SPEAKER_01
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SPEAKER_03
There was a cup on the table, I remember. We were drinking water, a little paper cup, we were at this burrito place and you were like, if I could buy this cup for five cents and sell it to you for seven cents, that's my passion.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. Put my all in it like the days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.
SPEAKER_03
Ramon, he is back. The guest from episode two, which was one of the best episodes ever of this podcast. And then it was taken down for a bit, I don't know what happened, there was something, we got to take it down, make a little edit.
People started hitting me up. Hey, what happened to Ramon's episode? That's how much people cared, they wanted to know, people would just keep attracting us, that episode's still in the library, something happened. Some people noticed, which was amazing to me.
And now you're Twitter famous as of today.
SPEAKER_02
Well, because of you and Sam, yes, because you and Sam retweeted me and I got like almost 8,000 followers overnight. I went from 2,000 to 11,000 within 24 hours. So. Wow.
SPEAKER_03
Well, it's not just because we retweeted, I retweet a lot of stuff. You told a great story. I'm just actually gonna, I'm gonna find the hook here because you did a good job.
Did Sam write this for you? Or did you have him edit this? Because this was so well done. I felt like you can't, this can be your first thread and you started off this good on your first thread. How did that happen?
SPEAKER_02
No, well, it's Sam dripping off the whole tweet. So Sam actually helped me, okay, this will work. This is the concept.
This is a little bit like how you format it. Then he gave it a little bit like, I would start with this, I will do with this and I will explain that. Then of course I explained it, I send it to him and he said like, yeah, this looks great.
SPEAKER_03
How would you have started it normally? And then I'll read what the end result was. What would you have normally said? Or what do you remember what your V1 might have been?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Well, like you, you and I are friends. So you also know me personally.
Typically I would not start off with like, I bought something for just little as X and now we're doing Y. I would not. Too braggie.
Yes. But you know, Sam said like, no, that's you need to do that. And you know, it's true as well, right? So why not just explain it? That's what people get people interested.
And now I think we have 7,000 likes and a bunch of like 1,000 plus between.
SPEAKER_03
He said, two and a half years ago, I bought a dog ramp business for $300,000. Already interesting what the heck is a dog ramp business. Since then I've sold $35 million of dog ramps.
Boom, that's the hook, right? Yeah, this little thing turned into a big thing. And then the promise, why you should read this thread. I'm going to explain why I bought it, how I scaled it and why I bought a business versus starting from scratch.
But first dog ramps question mark. And then that is, and then the little hand pointing down like come read more. That is, you didn't take my power writing class, but that is exactly what you would have been my star student in this, if you had done this as the example, because it has all three elements, right? What I call the frame, I bought it for 300K and I've sold 35 million.
So that's the wow factor. Why should I pay attention to this? And why do I stop scrolling? So you have a scroll stopping number, $35 million of dog ramps. You have a curiosity gap, which is, what the heck is a dog ramp and how did this guy do it? And then you have a promise, which is, I'm going to tell you A, B and C, but first dog ramps, which is like, you give them a lightweight entryway that they have, even if they don't want to know how you bought it, why you scale it, all the operational stuff, I do need to know what the heck, dog ramps, what the heck.
And so, beautifully done. And then you tell the story. And the story is kind of amazing because people know that I don't talk about what my e-commerce business is, but they know that I have an e-commerce business.
What they don't know is that it started because we were hanging out in your backyard and we were talking and the whole time we're talking, your phone is just going, chaching, chaching. It's like, and I didn't even know what this was. It's the Shopify, Shopify is like notification sound.
And you didn't even notice it because it's always just normal to you. Your phone was sitting on the table. And I was like, do you need to get that? Like, what is that sound? And you go, oh, sorry, that's like sales.
And I was just like, you know, people love this idea of make money while you sleep, like passive income, oh, make money while you sleep. That is a sexy idea. This was even better.
It was like, you were just chilling and having fun and money was just being made for you on the side and just like a little chaching every five minutes. And it was literally in that moment, I was like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna start an e-commerce business because I can't sit here and just let Ramon have all the fun.
This is too good. So you inspired me to do it for sure.
SPEAKER_02
That's awesome. Yeah, I had to turn off that notification because it drove me crazy eventually, like chaching, chaching every time there's a sale. But it was fun in the beginning, almost like that, you know, Endorphin release each time.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, exactly. And if you're on YouTube, if you're watching the YouTube channel, which is just, I don't know, what is it? YouTube.com slash My First Million, I think, or HustleCon, something like that.
Just search My First Million on YouTube, you'll find it. But you can see the ramp behind Ramon. So he's got all the products behind you.
So the company's called Alpha Paw, that's your thing. So we're gonna talk about a couple different things. I thought it'd be fun, have you on your substitute teacher for Sam and like any substitute teacher, the class always has more fun when the sub comes in.
So that's what we're gonna do. I think we're gonna talk about a couple things. I wanna talk to you about kind of buying and selling, buying businesses rather than starting businesses.
So how you do it, and we'll go through some examples, maybe of what's out there. And then we'll jump back and we'll dig into kind of like your story. So how the heck you got started.
