Podcast appearances and mentions of bill d'alessandro

Are you ready to glimpse into the future of eCommerce and global events? In this episode, I'm joined by the insightful Bill D'Alessandro to explore our bold predictions for 2024. With a year of unpredictability behind us, we dive into what's next, discussing everything from the shifting landscape of eCommerce jobs to geopolitical tensions. Listen in as Bill kicks off with his prediction on the continued rise of offshoring, suggesting a significant shift in the structure of eCommerce employment, and we discuss the potential impacts on domestic job markets and how businesses might adapt. We also dive into the world of retail and venture-backed DTC companies, discuss the implications of AI in marketing and content creation, and raise some interesting questions about the future of personal branding and the authenticity of online influencers. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3NEkltd Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

It's that magical time again! Bill D'Alessandro and I are back with our annual ritual of reminiscing over last year's predictions and daring to forecast what the next year has in store for us in the world of eCommerce.  Listen in as we reflect on our predictions from the previous year, ranging from the state of the labor market, the fate of Twitter post-Elon Musk's acquisition, the trajectory of Shopify and the impact of interest rates on the economy. We also discuss the fascinating world of AI, examining its integration into customer service and the broader tech landscape. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/485mRB3 Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

How is your finance stack?We all love to talk about our tech or marketing stacks, but the financial side gets less attention.Heck, you might not even know for sure what your finance stack is! My guest today is an eComm legend, Bill D'Alessandro. Bill is the founder and CEO of Elements Brands. He's built or acquired 8 brands and sold 7. Before his time in eComm, he spent 5 years in the investment banking and private equity world. Talking about ad creativity or the latest case studies on scaling with Facebook ads is more of a dopamine hit than talking about finance. BUT, knowing what levers to pull, what to do, and what NOT to do as it relates to your finance stack can instantly add $100s or thousands to your bank account. Here are the 4 components of your finance stack that Bill and I dive into today. Trust me, this interview is fast-paced, interesting and guaranteed to put more cash in your bank account.BankingCredit CardsWorking CapitalDebtYou don't need to be a CFO or a CPA to get value here. You just need the 80/20 of how to optimize your finances. Here's a look at what we cover in this episode:Why it's not always best to maximize assets and reduce liabilities; for example, accounts receivable are an asset, but they're also NOT cash in your bank.When it's "OK" to use Debt and when you shouldn't.What's essential and what's not when it comes to a bank?How 2 simple shifts in credit card usage can add $10s or $100s of thousands in your pocket…money you will NOT receive a 1099 for.Why working capital is the blood of your business. A few simple tips for accounts payable - when you do this right, this is the cheapest form of "debt" you can useWhy Merchant Cash Advances so commonly start a death spiral and what to do if you're in this trap.

As Amazon faces groundbreaking legal challenges, what does it mean for the broader eCommerce landscape? In this special episode, I'm thrilled to be joined once again by Bill D'Alessandro, owner of NaturalDogCompany.co, one of the voices behind the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast, and undeniably one of our most cherished co-hosts. Together, we're diving into the ongoing buzz around Amazon and its monumental recent lawsuit, trying to make sense of what it really means. Listen in as we discuss some of the looming questions surrounding Amazon: Is it truly a monopoly? Should the behemoth be either broken up or regulated? We also delve into what it means to be classified as a monopoly, the current happenings with Amazon in light of the lawsuit, and whether such legal actions are ultimately in the best interest of consumers. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/46GXHYv Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Ever wondered about the highs and lows of being in the eCommerce game? In this episode, I'm joined by the one and only Bill D'Alessandro, arguably our most frequent co-host, for a candid conversation on our biggest wins and losses in the business world. Together, we dive into the significance of strategy, size, and timing when thinking of buying and the critical role of having a niche. Listen in as we share our three biggest wins and our three biggest losses, including one of the biggest misses of Bill's eCommerce career. He also shares what it's like to sell seven brands at once (and the approach he took to manage the sales), how to use personality profiles to hack your hiring process, and why sometimes timing is everything. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://tinyurl.com/mpyn2wze  Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Why did one of the biggest holdco owners & operators sell his holdco? Bill D'Alessandro talks about what led to the decision to sell all but one of his companies, having to let go of being “the Holdco Guy,” advice for entrepreneurs thinking about operating & owning multiple companies, insights on online marketing, & how he sees AI changing the world forever.   LINKS & MENTIONS FROM THIS EPISODE Bill's Natural Dog Company https://naturaldog.com/ Acquisitions Anonymous podcast https://www.acquanon.com/  Join the list for Main Street Summit https://www.mainstreetsummit.com/ Read the Messy Marketplace (or go to episode 1 of the Permanent Podcast feed to listen) https://www.permanentequity.com/the-messy-marketplace   CONNECT Bill on twitter https://twitter.com/BillDA  Bill on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/billda/ Brent on twitter https://twitter.com/BrentBeshore Brent on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentbeshore  Visit https://www.permanentequity.com/ for more Sign up for our weekly newsletter for operators, Permanent Playbook: https://www.permanentequity.com/newsletter  Sign up for a new daily newsletter from Tim Hanson, Unqualified Opinions: https://www.permanentequity.com/unqualified-opinions    TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Bill Fills Dead Air Time 4:48 HoldCos: A Mailbox Full of Money? 11:19 Letting Go of the HoldCo 16:14 Hitting Rock Bottom & Losing the Plot 25:01 How to Build a Holdco the Right Way 31:54 From HoldCo to OneCo 34:55 When to Go Fast vs. When to Be Patient 41:30 Don't Buy a Business That's Too Small 47:50 Handling Layoffs 52:12 Being Vulnerable: Handling Anxiety & Loss 1:08:26 The Additive Effect of Subtracting  1:15:12 Lightning Round: Advice for Small Business Owners & Operators 1:16:16 Lightning Round: Hiring 1:16:38 Lightning Round: Marketing Doesn't Work 1:18:24 Lightning Round: When to Take on Capital 1:19:13 Lightning Round: How to Sell a Company 1:21:14 Lightning Round: How Much Debt is too Much? 1:21:50 Lightning Round: Stop Using Slack 1:23:51 Lightning Round: Cutting Costs While Increasing Quality 1:24:28 Lightning Round: AI is the Singularity 1:32:26 Advice for Your 25-Year-Old Self: Be Deliberate 1:34:28 Why Brent Can't Sleep: Main Street Summit   EPISODE CREDITS Produced by David Cover  Additional editing & mastering by Ryan Lipman Intro music by David Cover, Andy Freeman, Rhett Johnson, & Andrew Luley Outro music by Jees Guy   WE STEWARD COMPANIES THAT CARE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT  Visit https://www.permanentequity.com/ for more Sign up for Permanent Playbook, our newsletter for operators in the field: https://www.permanentequity.com/newsletter  Sign up for Unqualified Opinions, a new daily newsletter from our very own Tim Hanson: https://www.permanentequity.com/unqualified-opinions  Check out our other podcast episodes here: https://www.permanentequity.com/audio    LEGAL DISCLAIMER This podcast is made available solely for educational purposes, and the information presented here does not constitute investment, legal, tax or other professional advice, and should not be construed as an offering of advisory services, or as a solicitation to buy, an offer to sell, or a recommendation of any securities or other financial instruments. The thoughts and opinions expressed by or through this podcast are those of the individual guests and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Permanent Equity. The discussion on this podcast of any entity, product or service does not imply an endorsement thereof, and the guests may have a financial interest, whether through investment or otherwise, in one or more of any such entities, products or services. This podcast is presented by Permanent Equity and may not be copied, reproduced, republished or posted, in any form, without its express written consent.  

We'd appreciate you filling out our audience survey, so we can continuously work on providing relevant content to our listeners. Responses received by 05/11/23 will be entered in a drawing for $500 cash.http://www.thefortpod.com/surveyBill D'Alessandro is the Founder and CEO of Elements Brands, one of the original holding companies for direct-to-consumer brands. He has acquired or founded more than a dozen businesses with over $100M of revenue and has realized seven exits in both DTC and SaaS. Bill is also the co-host of the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast.On this episode Chris & Bill discuss:➡️ Lessons learned from Element Brands and owning 6 businesses➡️ His pivot to owning Natural Dog Company and why focus is powerful➡️ How to decide between marketing & product innovation➡️ Insights on the pet industry and why it's hugeKey Takeaways:(3:13) - What was your strategy in 2016 and why have you totally flipped on it in 2023?(4:57) - DTC is not a business model(6:14) - Prioritizing marketing over product innovation(10:36) - Was there ever a time when you thought this massive ad spend was unsustainable?(12:23) - What's happened in the past 18 months since Apple changed its advertising privacy model?(14:33) - Putting brands on autopilot(16:22) - When did you start to realize only one of your eight brands was worth working on?(19:53) - How has your life changed after consolidating your focus?(22:14) - Is there a way to make the Aggregator model work?(25:46) - How big is the pet industry and where is its potential?(26:59) - What are you going to do with this business now that you're solely focused on the one instead of 8?(30:14) - Why have you chosen to go into retail?(33:18) - How do you get your product into 4-5k stores?(35:55) - Is there any brand with leverage over Walmart?(36:54) - What could make this move into retail go wrong?(39:35) - What's your approach to product packaging and design?(42:45) - How did you arrive at the decision to launch 12-16 new products this year and how do you decide what they'll be?(46:32) - What needs to happen in order to get into Walmart and Target?(48:59) - Would you get a higher valuation on your company if you're in Walmart/Target and successful there?(49:46) - What has podcasting done for you?Additional Resources

Running an eCommerce business can be a wild ride, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows. One major hurdle that many online store owners face is figuring out how to finance their businesses. So today, I have Bill D'Alessandro, perpetual repeat guest and Founder and CEO at Elements Brands, joining the show again to dive into financing and—more specifically—revenue-based loans, also known as merchant cash advances. In the episode, Bill drops some serious knowledge bombs about financing your business and the importance of going into it with your eyes wide open and knowing all of your options. Listen in to hear why he's not a fan of revenue-based loans, the alternatives to look at, and tools for planning your cash flow to avoid falling into the debt cycle in the first place. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3xLswMh Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Michael Girdley (@Girdley) and Bill D'Alessandro talk about an aircraft service center and flight training school. Why are we SO excited about hobbyists as a customer base? What is needed to succeed in this business? The business has some exciting numbers for anybody interested in a lifestyle-type business in this space. Company:   Aircraft Service Center and Flight Training School, $2.5M list priceLocation:   New JerseyStated Financials:   Annual Revenue $ 2,322,000Asking Price:   $ 2,450,000-----Thanks to our sponsors!CloudBookkeeping offers adaptable solutions to businesses that want to focus on growth with a “client service first” approach. They offer a full suite of accounting services, including sophisticated reporting, QuickBooks software solutions, and full-service payroll options.-----Show Notes:(00:00) - Introduction(00:41) - Our Sponsor is CloudBookkeeping.com(02:08) - Is Bill finally okay after his anger from the last episode?(04:13) - Deal & financials: Aircraft Service Center and Flight Training School(07:31) - What pieces of information are worth noting?(11:23) - Why do you need to love the line of business for this deal?(12:56) - Buyer-business fit: The owner has been in the aircraft business for decades(16:21) - Why do they have a gravy train as a marketing funnel?(16:47) - What is so particular about intense hobbyists as a customer base?(19:51) - What do we forecast for this industry's future?(21:15) - Why is this such a fantastic lifestyle business?-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#162 - Cleaning up crime scenes for big money! #161 - How to spot red flags in eCommerce listings?#160 - Should we buy this drag strip... for the land?#159 - Make Millions Moving Dirt in Michigan#158 - $1.2mm revenue Court Maintenance Company for Sale!#157 - Make a $1mm/yr with a Language School Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.

Michael Girdley (@Girdley) and Bill D'Alessandro talk about an aircraft service center and flight training school. Why are we SO excited about hobbyists as a customer base? What is needed to succeed in this business? The business has some exciting numbers for anybody interested in a lifestyle-type business in this space. Company:   Aircraft Service Center and Flight Training School, $2.5M list priceLocation:   New JerseyStated Financials:   Annual Revenue $ 2,322,000Asking Price:   $ 2,450,000-----Thanks to our sponsors!CloudBookkeeping offers adaptable solutions to businesses that want to focus on growth with a “client service first” approach. They offer a full suite of accounting services, including sophisticated reporting, QuickBooks software solutions, and full-service payroll options.-----Show Notes:(00:00) - Introduction(00:41) - Our Sponsor is CloudBookkeeping.com(02:08) - Is Bill finally okay after his anger from the last episode?(04:13) - Deal & financials: Aircraft Service Center and Flight Training School(07:31) - What pieces of information are worth noting?(11:23) - Why do you need to love the line of business for this deal?(12:56) - Buyer-business fit: The owner has been in the aircraft business for decades(16:21) - Why do they have a gravy train as a marketing funnel?(16:47) - What is so particular about intense hobbyists as a customer base?(19:51) - What do we forecast for this industry's future?(21:15) - Why is this such a fantastic lifestyle business?-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#162 - Cleaning up crime scenes for big money! #161 - How to spot red flags in eCommerce listings?#160 - Should we buy this drag strip... for the land?#159 - Make Millions Moving Dirt in Michigan#158 - $1.2mm revenue Court Maintenance Company for Sale!#157 - Make a $1mm/yr with a Language School Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.

