has a bunch of things, a bunch of lines on it. Um, so to design that, like I, I didn't know what to do, but what I looked on Reddit, I asked for advice. I went on YouTube. I figured out how to design this thing. Um, that was like the first thing I did. Then you design the casings, you look up potential motors, you buy them all, test them and, and,

45:33uh. So you ended up making the, assembling the thing yourself. Yes. Yeah. So for, I was assembling these things myself up until literally a year ago to the day. Um, we, we got up to like 80 K a month. I was assembling, shipping, I had two 3d printers running my closet in like, in my apartment. And then I, I kind of went like Alex Hermosi mode. I was like, wait, what if I just, you know, do this, but more, you know? So I found like a 3PL, uh, and normally a 3PL, I mean, you know this, but, um, they just

46:05ship stuff for you. Uh, they like fulfill your stuff. But I was like, Hey, let me use your employees. Like I'll put my 3d printers in your place. You guys can use them and make them on the spot there. Yeah. You can make them. Um, and so now my 3PL makes it and that's how we were able to grow to this point. So you're flying to China tonight. I'm flying to China tonight. You're going to get, you already have, cause this is made. Yeah. So we, I bet a prototype, you found somebody on Alibaba. What'd you do? No, no, I did not do that. That would be risky. Um, no, I, I got connected. So I, I'm like pretty big on Instagram now and like YouTube. So I, I, I made sure to like get connected via word of mouth.

46:38Um, so I found a factory together with them. We, we designed this thing. I flew there like a couple of months ago. We, um, we got to this sort of like golden sample and now production is like sort of done. Like the molds are done ish. So I'm going there now to like get the final samples and then we'll be able to. How many employees do you have? I don't have any like, like full time employees. Uh, but I have like, you know, contractors, I have like, um, five contractors. So have you taken money out of the business yet? Are you like, I took a million bucks out of the business last year or two million bucks or something? Yeah. So like this year it'll do, let's say, let's say hypothetically you do 5 million in total

47:11revenue in 26. How much cashflow per, like how much, uh, profit? I don't know if you measure it. Uh, yeah, it's around like 20% like net, uh, income. I don't know. I, I, I kind of look at it. It's just like my business. Like some of it's in the business bank, some of it's my Vanguard, some of it's in my personal bank. I don't know. I just kind of like take it as I see fit. And there's no repeat purchase, right? Like nobody's going to buy. Yeah. There's no, yeah. But what is like, uh, I remember years ago when, uh, Thera, you know, Theragun, like my, I have a Hypervolt that I use forever. I love it.

47:42And I remember they came out and people were like, dude, like all the Chinese companies are just going to knock this off. But they, they did. Yeah. But they did do a good job of like kind of branding it where I, I am like into my Hypervolt. But then they also came out with like 30 products. There's like the things that like do my legs and I love all of them. And it's become my routine. Is there like other things that you're going to, you can do? I do have this vision of being like a, a brand specifically focused on making products for the TMJ community. The brand is like your TMJ.

48:13Yeah. So it's like your TMJ pen. Then I'm thinking like your TMJ band. We had this guy in the podcast named David. Yeah. And his whole company. And like, we started out as a shtick, but it wasn't entirely a shtick where it was like, Sam doesn't believe that picking an important name is actually important. And this guy's whole job, he makes a lot of money naming companies. Blackberry and Swiffer. Sonos, Febreze. He named all this stuff. And I am totally on board with what he's doing now. And his whole, I actually just hung out with him the other day. His whole thing is like, if you're a young entrepreneur, start your company.

48:43Who cares? But once you get some traction, consider making a name that can last forever because it actually does matter. And I buy into that. I would highly consider keeping that as maybe the TMJ pen, that product, but having like a proper company name. Yeah, that's, that's possible. I don't know. I feel like it's just like, not the main like concern right now. Cause like that. Maybe it's not now. For this product. Yeah. Like people, it's like, this is like the TMJ pen, you know, it's like, it's like when people say TMJ pen, it's this, like there's no other thing. So it's like, I think that's a pretty good name.