But I first wanna give the people and myself really kind of a crash course on this process of buying businesses. Cause I was amazed when you told me you bought this business for 300,000. And did you buy this off of Flippa or Quietlight or would you have to buy this?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I bought this on a similar broker like Quietlight. They're not around anymore, but it was a similar broker. Not as Flippa, but it's more of a broker.
SPEAKER_03
And when you bought it, I was sort of like, what the heck, like who does that? I didn't even know anybody who does like off these like random websites. Like I could see you buying something for a few thousand dollars, but 300 grand I thought was a lot. And I was like dog ramps, what the heck.
And you had told me then that you're like, yeah, the business is doing good and the person really wasn't doing any marketing or they didn't run any Facebook ads. I think was the case. And so you just saw like a clear growth lever.
So break it down. Like why do you do this? And then how do you do this buying businesses thing?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, me personally, I think it's also like, what's your personal preference? What's your skill set? Some people are really good at going from zero to one are really builders. Others are really good at going from one to 10. And those are, you know, scalers.
I'm not really good at building. I'm better at scaling. And so I like to buy versus build because it gives you a lot more speed.
It gives you history and data. And it's similar like real estate where I try to find crappy houses that you need to fix up, but in a good up and coming neighborhood, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02
So good market. Yes. Good market. There's a market fit.
You know, if this house was amazing, you would be able to rent this out for two, three, four times more than the current owner does. It's the same with websites. So I look for websites that have a good product mix, product fit, has history.
It doesn't have to be, you know, going really well. I'm not looking for websites that are overly optimized. So I tend to not buy websites from other internet marketers because they already did all the things that I probably would do for it.
So it's not really room for growth.
SPEAKER_03
What was the person like? What was the business like when you bought the dog ramp business? So describe kind of what you saw and what made you decide, yeah, I'm going to buy this one.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. It solved a real problem. I wasn't aware that this is actually a problem.
I have a dog, but I have a pit bull. I don't have a small dog. So there's a real problem for a niche audience that you really can target on Facebook.
Those were the good old days that you really could niche targets still on Facebook. It had not a lot of competition at that time. Not a lot of people were promoting ramps on Facebook, Instagram, or even Amazon.
The website was a very crappy website where I knew that if we switched to Shopify, if we increase or improve the copy, the pictures, et cetera, the conversion rate would most likely increase. This case, the two founders were not doing any Facebook ads. There was no paid acquisition happening at all.
And even though they had a decent side customer database, they were not emailing even existing customers, let alone trying to capture a card of bannermint people.
SPEAKER_03
So this was a good market, which is pets. It's a house that you said, OK, if I renovate the kitchens, the floorboards, the countertops, which is like redoing the website and the branding of it, the copywriting. And then lastly, they're not even trying to rent it out.
They don't post it on Craigslist. They don't have flyers out in the neighborhood saying, rent my place, which is they weren't doing paid advertising, ticket customers. So you saw it, you bought it, and you grew it.
What's another example? So let's walk through some real examples, and then you tell me what you like or dislike about some of these businesses. Because I know you did some research on what's out there today.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So for example, there's one out. It's sort of a crossword puzzle website.
So think of when I think a lot of people play these wards with friends games or scrabble games. And then there's a website out there apparently that you can just put in your letters, and it will give a bunch of wards recommendations.
SPEAKER_03
Cheat codes website, yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Exactly. And I kind of love it because it's so, there's no nothing to do. Like, I think there's probably a database that's already pre-built that you can buy.
You build it basically once, and then it's just trying to get SEO traffic to your website. So for example, there's one for sell now for $9 million. They started it in 2017.
It does $3.5 million in revenue. And because there's no really team needed, it's almost all profit.
It's around $3 million of profit. And it's just printing money, basically. I like these type of niches where not a lot of people think about, but there's definitely a huge search volume.
SPEAKER_03
What would you do? So give me two pieces on that. So the first is, with something like this, how would you try to grow it? Or would you not buy this because you say, I don't know how I would grow this, where I get a faster payback on my money? So what would you do? How would you think about the growth levers for this one?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's a good question. I will personally not buy it at the moment, because the price tag, typically I only buy things in a couple $100,000 range, not millions. Without knowing too much of the current business model, I definitely would try to increase RPMs, meaning how can we squeeze more advertising dollars out of the same traffic? They get tens of millions of visitors a month.
And I looked at a couple of similar websites, and I think there's a huge opportunity by placing ads differently just to increase RPM. If you have an e-commerce, you want to increase conversion rates. If you have a content site, you want to increase RPMs, meaning how to get more people to click on the ads or things like that.
So I would do that. Secondly, I would look and do research like for sure if there's a huge segment of people that love Scrabble, what other games do they like? And maybe build a sub-assistor website that does, I don't know, like what's it called, Sudoku or whatever. So that's the two things that I would, if I would buy this type of website.
SPEAKER_03
And basically, when you buy something like this, most people say, I don't have $9 million. And I think when you first started looking at these websites, you also didn't have enough money to buy one of these. So tell the story of how you first started going to these websites, even when you didn't have enough money to buy one of these companies.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. I've actually bought and sold websites and started with buying something for $500 and then sold it for $1,500. I started on Flippa 12 years ago.
And I bought a Piñata website that sells Piñatas. You can send a picture of Sam. And it makes a Piñata of him.