Bill D'Alessandro is back! A couple months ago, Bill wrote a post that blew up in the Ecommerce Fuel forums titled "This Is An Intervention: Stop Taking Fixed Fee Loans" where he explained why the quick & easy revenue-based loans from folks like Wayflyer, ClearCo, and Shopify Capital are so much worse than they look. I'll be honest: I myself realized how poorly I had been thinking about this kind of debt, and I knew I needed to have Bill back on the show to explain more to the rest of us, especially after his episode on contribution margin had been one of my most popular ever. Bill is the CEO of Elements Brands, has a finance degree, and has personally borrowed millions of dollars of debt and equity to finance his businesses. He knows what he's talking about and is an incredible guide to revenue-based ("fixed fee") loans, credit cards, asset-based loans, SBA loans, and more. It's a great chance for you to think through the financial stack at the center of your business. Want to take Bill up on his offer to audit your financial stack? Reach out to him by heading to https://billda.com/debt. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [2:44] Bill's e-commerce debt background [3:33] Stop taking predatory, fixed fee loans [8:05] Interest rate calculation [13:35] Bill's opinion on when to take fixed fee loans [15:19] Good finance tech start for businesses [19:46] The importance of the "personal guarantee" [22:52] The pluses & minuses of Parker cards [28:38] Key advice about loans [39:18] Bill's e-commerce plans & vision Read Bill's full article (and work with him on your financial stack!) by clicking here. Follow Bill on Twitter at @BillDA. Listen to Bill's podcast, Acquisitions Anonymous on Apple or Spotify. Follow Andrew on Twitter: @andrewjfaris Email Andrew: podcast@ajfgrowth.com Work with Andrew: www.ajfgrowth.com Music Intro: "Tell Me Mama" by The Devious Means Music Outro: "Rusty Little Scissors" by The Devious Means

It is the most wonderful time of the year! Not only is it a time to get together with friends and family and enjoy each other's company, but it's also the time of year when Bill D'Alessandro and I look back on our predictions from a year ago, see where we were massively off, and make even more predictions for the coming year. So get comfortable, grab your holiday favorite drink, and get ready to see how egregious our predictions were from last year, and speculate with us on what 2023 will bring. We'll be talking about where we think the markets will be headed, what we expect to see from the labor market and domestic sourcing, and what's up with Shopify in the coming year. We also share our AI-related predictions for the new year and chat about some really cool tools that may just change how we all run and manage our businesses. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3FsNgMf Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Bill D'Alessandro is the founder and CEO of Elements Brands, an aggregator that includes the rapidly growing Natural Dog Co. And while it's always too much to talk about "the secret" to someone's success, it's not an accident that Bill's success comes alongside his obsession with tracking & optimizing for contribution margin. In this episode we start by defining "contribution margin," talk about why and how Bill's team ruthlessly reports on it, and how it helps you get away from the deceiving ubiquity of revenue metrics. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [1:39] Bill's personal background [3:24] About Natural Dog Co. [4:51] What do you mean by contribution margin? [9:31] Contribution margin metrics [9:24] Peet's climate tech funding opinion [12:24] What Bill's digital marketers report on: contribution margin vs revenue [13:45] How do you report contribution margin in the organization? [18:40] Revenue is not how you value a business! [20:40] LTV impact in the Facebook dashboard [22:12] Other operational opportunities for contribution margin conversation in the business [26:37] Why are you making a move to 3PL? Places to follow up with Bill: Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillDA Bill's Podcast: Acquisitions Anonymous (Apple, Spotify) Work with Bill: www.elementsbrands.com Places to follow up with me: Follow me on Twitter: @andrewjfaris Email me: podcast@ajfgrowth.com Work with me: www.ajfgrowth.com Intro Music: "Tell Me Mama" by The Devious Means Outro Music: "Rusty Little Scissors" by The Devious Means

What is the future of Amazon? That's what we're diving into today with Bill D'Alessandro of ElementsBrands.com. Bill is a repeat guest on the show and someone who has very different views on the current—and future—state of Amazon. Listen in as we debate whether Amazon is dying like some believe, whether brands should be leaving the platform for greener pastures, and Amazon's biggest weakness. Whether you sell on Amazon or not, the behemoth is hard to ignore if you're in eCommerce, so this is an episode you won't want to miss! You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3F8izgN Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

We were thrilled to hold eCommerceFuel Live at Chesapeake Bay, a place rich in history and great food. This year was especially unique, as it was the first large live event we have held since the beginning of the pandemic, and coming back together as a community was very rewarding. In this episode, we will be reviewing everything that happened during eCF Live. To help us discuss this is Bill D'Alessandro, CEO of Elements Brands. Listen in as Bill and I share how this year's event was different from the eCF Live events we have had in the past, as well as the importance of making time to do the things that make you happy. You will learn where growing companies often fail, how to build a rich company culture, and how to effectively sort your social media accounts by engagement levels to create a sales funnel. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3xckqx1  Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

There's running a business, and then there's running a business when you have small kids, which is a totally different ballgame—and one that I'm talking about today with my good friend, Bill D'Alessandro. Bill is right in the thick of it with this two-year-old and five-month-old, and we're going to be keeping it real and dishing about the struggles of trying to balance parenthood and entrepreneurship. Listen in as we give our honest thoughts on what it's like trying to run a business while raising young kids, how to maintain some level of productivity, and how to find a balance between family and business that works for you. We also share one of the best investments that you can make to balance work and family life, as well as some of the things anyone who has kids (but especially entrepreneurs!) should consider doing financially for their children while they're young.  You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3pX83Ai Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Elements Brands CEO Bill D'Alessandro returns to chat with Mike about his recent (and unfortunate) experience with an Amazon aggregator who bought his business.   For many entrepreneurs, selling a business can be an even bigger achievement than starting one. While some luck out with finding honest-to-goodness buyers of their business, others get caught up in less favorable situations.   Bill D'Alessandro, founder and CEO of Elements Brands, is no amateur when it comes to selling businesses with 10 years of experience in Mergers and Acquisitions. But even a man of experience like him isn't exempt from the occasional rotten buyer.   In this episode, Bill shares in painstaking detail the dodgy deal he had to face with an Amazon aggregator who bought the business he was divesting. From how the deal started and ended to valuable takeaways of the event, Bill's story is certainly one you want to listen to.   Timestamps:  How the deal with the shady Amazon aggregator started - 4:18 The first red flag - 7:32 Tips on how to protect yourself as a seller during a negotiation - 13:56 Continuation of Bill's story - 22:30 Recap and some tips from Mike and Bill on how to navigate a fishy deal - 41:12   That's it for this week's EcomCrew Podcast. As always, it's a pleasure to have Bill on the show. It's not exactly the most inspiring story to tell, but it's an equally important one nonetheless.   If you enjoyed this week's episode, feel free to leave us a review over on iTunes. Happy selling and we'll see you in the next one!

Thanks to the pandemic, the last two years have seen incredible growth and change for the eCommerce space. Some of which we predicted, and some things seem to have come completely out of nowhere. As we near the end of the year, it's always fun to look back at the predictions we made, as well as what we believe we can expect to see in the coming year. To help us reflect on these predictions is Bill D'Alessandro, CEO of ElementsBrands.com. Will Facebook advertising be fixed by the end of next year? Will there be a new web browser on the horizon? Could this be the largest year we have ever seen for eCommerce M&A? Tune in as we share our thoughts on these questions and more. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3y29nF9  Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Bill D'Alessandro is the Founder / CEO at Elements Brands, a parent brand that owns and acquires e-commerce companies. Bill founded Elements Brands in 2010 and has scaled to 8 figures of revenue, 50+ employees, and 51,000 square feet of office/warehouse. Elements Brands is vertically integrated and they own and operate all their brands. They have a team of in-house experts in digital marketing, branding, wholesale sales, customer retention, and financial analysis. Their supply chain and logistics teams manufacture and ship thousands of orders each day to customers around the world. On this episode, Chris and Bill discuss Elements Brands and why Bill chose vertical integration, with a rabbit hole into how that has played out so well for them given the current supply chain challenges facing the globe. They have a great discussion on the 'Amazon Seller' model and where that plays a role in the companies Bill looks at purchasing. They break down Bill's strategy when acquiring brands and what that process is like for the seller. They also discuss how Bill landed on Petcare and skincare for his core products, Culture Index, digital marketing, and more. Enjoy! Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_ekX3rEf4iY Follow Chris on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/FortWorthChris Learn more about Chris Powers and Fort Capital: www.FortCapitalLP.com Follow Chris on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ (02:20) - Bill's Background and Career  (04:02) - How did reading 4 Hour Work Week impact you? (06:04) - Building KP Elements (08:07) - What is Elements Brands and how is it structured? (09:51) - Element's Berkshire Hathaway Angle (10:25) - What's your day-to-day focus as CEO? (11:13) - Why did you choose to pursue vertical integration? (12:51) - Why do more folks not do vertical integration? (15:13) - How did you land on skincare and petcare as your core products? (18:15) - Discussion On The ‘Amazon Seller' Model (25:49) - Bill's Process When Buying Businesses and His Ownership Strategy (27:12) - Valuing the Business (30:57) - Are you ever paying a premium for a great brand? (32:20) - How does your deal flow operate? (33:56) - What happens from the initial verbal agreement to the day you own the business? (36:00) - The Financials Side of Deals (38:26) - Organizational Structures (39:55) - Elements' Employee Makeup (43:10) - Ingesting The Acquired Companies Teams (43:48) -  Culture Index (46:34) - What's going on with Facebook and Apple and online advertising? (57:50) - How many of your 60 people are Marketing & SEO? (59:50) - How are you thinking about our current supply chain issues? (1:04:03) - Is there a solution on the horizon in terms of having the ports operate longer hours? (1:07:39) - What's your end goal for Elements Brands? (1:09:54) - What do most people get wrong when starting their first product? (1:11:43) - Is there a way to start sales before putting a lot of advertising dollars at risk? (1:13:20) - Teaching Entrepreneurship Through Action (1:15:28) - What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? (1:16:11) - Is there a book you would recommend? Plain Talk by Ken Iverson (1:18:36) - How can people reach you or Elements Brands? Bill's Personal Website Elements Brands Bill on Twitter The FORT is produced by Johnny Peterson & Straight Up Podcasts

In this episode of The Nick Huber Show, I was invited to sit down with the guys from Acquisitions Anonymous run by great entrepreneurs, in their podcast, Michael Girdley, Mills Snell, and Bill D'Alessandro talk about and break down businesses that are for sale, evaluating if they're a good investment or not. We tackle a self-storage facility deal in this episode and discuss if it's a yay or a nay.   Find out more how much is a storage facility worth in this episode!   Show notes: https://sweatystartup.com/the-nick-huber-show/ Special thanks to the sponsor: https://junipersquare.com

It's been a rough year for many of us. Shipping rates have gone through the roof, supplier prices are increasing, and margins are getting tighter. My good friend and regular guest Bill D'Alessandro joins me today to discuss one piece of the profitability puzzle: the sad world of supplier price increases. We're diving into what's been going on in the world with supplier price increases, if the levels we're hearing about are in line with what the official numbers say, and whether or not you can expect even more price increases in the near future. We're also looking at different ways you can protect your business and your personal investments, and mitigate price increases without impacting your sales and profitability. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3kGMAcS Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

This is Mike and welcome to Episode 410 of the EcomCrew Podcast!   The holidays are right around the corner and we're still wrestling with this perfect storm of supply chain issues for ecommerce sellers.    My guest today is Bill D'Alessandro, who is one of the best people to talk to on how to deal with these longer lead times, higher costs, and unpredictability going into Q4.   Bill is the CEO of Elements Brands, an ecommerce rollup company that specializes in buying and scaling consumer products brands.   Bill does a lot of stuff in ecommerce, which is why we're planning to have him on more regularly to add a lot of value to our listeners.   In this episode, we'll talk about:  The oncoming B2B logistics challenges Ecommerce inflation Why safety stock can give you a leg up going into Q4 Where to source cash from to beef up your inventory Defending your business against the current shipping crisis   Despite all these challenges we're all facing, now seems like a great time to be selling an ecommerce business.    We're inviting you to a free public webinar about Selling Your Business for Top Dollar, where we'll go over the entire process of selling an FBA business.

In this episode of The Sweaty Startup, I was invited to sit down with the guys from Acquisitions Anonymous. It is run by Michael Girdley, Mills Snell, and Bill D'Alessandro. All are great entrepreneurs, and their podcast talks and breaks down business' deals anonymously that are for sale and evaluate if it's a good investment or not. We tackle two exciting deals today, a $900k Moving and Storage Company & a $500k Rural Mini-Storage. Find out more how to analyze businesses for sale in this episode! Check the show notes here! https://sweatystartup.com/the-sweaty-startup/ Special thanks to the sponsor: https://supportshepherd.com  

It's been seven full months since we closed the deal on an exciting new ecommerce business. Be sure to check out these episodes to learn how we closed the deal on this new venture:     Episode 366: Mike's Exciting New Business Episode 381: How Mike Is Growing His New Business     Today, I thought I'd give you guys a little sneak peek on how things are going, and why success in ecommerce rarely ever happens overnight.    Joining me for this episode is none other than one of my partners in this venture, Bill D'Alessandro. We'll be talking about how we're maintaining quality across multiple teams, why implementing changes gradually is giving us better results, and what our long-term goals are for this business.   Whether you're looking to sell, buy, or are in the trenches of scaling your online business, I'm sure you'll find a lot of value in this episode.    If you're interested in the general manager spot we'll be offering as part of our goals for this business, shoot me an email over on support@ecomcrew.com.    On the topic of growing an ecommerce business, we've recently developed a full-length Amazon FBA For Beginners course tailored to those who want to avoid fatal rookie mistakes when starting an FBA business.    It launches very soon, but we're offering a discounted early access for those who sign up to our waiting list. Head over to ecomcrew.com/fbawaitlist to register.    As always, leave us a review over on iTunes if you enjoyed this episode. Happy selling, and we'll talk to you soon!

This week, Victor and I spoke with Bill D'Alessandro about buying, building, and operating great e-commerce brands. Bill is the founder and CEO of Elements Brands and in our conversation, we covered the following topics: - How to source a contract manufacturer as a CPG business - How to apply an 80/20 approach to your business - How Elements Brands is organized - How to know if a company has an actual 'brand' - Building an e-commerce brand - How to strategically position a brand by price and quality --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-circle-of-competence/support

In just a few short years Bill D transitioned from investment banker to single brand eCommerce store owner, to now owning and leading a portfolio of 10 eComm brands through his company, Elements Brands.    I wanted to pick Bill's brain - one, because he's just wicked smart, but, two, because I think all eCommerce store owners could benefit from his perspective. In this power-house episode we uncover:  How Bill went from investment banker to owning a portfolio of growing eCommerce brands.   What Bill looks for when he's considering buying an eCommerce business (there are lessons here for you, whether you're looking to sell right now or not). Why diversity of traffic is so important and what to consider here. What's the metric to rule all metrics? No, it's not conversion rate, or AOV, or Return on Ad Spend. (Hint: you're probably ignoring it or not calculating it the way you should.) Why profits are sanity and revenue is vanity. How well document processes build value now and later. Plus much, much more!