Planning an exit strategy

49:14But yeah, for the company, like, so you said like you did have a question. Well, what was your question going to be? Well, yeah, my question was going to be like, listen, you're going to, you're going to be like, oh, money doesn't matter. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We won't say that.

49:28It's called my first million, not just one million and stop. I've heard a lot of guests come on the show. It's like, you know, they've made it and it's like, oh, I'm just like, nah, I want a couple of mil in the bank. Right. I want that. So I get this urge to like sell in maybe two to three years or something. Sell the company. Yeah. And I don't know what, therefore I should like really be focusing on. Cause like if it, for me, like the obvious thing right now is like, hey, what's the like main constraint? It's, uh, you know, going and solving the supply, the supply issue. Then it's going to be like demand. It's going to be like.

49:59Short term constraint. And then you have your long term constraint in this scenario. Yeah. And, and I don't know what the like longterm, like maybe it is a longterm constraint to not have other products, but the issue is like, I don't know, like what would be super important then to weigh against like losing focus on just like cranking up more ads now. So maybe it's a recurring revenue, right? Like maybe I should get into TMJ, like supplements and, and oils and creams and stuff, or maybe it's having more products on the consumer side. Maybe it's having IP, maybe it's having registration with the FDA.

50:30Maybe it's having like. You have three options. Yeah. And you don't have to decide right now, but it's good to know what they are. Cause then when you're doing the business, you'll look for clues that support one of the three options. Either you can go wider TMJ. So you could say, great TMJ, this helps, but it's not a solved problem. I can sell the creams. I can sell the oils. I can sell the supplements. I can sell the whatever. So you go wider TMJ. You can go wider pain relief. So maybe heated massage for other conditions, other parts of your body, the kind of hyper-rice model, the, um, Theragun model where you're going to create, you know, right now.

51:02They're just like a recovery company. Yeah. They're a recovery company there. And you would be a pain relief company. And you would say, okay, cool. I'm going to go find all the different types of pain. I'm going to create like specialty products. I'm going to run the same playbook across them. And so like right now the, those slot heated, heated vibrating slides is like the big one that's going viral right now that I think someone's Nike is doing or somebody is doing. Yeah. So you could, you could go wider in that direction of pain relief, heated, maybe heated massaging pain relief, or you could just say, actually, I just got good at doing this model

51:33of like content-based selling of products. I now know how to do a little bit of supply chain, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I'm really good on the marketing side and I'm fundamentally limited by category and product. And if I just take, you know, I'm a, I'm a nine out of 10 entrepreneur. I just need to find a nine out of 10 opportunity. TMJ is just a two out of 10 opportunity because of the nature of what I'm doing. And you just take your highly transferable skills of creating content, selling through content, you know, and you just apply it to a better category and you, that has tailwinds. You don't fight the, the small tam problem.

52:05And you'll potentially have liquidity already. And you're so young, you're going to have money in the bank and you're going to have like a bunch of lessons learned that with a clean slate, like this can be your starter business. Like most entrepreneurs have a, have a starter business, have a thing that they did early that wasn't their lifetime business. And, you know, so that's the other possibility. So you, you know, you don't know which one of the three it is right now. Maybe you should write down a hypothesis as to which one of those three it is. And then as you operate the next six to nine months and you're focused on growing this business, you'll at least be aware of and looking for clues as to which one this might

52:37be. Maybe you launch a little test in one of those, one of those three areas and you figure it out that way. I mean, I think, I think it's what it is, is like, I, I like to use the business as like a learning opportunity, uh, like as just like a personal growth thing. It's probably going to be like, Hey, is there more juice to squeeze out of that in, in the TMJ space? There definitely is. I think so too. When I, a few, a handful of years ago, I had Lyme disease and I like would look on like Reddit and stuff. And I noticed that the, the very clear trend and amongst some other friends who got sick

53:10with different illnesses or injuries, there's dozens or hundreds of injuries or illnesses where people feel like no one's listening to me. No one takes me seriously. What the hell? But I know something's wrong. I don't feel good. And so they go to these communities and they buy these products where it's like, finally I'm being heard and I'm being catered to. And it's, I, if I had to guess, this is one of them because I've heard that word TMJ. But when you see it like clicking, I'm like, Oh, that can't be that bad. And then the person who has it, like, it's horrible. You know what I mean? And if you go to the doctor, they're just like, well, you know, just try not to stress so much. Like, yo, I'm kind of pretty stressed because this hurts every day also.