Yes. A company in Texas would make a Piñata and then ship it directly to the customer. So I bought that for $5,000 that's scraped together, improved the website traffic, and made my money back in 2 and 1 half months, and then sold it a month later for $22,000.
So it's not huge numbers, but those really helped me to grow a little bit and really get a lot of experience. When I started Soap Hub, I actually saw a similar website for sale on Flippa that was for sale for $100,000. It was in the daytime TV era too, and the topic was about daytime TV.
Of course, I didn't have money. I had a couple of $1,000. I was not able to buy that.
But what I did is like, hey, let's see if there is something there. Let's do a small test, build a fan page, see how the engagement goes, and then see if there is something there, and then grow from there.
SPEAKER_03
I guess we should explain. You created, if people have listened to episode two, they know the full story. We won't go the full story again this time.
But your claim to fame, what episode two is about, is telling the story of how you created a Soap Opera content site, like a Soap Opera website that was basically just saying, hey, you're watching Days of Our Lives, or you're watching, I don't know, The Young and the Restless. Here's the recap. Here's the spoilers of what's coming next.
So you kind of built a spoiler site for daytime soap operas, like who the heck thinks of that. And then you ended up selling it for $9 or $10 million cash. And that's like an amazing, amazing exit.
And this is from a guy who has never watched a soap opera episode in his life. So I think people love that because it was so A, random, but B, interesting and relatable how you did that. And it sounds like one of the ways you were getting business ideas was you were going on these websites.
And I think you had told me at the time, you were like, I saw a website for sale that was also in the daytime TV niche that was like $100,000 for sale and you were like, cool, I don't have $100,000. But if this is worth $100,000, maybe I can make something like this. And then you went through this process where you said, OK, how can I test these ideas? Because when I met you, I was like, all right, what's your passion? You know, Silicon Valley style.
And you were like, what problem do you really want to solve? What industry are you really passionate about? And you were like, there was a cup on the table, I remember. We were drinking water, a little paper cup. We were at this burrito place.
And you were like, if I could buy this cup for $0.05 and sell it to you for $0.07, that's my passion.
Like, I like to buy things and sell things for a little bit more. And I'm basically an internet marketer. And I don't care if it's cups or dog ramps or soap opera spoilers, it doesn't matter to me.
I love the process of like business and selling things. And I was like, that's amazing. You know, I love the sort of self-awareness and honesty.
And then when you were testing ideas for before you created the soap opera site, you went on Facebook and if I remember correctly, you basically made like 30 fan pages or something like that. Because at the time, you could promote a page, a fan page on Facebook for like cents. You could go get a bunch of likes of your Facebook page.
And a lot of likes weren't worth too much, but you could kind of test what topics are people most engaged with. What topics, if I post content in this page, will I get a bunch of likes for? And I think it ended up being like the top three or something like, what was it? It was like right wing politics, like soap operas. And what was it the last one? It was like wrestling or something like that?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Wrestling was really popular. Soaps and politics.
Cars were also pretty, pretty high up.
SPEAKER_03
Right. And then you were like, I hate politics. I don't want to do politics.
What's the next best one? Soap operas? OK. Hire this woman in the Midwest to write blogs every day about soap operas and then drive traffic, baby. Sell us to go sell some paper cups.
SPEAKER_02
Exactly. And I just didn't really overthink it. I didn't wrote a business plan.
I just went on Upwork.com. Hey, looking for a writer that can write soap opera spoilers. Put a very simple blog up just to test to see would people go from Facebook onto a blog and write the story.
And that's how it basically started. And then started with $0.10 today from making from Google Adsense.
And then $1 a day. And then $10. And that's how it grew.
SPEAKER_03
Right. OK. Let's look at a couple more deals. And then we'll jump around again.
So give me another one that you saw before you came on the pod that you want to talk about.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So this is one I just saw an hour ago. I just thought I was interested.
Interesting. It's a goat milk soap website.
SPEAKER_03
They sell goat milk soap.
SPEAKER_02
What the heck is that? Yes. So apparently goat milk soap is better for the environment. And it's better for, they say it's cruelty free, because apparently a lot of soaps, the traditional soaps, they do testing on animals, et cetera.
So they claim, and forgive me for people that know about goat milk soap, this is the first time I've heard about it. And that's why that intrigued me. This could probably be a product that people that used this are already passionate about.
It's same like people that are into keto or super passionate. Or there's tons of these examples where it's a pretty small niche, but people are so passionate that they will spread the word for you. So this is why, website, you can find it on Flip-On.
Just search goat milk soap.
SPEAKER_03
And I'm looking at the listing. It says, four years old, monthly profit $20,000 a month. It's got a 29% profit margin.
And it's selling at a 1.8x multiple. So what is that? So let's say 20 times 12.
We don't do public math, but we do type things in. 240 times 1.8. So it's selling for 400 something thousand. Is that right? Correct.
SPEAKER_02
425 is the asking price.
SPEAKER_03
Right. OK, amazing. So walk me through.
How do you think about something like this?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So first, I will do a little bit of research about the product. Does goat milk really work? Is it more of a gimmick? Or is it that actually solve a problem? Or are people really interested? Is there a need for this? And again, if it's a gimmick, that's fine too.
This is not like of the answers. No, we'll not buy it. It's just important to know.