It's a jungle out there. Today we invite you to reflect on the state of the internet world we live in as entrepreneurs and the impact e-commerce can have on hundreds of thousands of people. One of the most interesting trends we are seeing in the arena is the service companies popping up to support the thousands of Amazon merchants out there. Today's guest, who quickly turned his back on a career in engineering in his twenties, started dabbling in Amazon sales until he came up with the idea for Jungle Scout just before taking off on a three-year world tour. He talks to us about how he spent those years living the true entrepreneur experience while actually building his now 100 person company. Jungle Scout searches, captures, analyzes and refines billions of data points from Amazon to deliver the most accurate data in the industry. His 200,000 plus customers were all clearly in need of his merchant scaling tools. Jungle Scout also offers numerous free educational resources to give young entrepreneurs everything they need to succeed. Episode Highlights: How Greg convinced his wife to give everything up to travel the world. The hesitation, the results, and the payoff of that path. The employee structure of Jungle Scout. The company's original design and what it has evolved to today. Stories that stand out as models of success for Jungle Scout. The Five Minute Pitch – what it is and how it's helping entrepreneurs succeed. How the Jungle Scout scholarship program is motivating young entrepreneurs. What's coming up for Jungle Scout. The company's new initiatives for bringing ease into scouting suppliers and merchandise. How his products have created friction with people in the business but also brought them in as clients. Transcription: Mark: Alright allow me to relax philosophically here for just a minute and I invite you to reflect on just how impactful our current era is with the Internet. Back at Traffic & Conversion in February, I actually hear Richard Branson talk about what they would do to get attention and PR; crazy stunts, parachuting into places and doing these incredible things just to be able to impact large volumes of people. Well as online entrepreneurs we have that at our fingertips and can do that often from our bedrooms just by putting up a good marketing campaign online. But we have the ability to impact thousands of lives and have this network effect as well of these thousands of lives impacting other people's lives. And I looked at where we're at with the Internet today and I think one of the most influential areas are all the service companies that are popping up and SaaS companies popping up to service the Amazon merchants that are out there. And I'd say by far one of the leaders of the pack is Jungle Scout. They—most of everybody that is in the Amazon world, you know who Jungle Scout is. They're kind of ubiquitous with this idea of product research. Joe, you got to talk to Jungle Scout in this week's podcast. Joe: Yeah. Greg Mercer founded Jungle Scout just a few years ago; 4 ½, 5 years ago, an interesting story. Look we talked all about how he came up with a concept, even where he met his wife Lisa, how we started the business, travelled with his wife Lisa for 3 years overseas while growing Jungle Scout. He has only settled back in Austin for the last year and a half, and the size of the company. And then really it was about his entrepreneurial journey. And then we touched on some of the key features in Jungle Scout and some of the other things that Greg has done with his good fortune like scholarships that you can find on the Jungle Scout website and in the show notes here. You know being entrepreneurs and having an easier time impacting people one on one or directly is something that we know here at Quiet Light because we're fortunate enough to be in a situation where we do work one on one with most people. And we know what it means when they sell their business or buy a business and get to stay home and see their kids more. We talked about that a little bit with Greg and like most entrepreneurs he started Jungle Scout to make money. But now that he makes great money that relieves the stress, right? We all want to have money in our bank account to relieve the financial stress but the big thing that fills his cup is the impact that he's having on individual lives. And he gets to hear about that impact when he goes out to conferences and they have a booth like out at Prosper and people come up to him and say listen this is my story, this is how Jungle Scout changed my life. And Greg says quite honestly look it wasn't Jungle Scout; it was you, it was your effort, it was your risk, your reward. Jungle Scout was just a tool that you used. So he's very humble about that but a great guy. Just a good human and I think that there are 2 or 3 things that come out of this podcast. First and foremost you get to hear a great entrepreneur story. He didn't go to school for business yet here he is running a business with 100 the least. What it's like to travel all over the world with your wife? It's right for some people, it's wrong for others. And then just the good things that he's doing with Jungle Scout Scholars and then all the features that Jungle Scout has, and the scariest one. And folks you've got to listen all the way through because we talk more about it at the very end. This is not a pitch for Jungle Scout. It's more of a story of entrepreneurial success. But you can literally find—can I give this away Mark? Can we give it out, too much information; what do you think? Mark: Oh no it's a great tease so get to the end. Joe: You can find your favorite product on Amazon and then use the Jungle Scout tool to find out who the manufacturer is in China. It is scary. But like Greg said it doesn't mean you're going to be successful. We know that all great ideas don't achieve success. There's lots of motes around these great listings on Amazon so it's no guarantee of success even though you find them in [inaudible 00:05:10.9]. But, great podcast, great guy, looking for to get to know him over the years as well. Mark: So he's down in Austin, right? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: Is he going to come to our meet-up coming up at the end of May? Joe: Yes he is. Mark: And when and where is that meet-up? For anyone in the Austin area or who has always wanted to go to Austin area, this might be an awesome opportunity to meet Joe. I probably won't be there. Amanda will be there as well and some really, really good people are showing up to this as well. Joe: Yeah everybody that we've worked with over the years that's down in Austin are getting an invite and hopefully [inaudible 00:05:44.1] groups is going to go. Actually, one person replied today and said thanks for inviting all my friends. It's like you're throwing a party for my friends. I appreciate it. It was pretty funny. And that was RJ at 101. It's going to be May 29th at Oasis at Lake Travis from 6 to 9 pm and it's just drinks nor dares and coming out with friends. Mark: Awesome, and we're going to have a page up on the Quiet Light Brokerage website. We're going to make sure it's included in the e-mails that get sent out. And also on the show notes for this podcast so that you can RSVP if you do want to attend. We would love to see, we'd love to host it for the night; bring a friend, bring lots of friends. It should be a few hours of just really good networking and getting to know some really key players in the space. So please do show up. But now let's get to the good stuff [inaudible 00:06:27.7] Joe: Let's do it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe here at Quiet Light Brokerage and today we've got another great guest on the Quiet Light Podcast. His name is Greg Mercer. Greg, how are you doing today? Greg: Joe I'm doing fantastic. Thank you very much for having me on and it's going to be fun to talk to you. Joe: Founder of Jungle Scout and many other things; a very impressive guy at a very young age. I just looked at your LinkedIn profile, listened to a couple of things on YouTube, and I saw your wife talking about you as well which was all positive by the way. Greg: Oh, that's good to hear. Joe: Well you know the drill, we don't have a whole lot of fancy introductions. So for those that don't know you and don't know the Jungle Scouts can you give a little bit of background on yourself and the business itself? Greg: I'd be happy to. So it's probably most relevant to rewind back to my college days real quick. I went to school to be a civil engineer and graduated. I got a job working as a civil engineer and I just didn't like it at all. I want to become an entrepreneur so I tried a number of different things. But the 1st thing I had a little bit of success with was selling physical products on Amazon. And that's ultimately what led me to quit my job. I was able to kind of replace my income by doing that. My wife and I actually at that point sold all our belongings and started traveling around the world and living out at Air B&B's and running our business from there. And one thing led to another and I—the biggest problem that I had with scaling my Amazon business was finding new products to sell. So I had a number of products up, some of them are doing really well, some weren't doing really well. I didn't really know why some were doing well and some weren't. And what it came down to was the amount of demand there was on Amazon for these products. So being kind of an engineer by background and a very data driven person, I was able to create some algorithms to estimate how well all products on Amazon sell. And that was ultimately how Jungle Scout got started. So I'd never started a software company before but I 1st built a simple extension. I was like no one will probably ever buy this thing but if nothing else I can just use it for myself. And it turns out we were able to get people to buy it because if you fast forward all the way today there's about roughly 100 people that work in Jungle Scout. We have over 200,000 customers so it's grown quite a bit since the 1st day when I didn't think anyone would buy it. Joe: That is absolutely crazy; 100 employees and did you say, 200,000 customers? Greg: Yup over 200,000. Joe: That's amazing. So I want to talk about a few things, I want to talk about you travelled the world with your wife while starting Jungle Scout so that's probably the most important thing. I love the fact that you went to school for civil engineering and then took a completely different path in the sense as an entrepreneur. But then you were able to start it as an entrepreneur while traveling the world and with your wife of all things. And then I want to talk a little bit about what Jungle Scout does and a couple of the other things that you're doing because of the good fortune you've had in the business through Jungle Scout. But let's get personal for a minute. I mean you are what 30, 31 years old I'm guessing? It looks like— Greg: 31. Joe: Right. So you've been at this for a long time. Did you meet your wife in college? Greg: I did actually so yeah we both went to school at Auburn and that's how we met. Joe: Amazing. And she actually was willing to sell everything and travel the world with you or was it her idea to do that? Greg: I think it was my idea. I had read Tim Ferris' book 4-Hour Workweek and I was like well this is pretty cool. Instead of living here we could go live in all these cool exotic places in much less money. And so I was like Elizabeth we should go and try this. And she was like yeah you're an idiot. We're not doing that. But I kept on bringing it up over the months and she's always really enjoyed travel. I think her biggest hesitation at the time was she was working for Target and was on a pretty fast crew path. And I think that's where she envisioned her career moving forward. So I think that was her biggest hesitation. It was like man I'm kind of going to give up my career a little bit, or at least put it on hold if we're going to do this for a year or 2 or 3 years or whatever. So I think that was her biggest hesitation but she's like you only live once let's go for it. And yeah we both ended up loving it. We did it for 3 whole years so we both ended up loving it a lot. Joe: And you launched Scott but just before you took off for a while you were over in Southeast Asia? Greg: Yeah it was actually just before I took off. I like the week before we took off. Joe: And how many years ago was that? Greg: That was is January of 2015, so 4 ½ years ago. Joe: So really you've run the business for the 1st 3 years of its existence by traveling. Greg: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Now the 100 employees that you have are they mostly remote, mostly they're in Austin, whereabouts in the world are they? Greg: When we started the company it was fully remote. I was traveling around so I didn't have an office to hire this people in. So we are fully remote. In January of 2018 is when I moved to Austin. That's where I live now. Since then we've been doing a lot of our hiring in Austin. So I think about maybe 40 of the people are in Austin now and the rest of the team is either remote. And then we also have an office in Vancouver. And then we opened up an office in Shenzhen in China about 6 months ago. So some of the team is there now. Joe: Amazing. So we'll talk about what some of those offices do for Jungle Scout and the subscribers in a bit. Now that you've gone through college, marriage, travelled the world, entrepreneur, you worked with directly and indirectly and inspire a lot of young entrepreneurs all over the world. Is selling everything, packing up, and traveling the world something you would say you got to do to that young man or woman that has the opportunity and is not tied down to things of this nature? Greg: You know I'd say it's not for everyone. And for me, it'll probably be like one of the most fond memories of my whole life. I kind of go in through a period. I think I learned a ton about myself. I met a lot of really interesting people. I learned a lot about different cultures. I think we visited roughly 30 different countries. We would spend about a month sometimes 2 months in each country. So when you spend like a month or 2 somewhere sometimes a little longer but you get like a pretty good sense of just kind of like what day to day life is and what the culture is really about much more than like on a weeklong vacation. So during that, I got to just learn a ton about all these different countries, fascinating things that a lot of countries do like very well. I was able to bring back individual things. I think certain countries do very well so that was really cool. So I'd say it's definitely not for everyone. I think to a lot of people it's very stressful. You're moving all around the world and you don't have any kind of—or we didn't have any kind of a home base. So with all that being said it's definitely for everyone. But if you're interested in it and that seems like something that you'd enjoy I would definitely recommend for you to try. Joe: Is there a particular book that you would have and go to? Is it Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek or is there a great travel one? Greg: Probably. Joe: Probably; okay. Greg: Yeah I'll probably just do the Tim Ferris' 4-Hour Workweek. It's a little bit outdated now. I think it was written over a decade ago now but the spirit is still the same. Joe: I'm reading one of his books now and I'm looking around like my office here. I don't see it but it's the tools to tighten switches. It is one giant book. The great stuff all from the podcast off from those he's taken over the years and a lot of the 4-Hour Workweek stuff as well. It's funny we've had Bill D'Alessandro on the podcast. Do you know who Bill is? Greg: The name rings a bell. Joe: He's from South Charlotte and he runs a consumer products group down at Charlotte. He does a lot of speaking, very close friends with Andrew Youderian from eCommerceFuel and Bill had that same 4-Hour Workweek life at one point and do the same thing working from a beach in Southeast Asia or somewhere. And we talked about this on the podcast now he has staff, an office, a warehouse; in many ways just like you. And he finds that he actually has more freedom now than before because he's got people that can actually do everything for him instead of having virtual assistants that he has to check in with every day. Greg: Right. Joe: So it is not for everyone like you say but certainly something to explore. It's not for me and my wife. I was in your shoes once upon a time when I was living in the frigid cold of Portland Maine for those folks that are listening out from Portland Maine. And this is back in the day when I heard a commercial for GoToMeeting.com I'm like what? What is that? And I went across the hall—I signed up for a free trial. I went across the hall to my other office and log in get the free thing and then go to my PC is what it was. It was a derivative of that. And I log into my PC from across the hall, this is 2nd nature now but I was amazed. I was like this is incredible. I went home and I told Christiana and said hey we're going to Florida for the winter. And she said we are not, you're an idiot. [inaudible 00:15:35.1] we did it for 5 years and then we got the hell out of Maine because it was too cold. Sorry for those folks that are still there. Were in North Carolina now and do love it. But this isn't about me it's about Greg Mercer and Jungle Scout. So let's talk about Jungle Scout and what it does. I know what it does. I've used it a little bit in the past. I know a lot of clients that bought and sold business with Quiet Light have used it. So can you just touch on what it does—let's talk about the progression of it; what it originally did and what it's evolved to today. Greg: Yeah. That's a good way to frame it. So it started out as just a Chrome extension. So most of the listeners are probably familiar with Chrome extensions which is a little add on that you install into your Chrome browser. And what it did is when you were visiting Amazon and you were on the listing or on a search page, you'd click this little Chrome extension and you'd see a little pop up. And on that pop up there was a number of different pieces of data. But the one that people care about the most is the estimated sales data. So that's what I was talking earlier; developing these algorithms that can estimate how well any product on Amazon is selling. Back then it was pretty poor accuracy, today a pretty high degree of accuracy. So that's how it started. Shortly thereafter we launched a web application and the primary functionality in there was again to find good opportunities on Amazon or find out how well things were selling. And that's kind of been transitioning over the years. We now have keyword research functionality. We now have functionality to help you find high quality suppliers or factories. Actually launching in 2 weeks is functionality to help you launch your product on Amazon. And then by the end of the year, it's going to be everything to help you kind of like manage and optimize your Amazon business as well. So the way we like or our mission here at Jungle Scout is to really empower and inspire Amazon entrepreneurs with the tools and resources they need to be successful. So we're building all that into our software but then we also have just tons of free resources in education and a whole bunch of other stuff just to help people be more successful on Amazon. Joe: Yeah I've looked at some of that both on your website on LinkedIn on YouTube. You are all over the place. It's pretty impressive the reach that you've got and the folks that saying you are praising Scott Voelker is somebody we know in common does that well and does it all the time. I love the empower people approach and to fulfill their dreams not only the staff that you have but the people that used to program, the 200,000 or so subscribers that you have. A lot of people in your—let's call your world, I want to call you an influencer because I think that's what you are Greg. So in your world, a lot of folks say I've made X many millionaires. You've heard a lot of stories over the years of the way that the tools that Jungle Scout has and provides to people how it's changed their lives, can you think of anything or anyone that stands out and what an impact it had in terms of with their Amazon business and how it changed their lives? Greg: I can think of a whole bunch of stories. And actually, I was—I think the last time we saw each other was at Prosper Show. And going to conferences and stuff like that it's always a great chance that I talk to all these customers in real life. So like probably a dozen times throughout that 2 or 3 day conference whatever it is like someone came up to me very emotional a few different times in tears but like just telling me this life story about how they found Jungle Scout and how it helped them create this business. And that's like a really, really special thing to be a part of. I never would've thought that in a million years like starting this business that people would come up to me in tears being like—just telling a story about how they were at a really low spot or they hated their job or whatever else and especially starting the business is what changed their life. A lot of them kind of attribute or say like Jungle Scout is kind of what caused that or encouraged them to do so or empowered them with the tools to have the confidence to do so. So yeah I mean there are tons of stories but I think most of them have like a ton of things in common, at least the ones that are most memorable are impactful to me. Joe: And it's the impactfulness I think that is most interesting. I think that with success and some of the things that we do, and you do, and Scott does and Mike Jackness another friend in common it's A. being a good human and helping people. There's peace of mind that you get with money in your bank account but there's pure joy, satisfaction, and other things that are so intangible by helping others and having people come up to you like that and say what you've created has changed my life, what you did changed my life, what you said, the way you helped me change my life and very impactful stuff. Greg: Yeah very much so and if you would have kind of—if I would really listen to this podcast not that long ago, just like 4 or 5 years ago, I would've been able to really like understand that at all. I don't think—at the time this seems like super shallow. But if I'm just being honest with myself, my only goal was just to make money. And the reason that was my goal at the time is like that's how I kind of like saw freedom. It's like okay I can quit my job or I have the security so I don't have to worry about it or I was always like—my 1st few years being an entrepreneur I was always so scared. [inaudible 00:20:59.8] like go back and get a job. Now it's like the most terrifying thing to me. So honestly—when I'm being honest with myself all I cared about was like the money at the time. And then kind of like as I felt like I was financially secure and kind of like no longer have those worries. That's when you're going to start asking yourself those questions like man what really does bring me the most happiness or like the most joy? And for me helping entrepreneurs is like very, very high on the list if not the top thing. So I would do these different case studies or free educational piece of content or whatever else. And people often say to me why are you giving all this away for free or why are you doing this it's only creating more competition for you or whatever else. And when I hear that it would just remind me of like yeah okay 5 years ago I would have said the same thing. I wouldn't have understood it but then I talk to these other people who are like successful entrepreneurs or whoever else and they're the ones who kind of like can understand that a lot better. It's like okay once you get to a certain point it's about okay what really brings you a lot of joy in your life, a lot of happiness and you want to optimize for doing those things. Joe: Yeah and that free content and everything you're giving it away for free but you're helping people and if you're in this for the long term it's going to come back around. And I think you're in this for a long term. Absolutely, yeah. Some of the things that you've done over the past are overflowing into other things that you have ventured into. And I want to talk about a couple of them. You and a group of friends have started something called the 5 Minute Pitch. I took a look at an episode or 2 of that. I've talked to Mike about it. I saw the one with Andrew from ECF on it. Do you want to talk about what 5 Minute Pitch is and how you're helping entrepreneurs? Greg: Yeah. So this kind of goes back to what brings me joy. And helping entrepreneurs is definitely one of them. It's also fun to hang out with other people I enjoy being around. So this was like a nice mixture of the 2. 5 Minute Pitch is shark tank style pitch competition where anyone with a small internet business who hasn't raised institutional money is eligible to pitch; so different people with all different types of businesses. Everything from a small software business to an e-commerce store to just developing a product and selling it through Instagram ads or whatever else. They pitch their business to myself and 4 other judges. And at the end of the season, the season actually ends in just a few weeks; we're giving the winner a $50,000 prize. They don't have to give up any equity in their business or anything. It's just prize money to help grow. So yeah it was a—we've only done one season of it. It was really fun and we'll probably do a few more seasons in the future. Joe: That's great now everybody that listens to the podcast knows that we don't pitch products and services. But I think that they all should look closely at Jungle Scout and 5 Minute Pitch. Take a look at it if you've got a product that's just taking off and you want to get more into the e-commerce world. Take a look maybe you could be on season 2. Who is Kevin O'Leary in the 5 Minute Pitch? Who's—and have you said you're dead to me to anybody? Greg: You know I've been watching some Shark Tank before thinking about these different lines and me and most of the other judges I think most of us are all just a little too nice to be Kevin O'Leary; which in results probably makes it a bit worse for television. But we're kind of just ourselves on the show. Joe: We had the founder of Happy Feet on the podcast a few weeks ago and he said that—and he did a deal with Robert on Shark Tank. Greg: Okay. Joe: He said that when you're on shark—and I've talked to 5 or 6 people over the years that have been on, when you're on Shark Tank when you finish up they make you go sit with a psychiatrist for an hour. You can't leave 10 minutes n. It's at least for an hour because they want to make sure that you're not going to kill yourself because of some of the things that some people have said about your business; so pretty rough. Alright so let's talk about something else I looked at before we jumped on the podcast here and that is the Jungle Scout scholar; JS scholar. What are you doing there man? Greg: Yeah. So it's just a scholarship program that we started just over the years I'm thinking of different ways and kind of like give back to the communities especially things I'm kind of passionate about. So that's one that we're doing. Each semester we're giving a scholarship to someone who's kind of like in business school or maybe computer sciences or something in that area who also has kind of like an entrepreneurial spirit. So it's pretty easy. Just create a little short video and submit it. Each semester we choose someone to give the scholarship to. And then with that also comes some mentorship for me to help them get their business off the ground. Joe: That's awesome. I mean it really is. A lot of people talk about giving back and helping others, young entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs themselves but you're actually doing it. How long have you been doing that program? Greg: I think we've given away 5 scholarships now so that would be about 2 ½ years I've been doing it. So it's cool. Joe: That's impressive. Now I'm going to talk to my 17 year old when we're off. He's applying to college next year and— Greg: Tell him to apply. Joe: He is not going to business school. He'll probably be an engineer or maybe an art student, who knows we're still working that stuff out. They change their minds a lot. They really do. Greg: Yeah I do too. Joe: I did as well. And we've actually had people that have put their kids through college and then bought them a business when they graduated which is very interesting. It's almost like they shouldn't have spent that's $200,000 on college [inaudible 00:26:30.4] part of the business but kids get to grow up a little bit. What's down the road, what's in the future for Jungle Scout? What things are you going to add that are going to help those 200,000 plus subscribers and fend off some of the competition down the road? Greg: Yeah we have quite a few product initiatives going on right now. We've really grown our product team a lot over the past 6, 12 months. We're going to really build out a lot of this stuff but most of it is around kind of what I spoke about earlier about right now the Jungle has got a tool at least that gets you up to until you launched your product on Amazon. We have a few other businesses that we have acquired or built over the years but we're kind of combining those into a singular tool. So by the end of the year, the additional functionality you can expect is like the stuff from those other tools. So helping you manage your business in our PPC and optimize it; all these different areas is kind of like what we're building in this year in 2019. Joe: That's great I know that finding a great PPC company is often hard for folks, managing products we've got folks that buy businesses and just—I am looking for a great company that managed the entire thing for me so that's fantastic. One of the biggest issues people have Greg as you probably know is sourcing great products. Is that down the road or is that part of Jungle Scout at all now? Greg: Yeah so we actually just released—so our newest feature is actually probably the one I'm most proud of called supplier database. And we actually just released this like a month ago. So it's pretty cool Joe. So we—I guess you've seen this too that a lot of people have a lot of problems finding high quality suppliers. And I did too. And I also found like this was one of the biggest pain points of our audience. And when I really started to get into this, it's like okay what's the problem here because there are tons of factories on Alibaba. That's how I used to find all my factories, just on Alibaba. There's tons of them and what it really comes down to is it wasn't like a shortage of factories or finding the factories or being able to communicate with them what it really came down to was finding a quality factory and vetting the factory before you did a production run. So like most of the horror stories that you hear are that the quality didn't come out as expected or every once in a while you hear a horror story about someone who a factory just ran off with someone's money or whatever else. And so there's a few ways I used to try to combat this; one was ordering a sample at a time. However, the problem is that when you're only ordering one unit, of course, they're going to give you the nicest one. They're going to like polish that one up extra but it's like oh can I do that on a production run of a 1,000 or 2,000 units and that's oftentimes not the case. So that was one way I tried to combat it. The other way was to get an inspection once the production run was finished. The problem there is when it didn't meet the quality sometimes you weren't able to get them to really fix what you wanted or is like sometimes a little bit too late at that point. So anyway the ways to try to combat it, the list was long but [inaudible 00:29:30.6] that effective. So what we did is we collected all of the US import trade data. So when you import something in the US you file some paperwork, yo give it to the government, and through this law called the Freedom of Information Act in the US, we're able to get access to that data. We put it into a database. We made it easy to filter and search through. And the way that it's able to solve this quality problem is you're able to find factories on there, you're able to see who their customers are, how often they import into the US, and how long they've been importing to US, the quantities; a number of different factors like that. So that's really cool but we kind of took it one step further by being able to essentially search for any Amazon product or any brand on Amazon in here and you could find out who are their factories. Joe: Holy cow, that's amazing and almost offensive in some ways. I would think if you're an Amazon seller and you're able to scrape through their manufacturers. That's pretty incredible. Greg: Yeah it's really incredible. It's like the old way for me of finding factories was when I found product idea I went to Alibaba, order a bunch of samples, whatever else. My new way of finding factories is like when I find something that I want to sell, and like sitting next to me right here is a little espresso. So if I want to sell espresso cups, I would just go to Amazon, I would search for espresso cups, I would see who gets the highest ratings. So who has like 5 out of 5 stars with a whole bunch of reviews and I just find their factory. Because then like right away then you know that there's a high quality factory. Joe: And you did that through sheer tenacity and hard work. What you're doing at the Jungle Scout is you're giving a tool to do it for them. Greg: Yeah. That what— Greg: And that's what I do now; I just who the factory is of the highest quality product on Amazon and I just contact them and I buy from them. So it's a much easier way to do it. Joe: Wow that's amazing; that's scary and amazing. Still, though I think for those that are going oh my God I'm never going to sell on Amazon because of that; it's that moat that you build around with thousands of reviews. I did a valuation today for something that is a fairly competitive it's in a very competitive niche but they've guy 17,000 reviews and the closest one has maybe like 1,100. That's an enormous gap in reviews. So there's a pretty big moat there. Greg: Right, and you know this Joe it's—when we launched this there was definitely—we probably got a dozen emails of like really pissed off people because now everyone can find out who their factory is. But you realize this because you deal with people who are buying business all the time but it takes a lot more than just knowing a factory to create a successful business, right? [inaudible 00:32:09.4] like a lot of other steps. Joe: A ton of a lot. Greg: So just because people can find out who your factory is that doesn't mean that they can just copy your whole business. There's a lot more steps to it than that so I wouldn't be too worried about it. We actually saw this exact same thing when I originally launched Jungle Scout because prior to Jungle Scout no one knew how well products on Amazon were selling. And now all of a sudden you could see how well every product on Amazon sold. So same thing I got like dozens of people emailing me pissed off because I was telling the whole world about how well their products were selling on Amazon. Joe: That was—they were pissed off shortly before they subscribed probably though, right? Greg: Right. So we've kind of seen a little bit of a similar thing with the supplier database. And then to your exact most people are like wow, well I'd rather have all this data and the whole world be able to know who my factory was than this type of thing not exist out there. Joe: Yeah I hate you but I'm going to give you my money every month because you created a great product. That's awesome; fantastic. I didn't know that it went to that depth and level where you can find the products manufacturer. That's incredible. Alright, Greg, we're running out of time, obviously, Jungle Scout is how do they find it? JungleScout.com? Greg: Yeah JungleScout.com if you're not familiar with it you can read up all about it on the website. If you're interested in just selling on Amazon too, I might be a little bit biased but I think we have like the best educational content out there and it's all for free. You can find all of it under the free resources section of the website. So any format you like learning in whether that's on audio or video or written it's all on there. There's a lot of—a bunch of end up guides. We do this thing called the Million Dollar Case Study where we launched 4 products from start to finish. You get to see the products and everything along the journey. So yeah that's tons of stuff on there if you just [inaudible 00:33:52.5] on Amazon too. Joe: Fantastic; a great educational tool and a great product. And for those out there with kids that are going to college in the next couple of years how do they get to the JS Scholarship or scholar site? Greg: JungleScout.com/jungle-scholar and you can find in the footer of the website too. Joe: I got it. I found it on LinkedIn. And then there's the 5 Minute Pitches well we'll put all this in the show notes as well. Greg Mercer, thank you very much for spending time with us. I know you're a very busy guy. I appreciate it. Greg: Thanks again. I'm glad I'm here. Take care. Links and Resources: Jungle Scout Jungle Scholar The 5 Minute Pitch