53:41In addition to whatever caused it in the first place. My first, my first specialist I went to prescribed me like 2000 milligrams of Tylenol a day. I was like, I would, if I had to make a guess, this will, you're going to grow a lot over the next three years and sell it. And I think that would be pretty cool. These are fundamentally pretty tough businesses to sell, you know, non-recurring niche product heavily based on your marketing genius. So it might be that like optimizing for the exit sometimes looks different than optimizing for cashflow. And so you want to kind of weigh those out.

54:12You don't even, again, you can go look at some comps and be like, is there any, who's done this before and exited? Well, let me go talk to them and understand like, does the factors that made that a successful exit match what I, what I have fundamentally in my business. But if it's just a cashflow business, that's great. Cashflow business can be awesome. Have you ever talked to any bankers or brokers? I haven't. A lot of times people only do that when they're ready to sell, when you should have done it three years earlier and you find out, you're like, I have a number in my mind. Just tell me what I need to achieve to make that number possible. And I'm just going to go do that for two years.

54:42Tell me three companies you looked at that are like this. What did they sell for? Why did they get that money they got? When did they do it? And you're like, okay, it could be like this revenue, this cashflow. And you know, these are the five or six other metrics. I'll just do that for three years. And then I'll look up and be like, okay. Okay. Yeah. If you guys know any, I had some people reach out on LinkedIn about it, but they seem kind of skeezy. So I was like, I'm good. Yeah. No, I would. So I would talk to Quietlight. They're more of a online brokerage, but they're easy to talk to. If you go look at their thing, they'll, they have a lot of these like FBA businesses

55:14that they sell that like are kind of like, I would say lower durability, lower quality businesses overall, but they seem to be selling. So like they know how to package those, what type, what business is working to own. Oh, Quietlight Brokerage. Okay. Yeah. Dot com. So go to them and then go look at brokers in your space. Maybe like, you know, you just have to Google and like tell Chachi BD, go do deep research on who's sold, you know, who are bankers that sell products like mine? Like, I don't even know what the name of this category is, but it might be like non-medical wellness devices.

55:44Okay, cool. And you could, you email the founders of people who have had, had access and say, who did you, who all did you talk to? Because everyone who sells at a company will talk to three or four. They'll say, I used this person. They were great. These two were kind of good. But I would not delay this. What Sam said is, he's absolutely right. You don't talk to them when you're, it's time to sell. You first talked to them a year or two before to actually understand what you need to do in the next 24 months to be a sellable business in the end. And the good thing about a sellable business is if somebody else is going to want to own it, it's probably the same like reasons you would want to own it. So there's no harm in building a very sellable business because at the very least, you made

56:19a business that's higher desirability to own for yourself or for somebody else. Yeah. Dude, thanks for doing this. You're awesome. No, of course. Thanks for having me. Good luck in China. Yeah.

56:28Good luck in here. All right. That is part two of Shoot Your Shot. We got one more episode coming out of the San Francisco location. We got three more founders coming up on the next episode. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, on Spotify. We looked at the data. I think 80, 90% of you guys are not subscribed. Who watched the episodes? What are you doing? Subscribe so you can watch episode two. And do me a favor. Whether you're a listener, then you're going to go to Spotify. Or if you're a watcher, go to YouTube. Put in the comments the city that you want us to go to next. Right now, we're doing this in San Francisco. We've already done New York. We'll go somewhere next to do it.

56:59So let us know in the comments right now. All right. Let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about Marketing School. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network, and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Hsu. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.