SPEAKER_03
Right, back to the pinata example.
SPEAKER_02
Exactly. Because it's very important too for all bit ideas have to be $100 million idea. I think a million dollar a year business is amazing as well.
So maybe goat milk soap is a very passionate niche product. I will do research like, OK, how many people in the US search for it? You can use Google Trends or you can use all kinds of search volume trackers that you can see how many people are searching for this keyword. I will look on Instagram.
Are there like, is there a rabbit fan base, like goat milk fans or Facebook groups? Then I will also look on Amazon. Is this sold on Amazon? If yes, how is the trend and what is the sales? And then you can use a tool called Helium 10 to see how much revenue a listening is doing. It's by the way, a really amazing tool to do research.
I do the same for pet products. I look what is trending on Amazon, what is blowing out the waters for sales, and then I will do research if we should also start selling that. Then I look, of course, on the business stuff, like business is the trend up or down or flat.
And also, most of the business I bought were either flat or down because that's how you get a good deal. So even if it's flat, even if it's not trending up, I still would potentially buy it. What is important are the traffic channels diversified.
Is 90% coming from just Facebook or is it just emails or is it just SEO? That could be a little bit risky, especially if it's all paid traffic from Facebook because all the e-commerce founders or listeners on this podcast will know Apple can make an update and suddenly the paid traffic landscape change. So I'm looking for diversified channels. Then, of course, I look at revenue profit margins.
So you can really calculate, like, OK, if I pump, is this going to be more of a scale where I can pump more money into Facebook? I put $1 in, I get $3 back? Or is this more like of a long-term play where I have to create SEO content that is less costly but it's a longer game? And then also, what's important to understand what you're buying are the trademarks, are the patents, is their email subscribers. So in this case, they have 43,000 email subscribers. There's 33,000 SMS subscribers.
I think there's a social media. All these things, in my opinion, are valuable because that's the same with when I bought Alphabet, had a huge Instagram following, a huge Facebook following. They had an email list.
They had trademarks and patents, all that was included in the sale.
SPEAKER_03
And those are great. Those are the assets. And so let's take a business like this.
I'd say it's $400,000 listing. How does it work if you don't have $400,000 lying around in a briefcase like an evil genius? What do you do? How do you buy a business like this if you don't have $400,000 lying around?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So you can use SBA loans to buy internet businesses. SBA loan is basically a business loan, small business loan, that I don't know when they started a few years ago, where they now also fund internet businesses.
And you can borrow up to 90%. So technically, you can buy something that is for sale for $400,000, and you only have to put down $40,000. And the interest rate is pretty low.
It's anywhere between 5 and 7. So it's higher than a mortgage, but it's much lower than a traditional business loan for people like us. Then the second thing you can do when you see an asking price of $400,000, you can always, there's a cash upfront offer.
And then you can offer like, hey, I will pay you $250,000 cash upfront at closing, the remaining $150,000. I will pay you spread out over the next 12 months interest-free. So every time I buy a business that's never 100% cash on closing, I always have 60% to 80% cash on closing, and the remaining is either seller's notes or an earnout.
SPEAKER_03
And that keeps the seller helpful because they need to help you out, plus it lowers the amount that you have to loan. So let's just say, let's just do a little loan calculator. So the SBA loan is what, 10-year loan, something like that? Yes.
So 10-year loan. So let's say you did the full amount, no seller financing, just for simplicity here. So you put down 40K, you're going to take the other 360K as a SBA loan.
And let's say you're paying 6% a year for 10 years. So your monthly payment on that loan is going to be $4,000. This business makes $20,000 a month of profit.
So you take the $20,000 a month of profit, you pay back your loan for four, you're left with 16K of profit every month right now. So you could buy this today and be making money. And so that difference, let's say 16K, you only put down $40,000.
So it only takes two and a half months for you to get all your equity back. And then you're profitable every single month. And you could reinvest some of that into growth.
So that's like a pretty sweet deal. And that's more than most people are making at their quote unquote safe job.
SPEAKER_02
Correct. And SBA, the beauty with SBA loans, they of course, they look at your personal credit history and et cetera. But they really look and make a decision that lenders on the business.
So they will never fund you if there's too high of a risk, right, if they think like, oh, if we cannot, the borrower cannot pay the interest month over month. So it's an amazing tool. Actually, I spoke with Joe Valley from Quiet Light Broker today, and he told me a story.
There was a woman, she bought a business for $1.25 million with an SBA loan two years ago, and just closed and sold the same business for 5.5, I believe.
It was in the five range. But put only 10% down. So she didn't even put $200K down.
But her return was, you know.
SPEAKER_03
$4 million, yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So if done right, SBA loans is a really great tool, a great leverage tool to get into internet businesses or buy a business. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. All right, everyone. Today's episode is brought to you by Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor.
It's a podcast on HubSpot's podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners. So join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions that deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing for strategy for business owners.
A few recent episodes include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feels so hard in 2022. And another one is five ways to make content creation less consuming.
So check it out. It's called Imperfect Action. You can look it up wherever you get your podcast.
SPEAKER_03
This is one of the tricks. Now, what do you give people a sense of? How do you make sure you're not buying a lemon?