Bill D'Alessandro believes that one of the most fulfilling things in life is working on hard things with smart people. The allure of the 4-hour work-week mentality can easily take over when starting out as an ecommerce entrepreneur, but might not be the smartest tactic for all businesses. There is now a trend gearing businesses towards something more lasting. Bill was living the 4-hour work week dream until he decided to change it up and “grow up” in his business. Since having made the decision to hire, Bill has seen business grow as his company, Element Brands, grows. He's now able to step away less often but more easily because he runs his business with quality people, that he pays well, and who are motivated to help him grow. Bill is based in Charlotte, North Carolina and currently owns a portfolio of nearly 10 e-commerce sites primarily focused on household goods and personal care. Though Bill started the entrepreneur life as a digital nomad, he recently made the the switch to a corporate warehouse/office location in Charlotte and has 22 full time employees. Episode Highlights: The building of the Elements portfolio and how that process came about. Using in-house vs. a broker for brand acquisition. How Bill came to the choice of creating this more traditional business style. What Bill's typical day is like. An example of when an employee saved Bill money as a result of their loyalty to the company. How the structure allows Bill to disconnect thanks to the competent team he has in place. Tips on hiring, vetting, and finding the cream of the crop. Bill's own hiring process. Preferences for outsourcing people vs in-house training them. Noncompetes Bill has in place and how they work well for him. There are plenty of people out there interested in not being entrepreneurs but are interested in helping build great brands. Transcription: Mark: Okay one of the most popular business books that I can remember coming out in the past 15 years has been the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And I'm going to admit I was a little annoyed when this book came out because all of a sudden everybody tried to become Tim Ferriss juniors where they were having their 2-hours per week that they were setting aside to answer e-mails and take phone calls. And so if I needed to reach out to them they would explain to me … they would say well I only answer e-mails during this time or I only take phone calls during this time and of course if it didn't work with my schedule tough luck because they had their 4-hour workweek and they only had half of that dedicated to e-mails. And I think a lot of people went to that 4-hour workweek. During that time there was this allure of I can sit on the beach, I can take vacations and have this business that's completely automated. That still has some allure today but more and more I hear people talking about being grownups in their business. Changing the way that they're going about their business, hiring staffs instead of just doing pure outsourcing, building something that's a little bit more lasting than what we've seen with some of that 4-hour workweek sort of business structure. So, Joe, I know you talked to a friend of ours Bill D'Alessandro. He was living that dream of the 4-hour workweek for a long time and then so to speak and Bill I would not say that you are a kid by any means but he grew up in business. Joe: Yeah, he did and let me say right now folks that I'm having my house power washed so you're going to hear the people in the background. Mark: That's why I was talking so long I was hoping that it would stop but it did not stop. Joe: We're all entrepreneurs, right? Life of an entrepreneur, I'm working from home. These guys already took a lunch break and they're back and so you're going to hear them every now and then. Anyway lunch … I had lunch with Bill D'Alessandro. He lives in Charlotte … I live just north of Charlotte a couple of months ago and we were talking … Bill just got married and we were talking about the honeymoon and he said yeah no it was great because I hardly checked in. I was gone for two weeks and I hardly checked in at all. And then he goes back when I was a digital nomad I went to the same country, the same beach, but I felt like I had to work all the time because it was me and me only. I had to tell my VAs what to do and I had to do certain things every day. On this vacation I turned it all off because I had good quality people working for me, running my business while I was away on my honeymoon and I was making money. And it just sort of clicked. Like you said, you just said grown up right? And that's really… I mean it is what it is but you don't mean it to be and I don't mean it to be offensive to those that choose not to run a business that way. I've sold many businesses where there's one owner operator and that's it doing his thing. Look at that you can actually see the people power washing in my window in the background. Mark: You know what it looks like? It looks like a scene from Oceans 12 where the guys on the background can really be is just setting up a big con on you Joe. You better look out. I hope you did a background check on these guys. Joe: It's hilarious they actually have giant trash bags on and just the holes cut out for the sleeves. And literally, I've got a house … the entire house right now they're choosing to do right in front of my office in the windows outside. So if you want to see it and see the trash bag folks go to the actual video instead of just listening to the audio. Mark: And we'll make sure we put this one video up; at least this clip. Joe: At least this clip. Anyway, it just sort of … it was an epiphany with … Bill has an interesting story. I first learned about him back in 2015 in Savannah at the eCommerceFuel event and Darren was there with us; Darren Harden a former broker at Quiet Light. [inaudible 00:04:19.8] Joe you got to meet this guy he's raised like 20 million dollars and he's building a portfolio of e-commerce companies. I don't know if that dollar amount was right. I didn't feel the need to ask but I got a tour of Bill's facility down there in Charlotte. He's got an actual warehouse. He ships it all himself. He's got rack space, he's got staff, he's got warehouse employees that he pays really well and they found ways to make him more money by cutting costs. And that's really what this is all about, it doesn't make sense to outsource all of this stuff two of 3PL, two VAs or does it make more sense for you in your business to bring it out in-house and run it and go to work every day, take vacations and not worry about it because you've got good people in place to do the job for you. Mark: Yeah, he talked on this topic if I remember right at eCommerceFuel last year and let's give a shout out to Andrew Youderian from eCommerceFuel Live. Anybody that is in e-commerce I always recommend, take a look at eCommerceFuel as a community to join. That's a fantastic community. But he gave this talk in eCommerceFuel Live and I remember being struck by it because it was something that we haven't been hearing. And I'm going to double down on what you said, Joe, if you choose that lifestyle sort of business which was the business where you are running just remotely and maybe not four hours but maybe eight hours a week that's a really good and viable option as well. I think a lot depends on your personal priorities but sometimes we'd look down at those businesses that require an office and going in and having employees and stuff like that. It is a really good alternative as well for a lot of people. I'm interested to listen to this one. Again hear what Bill has to say about this and kind of how he made that transition over to a fully staffed business. Joe: I'll tell you right now there's no doubt we'll have Bill back on some day and we'll be talking about his 50, 60, 70 million dollar exit because that's the path that he's going down. Now quickly before we go to that Mark we talked about eCommerceFuel, we talked about Rhodium, right now I'll just name three or four other conferences that we're going to and then we'll go right to the podcast. Mark: We can actually name them. So Prosper Show is coming up if you do anything with Amazon … that's in March and if you do anything with Amazon go to Prosper Show for sure. We're going to have a presence at T&C at Traffic & Conversion. Joe: San Diego in February. Mark: That's right and then we're going to be doing Blue Ribbon Mastermind with Ezra Firestone; an awesome marketer. Everybody knows who Ezra is. We're going to be at that event as well. Joe: Miami in January, there's one more in there right? Mark: Capitalism.com absolutely … Ryan Moran's conference. We're going to be there and I'm looking forward to that as well. That's in Texas right? Joe: Yes, it's going to be in Dallas. So we've had Ryan on, we've had Ezra on, we've had [inaudible 00:07:01.8] on, we've had James on; we've had them all on. They're great folks and we'll be at each of those conferences and we'd love to get together with you guys for dinner, for an event that we might put on, something along those lines. Please let us know if you're going to go to those conferences so we can connect. Mark: Sounds great. Joe: All right, off to the podcast. Joe: Hey, folks, it's Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage and on today's podcast, I've got Bill D'Alessandro. A lot of folks from eCommerceFuel know Bill very well. Bill is from the Charlotte area right here in North Carolina and owns a portfolio of e-commerce sites and is a regular guest on the eCommerceFuel podcast. Bill, how are you today? Bill: Doing well Joe. Good to see you, man. Joe: You too man, you too. So I saw you a couple of months ago, I got a nice tour of the warehouse and you're moving to a much much bigger one. And we talked a little bit about your experience and what you've gone through over the last several years but I want you to tell the folks that are listening who you are and what you do and give them a little bit of background. So we can start with that and then we'll go from there. Bill: Yeah, sure. So for the folks that don't know me … Hi, my name is Bill D'Alessandro. I'm the CEO and founder of Elements Brands. Elements Brands is a portfolio of consumer products brands. We focus on what we call household goods and personal care. So that's everything from sunscreen, shampoo, body lotion, lip balm, laundry detergent; all sorts of things like that. We own nine brands today and are under LOI to acquire a 10th. I started life as sort of your classic 4-hour workweek digital nomad entrepreneur but since then the business has evolved and I've kind of made a conscious choice. And now we're located … Elements Brands is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. We have as of this day of recording 22 full time employees and growing. And as Joe mentioned we are moving into a new 51,000 square foot office/warehouse kind of facility. So it's a far cry from my early digital nomad days. Joe: Yeah, it's definitely a far cry but one of the things that was interesting is that you kind of have more freedom in terms of when you want to take off from work. You can take off, turn your phone off and you've got a great staff there. So let's talk a little bit about that. I want to talk a little first though Bill about how you managed to build a portfolio of nine brands and you've got one under LOI. Did you start with one small brand and kept adding them on? Did you raise some funds? Did you go to family and friends? How did that work out for you? What was your process? Bill: Yeah. So I started the 1st brand in 2010. I got it up to low hundreds of thousands of revenue; basically just enough to fund my digital nomad lifestyle. And at that point … you know I kind of did that for a while, and I realized that as I wrote on my blog Thailand will not make you happy. And I realize that it was fun but you go to Thailand, you sit on the beach and you're still you. You're sitting with you on the beach and all of your hopes, dreams, aspirations, problems, demons; all those things come with you to Thailand. And I also felt like I was kind of wasting my potential. So I thought all right how do I make this thing a lot bigger? And I come from an investment banking and M&A background so my thinking was I know how to run an e-commerce brand, I also know there are a bunch of people out there selling e-commerce brands, why don't I go buy … I mean roll them up onto a single platform. So that led to our 1st acquisition in 2013 for which I basically used my entire life savings at the time and borrowed some money. And we bought that company and then in 2015 basically based on cash flow from the 1st one and we bought the 2nd one in 2015. And then we bought two in 2016. Then we bought another one in 2017. And then as I mentioned we'll do another acquisition this year. So … and then also I was fortunate enough doing work with you to sell one of my other distracting side businesses too so I can focus on Elements Brands full time. Joe: Yeah. You know it's funny because I don't think we've mentioned that at all when we had lunch a few weeks ago. You've built these brands and we have a relationship … Quiet Light Brokerage is a business brokerage firm but we haven't sold any of these to you. You've sourced most of these deals on your own through building networks and buying smaller troubled brands and turning them around directly for the most case wouldn't you say? Bill: Yeah for the most part we … you're always number one in my heart Joe but we do talk occasionally with some other brokers who shall not be named. And we also have fulltime staff here at Elements that is going out calling brands all the time to see if they're interested in selling and to see if Elements Brands would be a good home for them. I have a guy and he's an ex private equity guy and he spends his all day every day talking to new brands. Joe: So let me say right now, anybody that's listening, you can go to ElementsBrands.com and find Bill and his staff. If you've got a household brand of … what size Bill? Does it matter what size if they've got something that might be a good fit do you think they should reach it out to you? Bill: Yes, so we look at basically between half a million to a million in revenue in the low end to probably about 10 million on revenue on the high end. Joe: Got you. Now if you want to save Bill the trouble call me and I'll put together a great package and then I'll call Bill. Bill: Exactly which we actually love Joe. Because on a lot of times when the seller does have a broker, it makes the whole thing go a lot more smoothly so call Joe first. Joe: The guys at 101 commerce, RJ Jalichandra from 101, they're buying literally 101 FBA businesses. He said the same thing on a panel of buyers a couple of months ago at the Brand Builders Summit. He said look we've done this, we've done a lot, we'd prefer to work with a broker because all the vetting is done, the package is put together. It makes our buying process much smoother and much quicker. So please go with a broker and they're going to choose a select few that they'll work with and that's it. It does make it quicker for you guys for sure. Why don't we talk about a little bit of the advantages of a guy like yourself who I have to classify as a grown up in a sense. And I say that in the nicest possible way in putting myself down because I'm sitting here in my home office and I have no employees. None of us do at Quiet Light. We're all independent contractors brokering from different parts of the country in some cases we all live here talking to Bryan. He's usually in a different location. You, on the other hand, you've got 21, 22 employees that you are responsible for. You have a warehouse, you have offices. You are building a real business that maybe someday components of it will be sold off to private equity or the entire thing will be. How was that choice other than you just saying you're limiting your potential by not doing it, how has that choice come to and what has it been like for your lifestyle as opposed to that 4-hour workweek that you started off with. Bill: Yeah so it was very intentional. I'm sitting here in my office right now and to my left here are 22 folks. I've just got my door closed in recording with you but I come in every day. I'm in typically before nine o'clock and I leave at six-ish. I take lunch. I only work about a mile off from my house. I kind of … the realization came to me while I was doing the digital nomad thing that one of the most fulfilling things in life is working on the hard things with smart people. And you know just as humans we love to solve hard challenges and it's really rewarding to succeed with other people. And I realize that as a digital nomad a lot of the times I was working with VAs or contractors who were basically just pictures on Upwork profiles to simplify but I didn't really have a relationship with these people and they … even if I had a full time VA I couldn't grab a beer with them after work. And frankly when you're hiring VAs oftentimes you're operating on a shoestring and there's a language barrier and you're generally … and I will generalize here but I will say if you are operating a whole business on VAs and you may love your VAs but there's a whole other level of caliber of employee that is out there that you've closed yourself off to because you're not willing to give them a W2 and health insurance and their office that they're meant to. A lot of really really brilliant people want that. Joe: Can you give an example of that? I know that we talked a little bit about your warehouse workers and how you pay them higher than average, there's no turnover and they find ways to save you money and increase your profit. Can you give an example of maybe what we talked about there? I don't remember the specific details … a thing to do with honestly this cardboard boxes so- Bill: Yeah. Joe: [inaudible 00:15:12.13] I might have tuned out a little but the overall picture was you took care of your people and you paid them well. They appreciated it and I think that they saved you a fair amount of money just by being loyal to you. Bill: Yeah so Joe what you're referring to is we do all of our own warehouse and logistic. So instead of using a 3PL, we've got a warehouse and we've got a crew here that packs boxes. We ship them out of here. And if I talk to other e-commerce entrepreneurs either A. they outsourced their 3PL and complain about how much their 3PL sucks. Or they operate their own warehouse and complain about turnover and how hard it is to manage a warehouse. So going into it we pay our folks here in the warehouse easily 30 to 40 or more percent more than the minimum wage that they can get somewhere else. And occasionally we bring temps in and they go oh my God for less money I was putting chickens in bags in an unconditioned warehouse last week this is amazing. And we've had … unfortunate to say because we pay well we have had zero turnovers in our warehouse. And our warehouse crew they're not packing Elements Brands orders in between packing other companies orders. So they're thinking about our problems all day. And we had our warehouse manager, she came to me and said I've been looking at the way all the laundry detergent comes in on pallets and I think it's not optimal. If we switch from eight packs to 12 packs I can fit X% more bags on a pallet and stack it higher and use more the footprint and it's going to save us 20 plus percent shipping per bag. And we did it and we saved five figures because of that. And a 3PL would never do that for you or a VA that is not physically present could never see that stuff and even notice it. What I love about having employees is having people that think about Elements Brands all day every day. Like they think about it in the shower, think about it on their commute to work, like it's the thing that they do. It's their job and their career and they want to be good at it so I just love it a lot. Joe: So by taking care of them and putting a good environment together, a good employment package for them what does it do for you and the other folks that are focused on building the brands and building a larger portfolio? Are you able to put more focus on that and less nitty gritty on some of the other things? Bill: Yeah I mean I at this point … so I just went on my honeymoon that for two weeks we went ironically to Thailand. Joe: You sat on the beach but you weren't alone, that's good. Bill: Yeah so I'm not alone I was [inaudible 00:17:39.6] yeah thanks. And while I was there you know I was halfway around the world and spotty cell service and I was basically fully disconnected and the team ran the business in a fully … to use a digital nomad term fully automated way. But it's not automated because I've got 22 people that come in here and they want to be good at their jobs. And they've got their own managers who come in to work every day and see them and if they don't come and there's … everybody says hey where are you I didn't see you today, is your stock end gone? So for me, I found that when I was working with VAs because there is no senior person who the buck stops with, that person is you. You can never really unplug. You might be able to travel or you might be able to unplug for a week but when you unplug for a week everything kind of stops; like nothing moves forward. It might be in stasis but nothing moves forward. So when I was gone for two weeks I came back and we had launched the targeting marketing campaigns and we wrote a new product and it had progressed pipe on. Stuff actually moves forward without me because we've got senior people with accountability and a bonus structure that incentivizes them. As such they come into work every day without me. So I think in a way being really committed and put down some roots and commit to not just being in one place but also commit to your people they commit back to you and it lets you have even more freedom than if you pursued this digital nomad thing hardcore. Joe: And the reality is that it's not just the digital nomad thing where you're having more freedom because you're not doing that. You can disconnect and recuperate on your honeymoon in Thailand on the beach for instance. But the beautiful thing is that while you are away you're not stressed about it and other people are working hard to make money for you. Bill: Yeah. Joe: They're getting paid for it and getting paid well for but that's really truly a beautiful thing. So you have 21, 22 people on staff. That can be one of the hardest things to do; it's to find good people. Do you have any secrets or tips on your process on how to find the right people and your interview process or techniques or just vetting them in getting to the cream of the crop? Bill: Yeah so as you alluded to hiring is the most important thing in business. And the more people I hire the more I realize how critical it is. Like the bigger, we get every time we hire somebody if I introduce one toxic person or one slacker into this group it poisons the whole well. So it gets harder and harder to get a job here as we get bigger and bigger which I don't know if I would get hired at my own company today. So we do a series of written application with there are some gotchas in there where you have to follow directions extremely precisely and if you don't you are disqualified. If you make it through the written application without stepping in it you get a phone screen. I try to keep those phone screens to 15, 20 minutes and during that time what I'm trying to figure out is A. do you really want this job or do you just apply to everything on the internet, B. are your salary expectations in line with what we intend to pay for this job, and C. are you somebody just off the top that I think has a positive personality that I want to work with. And you can do that in 15, 20 minutes if you would cut out the small talk; if you get right to it. Joe: And are you making every hiring decision or do you do the initial vetting or somebody else does it? Bill: So it used to be that I did everything. Now where at a point where my employees do the written application, phone screen, and the next bit of the process is a written assignment where it will say like in the case of if we're hiring somebody to work on Amazon we'll say here's one of our Asense what do you think could be improved? No length limit, go and we'll see when you get back. Or if we're hiring a graphic designer we'll say something like make an info graphic about go … something anybody can do, something that's pretty broad but you're going to know if somebody is a good graphic designer based on the effort that they put in and then the quality of that work output. And make sure homework assignments are good we typically bring in two to four for in person interviews and I sit in on the in person interview. And if you do well in the in person interview you're hired. And my message to the team is I'm never going to tell you we have … I'm never going to force you to hire someone you don't want to work with but I might veto somebody that I don't think is right for the company. Joe: Okay, so you get that certain veto power for sure. If they're not reporting directly to you, you let others make the decisions. Bill: Well up to the final interview, yes. Joe: Up to the final interview; got you. So if you're sitting with a group of e-commerce entrepreneurs that have physical products are you generally advocating bringing on staff and having your own warehouse as opposed to outsourcing or are you simply saying it's got to be right for you and you got to do what's right for your situation? Bill: Different models are good for different people. I think the … what I see myself as doing and the model that I've become convinced is very good in a lot of situations and people don't fully give a fair shape to is hiring full time employees and not hiring gig based contractors. And those full time employees … I think it's awesome if they're in the same physical location as you but even if they're not, if they're full time and you have video with them one on one every day and you create this personal relationship such that they don't have any other clients and such that they begin to build up a confidence about your business so you don't have to explain to them the task you want done at the beginning of every task. You want to build up this surf of confidence where they just know about your business and you can say hey do that and so much as widen it because they already work for you. So what I tend to advocate for is people really want to create this web of outsourcers or gig based people, I can say find a person … like you probably live in a town or near a town of a sizable amount of people and sizeable would be 100,000 or 200,000. Try to find somebody … consider finding somebody locally that's talented that's not a bottom of the barrel price type of person. Find a quality person locally and it will unlock you as a CEO because your time is way too valuable to be spent typing into at a box on Upwork in describing to someone how they should scrape locations from a website that you should not be doing that. So if you're willing to pay somebody $50,000 a year which if you're in the in the freelance world they're like holy crap it is like [inaudible 00:23:49.8] the money, right? But $50,000 a year buys you a college educated American in your town likely or less even who is probably pretty smart and got a good GPA. And he will come in every day and you can teach them. That's a good requirement. Joe: And be very very well. What about finding experts in certain areas that may not be available in your town? If you want to outsource your Facebook advertising and your Google advertising are you training and doing that in-house and putting them through courses and programs or are you hiring agencies to do that type of work? Bill: Yeah, so we … the answer is both with the preference for hiring and training. So when we're absolutely pinched we use agencies but we have hired and trained a bunch of people in Amazon specifically. I've put people through courses on Amazon. I put people through courses on Facebook ads. I put people through courses on YouTube because if you hire a smart person who did well in school you just say guess what this is graduate degree. I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars, I'm going to put you through these courses, and I'm going to train you then on the fly. You're going to do … you're going to learn for 4 hours in the course and you're going to learn from the person you report to for 4 hours a day and before you know it you're up the curve in a month, maybe two. I find about two months is before is the curve until someone can be dangerous. Joe: Is there any particular online programs and courses that you always dwell that you go to? Bill: I've used Ezra's courses a fair bit; Ezra Firestone. I've used the guys at amazing.com, they operate a 40 bucks a month kind of subscription and there's a bunch of courses in there so I picked out a few. I've used the copyrighting course by [inaudible 00:25:29.4] for some people to just kind of learn and write e-commerce copy that converts. Those are ones that come to mind. Joe: Yeah for the folks that are- Bill: I basically look- Joe: I'm sorry Ezra's course is the Smart Marketer. We sat Ezra on the podcast. We actually just had a podcast go off, it will be a few weeks back once this airs with Bret Curry who created another course with Ezra on monetizing YouTube; smartmarketer.com you can find a lot of great courses there. I'm sorry, continue. Bill: There are others but if you invest a couple of thousand dollars in hiring someone you can create talent that you can't find in almost any city. I mean we live in this world where there is incredible amount of information available on the Internet in courses and it's relatively cheap. I mean a few grand you can … if you … people complain oh there's no Amazon expert, you can't hire them anywhere. Well, you can you should train them though. Joe: I love what you just said; you can create talent that you can't find by spending a couple thousand dollars on a course and finding the right person to go through it essentially getting their graduate degree. And you know what it does? It makes them employable for the rest of their life either with you or remotely if they decide to move on some day or maybe they'll become an entrepreneur themselves. That last point though, become an entrepreneur themselves, what do you do if anything in regards to non-competes? Because you're teaching a lot of people how to compete with you and they could step out of Elements Brands and perhaps go and launch their own business that might be competing with similar products. Do you have NDAs in place when you hire people? Bill: Yup, we do. We have non-competes and NDAs. I view it as once I train them and make them great it's now my responsibility to make sure they want to keep working for me. I want to give them access to nine soon to be 10 brands that they can work on. I mean I'm sure all the entrepreneurs out there listening remember you're like God I read all these articles but I can't do AB testing when I have 100 hits a week. Well I can teach them how to AB testing on a site that has 100 hits a minute. And you can do … pull in big leverage is just fun. So I got to make sure that they're having fun with me. And if somebody wants to go out and do their own thing I mean at this point nobody is running the whole business. My marketing folks are running marketing, they have no idea how the warehouse works. They have no idea how supply chain works. So it's harder than you would think for some of your employees to kind of see the whole business. And also … and this is the thing that I've really come to realize, I used to be of this mind that entrepreneurship is for everyone and everyone should be an entrepreneur and it is the best thing you could possibly do with your life. And I've started to realize that that's not true. There are a ton of people out there that don't want any part of this entrepreneurship thing and think it's stressful and uncertain and lonely and all these and they're just not cut … I don't even want to say they're not cut out for it. I'm saying their personality type is not fulfilled by it. So there's lots of really bright excellent people out there that are not entrepreneurs and they want to be employees and they want to be employed by a great company. And sometimes I interview people that I think they're to entrepreneurial and it makes them not a good fit. Joe: Right. And you know just to summarize everything I think you've done just that Bill, you've sort of … you're pulling big levers but you've checked all the boxes I think to someday have a sizable exit if you ever choose to do that. It could be 40, 50 years from now. It will be the one in buffet of the e-commerce world right there at Charlotte, North Carolina. But you're building amazing brands. You're really focused on building brands with great quality products and you're taking control of the whole process from beginning to end from the marketing to the fulfillment of it and you're taking care of your people. You're creating a local base of people that are going to focus on and think of your company first and helping building more value for the company, profits for the company that I have the feeling you go ahead and pay them back for through better facilities and more vacation time and bonuses and benefits and all that type of thing. You seem like a great guy to work for. If I ever decide to move on I might just try to fill up one of those applications but I think you'll probably stump me and I'll get thrown into the trash. Bill: We got a room in [inaudible 00:29:34.9] Joe. Joe: I won't pass. I won't pass, I know for sure. I'll just come down and have lunch with you instead. Bill, listen I know you've got to jump to another call. I appreciate your time thanks for sharing your story, your success on building a great brand, company environment, and not living that digital nomad lifestyle and creating more freedom for yourself. Hopefully, the folks will take some nuggets from this and do that as well. Bill: Yeah thanks for having me on Joe. Good to see you, man. Joe: Talk to you soon.   Links and Resources: Element Brands Bill's Blog Bill's Twitter Upcoming Quiet Light e-commerce conference attendance: Prosper Show T & C Summit Blue Ribbon Mastermind CapCom Conference