SPEAKER_02
Yes. That's, I get a question a lot. So when you go to flippa.
com, I would be careful because flippa.com is a marketplace. Anybody can just upload their listing or their website and basically claim whatever.
It's on you to do the diligence. If you go to a broker like Quietlight Brokers, they basically do all the vetting for you. They will look at the business.
Is everything legit? So the risk is much smaller. But regardless, if you're new to this, if you are to your first business, you can hire and do diligence company. Sintureca.
com is one. I think those are the biggest, well-known. You pay, it depends on the listing price, but it's as cheap as a couple of hundred dollars.
And it goes up from there. But they do all the diligence for you. They look through all the traffic.
Is it legit? Is the revenue legit? Is whatever, everything they claimed, is it all legit? And then they came back to you with like, well, we looked at all the data, all the numbers. You bought it for 1.2. But we think it's actually worth 900K, because these are the reasons. So definitely recommend going with the due diligence company, like Sintureca.
SPEAKER_03
Gotcha. OK. And give, OK. So these are the business you could buy.
What was the first kind of like, how the heck did you become you? So how are you figuring out how to do this? Give people kind of the, not, you don't go deep into any one, but just describe kind of the journey. And then I might poke into some of the sound interesting. So, OK, you're Ramon, you're born.
And I don't know, when you got your entrepreneurial start, what was the first kind of like entrepreneurial venture? Were you in your teens or 20s or what?
SPEAKER_02
My first real business was a construction business. I've done things before that, but they were like nothing really significant. But I think the way how I started the construction company is really my DNA, if that makes sense.
Because if I look back, a lot of other companies, I started basically the same. I didn't know anything about construction. And the story, I will keep it very quick, but I think it maybe could be helpful for people that maybe are overthinking steps or overthinking things.
I was out of a job, was 20 years old, had to pay my rent. Co-work of my mom said, I need a painter to paint the inside of my house. I can pay you X.
I forgot the number, but it was like a month's worth of money that I made in three days. So I thought, oh, this is amazing. I can be my own boss.
It's a lot of money. The harder I work, the more money I make. That was really what intrigued me.
If I can do this in one day, I will actually make the same amount of money then in a whole month.
SPEAKER_03
So you got paid on your output, not your input. Correct.
SPEAKER_02
And as you know, I'm a high school dropout, right? So there was not that. What year did you actually drop out? Officially 15, but I stopped really going when I was 14.
SPEAKER_03
OK, so that's basically ninth grade, right? That's US ninth grade.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I don't know what it is there. OK, my mom actually got a letter from the board of school with an official waiver. Like, OK, your son doesn't have to go to school, because in Holland, you have to go to school mandatory to 16.
They actually gave me a pass, because no high school wanted to accept me. But that's a different story.
SPEAKER_02
Such a good guy. On Sunday night, she paid me out and said, this is amazing. So on Monday morning, I came up with a name, house improvements or home improvements, one of those two, built some, designed a couple very ugly business cards, made a one page website, and put an ad out on the Dutch version of Craigslist.
And I thought, you know what, let's just not do only painting. Let's do, like, we do everything. Construction, like, remodeling from A to Z, whatever.
SPEAKER_03
I thought, like, let's just. And you don't know how to do any of that, by the way.
SPEAKER_02
No, no. I don't know anything.
SPEAKER_03
I barely was able to paint. So what gives you that confidence to say, I'll renovate everything A to Z, and yet, I don't know how to do anything A to Z?
SPEAKER_02
I think that's the naive thing. Part of me that I still have is, like, let's just see first if I can get a job, and then figure out, like, how to solve or do the job. And so an hour later, or two hours later, I got an email from a guy saying, hey, I'm looking for an electrician.
And I am rewiring the whole building, blah, blah, blah. I said, sure, no problem. I will see you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_03
I'm a ninth grade dropout. I'll be there in three hours. I got this.
SPEAKER_02
I went out to bought an official construction outfit. So I really looked like a construction guy, or, like, you know. And I went there the next morning.
And disclaimer, of course, I will not have done things that will potentially kill people. But I just wanted to see, like, I don't know. Like, maybe it was something simple.
SPEAKER_03
Maybe it's easy.
SPEAKER_02
So he gave me the tour. And it was like, I couldn't even understand the words he was saying, like, oh, we need to wire this, and we need to do it. And the floors were open, and the walls were open.
And I was still playing along. But in my mind, I was like, there's no way I can do this. Plus, it's dangerous as fuck.
So he went out to run some errands. I waited for him, because I didn't want to be, like, you know, an asshole just go, let's all wait for an hour. He came back, and I was like, listen, I'm going to be honest.
I don't know shit about the construction company. I don't know shit about the Electra. I just started yesterday.
I want to build a construction company. But I don't know anything. And because he was an entrepreneur, he laughed his ass off.
And he actually gave me work. He said, like, your hilarious just helped me with, you know, getting supplies. Terry was the boss over here.
Yeah. And he paid me the same amount of dollars or euros hourly rates than he would have done before. I think also, by the way, if we have young listeners, I think it's so important to do those things when you're young.
Because if I would do it now, I'm 40 years old.
SPEAKER_02
I don't think it's not in daring. It's not like, oh, I appreciate your hustle. No, it's like, hey, you're a con man.