Is really possible to acquire 101 Amazon FBA businesses in 2 years? At least once a month we receive a query from buyers and sellers about the company this week's guest founded, 101 Commerce, asking who is behind it and if they're going to be able to pull off what they say they will. It is hard to undertake, but of all the people that we've worked with here at Quiet Light, RJ would be the one to do it. He is here today to talk about what that process looks like so far. Richard Jalichandra, known as RJ, got his start in digital entrepreneurship back in 1994 and has been working in the space ever since. He is a CEO five times over, has held senior executive positions, and has generally been around the digital block several times over. While getting ready to retire – which of course hasn't happened – he founded 101 Commerce under the premise that he and his group would buy, invest in, and relaunch 101 niche private label brands on Amazon. RJ has the experience, the funds, and the team in place to make it happen. Stay tuned. Episode Highlights: RJ shares a few of the impressive businesses he's been involved in launching and growing in the past. How he got involved with 101 Commerce. Why the FBA business model attracted him the most. The 101 acquisition plan and how it came together. RJ stresses that this is not a fund, but an operating company. How 101 commerce is striving to create a next-generation CPG company. What top 3 things RJ and his team look for in a business to purchase. Why the person and the story behind the business matter immensely. How long Richard projects it will take to acquire all 101. RJ stresses the importance of the seller's over package and presentation of a well-run company. Why he recommends using brokers and seasoned experts for efficient due diligence and transaction processes. RJ's shares thoughts on brand expansion potential and tariff hikes. Why solid, prosperous deals need both a good seller and a good buyer to make them work. Transcription: Mark: It's probably at least once per month that I get an email about a certain company in our industry that seems to be making waves and the general question that I get … and actually I've just got this email a few days ago from somebody else that has been our podcast and I won't say who it was but asking who are these guys over 101 Commerce and are they going to be able to do what they keep saying that they're going to try and do? Joe I know you talked to RJ over at 101 Commerce, people that we know pretty well at this point and you talked about what they're doing. Joe: Yeah you know it's pretty incredible. His ability to network and we've done a podcast on networking and I'm telling you just a year ago I spoke to him and he came out of the blue and called me and said this is what we're trying to do and I told him that he was nuts. We laughed a little bit. I really should have looked him up on LinkedIn before I told him he was nuts because he's one impressive guy. What he's accomplished, what he's achieved in the companies that he's built I had him rattle them off after he did his intro. And I said stop being humble name names here and everybody listening will know some of the names that he named. But yeah they're pulling it off. Their goal is to buy 101 Amazon FBA businesses. They love the platform. They love the fact that it's got built in traffic and easy advertising platform and all they have to do is focus on a few things versus driving traffic which Amazon does for them. And I think they're going to pull it off. It's not going to happen in 24 months which was the original goal but they're well on the way. I tried to nail him down on the time frame and he was a little wishy washy on the amount of time it would take. Mark: Well I know the question I get from people on this all the time is isn't even possible to do what they're doing? Buy 101 companies within 24 months or even if it's 36 months. I mean could you buy that many companies? And my experience in this has been that I've seen people try to do this in the past, I've seen people try to acquire multiple businesses and roll them together and build this portfolio and they always end up running into buying a dog here and there. Or having an issue come up or trying to expand the team that quickly. So my response to people, who's pretty much universal … and RJ if you're listening to this, hopefully, you're listening to this, I'll tell you exactly what I tell everyone. It's really really hard to do but out of the people that I've met, he's probably the one person I would bet on being able to do this. And so I'm like a lot of other people I kind of grab my popcorn and I'm sitting back and I'm watching because this is really fascinating to watch them go through. How many are they up to right now as far as acquisitions that they've completed? Joe: I think the last time we chatted and we didn't get into specific numbers on the podcast but the last time we chatted I think it was about 14 brands and they're trying to get their systems and their processes in place and bring on more and more people. We ended up doing I think eight businesses for 14 brands with a total of three people. And then they realized we need to have some operations here and build some systems and processes so they've been hiring like crazy; and some really really talented people. So I'm with you. I think if anybody can pull it off … there's a few that I think could, but I think RJ and his team are one of them. We've had some other folks that are doing similar things as you know that have purchased a couple from us; Brad, in particular, has sold two to them recently but I think they'll pull it off. I think it will take longer than the 24 to 36 months. And I'd be betting on more from beginning to end maybe a total of 60 months. It's a big undertaking. Mark: Yeah and folks I want to say that again how many in how long? Joe: 101 businesses. Mark: No how many have they done so far? Joe: Oh 14 brands. Essentially eight purchases but within that there are … I believe there are 14 brands. And that has been less than a year. I think the first one happened early in the summertime. So it's really less than six months. Mark: Absolutely incredible and we're seeing this from a few different places. I know we had Shakil Prasla on quite a while ago now. I'm talking about how many he's bought, and he's bought more since we had him on. At that point, it amassed eight different companies … acquisitions that he had done over just a few years. So there are ways to do this. And by the way, Shakil's method is different than what RJ and 101 is doing. So there are a few different paths towards building up this portfolio and really scaling up pretty quickly. A fascinating example of somebody doing this at scale within the industry and definitely I'm sure this going to pop up there as one of the more popular episodes. Joe: So let's you and I stop talking about it and hear what RJ has to say. Mark: Sounds great. Joe: Today's guest is Richard Jalichandra … actually RJ. How are you doing today RJ? RJ: I'm doing great Joe. How are you? Joe: I'm fantastic. Good to see you. Hey, let's do the thing where you tell everybody about you instead of making me read the script. Can you give everybody some background on yourself? RJ: Yeah I'm an old digital entrepreneur. I dig my gut onto the internet in January of '94 building my first website for an agency client and I've been doing it ever since. I've done a whole bunch of different things. I'm a five time CEO now but I also hold senior executive positions at a whole bunch of venture and PE backed companies. So I just kind of have been around the block for quite a while. And then I tried to retire last year and then something I think you're probably going to ask me about kind of like I got a bug in my ear and back to your podcast got in my ear a few times and maybe influenced my current gig. But yeah recently we founded 101 Commerce and essentially what 101 is doing is we're buying, investing, and launching theoretically 101 niche ecommerce privately. We're running it on Amazon and we're a little bit into it as you know. Joe: A little bit. I remember that first conversation we had. Some guy named RJ called me out of the blue. I should have looked you up on LinkedIn before I told you you were nuts because that's exactly what I said. Do you remember the conversation? RJ: Yup. Joe: You're nuts. You're going to buy 101 Amazon businesses and you're going to run them, operate them, build a staff around that. You're crazy. RJ: You weren't the only one. Joe: You might still be crazy but you're pulling it off. Well, listen you're being very humble here in terms of your background. Come on share some of the businesses that you started and you rank them. Its name dropping please do it so that everybody knows. RJ: Well some of the ones that are … I mean depending on what your flavor is whether it's fitness or video games or … yeah let's see a couple, I mean I've done a bunch of things but the one that have seemed to kind of ring a bell on everybody, the video game space I was one of the senior executives of the company called IGN Entertainment where we ran a massive gaming network that have reached 50 million dudes; 13 to 34 year old dudes at the month. And famously of all the acquisitions I did, they are the one that always delights people at cocktail parties with Rotten Tomatoes. So I did a bunch of acquisitions there but Rotten Tomatoes is kind of the one that I can throw out there. And also everybody is like wow you did Rotten Tomatoes. I'm like no I didn't found it but I did buy it. I'm really good friends with the founders of it still today. And then let's see … I ran something called Technorati which at one point was a social media darling until a small search engine company in Nutview did some things that made it very hard to compete from other search engines. And then I ran- Joe: [inaudible 00:07:56.2] name. RJ: No we won't name any names but yeah, just some small company in Nutview. And then let's see, after that, I did a fitness company called Map My Fitness which was then sold Under Armour. I mean that was a really successful fitness set of apps Map My Run and Map My Ride [inaudible 00:08:14.8] doing the cardio, a lot of people touched those at some point. And then I did a company nobody ever heard of. I was an enterprise media space … advertising media space; I'm running behind the brands. I sold that in 2014 and then I tried to retire then. And then I decided to do one more fitness gig and was the CEO of BodyBuilding.com and then that led to my second retirement attempt. Then here we go. Joe: Maybe the third time will be a charm. I think the list of businesses you just mentioned probably touched on 90% of the people listening know of at least one if not more of those especially the Map My Fitness and all that good stuff. All right so about … what 18 months ago now? Or no it's less than a year ago or about a year ago you and I had a conversation and you said hey look I'm reaching out, we're putting together a fund. We're going to buy 101 Amazon businesses. Why? Why are you focused on Amazon? Why are you not retiring like most sane people would do when they have the ability … no, I'll skip that, why are you buying 101 Amazon businesses? What's the theory? What's the plan? What's the concept? RJ: Well I'll back up a little bit and kind of tell you how I stumbled into it. Joe: Okay. RJ: So I mean I was going to try and retire. I'm still young enough though. I figured at some point I might jump back into a CEO chair or something like that but I promised my wife I was going to take two years off. No W2ing, just literally going to play golf, mountain bike, have some fund, raise my daughter, advise, maybe do some angel investing. And that was kind of the plan but I was also I go and I ever do want to get back in the chair will be kind of hard to do. I just was really on the beach for two years and not really educating myself. So I had this idea that I was going to buy a solopreneur 4-hour workweek business which I'm sure you've heard that one a few times in your job. Joe: A couple of times. RJ: A couple of times today but that was literally the goal. It was to buy a 4-hour workweek gig. Joe: Yeah. RJ: And so hence I wanted something that was at least a couple of years old. So somebody else has already done all the hard work, done the early stage startups. I know how hard they are to get things off the ground. I wanted something that was more matured and seasoned where I was more twisting knobs than actually lifting heavy boxes. Joe: Yeah. RJ: I looked at a whole bunch of stuff, not just Amazon businesses. I looked at SaaS, content; I have a lot of experience in content. I sold a SaaS company. I looked at lead gen, affiliate, and I looked at digital content. I was on the board of a company called Click Think which a bunch of your listeners have probably heard of as well. I was the chairman there so I knew a lot about NAT ecosystems. I was looking at all whole bunch of different things and I kept coming back to Amazon FBA. And the more I dug in on it I was just kind of blown away by the operating leverage that you get out of Amazon FBA. I mean essentially as I explained it to people when I'm trying to fish investors or just tell people I'm doing this you know my last real job we had 800 employees, 6 fulfillment centers, 500 people on the warehouse and you have to generate your own traffic. We had to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising and all that. Essentially with Amazon FBA, you outsource all those hard things. You don't have to worry about fulfillment. You certainly don't have to worry about traffic because you have 300 million of the highest converting consumers there are. So … and then, of course, the advertising platform is built-in. The customer service system is built-in. So basically I kept meeting and hearing about and listening to [inaudible 00:12:01.8] podcast including yours, people who are essentially running these really good businesses had really good net margins. And I wouldn't be shocked you know there's a plenty of people kind of running sub 1 million dollar businesses but every once in a while I meet somebody running a 15 million dollar business and was essentially a sole proprietor with a couple of VA's and they're running at 30% net. I'd scratch my head and go wow that's a way better business model than setting up your own ecommerce site and got in your head against you know Google and Facebook and trying to get traffic as well as having to compete against an Amazon itself why not lean into it, take advantage of that operating leverage, and see if you can build something that was incredibly profitable at scale. Joe: What about the risks? A lot of folks that I talked to are saying no, no, no, I don't want to buy an Amazon business. I think there's too much competition. It's too much risk and Amazon might pull the rug out from underneath me. They may just decide someday they don't want any more seller accounts or third party sellers. What do you have to say to those folks? RJ: You're right. Just go away. Don't look at Amazon businesses. Leave them all for us. Joe: You know what my answer is there are people out there like RJ that are a lot smarter than me that are doing it so there must be something okay with it. RJ: Look I mean there is no doubt there's proper risk of course. But when I was out in the open web there was platform risk as well. I've had Google like I said destroy one of the highest profile companies that I was at. Oh did I say that name? I shouldn't have said that. But I mean in other places and I've seen it happen and- Joe: It's okay don't worry about it. RJ: Okay, all right. Joe: The panda update, the penguin update they've all have affected … those have affected probably again 90% of the people listening so it's okay. They're probably happy. RJ: So everybody knows what I'm talking about. Joe: Yes. RJ: There is platform risk wherever you go. And even in today's thing where Google doesn't have quite the sway they used to, now you have Facebook and Instagram risk because those are the big traffic drivers of other third party traffic sources and stuff. So you're always going to have platform risk. And I just got comfortable with it because the FBA and the marketplace ecosystem on Amazon is literally what's driving its growth right now. I mean if you look at all the stats behind the curtains or whatever, it's driving the growth. And if you look at 20 years of operating history and behavioral study on Jeff Bezos he usually doesn't throttle things that are growing like a wheat. Joe: That's true. He doesn't. That's a good point. That's the answer I'm going to use from now on when people ask me about that risk. All right so in terms of- RJ: But I will make it clear there's a lot of stupid things you can that gets you into trouble and then there's some inadvertent things that could happen to you that do present risk. I don't want to make it sound like- Joe: It's not risk free. RJ: It's not risk free and we certainly are going into this with our eyes wide open knowing that even the best laid plan, buy 100 of these things who knows what happens. There's a portfolio theory and it goes both ways; good and bad. Joe: Right now Mark had an expert on from a PE firm in the last podcast maybe and I actually listened to it yesterday. By the time this this airs it's probably 3 or 4 weeks ago and the concept was buy them at a certain multiple pull them together and it's worth more automatically. We've all talked about that concept. Is that what struck you initially in addition to the scalability because of the platform itself? RJ: Well the first thing you should do is you should introduce me to that guy and we should get to know each other because there may be something we could do. The second thing is … I mean there's more to it than that. If it was just a financial arbitrage I probably wouldn't be that interested in it. There's a lot of places where you can do financial arbitrage. I love ecommerce so first off that just gets me from a personal standpoint. But what I like is just knowing that they're with resources, working capital, domain expertise, specialty expertise, how much you can grow these things is really kind of what interests me. I guess I'm not just interested in the financial arbitrage. I would correct something else that you said kind of the outset that we raised a fund. A lot of people think that's kind of what we do because they don't understand the PE and venture markets. But I would absolutely categorize us not as a fund. We are absolutely an operating company that works closely with venture and private equity funds. Joe: Yeah it's fine. We're trying to put a label on you recently and what you do and what some other folks are doing and it's … I mean it's … well, what is the label? You're just a company that happened to get some that you went out and raised money and are investing it in Amazon businesses. Is there an official label for your type of organization or is there not? RJ: Well what we're trying to do is create a next generation CPG company. Joe: CPG stands for? RJ: Consumer Packaged Goods, more than a CPG because Amazon obviously sells more. But essentially what we're doing is we're putting together a portfolio … a wide and broad portfolio of niche private label brands that sell predominantly; not exclusively but predominantly on Amazon. And that's really what it is. It's a multi-brand platform. You could think of it as any multi-brand consumer goods company like a Procter & Gamble or something like that. Joe: Okay so not unlike our friend Bill D'Alessandro at Elements Brands and what he's doing but it's a little bit more specialty niche and- RJ: Absolutely. Joe: That's what you focus on on Amazon. Okay. RJ: No and I love what Bill's doing too but it's very similar. He has a multi-brand strategy although he's taken a little more narrow focus than we are. Joe: Absolutely. Okay, let's talk for the sellers that are listening what is it that you and your team look for? What pops out to make you go I love that opportunity? Is it brand, is it gross margins, is it workload, is it … what three or four things do you generally look for when you're looking at one of these opportunities? RJ: I mean the first three things that we look at when we're just doing the highest level screens like when you send materials out we're just looking for a couple of really broad things. Because there's a lot of this for sale, between your guy's brands … absolutely a great deal flow. Joe's probably going to work at the Senate at some point but of our first cohort, almost 50% of the deals set were from Quiet Light so thank you for that. You guys do a great job. Joe: Thank you. RJ: With that said, some of your competitors also do a really good job putting together great materials and all that. So we're evaluating stuff. We're trying to screen just the sheer volume of things that come through the door. So we look at gross margin and net margin that tells us kind of a lot about the health of a business and what the opportunities are. But of course on Amazon the currency there is reviews so we're looking for what we term review restructure. It's not really a good phrase because what it really means is your relative strength, the velocity of reviews, quality of the reviews, how the reviews were generated. But right up the bat what we're trying to do is look at those three broad metrics to decide if we want to dig deeper or not. Joe: Okay and once you find a business that checks all of those boxes do you then go and jump right to the financial conversations with the sellers or do you say okay what platforms, are they selling in the US or can I expand internationally? Is there something else like a growth opportunity that sort of takes it over the top? RJ: Well one of the other things I love about what the materials you guys send us and some of … again some of your other- Joe: Include the competitors because this isn't about padding Quiet Light Brokerage. RJ: No, no, no I mean- Joe: And I won't pull a quote out of this just for the record. No, I'm kidding I- RJ: No, I'm good sorry. It's not just you but the other top brokers and guys that really put together quality materials and stuff. It really does save us a lot of time because normally you got to do a screen call before you even want to setup a call with somebody. Because of the interviews that you guys do you get to hear a little bit of the narrative. I think this is something that people forget when they're trying to sell businesses or sell anything; story and narrative is really important. If you basically have a very good narrative for everything from how you originally … what you did before you even started the business and then how that morphed into a business that narrative is really important for me to hear. And it's really important when I'm out pitching our investors as well. There's a lot of investment opportunities, a lot of money floating around and whatever but they want to know … they kind of want to hear your story and how the whole thing kind of morphed into what it is. And the same thing when I'm looking at even the smallest Mom-and-Pop business I've ever bought, I want to know about them. Where they're from, what they did in the previous career, and then how all of a sudden this thing kind of caught fire. Because that's really the moment like most of the things that cross those three bars, the first initial bars. Joe: Yeah. RJ: Somehow or another they've gotten some critical mass. They figured something out. In spite of the fact they might not have a working capital, they might not be a rocket scientist or an expert on PPC or fulfillment or something, they figured something out and that's kind of what we want to hear in that narrative. Joe: And the person behind the business I think is what you're saying matters tremendously it's not the numbers. RJ: Absolutely. So in addition to that narrative, the way they present that narrative tells you a lot about them whether or not … and again you can get this just by reading your memorandums. You can kind of get whether they're out for a quick walk or they're kind of at the end of their line and maybe just running out of gas and it's time for them to kind of move on and hand it to somebody who has even more gas. And it's also part of that narrative is getting me excited about the product category or something like that. But it tells you and then, of course, you're going to get to the … I know you're going to ask this but by the time we actually get on the phone with somebody or in video or whatever one of the most important things that I understand if a person is … a person integrity. Are they honest? It's often kind of like when you get on that first call, it's usually not in the books. Occasionally it's in one of the books but usually, on that first call a really honest person is telling you okay here's all the warts, here's all the things that aren't going well, you need to be addressed, I wish I could do better that kind of thing. So I think that's really important. So narrative and then the integrity comes out in that and then certainly I want to know … don't ever try and kind of hide the bad stuff because if you tell a great story and then you get indulgence and then all of a sudden the warts start appearing and you're like well you didn't tell me about that then there's an integrity. Joe: Yeah and you lose that trust. And this is not rocket science for the maybe the other brokers that are listening or people that are trying to sell their own