Like, yes. So if you're young, take advantage. You know, Sam was also really genius of doing that as well.
Right? Like, you can just get away with so much more of showing hustle. But also, like, I think he appreciated that I waited for him and just be honest. Like, hey, listen, I don't know shit about this.
But he gave me a really good tip. He said, in order to own a construction company, you don't have to know everything or do yourself. If I were you, find freelancers.
You focus on getting the projects. And then you outsource it to freelance. But that's what I did.
And found an electrician, freelancer, plumber, you know, everything you need, a whole crew that you need. And two weeks later, I got a second job. And I didn't do anything.
I just had my.
SPEAKER_03
Dispatched some of their. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. I sold it for 10 K my cut was like around 5 K. And that's how I basically grew the construction company.
And within a year, a little over a year, we were like a 20 to 24 people, depending on how many projects we had. And at that time, we did close to million dollars or million euros, sorry, a year in revenue.
SPEAKER_03
And you're like 19, 20 years old, something like that.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, 20, 21 when we were a year in.
SPEAKER_03
And so what happened to that? Happy ending or sad ending to the story?
SPEAKER_02
Well, very quick, maybe story about how I scaled the scaling part. I think it's also could be helpful for people is that the big problem with construction is every, like the job is two weeks and they have to find another job. There were job is four weeks, they have to find another job.
Right. So it was really hard to keep the guys busy and really make sure that the projects align, if that makes sense. So I thought, hey, who can I find? What can I do so I don't have to find jobs anymore? Real estate investors, they buy apartment buildings all at once.
They all need to be renovated at once. So I went to local real estate meetups. That was actually horrible because I was a really out of my place.
I was way too young. I was like a blue collar guy with all these fancy pants. But one thing lead to another that I met the biggest real estate investor in my region that I lived.
And he was literally buying apartment buildings at the foreclosure every month between 20 and 100 buildings at a time. So now he became my client. And he was my client to the end, basically.
I never had to search for a new customer. So that was all the good news. Then I made a bunch of mistakes.
Cash flow projection was one where construction, you really, it's a similar, a little bit similar like with e-commerce. I think you could grow yourself into bankruptcy, if that makes sense. Making, for example, you with a construction, same with e-commerce, you have to put a lot of money up front.
I have to pay every Friday the crew. I have to buy the supplies. But I only get paid all the way at the end when the project is done.
So the faster you grow, the more projects you have, the more money you have to put out in the open. And you have to wait for it. So that started, that was really, and that was just not good at cash flow projections.
Well, I just didn't do it. And another thing that really was bad was growing too fast that I had to hire people that I normally would not have hired and really lost grip of the business. That makes sense.
And it started to break. And I had to close the company after three years, more or less.
SPEAKER_03
And our mutual buddy, Sully, was at my house this weekend. And he said something like, I don't know, maybe this is the guy you already talked about. But he said, you had some mentor help you early on.
Somebody who really changed the course of your life. I don't know, is he talking about that guy who gave you that first kind of insight to hire freelancers? Or is there somebody else he's talking about?
SPEAKER_02
No, it is a different story. OK, tell that one. All right, that story was before my construction company.
I was almost 18 or around that time. My mother kicked me out of the house. You have to figure your shit out.
So I have to pay rent. So I had to find a job at a local Best Buy, the Dutch version of Best Buy. A couple weeks in, I said, this sucks.
I had like long hours, whatever. And there was a guy coming in in a nice expensive suit. He wanted to buy something.
Was not in stock. He gave me a business card and said like software solutions. And I didn't know anything about software or a program or whatever.
But I knew solutions. Because it or solution, whatever. I didn't know anything.
But I just knew like, OK, hey, there's a lot of money to be made and a lot of opportunity in because this was like the early internet days. Right? Like, I'm an old fuck. This is like before 2001, before the internet bubble, as people remember.
And so I didn't know what he was doing. But it was something in software and solutions.
SPEAKER_03
You knew it was good because he came in a fancy suit or you separately had been thinking about the internet?
SPEAKER_02
Separately being thinking about, because I always was like trying to, oh, let's buy this type of product in Germany and then try to sell it in Holland. Like I was always trying to build these, doing these schemes, legal, of course. But internet was just like this whole new, like for me, this was amazing.
There's so much opportunity. And so I knew that. I just didn't know exactly what, how to get started, how to even write a line of code or whatever.
So I started stalking him as a, hey, and this is again the benefit of being young, like, hey, I want to get a job at your company. And he said, we're not hiring. But I kept stalking him respectfully, but I did stalking him for months, like three, four months to a point where he said, you know what, I'm so sick and tired of this in a good way.
Let's make a deal. If I'm going to give you a book, on Friday, we have an internal exam for programmers. If you pass that exam, the company will hire you and give you a six months internal program to become a Microsoft developer.
But you have to promise me if you fail this exam on Friday, you have to leave me alone for the rest of your life. It's okay, let's do it. They know what it was, expect, he gave me a book about Microsoft Database Access Database Program.
Study that if my life was depending on it, did exam, and I passed. I didn't pass A plus, but I passed enough. And so they gave me a job.
And for six to next six months, they trained me. I was able to become a Microsoft software developer within this company. They gave me a lease card.
They gave me a laptop. They gave me like phone. Like it was insane.
So this guy really changed my life because I think learning how to code really is helpful also in other ways in your life. Like because it really, you analyze problems in situations just different when you know how to code. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_03
And today you don't consider yourself like a coder, like let's say for your e-commerce website, you're not the one going and making changes. Do you do it like sometimes or early on before you hire people? Do you just do stuff yourself or no? You're just saying learning it back then and using it back then and learning how to think that way was helpful.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And at that time, I had to learn visual basic. That language doesn't even exist anymore.
So it's like, I know how to read PHP and HTML. And I know how to do it, but I never do it basically. I think it's more of breaking down what was so frustrating as a programmer is finding bugs.
So you have like a 10,000 line code. And there's one thing, it breaks. You have to go through all the codes.
But it really trains your brain like, OK, how to really try to narrow down what it could be and where the problem could be. And that's my set you can use in all kinds of other real life situations. So I don't have a program right now.
SPEAKER_03
OK, fair enough. And we got five minutes left. You had a game you wanted to play at the end.
Let's do the game.
SPEAKER_02
OK. So I wanted to ask you, it's very silly.
SPEAKER_03
And why did you want to play this game, by the way?
SPEAKER_02
Because I think your audience would like to know these questions like, would you rather?
SPEAKER_03
So to root your rather. Let's give the people what they want.
SPEAKER_02
Yes. All right. So here's the first one.
Would you rather be the CEO of Apple or the president of the UFC?
SPEAKER_03
OK, president of the UFC, like Dana White, too much travel. I'm traveling. I'm on the road all the time dealing with all kinds of head event planning.
Like when I threw my wedding, I was like, this is the only event I'll ever throw like this. And for the UFC, every weekend they throw a mega wedding. So no way I'm doing that.
I also wouldn't really want to be the CEO of Apple. So I'll take the job. I'll go buy your company for half a trillion.
I'll buy my company for half a trillion. And then I'll peace out.
SPEAKER_02
All right. That's awesome. I saw this on a meme, actually.
Would you rather have dinner with Jay-Z or take $500,000 cash?
SPEAKER_03
$500,000 cash, easy. What would you do? Would you take dinner with Jay-Z? I feel like you might be a I want a unique experience person. No?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I will take the cash to it. There was all the debates. Like people saying like you should take Jay-Z because he's
SPEAKER_03
going to give you. Let's say $50,000 cash. $50,000 cash, I think is a closer bet here.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Then I will in the situation right now, I will take the dinner. If I have no money, I will take the cash.
SPEAKER_03
Right. Yeah, yeah. I'm in the same boat.
I think the dinner is most likely going to be kind of lame. But I get a good story. Who knows? Maybe we hit it off.
Maybe he's interesting. $500,000, you could go buy your charity dinner with Jay-Z for $90,000 and have the rest left over for goods after that.
SPEAKER_02
Or you can buy a Goat Milk soap website.
SPEAKER_03
Exactly. I mean, that's the question. Would I rather have that Goat Milk business today or this dinner with Jay-Z tomorrow? I'll take the Goat Milk business today.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Let's do which rather bootstrap, a million dollar business or VC back $10 million a year business.
SPEAKER_03
I think I would rather have a VC back $10 million a year business. I'll tell you why. I think that once you can get a business to $10 million, I think the odds of you being able to get it to $50 or $100 are quite high.
I think 0 to 10 is a lot harder or more likely to round down to 0 than 10 will stay at 10. So I think $10 million, really what you're saying is, hey, just stick with it for a little bit longer and you'll be at 30, 40, 50, 70, something like that million within two, three years. So I think that's the case.
And then I'm actually, a lot of people think VC means you're VC forever and that you're in this endless chase. They're like, well, the VC say you need to grow. The VC say you'll have to raise your next round.
My experience with VC has actually been quite different, which is, VC's give you the money. They might want you to do something, but it's your call what you do. And you can raise one round and never raise again from VC.
Or you can raise one round and grow at the pace you want. They might strongly advise you to do something, but it's on you to say, look, are you going to fire me? Do you have the power to do that? Are you going to fire me? If not, then I'm going to need you to shut the fuck up and stay in the back seat and let me do what I'm going to do here. So I think the $10 million business is just better than the bootstrap to $1 million.
SPEAKER_02
Then very quick, for the listeners that have an idea, but not the capital, would you tell them to try to get VC money or try to get the company started, get some revenue, and then do the VC route?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound cliche, but it's true. And whoever is doing this needs to hear this, which is the raising money is not the goal. So a lot of people are like, hey, I want to talk to you.
Like I'll invest in a company. And they'll say, I want to talk to you about what metrics we need to do to be able to raise an A in nine months. Or we're starting planning for our series B.
I want to talk to you about what metrics we need to do to hit the B. And I'm like, I understand what they're saying. And it's good to be thoughtful and plan.
But there's this sort of implication that raising money is the milestone. And it's like, oh, what business? What does this business need to do to be able to achieve this outcome? And it's actually the opposite. I have a business outcome I'm trying to get to.
I'm trying to get to $10 million in revenue with 20% EBITDA. Or I'm trying to get a 20% market share in this market, or 5%. I want to grow 20% a month.