business on their own. It's important to act with full disclosure and ask those questions and answer them thoroughly so that when you do get on that phone call that trust is continued to be built. And as I say … look creating a great package is not the hard part, connecting with great buyers like yourself RJ is not the hard part. Going at a letter of intent is not the hard part. The hard part is getting from letter of intent all the way through due diligence to closing. And if you do everything right, free LOI that becomes easier. Things still go off the rails. You and I had one go off the rails a little bit this summer and it got back on but it helps tremendously with full disclosure and trust being built and the people behind the business acting with integrity. It's not just the numbers. RJ: Right and the other thing you get and by those disclosures too is we also start operating the business pretty close. And I think that's a really important thing. I mean you're not operating a business but you're starting to think like the operator. Joe: I was going to say we don't … you don't get any control of anything- RJ: No but you're mentally putting yourself in the shoes of having a steering wheel in your hip. Joe: Right. RJ: And I think that's really important because it gives you a lot more confidence to get to the finish line. Joe: So let's talk about that and 101's operations. When you buy a business from a solopreneur or someone who has a small staff or VA's are you generally … and I know the answer to this, are you generally taking it over completely or are you bringing them on to help operate the business with you? RJ: That's a TBD I mean it really depends on the entrepreneur and the situation. Frankly, there are some people that they're just done. They want to go do something else. Joe: Yeah. RJ: This was their side hustle. They really love what they're doing. They may have financial reasons that they want to get out. We are looking for the rare entrepreneur and then the other thing is they can even want to jump on our boat but they may not have the right personality to be in a really high speed tech thing where you got to work as part of a team and any time we put more people together. They're humans and things don't always work right when humans interact even with the best of intentions. So it really is a TBD thing. If there are … in our first cohort we were probably looking to just take the businesses and actually create kind of a sandbox with these where we can build what I call platformization of the company; people, processes, frameworks, technology that allow us to go do this another hundred times and a hundred times after that. So with that said the first eight businesses that we bought we now have … I wouldn't call, I call it two principals have joined us from those eight. One was an owner and one was literally the guy who's like the GM who is running the business. Joe: Okay. They're going to help you with the other … what 93 that you buy, is that the plan and the goal? RJ: Yeah. 93 is the next milestone and then we'll see what happens after that. Joe: You're going to do that in 2019 or is it going to take a little longer? RJ: It's probably going to take a little longer then. Joe: Okay, I'll help as much as I can. RJ: I know you will. Joe: Talk to us about the importance of having a good presentation at package together before you ever get on that phone call in terms of … look I mean to be blunt you and I talked about you coming on the podcast a while ago and I said no. I said it didn't make sense because I didn't want people reaching out to you directly. And then I saw you up on the stage at Brand Builders Summit, you advocate now of a few different things. One is working with brokers because everything is handed to you kind of on a silver platter but then I think also you've talked about specific attorneys and things of that nature. What are those few things that you say now that you've learned and you've got a certain amount of deals under your belt that you're going to sort of also not just in terms of the business three check boxes but your processes going forward for somebody that is also maybe building a portfolio even if it's a smaller content site portfolio things of this nature, what certain things are you trying to put in place like working with brokers, like working with certain attorneys, and things of that nature, anything? RJ: Yeah no gosh you just hit on the mother lode there. Let's go in no particular order but let's start off first with the broker no broker question. So people heard about what we were doing, the word kind of got out there and frankly, we had hundreds of leads that came in through our website. A very few of those were for a surprising number that would have crossed kind of our minimum thresholds and something we would have been interested in. But when we do a deal like that we have to do a heck of a lot more work. A lot more work. And it's kind of hard pressed to sift through that. If they don't come with their own package, financials, a really good narrative, good transparency, it's going to be a lot of work for us. And most people don't know how to sell a business. I mean let's just call it like they make selling business hard. So we're happy; very happy to work with brokers because we feel there's a couple of things that brokers do. You validate a deal for us. I mean basically, you're not just going to take … your time is valuable; you have other opportunities and things like that. So we know that you're already in a little bit of a quality … you're checking a quality box. And then, of course, you help in put together really nice financials and things like that; things that you know are going to make it really fast for us to kind of do that. And then I'd say another really important thing for a buyer to consider and then we're going to link with a lawyer or other professional services because frankly brokers pride in professional service. When you're selling a business for the first time or even a second time, third time, fourth time, fifth time, but certainly the first time … if you've never done it before it is going to be emotionally traumatic. Joe: I know you're going to go there. It is so emotional. RJ: And it's your baby. It's your baby and guys on the other side of the table they're professionals and they do this for a living or whatever and it's not that you're going to feel like you're outmatched. It's just you've never been through it before and it's incredibly stressful. And some buyers are going to ask … they've got investors and they require them to check a whole bunch of boxes before they actually write a check. So they're going to ask you to check all those boxes too and that can be incredibly stressful. So having a shoulder to cry on i.e your broker and play- Joe: Or vent to. RJ: It's not … no that's it, a lot of it is just like I cannot tell you … I mean I have bought a small business once, probably 15 years ago … 14 years ago. I bought a small business that wasn't represented by a broker and I am not exaggerating when I tell you I hired him a therapist. Because otherwise, we're not getting … neither of us is going to get what we want because the guy is going to fall apart. And so I have a feeling a lot of people probably underestimate just how hard the emotional side of getting a seven figure deal done. There's a lot at stake on both sides of the table and [inaudible 00:30:59.4]. So there's a lot there. Of course, you guys do a lot on just the sheer process side that is there but I would say that's an underestimated really big value thing. Just being the therapist through the whole process. Joe: Yeah it takes a good buyer too; a good broker, a good buyer. But what about the attorney side of it? You've had some experiences with great attorneys and maybe some tough ones too. What is your view in terms of that aspect? I think you actually … you and I talked to at one point where you're going to do … are you still considering requiring your sellers to work with a select group of attorneys that you know have ecommerce experience? RJ: Yes. So and before I even get to that I would just give this is a huge bit of advice to any seller. Do not use your family attorney. Joe: Well there's … I mean I have an unwritten rule that if somebody comes to me and they want me to sell their business I ask them point blank do you have an attorney and are they related? Is it your mother, brother, father, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, etcetera? Because I had an experience where I had someone that was a few years out of grad school, they started a business in college. We got the business under a lot of intent, over asking price and it was a few years ago so I was fairly new RJ. But his mentor in grad school was an attorney, my trade. His fiancée was in law school and his mother and father were attorneys. The deal blew up. It was a one sided contract and there was absolutely no way to fix it. And the buyer was fantastic it was very fair. It was fantastic, it blew up, went away and I learned that lesson. So what you're saying right now to anybody that wants to have a relative as an attorney it's a really bad idea because they're going to fight like rabid dogs for things that don't necessarily matter and kill the deal for you. Is that what you- RJ: Yeah … no, I would take it even a step further. I actually wouldn't mind if they were your family attorney if they happen to be an ecommerce lawyer because the domain expertise is also really important. You can't just take somebody even if they've done M&A that they sold dry cleaner chains or something like that. Ecommerce and digital assets are just different and so if you don't have a lawyer who has the domain expertise we're probably going to have issues because we're going to have to spend a lot of time educating. So I would highly recommend … and look Joe can recommend, most of the brokers have their stables of good recommended lawyers. But just because you have a lawyer, maybe you have a good business lawyer don't necessarily use that one. Look for somebody with the exact domain expertise of what you're getting into. And then the last thing I'd say about lawyers is lawyers love to point score. I mean this is kind of what they got graded on in law school when they're doing all that. They like point scoring and the one thing … a bit of advice I give to anybody who hires a lawyer is remember the lawyer works for you, not the other way around. So you need to watch whether they're going into point scoring mode just for the sake of wining points. And you have to understand it's not 100 points in a deal. It's usually like four or five that matter. And yet there's the long contracts, it's four or five that matter and then may be one or that lean or important to you and that's kind of what you need to focus on. Make sure you that manage your lawyers so that they know what's important to you. And they're not worried in section 17 and 19 where it's [inaudible 00:34:40.3] and crossing tees and that some warranties and things. Joe: I agree 100%. If I could look back at all the transactions, for the most part, the buyers are good people, the sellers are good people, and if we lived in a different world they could shake hands and the deal would be done. RJ: Yup. Joe: You do have to have contracts. We do have to have attorneys but it needs to be a fair and balanced deal for both parties. It's … I've only had one deal fall apart because of the attorney and it was, in fact, that situation that I just mentioned. Let's talk for a minute and jump over to owning an Amazon business for the people that are buying. We talked about what you look for from sellers but from people that are buying what are your thoughts on if it's 100% US based Amazon business and they've got the capital? In your opinion and experience now should they look at either expanding these skews in the US or maybe looking at the EU and different market places or does it simply depend upon the brand? RJ: I think it's highly contextual. Every situation is going to be very different. There's a ton of these Amazon podcasts that say skew expansion and international expansion which both require working capital. I don't think it's as simple as that. I think you really have to kind of look I have met people literally in the last month where they tried to go overseas and failed miserably because their product category just wasn't appropriate for European market or whatever market. So I think it really is highly dependent there. But it's certainly worth investigating. One of the things I like about Amazon is that you can experiment relatively cheaply for thousands if not low tens of thousands of dollars where you may not get hurt too badly if you made a big mistake. Essentially taking existing products and doing a small MOQ and launching it in Europe, if it fails miserably again if you have the right gross margin structure you're probably not going to lose money [inaudible 00:36:36.9] an opportunity cost. But look if you're going to be successful … I mean you've said this on your podcast you got to take some swings at the play and you're not going to always hit the ball. Joe: Got you. All right let's talk about another big fear given that you're an expert in this space now and you own … I'm not going to say exactly how many and neither are you probably, let's say more than 10 brands and FBA businesses altogether. How big is your fear of potential tariffs getting your individual brands? Does it keep you up at night? Does it hit every single brand or certain categories? Can you just touch on that as an owner in the space now? RJ: Sure. It's really also is highly dependent on your exposure to Chinese manufacturing. So yeah … so we certainly have our fair share of products that are manufactured in China. It's certainly something that we are monitoring and we are thinking about. At the same time … and Joe you know this personally, we've expanded rapidly into Europe. We own two European businesses now and so we will look at it later to expand it even more with Chinese based products as we go into Europe. Look I mean- Joe: [inaudible 00:37:47.1] Europe and not being impacted. Is that … okay, and will you have an opportunity? Have you done the financials? Does it make sense if you do that and shift from China to Europe to then import from Europe to the US and avoid the tariffs or is that just simply too much cost shipping wise? RJ: Oh that's a great idea, Joe. You should come work for us in our supply chain. Joe: No thanks I'm not that deep though you've got smarter guys than me. I know one of them … a lot of them actually. Is it something you guys are already working on and something you've crunched the numbers on? Come on I know you probably have. RJ: I think it's still early days and look we're thinking about it a lot. We're thinking about well … I mean it's too Wednesday about it. Everybody gets it. Everybody is all level playing field but it's not that simple. If it changes the price dramatically where there's price elasticity of demand issues in the category that can just impact overall demand. So look we're worried about it. We're hoping that it gets resolved and most of the time what you see in these geo political things is they usually the small period of exposure and everybody actually finally sits down and see when we get to the problem fixed. So that's what we're hoping for knock on wood. Joe: Let's both do it. Everybody else do it now as well. All right let's talk about a first, at least a first for me and I think a first for Quiet Light Brokerage although we've got a second in place now and it may happen before we close. On a transaction that we did together we actually instead of selling or transferring control of the Amazon seller account entirely we tested and successfully moved a brand from a well-established existing seller account took VA's in and tested it in another account that you happened to own. Can you talk about that a little bit for those … and I'll tell you why, because there's always a fear. Some people want to keep their seller account in particular over in the European markets. For some reason, some people are a little bit more fearful in some other countries. For some it's a legitimate fear, others I would say not but we tested that and it … can you just touch on that and what you did there and what you prefer whether it's buying a brand and moving it into your own seller accounts or buying the seller account entirely? And what the difference is between the two for you got. RJ: Yeah no, no, no, we'll just talk about the actual experience. So yeah we were certainly … we had our own questions, the exact process that we used was we did a test. So we didn't move all of the Asense over at once. We took three Asense, a top selling Asense, a medium selling Asense, and actually, it was two medium selling Asense and one longer tail Asense. I didn't want to jeopardize or risk a top selling Asense and until we moved into this other seller account. It was not equal. It wasn't too far behind. But it was definitely a smaller seller account than the one where they originated from. Joe: Were the reviews on the second seller account that you moved it into were the seller account reviews better or worse than the one you were moving it from? RJ: Worse. Joe: Worse, okay. RJ: They weren't bad but that's a worse- Joe: 4 ½ to 4 or something, okay. Sorry I had to clarify. RJ: Yeah I think it was like 2000 like 1200 or something overall reviews. Joe: Okay. RJ: But look the product reviews go with the Asense. So that's a really important thing in a seller account. If you are selling 3rd party products, you're selling Nike's and there are 20 other vendors on Nike's and you're fighting for the buy box, then your seller rating is a heck of a lot more important than the case for your private label. I know that's important- Joe: The big mystery and big unknown that so many experienced Amazon sellers people that are doing half a million or a million dollars a month is we don't know how important those seller account reviews are. When you … I mean obviously they're important in some way but when you go from 4 stars to 4 ½ and 4 ½ to 5. So, in this case, you moved some of the Asense over, obviously the review … product reviews carried over and if … was it a … I think we did a three week test and talk about how it turned out and we ended up closing the transaction. RJ: It was a 15 day test and then we extended it for a couple of days so it was just under three weeks and the seller was awesome. He is super cooperative. We were also risk averse as he was risk averse. We are risk averse so we really cooperated well to see if we could make the test as well. The other thing we had to replicate is GPC campaigns so they were identical. Joe: Yeah. Was that an automated process or a manual process? RJ: I didn't do it myself Joe so I can't tell you the exact process. I try and keep my hands where they're good and that's not one of them Joe: Okay. RJ: But from what I understand the seller actually created these campaigns for us and literally proved that it was a cut and paste. And then our team put it into our seller account. And then he had access to our seller account too … or viewing access or whatever so that he could make sure that it was setup. Because like I said he always intended to make it work. Joe: Yeah. RJ: So he wanted it to work and we had a couple of checks in there on our side to make sure that there's no way [inaudible 00:43:15.2] the situation even though we didn't really have any fear with him in particular. But it is something that you want to like at least have a couple of safeguards that somebody is not running a big Facebook campaign and juice in the results or something like that. Joe: All right so just for point of clarification for everybody listening the typical way that an Amazon business transfers is that the entire seller account transfers. Generally, in asset sales, the new owner takes control of the seller account and you're left with an empty shell of your corporation. What we did in this situation was move the Asense from one seller account to another. All the product reviews carried over. The seller account wasn't as high quality. We tested it out for a few weeks in a few ways and duplicated the sponsored account. And it turned out great. The seller has to help and it's in their best interest. And this is the big picture thing here Richard, it takes … and you talked about it throughout here, it takes a good buyer and a good seller to make a deal work. It's … nothing is cut and dried, there is lots of emotions involved in the process when you're selling and even for a first time buyer. Some people are putting their life savings on the line and they want to make the right choice so emotions run high all across the board. And it's never a winner take all situation, both a buyer and seller have to be happy at the closing table. It begins way back at the initial call and building a good package and managing your own personal brand and reputation. Doing the right thing as a seller and thinking someday maybe you're going to exit; maybe you're going to pass it on to your kids. Either way, you want to pass on something really great because if your kids take it over you want them to be successful because it may be your retirement money. And if you pass it on to someone else you're willing as a buyer Richard … RJ to pay more for a company that is really tidy and neat and you're able to just take off with it as opposed to sifting through the details and fixing things first I would imagine, right? RJ: Yeah and I'm going to say something that my team would probably kick me into shins over but I fundamentally believe this. And my mentor who kind of trained me in my career he always said always be willing to overpay for a great asset because the good ones are hard to find. And as you were saying that … so again if somebody is really running a great business we're not going to get in a pissing match over a couple of tens of a multiple or something like that. Because ultimately that's a great asset, we know what we're going to be able to do with it downstream and those are going to be rounding errors or something when we look back. You mentioned as you were saying that one of the things I'd like to remind sellers too is that I'm sure you kind of educate them as you bring them on board but there's a lot of these businesses out there. In 2017 Amazon announced that there was 20 thousand 501 million dollar sellers so there's a lot of choices; even if we're only trying to buy 100 of them. Joe: Did you just read Walker's book? What's going on here? You just quoted him exactly. And maybe you guys are reading the same stuff. Walker Diebel has published a book called Buy than Build. RJ: Yeah. Joe: Yes Buy than Build, you're not quoting him you're just quoting- RJ: No, no, no, if you read my narrative you would hear that. But I think what I'm getting at though is don't be a pain in the ass because we've got that 400 businesses in 60 days and we put … in that first 60 days we put eight in the LOI and then we bought a few more and whatever. My point is that at some point in this when we had a couple of your early ones get difficult, I remember being … Keith and Chris, they're sitting there I'm listening to a conference call with a seller and a broker and I literally got up on the whiteboard and I got in giant letters and I wrote NEXT! and that became kind of a mantra. If you're not acting your job well … it's not even if you're a jerk or whatever but if you're not acting that you have your buttons up there's a lot of another choice out there. And the same goes if you're a really good asset there's a lot of choice for you to who you sell to as well. If you're a really well run business and you're dealing with a jerk tell your broker find me the next one. Joe: Well let me say this you're saying to the sellers don't be a pain in the ass. To the buyers, the seller does have choices. The first time I was on a conference call with Keith we were on the call late at night with Max. Max was over in Europe and Keith was so professional, so good, so likable to the point where when the call was done my seller wanted to Keith to be the buyer. He did calls with other buyers. He wanted Keith to be the buyer and 101 Commerce. That is what you want to accomplish buyers on those conference calls. You want that seller to go I choose you because you're not alone and the one that wants to buy a great business. And that's hopefully what a lot of folks listening that are owners of the Amazon FBA business, and ecommerce, and SaaS businesses, content business in general. It really doesn't matter if you want to build a great asset and build a great reputation for yourself so that guys like RJ and Keith and other great professional buyers are willing to pay you maximum value for your business in a seamless, painless, exciting process so everybody prospers at the end. RJ you're awesome. I look forward to working with you for the next 24 months no more because you're going to buy 93 in 24 months and then you're done right? RJ: Yeah [inaudible 00:49:05.2]. Joe: All right I'll work with you as long as you choose to work with us here at Quiet Light Brokerage. RJ: Or eventually at some point, I'm going to find somebody smarter than me to run this and then I'll come work with you guys. Joe: There you go. Well, it's a privilege talking with you. Thanks so much for your time. RJ: Awesome. Joe: I appreciate it. RJ: Okay, thanks, Joe. Take care.   Links and Resources: 101 Commerce  

"The most finite resource you have is your time and your team's time. So if we were to spin our wheels chasing this huge big box business, that would prevent us from spending our time to stuff that is hugely profitable and is continuing to work. So why take your eye off the ball?" - Bill D'Alessandro on abandoning the big box retail route "My products are in 5,000 Target stores." Admit it, at some point in your ecommerce entrepreneur life, you wished you could say those words. Or let's say you didn't, but imagine for a minute that you're at a party back home for Christmas and high school friends are asking what you're up to, and then you say those words. Yeah, we've all been there. But with all the allure of big box retail distribution comes headaches that you probably are not aware of. As an example, one big chain approached us about selling our coloring books on their shelves and we were psyched. But after running the numbers we realized that it's not even worth it. Today's guest, Bill D'Alessandro, has gone through the big box retail route when he acquired a business that already had a retail presence. He tells us in this interview the woes he encountered and why he ultimately decided to no longer pursue that route. Bill is the founder of Elements Brands, a company that acquires and scales consumer products brands. He has been buying businesses for 7 years now and currently owns 9 brands with over 130 products. He is not a stranger to this podcast and you can listen to a previous episode he has done with us about buying businesses vs. starting one from scratch. Some conversation points: The details of how Bill got into retail distribution The advantages of mom and pop shops over big box retail Treating mom and pop shops as big B2C customers The actual costs of going into retail What chains expect from a brand owner The ridiculous fees chains charge to get your product in their shelves What he plans to do moving forward Bill is currently on the lookout for good businesses to buy and add to his portfolio. If you are planning on selling, you can contact Bill at bill@rebelceo.com or hit him up on twitter at @billda Resources mentioned: Stamped.io AsiaInspection Thanks for listening to our 114th episode. Until the next one, happy selling!