You have a business outcome in mind. And then you just say, do I need more money to make that happen, yes or no? Money is the fuel. It is not the destination.
It is not the point of the journey for raising money. And so I would just say, yeah, when you start, when you have the idea, the goal is, OK, well, I need to get like one customer, 10 customers, 100 customers, 1,000 customers. You start doing that.
And then at some point, if you get stuck because you lack the money, meaning you truly need to go buy inventory, or your paid ads are working, you just need to spend more to get to the next milestone, then you raise the money. Don't raise as your excuse to go do the business.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And you also see a lot of deals where people approaching you and me in a little bit lesser way. But I do feel like there's a lot of people think they need money to launch a business, but actually don't.
Because they think, oh, it needs to be pretty, or it has to have all these functionalities. But maybe they could just start with one functionality and just have a fiverr designer just do it and do it, at least get started.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, my favorite people to fund are people who have created a company and made all the mistakes, ended up with a small win where they got a taste of winning, but not enough to go retire on a yacht. Because the next time they start, they're like, not going to waste those six months on design mockups and branding and getting the trademark and all this other stuff. They know what are the traps, and they know what you really need to do versus what you think you need to do.
And there's a big gap there. But usually, even if somebody tells you, experience is the best teacher. Because the voice in your head, typically, from most entrepreneurs I meet, the voice in your head typically is giving you some bad advice your first time through.
And it's OK. Just go do it, learn those lessons, and then the second time you're much better off.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I agree. Then last question, would you rather do a boxing match against Sam or do an Ironman with me and Suley?
SPEAKER_03
Both. I'd rather do the boxing match with Sam, because that sounds more fun and exciting than an endurance race. But yeah, so I would do a boxing match with Sam.
I think that'd be great. I've always wanted to feel what it's like to be in a real fight. I think I got into one or two little altercations when I was younger, like in high school or middle school.
But it was always like I hit the kid, and then he ran away. Or like he hit me, and then it got broken up. And it's like, it never was like, OK, let's do this.
Let's get let's start. No one's going to break this up. And the point is to actually get in a fight.
So I would do it. Although Sam is definitely like on horse tranquilizers or whatever, like horse growth hormone or whatever he's taking. That guy's built like an absolute monster right now.
So I need a little training period. But I would do it.
SPEAKER_02
Actually, a lot of people, because he's been posting videos of me and him sparring, he wants to become a fitness influencer now.
SPEAKER_03
To his credit, by the way, he posts videos of you hitting him and him going down. Normally, when people post a cherry pick, what makes them look good, he does the opposite. He posts of you hitting him at liver shots and him falling down over and over again.
Like a compilation.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And also to his credit, he started four or five months ago. Not super serious, not that he's doing it every day.
But he actually got really good really fast. I've been training much longer. But a lot of people on the Twitter comments actually are voting for you versus Sam.
So maybe we should give the fans what they need.
SPEAKER_03
Let's give the fans what they want. Yeah, we need a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something. It's like, if a certain number of people vote for this or buy the Pre-Buy a paper view, $5 paper view of this, we'll do it.
We need like whatever, 10,000 pre-bys. OK, 10,000 pre-bys, that's the goal. 10,000 pre-bys of a $10 paper view, and then we'll do it.
SPEAKER_02
OK, let's set it up. And then you can come here to Austin.
SPEAKER_03
Give me like, I don't know, four months to train. And we'll film the training. Four months to train.
Yeah. Or to six.
SPEAKER_02
Each one can get one good trainer, a boxing trainer. Do you do what you want to do, boxing or MMA?
SPEAKER_03
No, boxing is simple. I don't have time to learn five martial arts. So we'll get to the point where we're both shitty at boxing and then we'll do it.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, let's do it. I think we should do it. And then maybe Suley and I can box do as the pre-links.
With that undercard.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, we should get it on the card. It's a CEO boxing tournament.
SPEAKER_02
Yes. And we stream it. And we do it in a really small, ratchet, like boxing gym here.
That's right. And also we can go there and then we'll just stream it for the people. Right. 10,000 pre-bys. That's a lot, but I think it's doable.
I think it's doable. Especially if you can get the support of your listeners.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, we're saying it now. People will just have to see. We'll just have to get them a link.
And let's get them a link and let's do this. All right. I can't wait.
All right, perfect. OK, I got to run. I got to do a call with this guy.
Ramon, thanks for being on. Where should people find you? So now your Twitter name is so is it Ramon Van Meer? Is that your Twitter handle? Right?
SPEAKER_02
Actually, I feel so dumb. I don't know, actually. Let me see.
Because I barely used it until yesterday. Yeah, Ramon at Ramon Van Meer.
SPEAKER_03
All together. At Ramon Van Meer. Go buy.
If you have a small dog, like I have a multipoo. I have four of your ramps in my house because it's a lifesaver. Otherwise, your dogs get injured backs and they're jumping off couches and stuff like that.
That's like, imagine jumping onto something or off of something that's three times your height. That's what they're doing. And so these ramps are onto the bed, onto the couch, up the stairs.
That's how I use them. So go buy some ramps from Alphalpa.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, thank you for the plug. Thank you for good talking. And I see you at the boxing match.
Amazing.
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh. Yeah. 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 a road. Let's travel never looking back. Bye-bye.