"If you're never been an entrepreneur before, I would suggest starting a business. If you have done it once, I would strongly advice buying a business. It's just a lot easier." - Bill D'Alessandro of Elements Brands If you've been listening to the podcast for a while now you might have noticed I that when I talk about my speaking engagements, I always give credit to someone who told me--back when I was unwilling to speak in front of a large crowd and would rather get a root canal--that I needed to do something that makes me uncomfortable to further my career and life. That someone is my guest in today's episode. Bill D'Alessandro is the founder of Elements Brands, a company that acquires and scales consumer products brands. He has been buying businesses for 7 years now and currently owns 9 brands with over 130 products. We invited him to be one of the special guests of our 100th episode and if you haven't listened to that, absolutely do so--you will find nuggets of advice you won't get anywhere. In this episode we discuss why he prefers buying businesses over starting one from scratch and when you can do the same. Here's an overview of what we discussed: How Bill and I met and how he helped push me to become a speaker Why he prefers buying existing businesses When it is right to start a business or invest in an existing one Bill's buying criteria and the attributes of a business that is a good buy Turning ugly into an opportunity What businesses to avoid buying The time when a third party tried to sue him for buying one of his businesses What he does after buying a business Why not all debt is bad, especially if you bought a business you want to grow (unless you have rich parents) If you want to explore the possibility of selling your business, you can reach out to Bill on Twitter or shoot him an email at bill@elementsbrands.com. Resources mentioned: AsiaInspection Stamped.io Elements Brands Under the Hood We have a new segment on the show! Starting next year, we will be featuring a segment called Under the Hood, where selected listeners get an hour (up to 1.5 hrs) of FREE coaching with Mike and Dave. In exchange, the coaching session will be recorded and turned into a podcast episode. If you want to ask Mike and Dave for ANY advice about your business absolutely for FREE and want to help put out good content for the podcast as well, we need you. Sign up at ecomcrew.com/UnderTheHood if you're interested. Thanks as always for listening, and until next week, happy selling!